Archive for the ‘Healthcare approaches’ Category

I feel good!

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

I have never believed the way I feel is a matter of chance. The life we experience is not a chain of chance occurrences.

I hear a crowd of people disagreeing with me, or at the very least starting to feel uncomfortable. If you are one of these, right now, is it possible that you’re feeling that way because of the responsibility I bestow upon you for your own life experience? Is it just too uncomfortable to admit that the discomfort and pain you have experienced in your life is of your own making?

Sure, external things might be seen to happen by chance, but I’ve seen that my experience of them is of my own making. And, certainly, the choices I make as they happen certainly are. I’ve watched myself descend into the depths of depression because of choices I have made or, worse still, not made. I’ve felt my mood change in an instant because of thinking choices I have made. I’ve told myself, “get a grip, Sean!” and then acted.

This is not to say that it’s an easy process. Indeed, I’ve really struggled on many occasions; had some really dark nights of the soul. However, difficult as it may be, though, it is simple!

My own formula is straight forward: do things that make me feel good about myself. This may involve making choices and taking actions that require great courage. However, these choices must be made and when they are, I feel good about myself.

The tools I use for refining my character and building my confidence are mostly modes of physical culture: martial art, running, golf, and squash. I augment these with meditative practices, although all of these activities involve an aspect of meditation. Even my work I treat as a path of self-discovery rather than just a method of making a living. In all these activities, I need to ensure that I continually reinvent my approach so I remain fresh. On numerous occasions I have let this slip only to pay for it in how I feel about myself.

Try doing something new! You can start with with simple things. Let me give an example. This year in June, I started running competitively again. I hadn’t done so for twenty years. I have pushed myself through mental barriers repeatedly since I started again. Each time I do that, I feel better about myself. With each victory over self, and note that the real competition for me is against myself, my confidence grows. Of course, physically I’m in fantastic nick. Mind and body being one, this is bound to make me feel better emotionally. Each time I set myself a challenge and achieve it, I feel better about myself and my confidence grows.

So, my invitation to you is to choose something, or several things, that challenge you personally and refine your character through their practice. Make sure you set challenging but achievable goals. I have no doubt you will feel fantastic!

Of course, if you’ve never experienced this you won’t be able to relate to it. You’ll will just have to take my word for it. Why not make the decision to change and invest in the effort based purely on faith. Hopefully, what I have said makes enough sense and instils enough faith in you to move you to act. I really hope my experience will help a few other people that read this to follow a path that makes life feel better.

Let me leave you with a couple of examples that may further illustrate my point. Both are stories of men who have lost a leg. If I feel down, I think of these men. I have no room to moan! What will you do today to live life magnificently? Please come back and tell me what you have achieved.

Chris Moon

Manuel De Los Santos

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Real Healers

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

A long term patient of mine that consulted me regularly for acupuncture little snippet you sent me, entitled “Touched by an Angel”. I not sure where it came from but feel it may have been an article from the Mail on Sunday. It read as follows:

