Talk:Meridian (Chinese medicine)

Page name

(TCM) is a pretty bad disambiguator, as it in itself is ambigous. I suggest Meridian (physiology), Meridian (medicine) or Meridian (chinese medicine). -- Chuq 10:18, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi Chuq, this seems a good suggestion to me. I'd use Meridian (chinese medicine). How do you change Titles? Geraldstiehler 10:26, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Use the "move" button up the top. just enter the new name, and the page will be moved, with a redirect from the old name automatically created in its place. -- Chuq 11:18, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I really don't like the "TCM" in the title. It is vauge and confusing. Unless anyone objects I will be moving this page to Meridian (Chinese medicine) in a short while. -- FP ?? 08:12, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

I doubt anyone will object. Meridian (TCM) moved to Meridian (Chinese medicine). -- FP ?? 08:23, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

I have restored the original page name, which was apparently changed using a redirect, without discussion. Meridian is the common English term, and this is the English Wikipedia. -- Fyslee / talk 01:19, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

GFDL history statement for Aligned water theory

This section preserves history for GFDL licensing compliance; please do not remove.

The following text, inserted 07:28, 14 Apr 2005 Dpbsmith, is a copy of text that was solely authored in a rapid series of edits, the last on 23:33, 12 Apr 2005, by 67.127.72.243, in an article entitled "Aligned water theory." This notice is being provided so that history is preserved in the event that Aligned water theory is voted for deletion. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:30, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The aligned water theory of the meridian (TCM) conjectures that meridians are made up of aligned water clusters. Aligned water clusters are where large numbers of water molecules align electrically to form a stable cluster. These have been photographed with an electron microscope by Shui-Yin Lo outside the body. He calls them IE crystals.

These aligned water molecules are thought to flow between the cells. They form a chain that completes a circuit around the body.

When the water molecules fall out of alignment the body may become less healthy.

Scientific predictions and section cleanup

However, later research has confirmed that meridians exist, and many of the claims of meridian diagnosis and treatment are reliable. Despite such research, skeptics of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) often characterize the system as pseudoscientific. Proponents reply that TCM is a prescientific system that continues to have practical relevance.

The above statement is contrary to the citation which identifies NO existence of meridians. I edited the statement to conform to the conclusion of the citation.

The modern search for evidence of the meridian system has become acupuncture's search for the Holy Grail. A number of researchers have claimed to have found evidence for energy meridians, but to date these claims have been unconvincing (v., e.g., Stux & Pomeranz, 1995; Lewith & Lewith, 1983; Chaitow, 1990). For example, Vernejoul claimed to have actually photographed the meridian system (Vernejoul, 1985). Efforts at replication have led most researchers to conclude that Vernejoul photographed the lymphatic system rather than a meridian system (v. Stux & Pomeranz, 1995). While many practitioners of acupuncture assume the existence of meridians, after a significant amount of research, no convincing evidence has been found for their existence. Convincing evidence does exist for local and total body effects of acupuncture interventions, but none has been found for meridian effects (Stux & Pomeranz, 1995).

The above excerpted from Hooke, A Review of Thought Field Therapy, Vol. 3:2; Article 3, The International Electronic Journal of Innovations in the Study of the Traumatization Process and Methods for Reducing or Eliminating Related Human Suffering. --Michael.spangler 13:12, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

However, the predictions of the modern scientific theory of meridian system have been confirmed or supported by multiple research results in both acupuncture and conventional biomedical sciences.

This is a very bold yet vauge and unreferenced claim (which I removed). It sounds like something unsubstantiated that someone who believes in the system would repeat. If this claim is true, it needs to be much better supported. First of all what are the predictions of the "modern scientific theory of [the] meridian system"? Is there such a thing? What specific research results have upheld these predictions? Some references would definitely needed for such a potentially controversial claim.

I marked the section which lists the meridians of the arms and legs for cleanup for two reasons:

• These terms should clearly be linked to more detailed articles, but I was unsure whether they should go to Chinese medicine-specific articles, or the scientific articles on particular organs.
• Could someone explain why, for example, my stomach meridian is in my leg, even though my stomach is clearly located in my middle torso? Are these just named by the organs they are connected to? What are their Chinese names? Is there a physical manifestation of the purported connection which is observed in cadavers?

