Using Science to Make a Point about Acupuncture

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Using science to make a point about acupuncture

By: Kao Chen

Cao Xiaoding

TEN years before the world heard of acupuncture, a young Chinese doctor with a doctorate in physiology from Russia was invited to observe an unusual chest surgery in Shanghai, which used acupuncture in place of an anaesthetic.

That was 1964.

"It was a stunning feat involving a team of three acupuncturists, who worked on 20 pairs of acupressure points," recalls Professor Cao Xiaoding, now 70, of the Shanghai Medical University.

And that was how an overseas-trained modern doctor ended up doing pioneering research in TCM, thanks to "serendipity, what else?", as she puts it.

Prof Cao, who is barely 150 cm tall, enjoys a standing as a researcher of world renown, an expert on acupuncture and adviser to the World Health Organisation on traditional Chinese medicine.

She was one of four foreign experts invited to America's National Institute of Health (NIH) hearing on acupuncture in 1997 - a milestone that led NIH to conclude that the treatment is efficacious for specific diseases, and is safe to practise.

The NIH hearing paved the way for certified acupuncturists to practise in about half of the American states, and made acupuncture expenses recoverable from health insurance in several states.

While proud of the breakthroughs in the field, Prof Cao admits that "it will take many generations before we know the full science behind acupuncture".

She sums up her own career as one of "using modern scientific methodologies to explain TCM theories".

For example, she found that people indeed react differently to the acupuncture needle.

It relaxes some people, whose skin temperatures rise after the insertion of the needle.

But others tense up, and their skin temperatures dip and stay low, she says.

"We found about 70 per cent of those tested fall in the first group, who could substitute the use of anaesthetic - which has uncomfortable side effects - with acupuncture.

"But the other 30 per cent require a combination of acupuncture and anaesthetic in a surgical operation."

Acupuncture, she says, works because the sensation of the needle - a sore, swelling and numbing sensation - acts on the pain-modulating system in the brain, which releases an opiate peptide, suppressing the pain of the operation.

Later, her team conducted research on the use of acupuncture in treating chronic pain and found it effective in treating diarrhoea, constipation and high blood pressure, and in helping stroke patients recover.

She is now director of the Institute of Acupuncture Research and Centre of Clinical Pain Research at her university, and is vice-president of the Beijing-based All-China Society of Acupuncture and Moxibustion (a TCM therapy that relieves muscle pain by burning herbs on the skin surface).

In her more recent work, she focuses on how acupuncture bolsters the body's natural immune system.

However, the study to do a scientific map of jing mai has proved elusive. This is the system of channels and sub-channels joining the acupressure points through which the body's vital energy and body fluids flow, according to TCM theory.

Despite much work by acupuncturists, anatomy experts, physiologists and others, only nerve endings and blood vessels have been found under the acupoints.

During the course of her work, Prof Cao has met many of China's senior leaders. One encounter stuck in her mind.

"I was most taken with Premier Zhou Enlai - he told me that until science could explain how acupuncture works, there will always be doubters."