“To carry on from last week’s column about facialist Vaishaly Patel, I am so excited to tell you all about John Tsagaris who works at the Vaishaly salon and is one of the most profound healers I have ever encountered. John spent many years training in the art of traditional Chinese medicine in both the UK and the Far East His treatments incorporate reiki, Zen shiatsu (a more dynamic, vigorous form of the ancient acupressure massage) and acupuncture, along with psychotherapy, and believe me, with these skills he can transform your life and consciousness.
On meeting John one can feel overwhelmed. His presence is one of purity and light. His gaze feels as though he is looking right into your soul. I believe that this angel truly cares about who you are and how you feel. How refreshing! As he guided me into his tranquil white room I felt a sense of safety. The session began with us going over my medical history. John then checked my pulse and examined my tongue which, in China, are both benchmarks of health. More notes were gathered, including details of my diet, menstrual cycle and energy levels.
Then the massage began. Now this is no wishy-washy feather touch, but a firm, sometimes painful acupressure. The back, particularly, is given a thorough going-over — pressure points are stimulated and muscles are eased. The massage is another of John’s diagnostic tools, as the way the body reacts to touch gives signals to internal health. All the while his gentle, reassuring voice talked me through the blockages he felt in my body and explained his intention to release them and free me from the years of feeling pent-up. I felt a true shift as he worked on my neck and back, as if I was stretching my wings and my head was becoming unglued from my shoulders. Space was being created.
Then it was time for acupuncture. Needles were inserted painlessly into my skin to stimulate liver and kidney function and to detoxify and strengthen my blood. Warming cups were placed over the needles to aid the process (this also feels very comforting). While the needles did their job, John began his reiki healing, placing his hand on my heart chakra. All became still and I felt a rare moment of total ease in my own skin. Then he said, ‘I need to tell you something. You are not alone. I feel a man is walking with you throughout everything.’ Immediately, thoughts of my dear daddy who passed away seven years ago filled my head. John continued, This man has been through lots of grief in his life and knows what you go through… He passed away at 42.’ All of a sudden the floodgates opened. My brother died of cancer at 42 and we had never been close in life, which is something I have always felt guilty about because I feel I was not there for him. In my mind I was not the best sister in the world but the fact that my brother was still looking out for me released a surge of emotion. I had not told John anything about my family history, so there was no way he could have known about my brother. I was happy but in floods of tears when John explained that, occasionally, he has a deep intuition that presents itself when the release of the emotion related to it will help his patient.
Angels come into your life to reveal, surprise and amaze, and I’m so thankful to have met one.”

As you might imagine I was very flattered that she thought highly of me. However, I felt the need to a couple of things in response.

I make great efforts to convince folk of their ability to heal themselves and give them the tools, rather than allowing them to fall under the illusion that it is me doing the healing for them. This way, they become self-sufficient and self-empowered; able to continue themselves without a reliance on a third party. Nowadays, I do this primarily though teaching the ancient art of T’ai Chi.

In many ways, the situation referred to in the article is the antithesis of my healing philosophy. In this case example, there is a high risk that the client becomes co-dependent. In my opinion, this is the worst possible outcome for all concerned. I am sure that Derren Brown might have a thing or two to say about the article as well!

What I have found in my years as a clinician is that modern humans under-perform their potential massively due to self-limiting beliefs and their image of self. I believe, based upon personal experience, research and watching others, that by changing one’s image of self this massive potential can be unleashed.

The trouble is, most want a quick and easy route. Many quick-fix methods are proclaimed but I believe they achieve more commercial success than any healing of significance. I think the secret to releasing this potential involves some or all of the following:

• A desire for better and a clear mental construct of what this actually entails
• Self-analysis to achieve self-understanding
• Smart thinking
• A clear plan with specific and achievable milestones
• A belief that the ultimate goal can be achieved or, at the very least, moved towards
• Determination and single-mindedness and the willingness to suffer in the short-term in order to reach long-term goals
• Hard, hard work

…I am sure there are probably other useful components.

Anyone who feels that the path to healing is easy is deluded, in my opinion. Having said that, the path I propose above can be extremely rewarding both in the outcome and the process. It’s a bit like the feeling of a hard work out: it burns and its tough…but there is something quite delicious about it!

Anyway, thank you to my loyal patient for thinking about me.

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NHS or “NIS” – a matter of perspective

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010


I received a leaflet through the post this week, the cover looking like the above. Now, I’m not one to shun something free (once an accountant, always an accountant!) but the image and wording on the front cover just reminded me of how I feel a change of perspective in healthcare is desperately needed in this country.

Look at the cover! Whilst it calls itself “The National Health Service”, what it actually is is a National Illness Service. Rather than encouraging the constant striving towards better health and vitality by wise lifestyle choices, the NHS proposes that we constantly run in fear of disease; that disease is some random act of chance that is unavoidable and ‘in your genes’.

Even geneticists agree that less than a quarter of the factors responsible for our state of health are genetic in origin.

So, maybe we should spend less on pharmaceutical drugs, as a nation, and more on education, sporting and exercise facilities and other opportunities for improving the nations health. Certainly, the current approach seems not to be working for the NHS. So, let’s try something new…or didn’t the ancient Chinese already understand this?

