26 Mar 2023
Interesting If True - Episode 97 - The Second Poke, Take Two
Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that sticks our sharp voices right into your ear-y meridians.
I'm your host this week, Aaron, and with me are:
I'm Shea, and this week I learned there is no winning at parenting, only damage control.
Acupuncture recently stuck itself back in my life. Heh, needle puns. So I’m going to get right to the point and … umm… No, first I’m going to do a recap but I couldn’t find a acupunctuating way to say that… haaaaa
Check out episode 53 for our complete intro into acupuncture.
Briefly, from episode 53’s intro:
Acupuncture was initially described in the Shi-Chi text, cerca 90 B.C.E., it describes 11 “mo” or vessels that hold chi. About a hundred years later there are 12 mo and chi flows in the body. Over the next two thousand years the 12 mo turn into hundreds to thousands depending on who you talk to - because there is no standard. In the early 1900s China, like the rest of the world, became focused on the industrial revolution of the western world and sought to adopt western, science based, medicine (such that it was at the time).
The Chinese Communist Party all but outright rejected traditional medicine:
Our men of learning do not understand science; thus they make use of yin-yang signs and beliefs in the five elements to confuse the world… Our doctors do not understand science: they not only know nothing of human anatomy, but also know nothing of the analysis of medicines; as for bacterial poisoning and infections they have not even heard of them… We will never comprehend the ch’i even if we were to search everywhere in the universe. All of these fanciful notions and irrational beliefs can be corrected at their roots by science. 1
And so yes, chi is an irrational belief and that is the last official quote that will be based on reality.
Traditional medicine — again, not yet TCM, we haven’t made it to that branding yet — was on its way out, from 1927 to 1936 the Chinese Journal of Physiology has nothing to say on the topic.
Acupuncture, plainly, is a theory of healing — not a medical science — based on philosophy not results, processes, or even simple observations.
The foundation of acupuncture is the belief that one’s chi or (Qi if you want to be correct or charge an iPhone) needs tending. Under normal, desirable conditions your chi flows through your body freely along pathways in the body called meridians. Think of this as the Force flowing through a Jedi’s Force-circulatory or Force-lymphatic system. Illness, then, is caused by chi blockages or imbalances, and not the cool kind Ty Lee or the Kyoshi Warriors can inflict — and yes, I am shamelessly reusing my Avatar jokes from episode 53, they’re that good… according to my mom, who says I’m very funny indeed.
The “treatment” if you will, is to insert a now-tiny, ultra-thin, needle into the body where the meridians overlap to improve the flow or balance of your chi because… needle. I want to step aside and note though that thin needs are kinda new, back in the day, this was probably done with a medical ice pick or surgical grade splinter.
This is, obviously, nonsense.
Despite thousands of years and many times many more attempts to analyse it no one has ever proven the existence of, much less their ability to manipulate, chi by any name. Raki, cupping, dry needling, and all of their ilk are, at best, magical-thinking nonesnse and at worst, a tragically poor substitute for actual medical intervension.
There’s a reason Randi’s millions went unclaimed.
