Acupuncture Becomes a Medical Science with the help of Neuroscience. (2)

The Problem of Acupuncture from the Point of View of Medical Research

“Acupuncture” is not standardized. When one describes acupuncture; the theories, methods, and even needles used could vary depending on acupuncturists.

This is especially true in Japan. There is a saying that there is one original acupuncture style for each acupuncturist. There exits so many acupuncture styles and each style claims its original method.

If acupuncture is just a cultural heritage, this diversity is rather interesting.

However, if acupuncture wants to be a part of the modern medical science, this circumstance is crucial.

One possible cause of this circumstance might be that there were no indicators to measure which method was most effective.

If we can quantify the efficacy of acupuncture with our project, we will be able to compare which method is most effective.

Aiming to Standardize the Acupuncture methodology

Acupuncture will be recognized as a part of the modern medical science, if the most effective acupuncture methodology for a certain type of disease and how much improvement is expected scientifically become clear.

In the modern medicine, every healthcare professionals are required to select the most effective treatment. A treatment that are scientifically accepted as the proper treatment is called “standard of care.”

The number one goal of our project is to establish the standard of care of acupuncture.

The second goal is to make a system where any healthcare professionals in any hospitals can select acupuncture as the proper treatment (the standard of care) for a certain type of disease.

Because of SEIDO Acupuncture and Beyond

What I strongly felt when I started the project was the high compatibility between SEIDO acupuncture and scientific research.

With SEIDO acupuncture; you needle one acupuncture point which is set at millimeter precision, and check the result immediately. This procedure can be used as the experiment model for the project as is and is also easy to document. 

If several acupuncture points or time after needling are necessary to observe the result; or a point location changes depending on subject’s condition or acupuncturist’s sense, the experiment becomes complex. It will be time and resource consuming to analyze which factor contributed to the result from the big data. 

SEIDO acupuncture which is highly compatible to scientific researches are accelerating the speed of our project.

As the project progresses and some data is collected, I will be asking other acupuncturists to gather data for various diseases.

Personally, I think SEIDO acupuncture is close to a standard of care. However, I think it is also important to keep searching for the best method and establish a standard of care.

I think it is necessary to put aside your personal belief, assertion, or ideology, and choose the best treatment for patients in order for acupuncture to be recognized as a part of the modern medical science.

Faster than You Can Imagine

Normally, it is not easy to gather enough subjects for a research. But we are very lucky in that respect.

Hokuto hospital is a large general hospital and has a lot of patients and workers. Moreover, since our experiment method is simple, non-invasive, yet eases body complaints; we are able to gather subjects smoothly.

We held the first meeting on November 15th, and the project had started on December 14th. We are expecting more than 10 subjects within this year.

We have already found interesting data, and have started to prepare a research paper.

Hokuto hospital has started to consider acupuncture as a mean of treatment in the hospital in response to this outcome.

Our research project is progressing much faster than we ever imagined. I wonder what is coming up next and what the future would look like.

I want to share my good luck with you and give a big impact on the medical world by revealing the true potential of acupuncture which has been hidden in a veil of mystery.