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Traditional Chinese Medicine and ME

Monday, May 24th, 2010

ME:  How External Causes Affect Our Health – The Traditional Chinese Medical Understanding

 When as Chinese medicine practitioners we meet patients with ME and its associated conditions, our first priority is to establish a diagnosis. For millennia the Chinese have understood that different diseases can have the same one cause, and that one cause can result in a variety of diseases.  To understand each patient’s particular illness, we analyse in detail the patient’s history and in doing so reflect on the current symptoms and, as importantly, the reason why the symptoms have occurred.

 In Chinese medicine, ME is often seen to be the result of an invasion of external forces which remain in the body long after the original illness has gone.  This is similar to the Western theory which links ME to viral illness.  Where do these external forces, referred to as retained pathogenic factors in Chinese medicine, come from?  And why do we retain them in our body? 

 Well, the main pathogenic factor is Wind, which is usually accompanied by another agent such as Heat or Cold.  We can physically feel these agents – a hot sunny day or a cold winter night alters the way we feel about pain for example.  Some pain is better for heat, some feels as if it needs to be cooled especially if there is any itching present.   Damp, another factor, is often accompanied by Heat, causing us to perspire more than usual.  We use these terms as a shorthand to describe a diagnosis which includes many symptoms such as sore throat, thirst, shivers/fever, obesity, pain relieved by warmth and so on.  We can also be aware of Wind – maybe on the beach or under air conditioning. When Wind enters the body we find pain that moves about, or a runny nose, or itching.  Damp is found both in the environment and in the food we eat – think how soggy a sausage roll can be!  We also produce Damp internally by worrying too much. 

 When you have a cold, it’s likely that your body’s “wei qi” – similar to the immune system – has been compromised in some way.  Perhaps you’ve been overworking, or taking on too much, or worrying too much.  Your body becomes weakened and susceptible to these pathogenic factors and so you become ill.  Generally we throw off these infections, but sometimes they become lodged in the body, or even appear to be expelled but the body has merely suppressed the agent.  This happens when we take suppressive drugs to combat disease – including cold remedies and antibiotics. 

 The seeds of weak wei qi are sown in the past.  Every illness has its own cause.  For example, in clinic we often see people who have overworked in every single area of their lives.  The majority of people with ME are women – and so many women have been working at full time jobs, running a home, caring for children and aging parents, that it should come as no surprise that eventually their body just has no energy to carry on. Alongside this is the pressure that both men and women are under to work more, play harder, achieve the next goal – and maybe we’re not all cut out to achieve success from a material perspective!

 Furthermore, in many cases an acute illness is regarded as an inconvenience and not a reason to slow down.  During an acute fever, as much rest as possible is required to ensure that the body recovers properly.  Many of those with ME reported that it began after a severe infection during which normal life continued apace.  There is no research to show that such patients habitually overworked, but anecdotal evidence indicates that this may be the case.  

 Another reason that these factors develop is the inappropriate use of antibiotics.  In Chinese medicine antibiotics kill bacteria but do not clear the underlying cause of the disease.  Antiobiotics are described as cold in nature, and using cold to alleviate heat can slow down our energy.- think about how we are affected by cold in winter when we leave a warm building – our tendency is to shrink into our clothes for warmth before we begin to shiver. As it slows, we develop heat and this can contribute to further infections. Antibiotics are particularly inappropriate for viral infections as they are ineffective.

 For children with ME, overwork, lack of sleep and poor nutrition contribute to the effects of retained pathogenic agents which may arise from childhood illnesses such as chronic earache, tonsillitis, catarrh, sinusitis and frequent mouth ulcers. 

 So, how do Chinese medical practitioners treat ME?  It can be hard to dislodge the pathogenic agents especially if the individual is a chronic sufferer from ME.  The practitioner aims to help the patient to understand how their  condition developed and can offer other forms of therapy alongside acupuncture – dietary and lifestyle advice, for example.  Our goal is to help you, as a patient, to deal with your condition in a more positive way. We can offer a helping hand and a listening ear whilst you are taking the road to recovery.

