Chinese Medicine Research Paper

Traditional Chinese Medicine is one of the medical systems with the longest historical background, with the first record of the practice of Chinese Medicine being dated up to more than 4000 years ago. The philosophy and fundamentals of Chinese medicine is based on the Taoist view that humans should live in harmony with the nature (天人合一) and that any interruptions or interventions of the nature balance would result in sickness in the human body. With this as a foreground, Chinese Medicine is mainly based on the flow of Qi and the balance between Yin and Yang as well as the five elements in our body. To maintain the human body in a healthy condition, TCM focuses on restoring the natural balance in our body by various traditional ways, such as

Acupuncture

The first record of Acupuncture is found in the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (黃帝內經), which is 4,700 years old.

As the fundamentals of acupuncture, Shen Nong (神農) – the father of Chinese Medicine- theorized that there is a vital force running through our body, known as Qi. Qi travels through the body along meridians, which are special pathways. There are fourteen major meridians running across the surface of the body. Acupuncture points are specific locations where the meridians reaches the epithelial of the skin, and can be assessed easily. In TCM, there are up to around 2000 acupuncture points on the human body.

Acupuncture is a technique which includes a collection of procedures involving the stimulation of points of the body in various ways. There are two ways in which needles is penetrated into the body surface: manually and electrically. The position where the needles are applied and the depth of the insertion affects the effects of acupuncture, thus the variables in acupuncture is dependent on the nature of the imbalance within the

For pain levels experienced, it was indicated that the groups with acupuncture after surgery shows a higher pain threshold. The group which rested for 20 minutes required the use of morphine to relief pain after 10.6 minutes. Whereas for the group with low frequency and high frequency acupuncture, the time taken for them to request morphine as pain relief is 27.9 and 28.1 minutes respectively.

For the volume of morphine used, it can be concluded that acupuncture anaesthesia reduces the morphine usage after surgery. The high frequency acupuncture group used only around 40 per cent of the volume used by the group which rested. While the low frequency acupuncture group used around 60 per cent of that used by the group which rested.

This research demonstrates quantitatively that acupuncture can indeed achieve an anaesthetic effect on patients.

(3) Pain relief of osteo- arthritis using acupuncture - related treatments : the physiology behind