CHAPTER 6
BLIND SCIENTISTS DISCOVER THE RAINBOW
A fish said to another fish, “Above this sea of ours there is another sea, with creatures swimming in it—and they live there, even as we live here.” The fish replied, “Pure fancy! When you know that everything that leaves our sea by even an inch, and stays out of it, dies. What proof have you of other lives in other seas?”
—KAHLIL GIBRAN, "Other Seas," The Forerunner, His Parables and Poems
Accumulated scientific research and observations over the last half-century, coupled with developments in physics over the last three decades, have enabled the veil obscuring the mysterious mechanism of acupuncture and related holistic medicines to be incrementally drawn away. The development of acupuncture research can be categorized into four general stages:
1. Anatomical study tried to find anatomical structures that corresponded to the function of acupuncture; the result was negative.
2. Phenomenological study asked whether acupuncture phenomena, such as sensation propagation, low resistance, and other physiological reactions, actually existed; the result was positive.
3. Physiological study attempted to explain acupuncture phenomena within the existing knowledge of physiology and was able to propose feasible mechanisms for some of the phenomena. When it came to established phenomena that could not be explained by the existing framework, however, the approach was to pretend they didn’t exist.
4. Frontier study focuses specifically on the phenomena that challenge the framework of existing knowledge, with the intent of extending our understanding. If successful, this research will make important contributions not only to medicine but also to physiology, biology, psychology, and even physics.
Asking Naive Questions
According to the principles of Confucianism, a respectable individual should avoid asking questions that would embarrass or displeasure authority. The essence of frontier science, however, is perpetually asking questions, including naive ones, and tirelessly pursuing the truth behind phenomena. The following sections are some of a long list of ostensibly ignorant questions that could be posed concerning acupuncture.
How Big Is an Acu-Point?
This straightforward question elicits a relatively vast range of responses from acupuncturists. Some say that it is in the size of a sesame seed, others claim it is the size of a soybean, and others believe it is even bigger. The diversity of responses encouraged me to make posing this question to acupuncturists, whenever the opportunity arose, something of a hobby.
The most humorous answer came from an experienced Chinese acupuncturist who was about fifty years old. With a friendly smile, he responded, “I asked the same question when I was a student. But my teacher got angry with me and scolded me so awfully that I never dared to ask such a stupid question again.” This is a typical Confucian response, admonishing the student for the impudence of posing a question that might embarrass his teacher.
A German doctor provided a completely different answer. Lacking the Confucian influence and being educated in Western medicine, with its firm belief that the body is a machine, he responded without hesitation, “Oh, the acupuncture point is round and 2.5 millimeters [0.1 inches] in diameter.” I subsequently discovered that the head of the electrode in the electro-acupuncture device he used was flat, round, and 0.1 inches in diameter.
As discussed, people long believed that meridians were some form of physical channel, like a blood vessel or nerve fiber, and acu-points were akin to ganglions (clusters of nerve cells) or some form of hole, but anatomy and histology could not prove it. The existence of acu-points and meridians has been objectively proven by means of electronic measurement of skin conductivity with excellent reproducibility, and so electronic measurement allows a relatively straightforward path of inquiry into the form of meridians and acu-points.
Figure 6.1. The shape of acu-points.
The images in figure 6.1 are derived from measurements made by the American scientist R. O. Becker at New York University in 1960. They look like contour maps of hills, but rather than lines of equal altitude, they show lines of equal electrical conductance, which is the ease with which an electrical current passes. These images illustrate why acupuncturists find it so difficult to answer the question “How big is an acu-point?” with any consistency. It is comparable to asking, “How big is the top of a hill?” The answer depends on an arbitrary definition—which contour line you select on a map. So the answer to the first naive question is that acu-points, unlike nerve knots or holes, have no clear boundaries. Instead, they may be considered as akin to small invisible hills with subjective boundaries.
The technique of electronic measurement also allows the shape of meridians to be explored. Figure 6.2 depicts the results of electronic measurements made along the meridian (left) and across the meridian (right), by American scientist R. O. Backer in 1960 and Chinese scientist R. J. Zhang in 1980, respectively.
