1 Original Paper New Abdominal Acupuncture A Description with Clinical Examples Michael Grandjean, MD phone: +49 6142 965959 fax: +49 6142 965961 email:
[email protected] abstract: 153 words text: 1879 with references figures: 6
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3 Abstract A number of well known acupuncture microsystems are used in contemporary clinical practice including the auricular acupuncture system of Nogier, the scalp acupuncture system of Yamamoto, and the hand acupuncture system of Yoo. These microsystems are based on the discovery of a somatotopic relationship of a particular body area to functional areas of the cerebral cortex. Zhiyun Bo introduced an abdominal acupuncture microsystem in 1991 and published the first text on this microsystem in 1999. Accurate localization of acupuncture points on any of these microsystems in clinical practice can be difficult. A novel technique to rapidly, accurately localize microsystem acupoints via stimulation of those points with low level laser energy is described herein. This technique can be used with any acupuncture microsystem, and when applied to the abdominal acupuncture microsystem is termed the New Abdominal Acupuncture (NAAP). NAAP produces rapid clinical improvements with durable results, and clinical examples of this technique are presented. key words: acupuncture, methods, microsystems, laser
4 Introduction Many different acupuncture microsystems have been described since Nogier first described an auricular acupuncture system in the 1950’s.1 Since that time, many other acupuncture microsystems have been described including scalp, face, eye, nose, philtrum, mouth, tongue, neck, spine, chest, abdomen, hand, foot, and wrist/ankle microsystems.2 These microsystems are all based on the discovery of a somatotopic relationship of a particular body area to functional areas of the cerebral cortex. Some of these microsystems have complete somatotopic representations of the human body described while others have incomplete representations. Microsystems having complete somatotopic representations of the body allow almost any health condition to be treated, with examples that include auricular acupuncture developed by Nogier1 , scalp acupuncture introduced by Yamamoto3 , hand acupuncture developed by Yoo4 , and abdominal acupuncture introduced by Bo5 (see Figure 1). Each of these microsystems uses a different method to localize the specific acupuncture treatment areas on their body parts (e.g. ear, scalp, or hand). Health conditions are treated by stimulating specific points on a given microsystem homunculus using acupuncture needles, moxibustion, manual pressure, local anaesthetic injections, or low level laser energy. 6 Zhiyun Bo introduced an abdominal microsystem in 1991, with his first text fully describing this microsystem and its clinical use published in 1999.5 This abdominal microsystem is classically represented in the form of a turtle (Figure 1). Important points to position this homunculus on the abdomen are CV-13 (Shangwan) which corresponds with GV-20 (Bai Hui), while CV-2 (Qugu) forms its caudal end.
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