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Sustainability and Healthcare

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Over the last few years, the term “Sustainability ” has quickly become a bit of a buzz word. It’s particularly heard in the field of economics and politics in the form of the preposterous concept of “sustainable growth”. In my opinion, this concept does not stand up to logical scrutiny. For anyone who doubts that and has scarce time to read about it, just look at the front cover of the Richard Douthwaite’s book “The Growth Illusion”. A picture of a balloon with the globe painted upon it has a pipe running from it to a factory. The picture achieves movement to show that the balloon is gradually getting bigger with a clue to the inevitable consequence. It’s also used in the field of ecology, where it makes perfect sense. However, it is not a term often used in the field of medicine and healthcare, yet this area is one of the most important to apply the concept!

For any medical intervention, logically, the improvements afforded to the patient by its methods must be sustainable even subsequent to withdrawal. This logical conclusion is arrived at if one considers that the natural human state is one of homoeostasis, balance.

Obviously, until we establish reliable holistic solutions to disease processes like diabetes, dystonia and multiple sclerosis, reductionist approaches may well be appropriate as they can help life continue in relative comfort, whilst more sustainable, holistic solutions are determined. However, the problem should never be merely ‘swept under the carpet’, removing the opportunity for self-understanding, progress in healthcare systems and allowing the underlying disease mechanisms to continue.

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Health and Holism

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

The concept of holism has already been applied to ecology and even business. So why is it yet to be applied seriously towards healthcare on a national level? There is a glimmer of hope that this is starting to happen with the NHS “Fit4Life” initiative (www.nhs.uk/change4life). However, it remains to be seen whether healthcare will turn a corner and start seeing symptoms as a communication between mind and body, unconscious and conscious, where a person’s spirituality is taken into consideration, where symptoms are not seen as inconvenient, uncontrollable, chance happenings. Disease can be viewed as part of the process of our personal growth. If it is seen in this light, I believe that the cost of healthcare in this country will tumble.

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Healthcare for the New Millenium

Monday, March 8th, 2010

I was asked to provide comment for the Sunday Times Style Magazine about illnesses that modern medicine has a tough time trying to diagnose and treat. Of course, I draw mainly upon my own clinical experince in making such comment. However, it seems to me that there is a lesson to be learned here on how we manage anything in this country of ours, not just healthcare. Anyway, here was my submission (I wonder how different it looks when it is published?):

“Modern medicine is utterly impressive if you are critically ill, have a  broken leg or some very clearly defined medical problem. The challenge for modern, NHS medicine is where the sufferer’s condition less easily lends itself to simple categorisation into broad groups for generalised treatment, with drugs say. In my experience, healthcare problems such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, food intolerances and Irritable Bowel Syndrome, for example, seem to pose difficulties for the GP that Acupuncturists and Traditional Chinese Medical clinicians do not seem to experience. That is not to say that we have a quick-fix solution for patients. It is just that we have certain advantages over NHS methods. For example, we have the luxury of time, generally spending much longer with the patient than is possible in an NHS setting. Also, our diagnostic framework enables us to make a unique diagnosis for each individual followed by a very tailored treatment plan. In this way, the treatment is much more targeted and will involve a process of self-understanding for the patients in terms of development of the illness, its root cause in terms of what they have or have not done to precipitate it, and by deduction, a route out of the situation. It’s a healing process that they can have an active involvement in rather than being prescribed a ‘pill’ and returning to the mêlée of life that has probably caused the problem in the first place.

We have many patients that consult us with a range of disparate symptoms for which they have been prescribed a variety of medications. Each symptom has been treated as an entirely separate problem. However, when we re-diagnose from a Chinese Medical perspective, it becomes very obvious that all these symptoms are part of the same disease process that has been initiated by an unsatisfying job, abusive personal relationship or just a sedentary lifestyle.