The results show that the form of a meridian can be visualized as somewhat like a miniature invisible mountain range, and as such do not possess clear boundaries. Several peaks, coinciding with acu-point locations, occur along this range. The research done in China in the 1970s into the width and depth of routes of sensation propagation, discussed in chapter 5, is consistent with this conclusion.
In 1986, W. P. Zhang, a young physicist specializing in hydraulics at the Chinese Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, studied a low-resistance liquid channel beneath the skin with a hydraulic instrument. He found that this channel, to some extent, also corresponds with meridians, and that its shape is similar to the route of sensation propagation along meridians, discussed in chapter 5: that is, the channel is like a band with a central thread and two margin regions. The width of the central thread is narrow, while the margin regions are broad with nebulous boundaries. The experiments described in chapter 5 about tracing the path of radioactive isotopes through the body also support this finding.
The combined implications of the conclusions of these multiple studies of the shapes of acu-points and meridians support the unified conclusion that a meridian resembles a small, invisible mountain range with many small peaks, which we call acu-points. This is an important step toward revealing the reality of the invisible rainbow in our bodies.
Do Acu-Points and Acu-Meridians Move?
Be careful about posing this question to acupuncturists. In my experience, many consider it to be ignorant and respond with derision. At best, you might be directed to any number of elementary textbooks that depict the established routes of meridians and locations of acu-points.
Fortunately, I have also encountered some experienced acupuncturists, such as Ding-zhong Li at the Sixth Hospital of Beijing and Klaus Peter Schlebusch in Essen, Germany, who appreciated the question and responded that acu-points are not fixed. While they usually have a definite location, with slight variations, they can move, sometimes dramatically. This is particularly true of acu-points on the limbs, which in special cases can exhibit several inches of movement.
These doctors assert that the textbook representation of the fixed network of the acupuncture system is a simplified depiction for educating students. In reality, the meridians and acu-points are, in their words, “vital.” When asked how they could find the precise location of acu-points if they have moved, they responded: “By feeling and intuition.” This poses a challenge to those of us who, possessing neither sufficient sensitivity nor intuition, have to depend on instruments.
Fortunately, as with inquiring into the form of acu-points, this kind of measurement by instruments is also relatively straightforward. Furthermore, the measurement data can be depicted as images with pseudo-colors, allowing for easier interpretation of the results. Plates 8 and 9 in the color plate section shows that the acu-points on the top of the fingers are relatively stable with only minor variations, while the acu-points on the palms can move significantly.
The extensive investigation into sensation propagation along meridians in China in the 1970s supports a similar conclusion. As discussed, Ding-zhong Li and others observed significant deviations from the routes of meridians displayed in the textbooks, as shown in figures 5.2 and 5.3, meaning the answer to the question is yes, acu-points and meridians do move. This suggests that it is impossible to locate a system of fixed pipelines and knots that correspond with the acupuncture system. As such, anatomical research into the acupuncture system can never succeed.
Are Electronic Measurements on the Skin Reliable?
Scientists generally place much more faith in instruments than in human responses, as instruments do not lie. But instruments are operated by people, who can make mistakes. Consequently the results of measurements by instruments also have to be verified by others.
Consider the example of electro-acupuncture, developed by Voll as an electronic diagnosis system in 1953 and still widely used by thousands of practitioners in Germany. During a conversation with some fellow scientists I was informed of research undertaken at Germany’s Kaiserslautern University of Technology that led to findings critical of Voll’s system. While I was assured that the research had been performed without any bias against acupuncture, the findings pointed to two significant issues with skin resistance measurement. First, the pressure of the electrodes on skin greatly influenced the reading on the resistance meter. The more pressure was applied, the lower the resistance that was recorded. Second, there was a persistent fluctuation in the reading, and as the sensitivity of the recording instrument increased, the stability of the reading decreased. Consequently, it was concluded that Voll’s entire system of electro-acupuncture was unreliable.
Figure 6.4. Skin resistance and electrode pressure at acu-points and non-acu-points.
