Acupuncture. Is Modern Research Rediscovering Acupuncture
By Geoff D'Arcy, Lic.Ac.,D.O.M.
“Electric homeostasis is one of the basic functions of the human body. This homeostasis supposes correlation at increasingly higher levels of the atomic, molecular, cellular, tissue and organ electromagnetic field. It may be said that the electrical structure of the human body must have an architecture as precise and important as the biochemical structure, between which there is continuous interdependence.”
We must not forget we all are composed of electrically charged particles.(1)
Can this precise architecture be an electromagnetic energy body? It may well resemble a hologram, a truly three-dimensional energy body interfacing with the biochemical body! This is what is being suggested by modern researchers.
A Kirlian photograph on the wall of my office pictures a leaf with the top part cut off and thrown away. The photograph captures the “corona discharge” that represents millions of electrons streaming from the object. The upper portion of the leaf is cut off yet one can clearly see the “phantom leaf” or “energy body” that remains. All living organisms must have an attending energy body interfacing with the physical body.
In a series of experiments done in 1920, Elmer J. Lund demonstrated how the energy potentials of the body of a hydra could be reversed changing the biochemical structure. He found that he could control the energy architecture of the hydra’s body by passing small direct currents through the animal’s body and could cause the head to sprout out of the tail and vice versa. Dr. Robert O. Becker pioneered research that developed Lund’s early work revealing how minute electrical currents (millionths of an amp) could stimulate bone and tissue repair and regeneration. He studied the way the body utilized minute currents to stimulate biochemical repair and rejuvenation — a phenomenon known as the “current of injury.” During his early research on salamanders, his data suggested that when a salamander’s leg was amputated, it generated measurements at the stump that initiated a non-differentiated cell-guk (blastema), possibly generating an electromagnetic phantom limb that then coded the cells into fulfilling the growth of a new limb.
One stage up the evolutionary scale, Dr. Becker also worked with frogs that cannot regenerate new limbs. His experiments suggested that the difference between frogs and salamanders was that the frog didn’t have the “juice,” or energy, at the end of the process to generate a strong negative potential. In the laboratory, Becker then added the missing element and remarkably, the frog grew a new leg. Adding the missing negative potential facilitating energy flows seems to have boosted the energy body and empowered the physical body to re-grow the leg.
Humans also lack the power to regenerate limbs, but not completely! Studies have also shown that children up to age 11 can re-grow the first phalange of a finger that has been cut off.(2) English surgeon, Dr. C. M. Illingworth fostered these studies and discovered that, as in salamanders, if the wound isn’t covered by a flap, the non-differentiated cell guk (blastema) forms and I believe is coded and empowered to fulfill the energy body’s phantom limb. Dr. Illingworth has since measured a negative current of injury off the end of the stump, as was found in salamanders.
Many decades ago, Burr proposed that “Life-Fields” extended out from the body, like a hologram, and provided a field into which the biochemical body could grow. Standing on this research, Becker, and more recently, Dr. Andrew Bassett, have produced electromagnetic devices that stimulate healing of fractures. The devices are no longer implanted but placed outside in the cast. They produce external applications of weak electro-magnetic fields across the site. Non-union fractures have been healing in a remarkably short amount of time, even after several years of non-union.
Dr. Becker was not the first to stumble on these ideas of exciting our own currents of injury to heal bones. In his book, Body Electric, Becker relates that a Dr. Hall of Pennsylvania used electro-acupuncture to stimulate bone repair in the mid-1800’s!(3) Benjamin Franklin also used electrotherapy to heal a friend’s frozen shoulder.
These ideas are not new. From ancient China, to India and Greece, many traditions believe that humans have an energy body, and that stimulation of energy flow within this body facilitates healing. One of the basic tenets of ancient Chinese medicine is that Energy = Matter, and that by stimulating energy, matter is affected. It is this same foundation of thought that Einstein proved to scientists, that energy and matter are dual expressions of the same universal substance, with his equation, E=mc 2.