Because the NHS is ‘medicine designed for the masses’, the diagnostic approach has become ‘for the masses’. In other words, all sufferers have to fit into a pre-defined medical category. Moreover, the result of this medical categorisation is a standardised approach for all sufferers. This is compounded by the sheer volume pressure that our NHS doctors are faced with. Our quick fix society has seen to it that the doctor’s work is never done. The general attitude to health seems to be “I’ll break myself, but you can fix me” shifting the whole responsibility of healing to the doctor.

There is a parallel here with the business world. Businesses that manage by fire-fighting at the very least fail to grow and at worst they just fail completely. A longer term, big picture strategic management approach to business often reaps rewards that far outweigh the initial investment in terms of time and other resources. I think that our public healthcare systems need to follow a similar approach. As a country, we have proved to ourselves that we cannot just listen to a symptoms and prescribe a symptomatic solution for the patient. If we do, even if this symptom disappears, others follow as the root problem within the life of the individual has not been addressed. A famous Chinese physician, Li Shi Zhen, said “all illness is rooted in life”. I think that public healthcare needs to embrace this philosophy pretty soon if it is to manage the huge demand that it is experiencing for healthcare in this country”

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Being Your Own Health Expert

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Sometimes I say to patients that they are the expert when it comes to their own body. I, or any other medical practitioner – conventional or alternative, western or Chinese or whatever – may have a lot of specialised knowledge and be trained in various therapeutic techniques, but what we don’t have is the actual experience of being that patient. We try to make up for this by listening to the patient, asking the right questions, perhaps by taking their pulse or examining their sore back; but still we don’t know what it is like for them from the inside, as it were.

However, often people have forgotten how to listen to their own body. That sore back, or that sickly feeling in the stomach, are telling them something. Perhaps they are simply telling them that they spend too long sitting at a computer in a slouched position; or, perhaps, that there is something in their life that they are sick and tired of putting up with. But instead of listening, sometimes they go to a doctor, or an acupuncturist, or some other kind of practitioner, wanting the problem just got rid of. This may happen; the doctor may give them some pills to stop the nausea, or an acupuncturist may use some well placed needles to relieve the back pain, but one can ask whether either treatment is doing the patient any favours in the long run if the underlying issues aren’t also addressed. A real healer – GP, acupuncturist, or whatever – will help them understand what is going on inside their body, will teach them to listen to their own body.

Part of this ‘listening’ involves opening up the emotions or feelings tied up with a symptom, or set of symptoms. If we can learn to listen to and be receptive to our body, we can begin to get a feel for, begin to understand, what our ailments are telling us. Sometimes they have vital information to impart which may, in the long run, make our lives a whole lot better!

Learning to listen in this way opens up a more satisfying and natural relationship with ourselves; all too often we hand responsibility for our health over to the ‘experts’, alienating ourselves from our own experience and treating our body like a malfunctioning machine. We need to re-learn how to be a human being who is fully in touch with themselves, understanding the hidden language of the body. We need to become the expert on our own health.

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Just chemicals in the brain?

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

A patient said to me the other day that her GP had told her that the feelings of anxiety and panic she was suffering from were just due to an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. In some ways, I suppose, that is an attractive idea, since it may suggest that there is nothing wrong with us really, the anxiety is not ‘our fault’, any more than it is our fault if we catch a cold. Also it may suggest that it can be easily fixed – just take the right pills to sort out those chemicals.

I wonder, however, where such an essentially materialist view of what it is to be a human being leads to. If our anxiety is just chemicals in the brain, what about the rest of what we experience? Love, for example, or compassion? Is that to be reduced to just some kind of chemical shift? It seems to me that the question of what it is to be a human being is a question which is being asked of anyone who suffers, like my patient, from anxiety, or other mental problems such as depression. And it is being asked, for that matter, of anyone who tries to help such patients. Its clear that something is wrong – and with such patients it is certainly clear that it is not just something they have imagined or made up – but what is it that is wrong? Is it just that there is a chemical imbalance in the brain? To me that seems like a desperately impoverished view of humanity. (One can also question how true it is – check out the article “The Myth of the Chemical Cure” by Dr. Joanna Moncrieff at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8138893.stm)

I am not, by the way, saying that pharmaceutical drugs such as anti-depressants are bad. I know some people who feel that they have been helped by these drugs. But I don’t think they can be anything other than a help along the way, something which gives us the breathing space to address our life and the questions we face. And I wonder if sometimes they don’t just defer having to deal with the basic issues that need dealing with.