Fortunately, the same question had already been asked and systematically investigated by numerous Chinese physicists in the 1970s during the expansive sensation propagation research project. The experimental results (fig. 6.4) of Shi Yi, one of the physicists involved, show that the difference between the readings of skin resistance at acu-points and at non-acu-point locations is usually in excess of an order of magnitude—the readings for electrical resistance at non-acu-point locations was more than ten times higher than the resistance at acu-point locations.1 While the pressure applied to the electrode influences the absolute reading at both types of points, the relative difference is almost independent of pressure. Therefore, while measurement accuracy is not particularly good when assessed under the exacting standards of electronics, it is good enough to locate acu-points during clinical practice. As such, it can be asserted that skin resistance measurement, which forms the basis of Voll’s electro-acupuncture, is reliable.
In addition to the relationship between measurements and electrode pressure, Chinese scientists also studied the influence of the voltage used during measurements. Figure 6.5 shows the results of an experiment conducted by Xiang-long Hu at the Fujian Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine. It is evident that a significant relative difference between measurements taken at acu-points and non-acu-points is maintained for a range of different measurement voltages. While the absolute readings are greatly influenced by voltage, the lower voltages are all able to reliably discern acu-points.
Figure 6.5. Skin resistance and measurement voltage at acu-points and non-acu-points. Acu-point measurements are marked with arrows.
Figure 6.6. Skin resistance and frequency of the measuring current.
Finally, the influence of electrical frequency on measurements was systematically investigated in 1960 by a young German physicist, C.-E. Overhof, at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. This study formed his doctoral research and was performed under the supervision of Croon, the first person to discover the unusual electrical characteristics of the skin at acu-points, as well as W. Ernsthausen and H. Rothe. As with the other investigations, the results of this study (fig. 6.6) show that while the measurement frequency greatly influences the absolute values, a significant relative difference between the low-resistance acu-points and the non-acu-point control points is always present.2
Figure 6.7. The macroscopic wave trains of body conductivity.
Figure 6.8. Microscopic wave trains in a living system. Image by Konstantin Zioutas, physicist at CERN/LAA.
Are Electronic Measurements on the Skin Stable?
The second issue raised by the researcher at Kaiserslautern University was that in addition to being influenced by pressure, the value of electronic measurement also fluctuated considerably. In addition to being strongly influenced by pathological and unusual physiological states, some spontaneous fluctuation in healthy individuals (fig. 6.7) is consistent with earlier findings. It also correlates, to some degree, with biorhythms and is referred to in the ancient acupuncture texts by the somewhat esoteric term “midnight-noon ebb-flow.”
Furthermore, the more precise the instrument used, the larger the fluctuations found in electronic measurements on the skin. An instrument with very high sensitivity to skin resistance fluctuates violently at very high frequencies (fig. 6.8). Measurements of skin resistance exhibit both slow cycles of fluctuation, similar to solar and lunar periods, and very rapid cycles of fluctuation, in milliseconds and even microseconds. From the viewpoint of electronics, skin would be considered a very poor and unstable resistor.
Fortunately, the relationship between the increasing sensitivity of instruments and measurement instability also implies that less sensitive instruments will exhibit much smaller fluctuations. In practice, medical doctors use much less sensitive equipment than those used at Kaiserslautern University, and even less sensitive when compared to the equipment used by Greek physicist Konstantin Zioutas at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva.3 The measurement data from clinical instruments is stable enough for clinical practice.
“Skin Resistance Measurement” Is a Misnomer
Most people involved in practice and research into electronic acupuncture use the term skin resistance measurement for a number of reasons: the measurements are performed on the skin, and also because the method involved is almost identical to measuring resistance in electronics, implying that these measurements are also of resistance. Finally, within the context of clinical instruments, the resistance of bodily fluids is small enough to be negligible, so readings can only be attributed to the skin.
However, the term is a misnomer that has misdirected research and impeded our understanding of the real mechanism at play in the variations in skin resistance. Rigorous examination of the methodology behind the term reveals inconsistencies with existing knowledge of anatomy, histology, physiology, biochemistry, and physics. Moving beyond the term skin resistance measurement lays the foundation for discerning the truth behind these issues.
No Anatomic Evidence—Skin Plays No Role
It has been established that the difference in readings between acu-points and control points is quite significant, usually in excess of an order of magnitude. If such a difference could be attributed to differences in skin structure, it would be relatively easy to detect these by way of anatomy or histology. There is no evidence to support this.