-- Beland 02:20, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

• • As stated in the corpus, the names refer to functional positions within the body's organ networks. Using the Western anatomical names for the TCM organ functions is regarded by authors like Jeremy Ross as a mistake, but happens by necessity when teaching English students. For instance, the pí (脾) system, while normally translated as "Spleen", probably refers to not only the spleen, but much of the hepatic portal system, and possibly cells and physiological functions of the liver and pancreas, etc. It is not the form of it, but the function that is important. So, to answer your question about why the Stomach channel is in the leg. Well, it's just that it was observed by people that stimulating certain points on your leg affect the performance of the wèi network. Anyway at some point people discovered the channels, and the points became grouped by the channel which they lie on. It's quite probable that if you were to needle points on the stomach channel and the Large Intestine channel (together, these two halves form the Yangming channel), and pass electricity through it - of the level of micro-amps to milli-amps - most of that current may be passing through the organs responsible for the wèi and dà cháng organ networks (ie, the stomach and large intestine).

Mugwumpjism (talk) 07:30, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

So I am not sure this is the place to discuss exactly, but the reason as to why the stomach meridian is in the leg, is it actually runs from the head (two branches that come together near the chin), then proceeds down the torso all the way to the 2nd toe. It is eastern science or eastern medicine. I attempted to find / link to a source on the internet, but unfortunately I can't find a single source that one would consider reputable .. I expect it will have to be book references in Acupuncture. However, I would comment that Western scientific proof is not the way to go here.

-- User:Clear2Go 20:28 EDT (Sep 15, 2006)

Section Headings

What's the difference between References and Bibliography? If it's nonexistent maybe the section authors ought to merge them. Yasha82.44.114.57 17:23, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

acupuncture meridians (channels)

I think recent re-discovery, in Korea, of the "Bonghan ducts" should also be discussed in this/related sections.

It would likewise be a good idea, I feel, to have at least a brief biographical entry for Kim, Bong Han (Bonghan). He was the researcher who originally discovered the existance of tubular "ducts" that seem to correspond to classical TCM meridians in their anatomical paths. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Valdi Yegorov (talk • contribs) 18:51, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Fractal Channel

Fractal fractal dimension channels and collaterals shape and dissection structure

(non-gap, non-smooth, non-pipeline, rough (crude), cell backfill fractal fractal dimension channels and collaterals) in 1996, Deng Yu et al, Beijing Jiuxianqiao Hospital.

Channels and collaterals' fractal fractal dimension characteristic is the channels and collaterals shape dissection, the organizational structure foundation and the essence. Why is this also channels and collaterals' dissection structure not easily the basic reason which was discovered by the predecessor. It has promulgated channels and collaterals' fractal fractal dimension characteristic, also revealed for the channels and collaterals mass transfer mechanism opened the new path, enabled to have the fractal dimension characteristic, the similar fractal dimension membrane (filtration, ultra filtered with reverse osmosis) or the chromatographic analysis column type “microscopic dynamic `static shuts activity open' the fractal fractal dimension `cell backfill ' the channels and collaterals model” to arise at the historic moment.

7, Oct. 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.147.27.138 (talk) 01:23, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Ununderstandable gibberish. -- Fyslee / talk 01:05, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Page name restored

Per consensus above (see "Page name" section above) I have restored the original page name, which was apparently changed using a redirect, without any discussion at all here where it counts. Meridian is the common English term, and this is the English Wikipedia. -- Fyslee / talk 01:21, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Confusing overuse of Chinese characters

There seems to be such an overuse of Chinese characters as to make reading difficult. Especially the lead suffers from this problem. An old discussion about this problem and article exists here, and I propose doing something about the problem. Since some editors have made good faith efforts to do what they thought was an improvement of the article, and I'd hate to see such information get lost and such work get wasted, I suggest making the existing lead a footnote and then use it's exclusively English version as the new lead. If no objections are forthcoming soon, I'll make an attempt and see if it floats. -- Fyslee / talk 06:06, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Per this guideline I think we can safely remove all the Chinese characters except for Chinese name of the title itself. I completely agree that it's currently impossible to read, — Blue-Haired Lawyer 12:58, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Picture missing!?!

