Supplimental experiments to determine if "duodenal" waves at acupoints were artefact

Published: 8 July 2018| Version 1 | DOI: 10.17632/fkkvzxn6v2.1
Contributor:
Fletcher Kovich

Description

This dataset is supplemental to a paper entitled: "The stomach’s communication with its related acupoints, and the 'intelligent tissue' hypothesis" which is still in preparation. That paper describes an experiment that captured impedance values from 6 stomach-related acupoints while the subject drank chilled water (see the related links below). At every monitored acupoint, the impedance featured waves that appeared to correspond to duodenal contractions. To determine if these impedance waves were artefact, the following additional experiments were conducted. “Duodenal” waves were present in all the plots of the impedance at each acupoint, even both ST-36 acupoints, which were (on Subject A) about 74cm below the start of the duodenum, which rules out any mechanical or bioelectrical artefact from the duodenum. And, more impressively, the signals were in contrary motion. If they were due to artefact of any kind, the waves would not appear in contrary motion at two locations on the skin, 6mm apart. Such contrary motion is a feature of organ-related information, reflected at acupoints. While swallowing, the subject held his breath, yet the waves were still present in the right ST-21 impedance plot, albeit at a greatly reduced amplitude (reduced from 15 to 2Ω). EXPERIMENT 1 However, to rule out respiratory artefact, the impedance at right ST-21 was monitored again while Subject A held his breath. Fig.1 shows that the duodenal waves continued while the subject was not breathing. But further, the wavelength was 2.85 s ±0.92, while the subject’s breathing cycle was 4.1 s, all of which rules out respiratory artefact. It is also notable that the duodenal waves were not diminished this time when the subject drank the (now warm) water, which suggests that this effect in the main experiment was due to the effect of the chilled water on the stomach. EXPERIMENT 2 On 17 May 2018, the same experiment was conducted on Subject B. Figure 2 shows the impedance readings at right ST-21 and ST-19. The duodenal waves continued while holding his breath, and also while drinking. On Subject B, the wavelength was 3.36 s ±1.53, which equates to 17.86 cpm (compared to 2.95 s ±0.69 and 20.31 cpm in Subject A). This variability between subjects is consistent with the results obtained in other experiments (see the accompanying paper, references 1,4,7,8). Note that the descending trends shown in both Figures 1 and 2 could be interpreted as a gradual diminishing of the stomach function, which might be due to the time of day, since (in Chinese medicine) the digestive function is recognised to peak at 11a.m. Alternatively, the trend may simply indicate that the stomach function is now diminishing after the subjects’ recent snacking; the impedance at ST-36, ST-37 and ST-39 have been found to rise notably in response to eating, and shortly after to decline (see the accompanying paper, reference 4).

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Full details of all the techniques and equipment used can be found in the following documents. http://www.curiouspages.com/research/locate.pdf http://www.curiouspages.com/research/monitorImpedance.pdf http://www.curiouspages.com/research/PicoGetSamples2U.mdb See also the accompanying paper for a description of the context and aims of these experiments (see below links). EXPERIMENT 1 On 18 May 2018, the subject had a light snack at 11:00 a.m., then the recording was made at 11:57 while he sat in a chair. He was asked to close his eyes to mark the period when holding his breath; and this was marked by the experimenter clicking a software button to indicate the start and end point, which are shown by the green lines in Fig.1. The subject’s breathing cycle was measured by watching his chest rise and fall ten times while using a stopwatch to record the time taken. EXPERIMENT 2 Subject B sat in a chair. He had a snack at 10:50 a.m., and the recording was made at 11:24. This time the subject also drank warm water (at 34.25 C). Both this event, and also holding his breath, were marked by the subject clicking a software button to mark the beginning and end of each event.

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Acupuncture, Traditional Chinese Medicine

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