Bodily Fluids Play No Role
Once the possibility of skin producing the variations in resistance measurements is discarded, the search for another source of resistance in the body ensues. As stated above, the conductivity of liquids beneath the skin—tissue fluids, lymph, and blood—is similar to the conductivity of seawater, its resistance is so low as to be beyond the measurement capability of clinical instruments. In other words, the resistance of bodily fluids is so small that it is negligible in these measurements.
Neither Nerves nor Blood Capillaries Play a Role
Another proposed explanation for the variations in skin resistance is that they stem from activity of the nervous system or blood capillaries. However, both the nervous system and the circulatory system are completely immersed in bodily fluids, whose resistance is so small that the activities of the nervous system and capillaries contribute essentially nothing to the measurements.
Consider the following analogy: a high-speed multilane highway (low resistance) and a very low-speed, unpaved, bumpy rural road (high resistance) both run between two cities. The roughness of the rural road will have a negligible effect on people’s commute times between the cities because everyone will be driving on the highway.
Acupuncture in Plants, Which Have No Nerves
The case for the nervous system contributing significantly to variations in skin resistance becomes even weaker when we consider that, in addition to being present on human and animal skin, these low-resistance points also occur on plants, as shown in figure 5.12. Scientists at the Xingjiang Forest Institute in China and the Hungarian Biophysics Institute measured the resistance on the bark of trees and defined the lowest resistance points as acu-points.4 They then inserted needles in these points and monitored the trees with infrared cameras. After 10 minutes, the temperature of the trees increased by 0.5 to 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit, and after two weeks, the shoots of the acupunctured trees had grown more than the control group. As plants have no nervous system, the apparent existence of an acupuncture system in plants contradicts a link to the nervous system.
Sweat Plays No Role in the Lie Detector
The generally accepted explanation for the working mechanism behind lie detectors, which also make use of skin resistance measurements, is also questionable. Mainstream opinion holds that the variation in lie detector readings is attributable to the changes that occur in the sweat on the skin when a subject lies. If this explanation were correct, skin resistance should decrease in a linear fashion as the lying individual starts to perspire. In reality, the readings of a lie detector fluctuate wildly when a lie is detected, meaning that the body would have to be able to repeatedly secrete and absorb sweat at a very high frequency, which is not possible.
Peeling Off the Skin and the Holographic Phenomenon
Japanese physiologist and psychologist Hiroshi Motoyama performed an experiment where he peeled off the stratum corneum, the outermost layer of dead skin that forms a barrier to protect the underlying live tissue, finding that only 30 percent of the readings of electronic measurements could be attributed to the outermost layer, and thus 70 percent must originate somewhere beneath.5 As the layer of dead skin constitutes most skin resistance, Motoyama’s results demonstrate that skin resistance is merely background noise, while the bulk of the signal—the 70 percent—originates inside the body.
If skin is eliminated as the major source of variation, where is the real signal coming from? Motoyama suggested that the bulk of the signal could be attributed to the polarization of tissue beneath the skin, near the measuring electrode. In this context, polarization means that the previously electrically neutral tissue takes on positively and negatively charged regions as a result of the application of the charged electrode. This would serve to impede the flow of electricity and increase the resistance of the tissue.
When considered in isolation, the polarization explanation has merit. However, polarization is generally a highly localized event induced by the measuring electrode. In contrast, when a patient is ill, electrical measurements are not only synchronously altered on all main corresponding acu-points throughout the meridian network, but also on all micro acu-points, including those on the ears, nose, palms, and feet. In other words, the change in these electrical measurements is delocalized and holographic—meaning that the state of each body part is reflected in the whole body.
This holographic change in electrical measurements occurs not only at acu-points but also at any point on the skin. That is, whenever there is some change in the body-mind system, the shapes of the probability distributions of the electronic measurement data synchronously change, maintaining similarity in patterns at different locations and on different measurement scales (Plate 10 in the color plate section). This phenomenon is called statistical self-similarity.
The Channel of Light, Microwaves, Acoustic Waves, and Isotope Tracers
Aside from these issues, there are many other phenomena in acupuncture that cannot be reconciled with the present knowledge of physiology. For instance, as discussed in chapter 5, numerous experimental findings illustrate that meridians act as a channel for light, microwaves, acoustic waves, and even isotope tracers. Serious investigation into acupuncture should not avoid the challenge of integrating these phenomena into an explanation of the working mechanism. Instead, the challenge of extending our knowledge to find the answer behind all these puzzling phenomena should be embraced.
