Clinical Application of Magnetic Acupuncture Particularly / 全日本鍼灸学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

From old times, Oriental medicine has had a double layer structure comprising therapeutic medicine and constructive medicine, and therapists of Oriental medicine have believed that the best treatment for us is to take care of our health. The problem of the usual therapeutic system used only by acupuncturists is that clinical field is limited to an acupuncture clinic and the number of patients is also limited. In view of the above and with the goal of solving these problems, we devised a new magnetic acupuncture methol which is applicable to our home treatment in the early stages of disease and examined, from both the viewpoints of Oriental medicine and health medicine, whether or not this magnetic acupuncture is a useful means for systematically performing the treatments of therapeutic medicine and of constructive medicine.<br>(1) Magnetic acupuncture treatment<br>In this treatment, it is mainly expected that slight clincal symptom (stiffness, pain) will be relieved owing to the synergistic effect of the needle pressure stimulation and the magnetic action exercised by the needle plastered on the reaction acupuncture points of living body's skin. Compared with the intracutaneous needle which acupuncturists use as a rule, it is easier to operate. In addition, it is superior in rapidity and durability of effect to the commercially available magnetic pellet and acupuncture pellet.<br>(2) Magnetic acupuncture<br>The magnet is made of isotropic barium ferrite and has a diameter of 5mm and a thickness of 2.3mm. It has a shape of a disc having a small projection located at the center of the disc on the side which comes into contact with skin (N pole side). The magnetism emanating from the projection has a magnetic flux density of about 952 gauss which is approximately 1.8 times as great as the magnetic flux density of the magnetisms emanating from the flat part of the plate other than the projection. There are two kinds of magnetic acupunctures one is gold magnetic acupuncture for PU (weak stimulation) and the other is silver magnetic acupuncture Xie (strong stimulation).<br>(3) Clinical application<br>In Ling-Shu (Rei Su) which is a volume in the earliest known text on acupuncture, the Nei Ching or Classic of Internal Medicine, or Da-Ging (Dai Kei), it is mentioned that the basic therapeutic point lies in the pain. On these grounds, one magnetic acupuncture disc is plastered on the point at which the response was greatest according to the acupuncture point phenomena (pressure pain, stiffness, depression, hypersensit iveness, trigger-point, etc.) and some additional magnetic acupuncture discs are appropriately plastered on the points surrounding the most sensible point, as well as on the main acupuncture points having a relation to the relief of clinical signs.<br>A clinical test was performed in order to prove the clinical effects of magnetic acupuncture. Thus, 401 subjects who usually complained of stiffness and pain in shoulder without any objective findings were picked out and clinically tested. These subjects were classified into magnetic acupuncture therapy group (120 subjects) and its placebo therapy group (281 subjects), and the clinical test was performed to compare both the groups. Here is reported a part of the test results.