The Effect of Moxibustion on the Meridian

Moxibustion is a traditional Chinese medicine, which use the burned moxa to generate warmth on the human's local skin and then exerts a therapeutic effect. Research found that moxibustion has effect on analgesic and anti-inflammation, which can be applied on myofascial pain, insomnia, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, cancer related fatigue, irritable bowel disease etc.. Although research reveal that moxibustion can treat these diseases probably by effect on analgesic and anti-inflammation, the mechanism of moxibustion is still not clear.

In modern study, the meridian has electric characteristic and the therapeutic effect of acupuncture may be related to the electricity resulting by acupuncture manipulation. However, there is no study to investigate the electric effect of moxibustion on the meridian. In our study, the investigators applied the semiconductor analyzer Agilent B1500A to investigate the electric characteristic of meridians and visual analogue scale (VAS) before and after moxibustion, which may provide another vision on moxibustion in the future.

The investigators intend to recruit 30 healthy participants with age more than 20 years old to participate this study. The participants receive acupuncture and then measure the VAS and electric characteristic by the semiconductor analyzer Agilent B1500A immediately(baseline data). The investigators add the burned moxa on the acupuncture as a method for moxibustion. After the moxa burned out, the investigators measure the VAS and electric characteristic immediately again(post moxibustion data). The investigators will use paired t test and repeated measure two ways ANOVA to compare the VAS and electricity of baseline data and post moxibustion data in each participant.

The purpose of this study is to combine the Chinese medicine and physics, using acupuncture to conduct electrical measurement, and to understand the effects of moxibustion on meridian.