Examining Underlying Assumptions: What Is Resistance?
Herein lies the decisive step that enables a breakthrough. Again, it involves posing a seemingly uninformed question: “What does a resistance meter measure?” Any student studying electronics can state the obvious answer without hesitation: “Resistance meters measure electrical resistance,” and move on to the next topic. It turns out that this seemingly inexpert question is appropriate and important, while the apparently obvious answer is incorrect and misleading. The following explanation is somewhat technical and mathematical but is central to revealing the underlying mechanism behind the acupuncture phenomena.
A resistance meter measures the electrical current passing through the tested object, not the resistance itself. The value that appears on the meter is actually derived from a purely mathematical calculation that involves applying Ohm’s law (resistance = voltage/current, or to use symbols, R=V/I). The measurement voltage is set to a known value on the meter itself, and the current in the tested object then creates a magnetic field that affects a coil in the meter, which moves the meter’s needle. Consequently, the “resistance” measurements that all the previously discussed studies refer to are actually “current” measurements. For a given voltage, this resistance is inversely proportional to the current. This means that if the resistance is doubled, the current is halved; if the resistance is quadrupled, the current is quartered, and so on.
The conductivity (J) of a substance is a measure of how easily electrons can pass through it. Resistance, which measures how hard it is for electrons to pass through a substance, is thus the inverse of conductivity. Mathematically this can be expressed as R=1/J.
Conductivity is also proportional to the electrical field strength (E). This can be expressed mathematically as J = σ E. In this equation σ is a constant, a property of the type of substance in question. Therefore, what is measured on the skin is actually the conductivity for the measurement current, which is proportional to the electrical field inside the body.
Energy Distribution inside the Body
To summarize, the key conclusion of the preceding discussion is that the measurements being referred to as “skin resistance measurements” are in fact measurements of conductivity, which is proportional to the strength of the electrical field inside the body. The following consideration should make the implication of this conclusion clearer. Consider an extremely simplified example of an idealized human body that is cuboid in shape (fig. 6.10). In this situation the electrodes can be regarded as two large flat plates that make contact with the body on both sides; this is consistent with using a constant measurement voltage.
If the diagram in figure 6.10 is compared to the measurement results in figures 6.1 and 6.2, it is evident that meridians are lines of higher-strength electrical field, while acu-points are points where the electrical field is the strongest. This highly simplified diagram illustrates that what is measured on the skin is, in fact, the heterogeneous distribution of electrical field inside the body. In other words, what is measured on the skin of the body is actually the energy distribution inside the body.
A New Chapter in Physiology
The conclusion that skin resistance measurements actually measure the energy distribution within the body has far-reaching significance. Given the significant correlation between the acupuncture system and the electronic measurements, what the creators of this system, using intuitive insight in ancient times, actually discerned is an approximate depiction of the energy distribution, or energy structure, inside the human body. As discussed in part 1, energy is an invisible, untouchable, and ethereal entity that can be compared to an invisible rainbow and inaudible music that exists in humans and other living creatures.
This discovery, elaborated in the following chapters, solves many of the conundrums posed by the puzzling phenomena of the acupuncture system, including:
• higher conductivity at acu-points and meridians
• the slow speed of sensation propagation along meridians
• wild fluctuations in body conductivity
• holographic changes in body conductivity
• meridians acting as light, microwave, and acoustic channels
• the lower resistance channel of meridians
• the isotope channel of meridians
This invisible energy structure can be considered Mon-zhao Wei’s third balance system, outlined in chapter 5, and as such opens a new chapter in physiology. In physics terms, this energy structure is a dynamic dissipative structure composed of chaotic electromagnetic standing waves. This development introduces some new concepts that are currently beyond the knowledge base of current physiology, biology, and medicine, and so are unfamiliar to physiologists and medical doctors. In fact, having been developed since the 1970s, they are even relatively new to physicists.
These new concepts, introduced in the following chapters, enabled scientists to discover the beautiful invisible rainbow in our bodies. The recognition for this discovery belongs to the accumulated endeavors of many scientists over several generations. This discovery was as elusive for our scientists as the visible rainbow would be for scientists in chapter 1’s world of the blind.