Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 21, 2025

Effects of Different Connection Modes of Electroacupuncture on Electrocardiogram and Nerve Discharge in Rats
Published on: January 3, 2025
[On the bidirectional regulation effect of acupuncture]
1Institute of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China. zhubing@mail.cintcm.ac.cn.
Abstract:
The wisdom of Chinese medicine in maintaining health is "Yin Ping Yang Mi" (balance between yin and yang). Obviously, the maintenance of "homeostasis" contains dual factors of "excessiveness" and "falling short". The life process must be protected by the stability-maintaining mechanism of the "bidirectional regulation" system. Therefore, the two-way regulation of the "homeostasis" maintaining involves the relatively independent potential energy of the "spear" and "shield", and also depends on two sets of relatively independent regulatory systems to complete. Acupuncture is an excellent performer of the "bidirectional regulation effect" of living organisms, but can this effect be caused by a single acupoint stimulation?This issue, which was not a problem, has become a big problem in acupuncture-moxibustion discipline. The concept of "two-way regulation" of acupuncture is over-expanded, which is difficult for the theory of Chinese medicine to take into account. It is only a broad expansion of the boundary of theoretical extension arbitrarily. From the perspective of life science, the present paper expounds that the "bidirectional regulation effect" of acupuncture is obtained from the activation of the "integration center" (not necessarily limited to the brain) by the stimulated acupoints at different somatic parts of the body, and through two sets of relatively independent regulation systems, so as to maintain the life's "homeostasis".
Related Concept Videos
Regulation of Heart Rates
The SNS increases heart rate through the release of norepinephrine and epinephrine, which act on beta-1 adrenergic receptors in the heart. This action increases the rate of depolarization in the sinoatrial (SA) node, the heart's...
Neural Regulation