When I see patients who come to The Sean Barkes Clinic because they are suffering from their mental state – anxiety, depression etc – I often find myself thinking that their problem is also (and I know this sounds like a cliché!) an opportunity. I am reminded of a story told about the psychologist C G Jung, that when a patient came in to see him saying something like, “I feel terrible, my wife has just left me!”, or “I’m ruined! They’ve given me the sack!”, Jung would respond by opening a bottle of champagne, to celebrate the glorious opportunity which had presented itself. One wonders whether any of his patients were tempted to throw the champagne in his face, but nevertheless the story illustrates an important point.

Jung thought that human life was about a process of ‘individuation’, a journey to wholeness if you will. Moments of crisis, when our usual way of being have broken down, are also opportunities to move closer to our true self, to become more whole, to become less of a fragmented person. In Chinese Medicine we sometimes talk about ‘destiny’, by which is not meant a fixed fate to which we are inexorably driven, but something more like the path we need to follow through life in order to realise our unique and individual potential most fully. From this perspective, patients suffering from their mental states have gotten a bit stuck on this path, have lost touch with their destiny, and what we need to do to help them is not just to make their anxiety or depression ‘go away’ so that they can ‘get back to normal’, but to help them to see their way forward, to help them to fulfill their destiny. Far from being just an imbalance in brain chemistry, their suffering is telling them something crucial about their life. (I think also here of art – quite often great art seems to come from suffering, and is perhaps a way the artist has of making sense of, and moving on from, his or her pain; what would have happened, I wonder, if all the great poets had been prescribed anti-depressants!)

Of course this is often no easy matter. One of the advantages of acupuncture, however, is that it is rooted in a way of thinking which has such a rich and profound, even poetic, understanding of the human condition. Without such an understanding, how can one hope to make progress? Furthermore, in this understanding the distinction we tend to make in the west between the psychological and the physical, or even the spiritual and the material, does not obtain. Thus we find that certain areas of the body, or points on the surface of the body, have relation to the psyche or spirit. For example, there are a number of points on the upper body which in the ancient Chinese medical tradition are known as ‘Window of Heaven’ points. Acupuncture treatment of these points, correctly applied, can help open our eyes to the way forward, can help us to look out and see ‘Heaven’ – which is not some fancy place in the sky but the state of being utterly ourselves, totally fulfilled. The human being lives his or her life, in this view, midway between heaven and earth; to be healthy we need the stability and rootedness of contact with the earth, and we need to be able to look up to the sky, to the heavens. In our world we often lose both of these, so it is no wonder we get ill.

To me, anyway, such a conception of what it is to be a human being is so much more satisfying than a materialist one. If problems are just chemical imbalances, I don’t know if I can be bothered to do anything about them! Whereas if they are a disorientation of heaven and earth, an alienation from destiny, something in me will stir to respond.

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QI

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

If you come for some treatment with a Chinese medical acupuncturist, he or she will probably talk to you, sooner or later, about your Qi. Qi, sometimes spelt ‘Chi’, is one of the key concepts of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), a form of healthcare whose roots date back at least 2,500 years. To understand anything about TCM, you need to understand what Qi is, and also to begin to recognise it in your own experience. Whilst for any Chinese person (except perhaps one who has been so thoroughly westernized as to lose touch with their roots), Qi is an everyday reality, as it will be indeed for any westerner who has trained in disciplines such as T’ai Chi or Chi Kung, for many people in the west Qi is still a strange and foreign concept.

Qi is not only a key idea in Chinese Medicine, it is a key concept in traditional Chinese thought, and no understanding of Chinese philosophy, Chinese religion, or, indeed, what may be termed Chinese science, is possible without grasping something of the meaning of Qi. Chinese civilization is of course very ancient and very sophisticated, and the notion of Qi has been central to how the Chinese have understood the human condition for millennia. However, and this is perhaps illustrative of the traditional Chinese approach to life which is so different from the western approach, Qi is not easily defined or tied down.