Where's one or more pictures illustrating the position of meridians? So shockingly absent, makes me think it's still a stub level article. 69.196.191.134 (talk) 14:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Chinese meridians

Nervous system

As clear, the chinese meridians follows more or less the nervous system

Removed by Bullrangifer, since there seam to be "issues" with the image, not sure which ones though, could probably be fixed when mistakes are explained. 91.182.136.18 (talk) 10:43, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I see my name was mentioned. Here is the diff and the edit summary:

• (rmv OR. Numerous aspects of meridians run exactly 90 degrees wrong. Meridians aren't based on the nervous system. Buddhists weren't allowed to do autopsies.)

I have no objection to an illustration, but certainly not the text, so I have restored the meridian image and used a neutral description. The deleted image was an OR juxtaposition, but is a documented and provably false claim made all the time by advocates of TCM who don't know anatomy. The illustration of meridians, without the comparison to the real nerve system, is okay. -- Brangifer (talk) 18:42, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Quote Addition

I've never done this before and am not familiar with how to make edits to Wikipedia pages, but I thought this quote might be rather fitting and helpful if someone else could properly add it to the article or reference it:

In a typical acupuncture study, researchers would inject a tracer or radio-isotope into an energy point along a specific meridian system or channel in a subjects body as directed by a skilled acupuncturist. The purpose was to see if the tracer would move and if it did, would it move along the meridians or channels as they appear on a classic meridian chart. Time and time again, they found the tracer would immediately flow along that same, specific, meridian channel where the tracer had been injected.

The researchers also found if they injected the tracer even slightly outside of a specific energy point, all the tracer did was pool in that spot. It went nowhere. These results clearly demonstrated the existence of a system of otherwise invisible meridians or channels within the human body, just as Eastern scholars had been teaching for many millenia. Here was proof of a system that was previously unrecognized and unknown to modern medicine. I found that to be truly astounding.

Furthermore, these studies were not conducted just in China and Japan but also in Europe and even here in the United States including the highly regarded Menninger Foundation. The studies were significant enough that insurance companies began covering acupuncture treatments and most do today.(pp.268-9)

Chunyi Lin and Gary Rebstock (2003) Born a Healer. Spring Forest Publishing. ISBN 0-9740944-1-2

Soulstrummer (talk) 16:24, 18 July 2009 (UTC)soulstrummer

That's an interesting claim from a practitioner, but we should use the references themselves. If this has really happened as claimed, it should be easy to find and use the references to the research itself. Since this is a medical subject, we can't depend on testimonials, but need better sources per the guidelines at WP:MEDRS. Brangifer (talk) 14:06, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

BTW, if this were even true, Felix Mann would be very interested! Brangifer (talk) 14:09, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

A web search for "meridian radioisotope" retrieves some references to experiments conducted by a "Pierre de Vernejoul" at the University of Paris: P. de Vernejoul et al., "Etude Des Meridiens D'Acupuncture par les Traceurs Radioactifs", published in 1985 in "Bulletin de l'Académie Nationale de Médecine", whatever that means. It seems he forgot to publish his article on le web, so I can't read it. However, I could download an English-language article, Kovacs et al, "Experimental Study on Radioactive Pathways of Hypodermically Injected Technetium-99m", 1992, which repeats the experiment in beagles in Barthelona. It appeared in a journal calling itself the "Journal of Nuclear Medicine", published by some group called the "Society of Nuclear Medicine". In any case I agree with Brangifer that we need to have some standards for reliable sources. A journal which publishes research about acupuncture could hardly be considered reputable enough to cite on Wikipedia. We don't want to mislead people away from proven treatments by letting them think that meridians are real! By the way, please don't give attention to Felix Mann, he says disreputable things like "It is unfortunately the case that many doctors, even when faced with one or several patients who have been cured by acupuncture where their own efforts have been fruitless, refuse to believe the evidence." (Mann, "Acupuncture", 1971, p. 1) What evidence? If acupuncture were really effective, then someone would have gotten a Nobel prize for it years ago. 80.189.139.93 (talk) 12:35, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I suggest that Eight Extraordinary Channels should be merged into Meridian (Chinese medicine) for the following reasons (in no particular order):

1. The meridians article mentions and lists the twelve regular meridians, but then just mentions and links to the eight extraordinary channels. I believe the list of the eight channels would fit well in the meridians article.
2. There is not a separate article for the twelve regular meridians.
3. The EEC article is very short, consisting of a brief intro including the same disclaimer this article contains, a short paragraph about the EEC, and then a list of the meridians themselves.
4. The meridians article is not overly long, and as such this addition would not have any negative impact on the length of this article.
5. The subject of meridians in general should also refer to the EEC in detail and not just the twelve regular meridians. After all, they are all meridians, and as such they all fall under the topic of the meridian article.
6. Most of what I see as missing from the EEC article (including a criticism section and some more information about meridians in general) would be covered by what already exists in the meridian article.

