The founder of SEIDO acupuncture, Makoto Kurihara, recently released his first book, "Reason for having acupoint".
I attended the publication launch party the other day.
The party was held as the discussion style with two other panelists, Dr. Masei Suda and Dr. Yasutaka Kato.
Dr. Suda (St. Luke's international hospital, department of rheumatology) is a member of the translation project of "The Spark in the Machine" written by Daniel Keown.
Dr. Kato (Keio university hospital, department of oncology, project assistant professor) is the leader of the acupuncture research project currently under way at Hokuto hospital.
I have wrote a blog article about my visit to the project site.
History Changing Acupuncture Medical Project in Northern Japan
On the very first page of the book, you will see the heading saying, "The meridian is a faith." This rather strong message has been rising debates among acupuncturists in Japan. But this was Kurihara's intention.
Kurihara has never denied the meridian, but he thinks it is not beneficial for practitioners to accept the physical existence of the meridian in all living things and look no further for other possibilities.
In acupuncture schools, we were told that the meridian was found and theorized first. After that, many acupoints were found on the meridian lines. So, when we put a needle to an acupoint, the qi starts to flow along a meridian line and the body reacts to that. Even with the modern science and technology, no one has yet proved the existence of the meridian. Although you cannot visually see the meridian, many acupuncturists practice acupuncture based on this theory. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it does not.
Kurihara questions this and claims that aupoints must had been found before the meridian. He claims that the meridian lines were designed afterwards for the purpose of theorizing the complicated medical system.
By getting freed from the meridian theory, Kurihara was able to look at the human body from different angles and eventually lead to found SEIDO acupuncture.
Do you want to know the reason for having acupoints?
Kurihara performing a demo on my cousine↓
Dr. Suda performs ultrasound-guided fascia release for his patients suffering from non-inflammatory joint pain. He explained that fascia could be the key to prove the existence of the meridian. He elaborated his insight using Lung and Stomach meridian as examples. When you empryologically look at the fascia surrounding lungs and stomach, their path match with the meridian. Doctors and scientists are finding many new discoveries about fascia. Fascia may at least partially be able to explain what the meridian is in near future.
Dr. Kato reported the exciting data about the acupuncture research project using MEG. He came to the conclusion that the meridian do exists.
The meridian is believed to run through a body just like blood vessels as shown on the picture. However, Dr. Kato said, "this is not the way the meridian exists. Instead, it exists in the XXX. It's network and effect could be visualized and quantified." Dr. Kato is currently preparing a research paper on this.
*I cannot write what XXX is at this moment, since the paper is not published yet.
There has been problems with previous acupuncture researches. No researches have clearly differentiated the effect of real acupuncture from sham acupuncture. Using SEIDO acupuncture, the research team has been successfully differentiated them.
I am planning to visit the project site again soon. Please wait for the exciting updates on this topic.
Overall, I felt the strong momentum at the event. A new fiscal year is coming up next week in Japan. Moreover, a new Japanese era is starting in May. I think that the event just opened up a door to the new era for acupuncture. In this new era, I am certain that acupuncture will take an important role in medicine.