RESUMEN
We retrieve and analyze the articles on body surface temperature of acupoints in the recent 50 years. Surface temperatures have been compared between acupoints and nonacupoints, and among acupoints in different states. The impacts of interventions for acupoint temperature are explored, including acupuncture,moxibustion and cupping, etc. We summarize the features and the rules of acupoint skin temperature. It is considered that there exists distribution rule for healthy people's acupoint skin temperature. That means acupoints have higher surface temperature than nonacupoints. In the same meridian the nearer acupoints close to the head and trunk, the higher the temperature is. The difference in symmetrical acupoints temperatures between the left and right side is about 0.5℃. In the different meridians the skin temperatures of adjacent acpoints are similar. The changes of acupoint's skin temperature in illness can be used as the auxiliary diagnosis. Acupuncture, moxibustion and cupping can produce acupoints stimulating, metabolism improving,balance, acupoint temperature regulating. Thus,diseases are relieved. The specificity and regularity that acupoint's skin temperature presents may be one of the manifestations of the acupoint specificity, also it is an important starting point of the research on acupoint sensitization. The further studies should consider different diseases and modern biological engineering techniques, so that more rules of acupoints temperature can be found by more sensitive and objective temperature measurements as well as experimental and the mathematical models.
RESUMEN
Traditional Chinese medicine considers that the final purpose of acupuncture treatment for disease is to harmonize yin and yang. Acupuncture redresses a balance between yin and yang by transmitting information to acupoints and then to corresponding visceral tissues and organs and the brain through the meridian system or the nervous system. In recent years, scholars at home thoroughly studied heart rate variability (HRV) analysis for acupuncture treatment of diseases and found that the regulating effect of acupuncture on visceral organs was closely related to autonomic nerves and acupuncture could restore a balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves. Many scholars explored the effect of acupuncture on diseases related to autonomic nervous dysfunction by HRV frequency domain or time domain analysis and gained a certain achievements. This article summarizes recent years’ domestic studies on HRV-based analysis of acupuncture for diseases with autonomic nervous dysfunction and reviews the close relationship between autonomic nerves and diseases and the related mechanism of acupuncture action.