I don't think this should be a problematic move, but I wanted to list in out before doing it just to be sure. Thanks. --Transity ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:08, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Since there were no dissenting opinions, I have completed the merge. I did not alter text from either article in the process of the merge. I took a piece of the text from the EEC article, and put it into the Meridians article. I did not copy over the text that seemed to already exist (in a similar form) in the Meridians article. I also added subheaders here to accommodate the new version of the text, and I moved one section as the flow seemed to work better. Everything else should be intact (if not, please let me know). Thanks. --Transity ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:37, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

A red link in the see also section is based on the following....

• http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&source=hp&q=Dietotherapy&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=ws

--222.64.222.219 (talk) 08:45, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

The "See also" section is reserved for articles that are already created. Such a link might qualify as an external link, but not really. It should be used as a reference for material that is included in the article. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:57, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Bonghan System

I realize that my recent addition of a link to Bonghan System is likely to be controversial but this new research has plenty of published science behind it and has been confirmed in different labs in a number of countries. With these new discoveries a statement which claims that there is no anatomical evidence of meridians misrepresents a truth that has become more controverial and less absolute. DavidWis (talk) 18:23, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Translation problem

I removed the following from the end of the lead as it's not written properly, and since I don't read Chinese I can't fix it:

• The translation "meridian" is claimed to be improper for inaccuracy.

Brangifer (talk) 18:44, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

"Role in dreams"

This last section solely deals with the hypothesis of a certain Dr. Tsai from Taiwan. This hypothesis is not based on traditional knowledge and it definetely is not rooted in science. "The repair nerves in the brain (and spine?) are grouped into many serpentine chains which are called "meridians" (Dzingluo or Zingluo經絡) by the Chinese school of medicine" - a statement like this is bound to draw fire both from traditionalists and scientists alike (plus, Dr. Tsai doesn't have any evidence to back up his little theory). I will therefore remove this section. Mallexikon (talk) 06:42, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Table from Acupuncture article

Flow of qi through the meridians
Zang-fu	Aspect	Hours
Lung	taiyin	0300-0500
Large Intestine	yangming	0500-0700
Stomach	yangming	0700-0900
Spleen	taiyin	0900-1100
Heart	shaoyin	1100–1300
Small Intestine	taiyang	1300–1500
Bladder	taiyang	1500–1700
Kidney	shaoyin	1700–1900
Pericardium	jueyin	1900–2100
San Jiao	shaoyang	2100–2300
Gallbladder	shaoyang	2300-0100
Liver	jueyin	0100-0300
Lung (repeats cycle)

I am looking for RS for anything I might have deleted from the acupuncture article as NRS. One thing was this table, part of which is in this article. Someone might want to check this for RS and integrate it into the existing table. PPdd (talk) 03:04, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

"Proof" of existence of Meridians?

A number of websites and books (such as books on the Tao) claim that the existence of meridians has been demonstrated by Japanese and German researchers. They cite: Nakatani Y: Skin electric resistance and ryodoraku. J Autonomic Nerve 6:52, 1956. Voll R: Twenty years of electroacupuncture diagnosis in Germany: a progressive report. Am J Acupunct 3:7-17, 1975. In particular, they cite a paper by Sir Thomas Lewis, as having found an "unknown nervous system" published in the British Medical Journal in February, 1937 and entitled The NOCIFENSOR SYSTEM OF NERVES AND ITS REACTIONS. It seems me that a device like the German NMR-mouse could detect these elusive meridians once and for all. What is the hang-up with today's means? Isn't there a way of conclusively determining once and for all whether or not meridians exist? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TonyMath (talk • contribs) 00:34, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

"Pseudoscience" should be added as a category for this article.