Why the study?
Does acupuncture at Hsien-Ku (St-43) alter the pulse spectrum of the human radial artery?
Does acupuncture at Hsien-Ku (St-43) alter the pulse spectrum of the human radial artery?
Acupuncture at specific meridians produces distinct, frequency-specific variations in the radial artery pulse spectrum.
May support meridian-specific pulse effects; hypothesis-generating for clinical relevance and requires validation.
We investigated the pulse spectrum variation of the human radial artery when Hsien- Ku (St 43), an acupoint on the stomach meridian, was needled and compared the results with the acupuncture effects of two other acupoints, Tsu-San-Li (St-36) and Tai-Shih (K-3), reported previously. For Hsien-Ku, the harmonic proportions were redistributed: the second harmonic (C2) decreased, C3, C5, C6, C7, C8 and C9 increased, C3, C6 and C9 became the relative peaks to their neighboring harmonics and C2, C4 became the relative minimums. The phase angles of the 2nd harmonic (P2) and 5th harmonic (P5) decreased, propagating faster. These effects were similar to that of Tsu-San-Li which is also on the stomach meridian. A totally different pattern was found for Tai-Shih on the kidney meridian. These results strengthen the theory that a meridian can be classified according to its effects on the pulse spectrum, and that all the meridian related effects such as those caused by acupuncture or meridian specific herbs are frequency specific.
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Wang et al. (2000) studied this question.
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