Qi is sometimes translated as ‘energy’ or ‘vital energy’. Perhaps the key thing to understand about Qi is that, in a healthy person, it flows. It flows all around the body, on the surface and through the interior, in a network of channels or meridians. In fact all movement in the body, including the circulation of blood and other body fluids, is governed by Qi. Qi also warms and invigorates the body, and aspects of Qi are responsible for defending the body against external pathogens, in a way analogous, to some extent, to the western notion of the immune system. Qi includes both what we would call mind and matter; the subtlest thought is a movement of Qi, just as much as is the movement of food through the digestive system. Patients experience Qi as an unusual dull achy or tingling feeling around the needle, or propagating along the meridian from the needle; this feeling arises when the acupuncturist inserts the needle so as to contact the patient’s Qi.

When people started practicing acupuncture in the west, some people scoffed at the notion of Qi and the meridians, because, they thought, in western medicine there was nothing corresponding to them. The meridians do not correspond to blood vessels for example, or to nerves. However, more recently researchers have been investigating the matter further, partly because acupuncture is so obviously effective – no less a body that the World Health Organization1 lists a number of medical conditions for which it considers that research shows that acupuncture treatment is of proven effectiveness.

Some of the research into how acupuncture works from a western perspective2 shows that the meridians may correspond to lines of slightly decreased electrical resistance, which would suggest that Qi may, at least in part, be made up of micro currents of electricity. (Modern acupuncturists sometimes make use of this fact to locate acupuncture points using a simple device to measure variations in electrical resistance on the skin, although whether this is a more effective technique than the traditional palpatory skill of the acupuncturist is open to question.)

Other research projects suggest that the meridians may be related to connective tissue3, the fibrous support structure for body tissues and organs. The insertion of an acupuncture needle into a traditional acupuncture point may cause changes in local connective tissue which are both long lasting and capable of influencing distant parts of the body, since the connective tissue forms a continuous matrix throughout the body. Since nerve fibres are embedded in connective tissue, the needle may also have modulatory effects on nerve signals. The meridian system may also be explained in part by the notion of migratory tracks in interstitial fluid4, the fluid which surrounds the cells which make up the human body; cells such as mast cells (which have, amongst other functions, a key role in the immune system) and fibroblasts (which play a critical role in wound healing)

One can question, however, the necessity of explaining Qi in western scientific terms. Western science and western medicine are of course highly sophisticated bodies of knowledge, but it is perhaps a touch arrogant of us to consider that they are the be all and end all, the only way of looking at the world – after all, from the point of view of Chinese medicine, western medicine is a relatively new form of medicine. It looks at the person from a particular point of view, which gives it both strengths and weaknesses. Chinese medicine represents a different point of view, with different strengths and weaknesses. It will probably prove impossible to fully explain Chinese medicine in western terms, just as it would be impossible to fully explain western medicine in Chinese terms. The wisest course may well be to use whichever medicine is more helpful in the case in question. In modern China, in fact, this is what does happen: hospitals may be split between departments of TCM and of western medicine.

The scientific findings mentioned suggest that Qi is a relatively subtle and complex phenomenon, which is not to be explained by any one western idea but only by a combination of several (micro currents, connective tissue, interstitial fluid etc). Quite a few patients who come for acupuncture treatment are obviously ill, but western medical tests find nothing wrong with them – from a Chinese medical perspective, the problem lies at the level of Qi. At this level western medicine does not operate – western medicine is effective when the problem is more obvious. From this point of view TCM is effective at treating relatively subtle disharmonies which western medicine does not see, and also at preventing these disharmonies escalating and as it were condensing into more severe conditions.

1. WHO (2002): Acupuncture: Review and Analysis of Reports of Controlled Clinical Trials Available from URL http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/en/d/Js4926e/5.html

2. Reichmanis M et al (1975) Electrical Correlates of Acupuncture Points IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering

3. Langevin H et al (2002) Evidence of connective tissue involvement in acupuncture The FASEB Journal. 16:872-874

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