That universal substance, "Qi", is a primal energy or vibration. Therefore, it is possible to attempt to heal the body with vibrational or energetic medicine, by manipulating the basic vibrational or energetic architecture of the body, as acupuncture does.
Medical science has been using energy concepts to create insights or windows into the body with imagery equipment, from x-rays, CAT scans, EEG, ECG, PET, to the MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imagery) that is able to visualize a tumor inside the body. The MRI stimulates atoms by stimulation of the transfer of energy of a specific frequency. All of these remarkable diagnostic tools provide glimpses into the body at different energetic frequencies — a glimpse into matter at the energy level.
When the body’s energy becomes imbalanced organic problems follow. Cancer tissue and healthy tissue have different electrical capacities. Research by Dr. Nordenstrom has found a “negative potential” electrical reading in the vicinity of cancerous tumors. He has reported some tumor remissions by the insertion of electrodes in the tumor and on its surface and then applying a current between the two. This technique normalizes the abnormal current of injury, perhaps righting the energetic imbalance or “hole” in the energy system.(4)
Astounding results in recent scientific inquiry has spawned a renewed interest in the subtler working and circuitry of the body’s bio-electromagnetic energy. Scientists are already manipulating the body’s own incredibly small currents for healing of tissue, nerve, bones and cancers. They are discovering trigger points and acupoints in the same locations. The possibility of subtle measurement is now available. We already know that acupoints have a precise location on the body’s surface that can be measured. Classic acupoints identified thousands of years ago by the ancients are measured today using scientific means and indeed show a precise decrease in electrical resistance.
Recent work by Dr. Darras and Professor DeVernijoul prove some remarkable results. Testing the validity of energy transportation along the meridian channels, the doctors injected a radioactive tracer (Tegg) at the acupoint and with the help of a gamma-ray camera, found that the radioactivity traveled along the acupuncture meridian at the speed of 3-5 cm/minute, (this being in the order of 25 circulations per day or night). The flow was slower for diseased organs. They discounted that the flow was of the lymphatic or blood system. The speed of this flow quickened when an acupoint was stimulated.
Dr. Smith, in his book, Electromagnetic Man, states that this flow was suggestive of an electromagnetically rotating field, maintaining a pressure in the direction of the target organ. Dr. Nakatiani, and Dr. Voll have conducted extensive research into measuring the end or beginning acupoints electrically as being reflective of the associated organ. High readings indicate inflammation, with low readings indicating degenerative disease. Any needle inserted in an acupoint will set up an electrical contact potential.
After all of his ground-breaking research, Dr. Becker believes that “One of the main lessons of [the effects of] bio-electromagnetism, so far, is that less is often more.” These electrical contact potentials may help regulate the energy body, and thus the physical body.
I believe the ancient Chinese discovered by trial and error, over hundreds of generations, what modern scientists are confirming today — that the subtle manipulation of the body’s currents provides great healing. I believe that within the experience of Chinese medicine there lies the keys to future advances in many areas of subtle healing energy work. The manipulation of bio-electro-magnetic energy for healing is still at a crude stage compared with the lineage of acupuncture and the experiential truths contained therein.
At some point in the distant future we may verify the two types of energy: one, consisting of low-frequency electromagnetic fields; and the other being non-electrical, a mysterious subtle energy akin to Qi. The first type of energy is now being measured and is being slowly accepted by conventional science. “Qi” may well remain a mystery.
References
Ionescu-Tirgouiste. "Measurement of aupuncture injury potentials by acupuncctoromety. American Medical Journal, vol.15, No. 3, 1987.
Illingworth, C.M. "Trapped fingers and amputated finger tips in children." J. Pediatric Surgery, 9(6), 853-8,1976.
The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Fountain of Life, Robert O. Becker, M.D., an Gary Seldon, New York: Quill, 1975.
Nordenstrom, BEW (1983). Biologically closed electrical circuits: Clinical experimentation and theoretical evidence of an additional circulatory system, Stockholm, Nordic Medical.