Chapter 4 – General Discussion

             The anatomy data gave us a piece in the missing puzzle in looking for neural correlates of acupressure.  The fact that most acupressure points are located near sensory nerve fibers clearly suggests the existence of a neural response to acupressure treatment.  Pressure can induce a wide array of physiological responses in nerve fibers and at nerve fiber endings.  Now that we know that acupressure points are located near nerve fibers, we could study this correlation at a microscopic level and look for locations of nerve fiber endings in relation to the points.  Our data also supports the study on the pain pathway done by Pomeranz and Stux [8].  They found a diminished response in acupuncture-induced analgesia if the afferent nerve was anesthetized.  Levine et al. (1976) reported that acupuncture analgesia was not successful if acupoints were selected in the areas where large nerve fibers were damaged [6].  From their experiments and our data, we postulate that cutaneous sensory nerves are analogous to meridians.  The mapping may be different and an analysis to correlate the two maps may provide yet another piece of this puzzle.

            The physiology study suggests some change in the brain’s response to tactile stimuli caused by acupressure treatment.  Some problems we encountered were stimulus position sensitivity and working with animals in pre-anesthesia.  Nevertheless, the methods used in this project were very useful and the non-invasive nature of evoked potential recordings allows us to use these methods in humans. 

            The use of sensory physiology in studying acupressure has allowed us to explore the meridian theory like never before.  Our study suggests a neural mechanism for the signal transductions that occur during acupressure treatment.  Studying the effects of acupressure treatment on a cellular level and looking at changes in the physiology of sensory neurons upon giving treatment can help us in further exploring this hypothesis.