RESUMO
Ultra-weak bioluminescence (UWL) is a physiological phenomenon widely existing in all the biological activities including human, animals, plants, etc., which reflects the energy metabolism of the organism. Since the last century, ultra-weak photon emission (UPE) has been applied to the study of the essence of meridians and acupoints of traditional Chinese medicine and obtained some results as the higher luminescence characteristics, but many problems remain unsolved due to the limitation of detection technology. In recent years, along with the development of bioluminescence signal acquiring system and imaging system, we are able to further explore the characteristics and biological mechanisms of UWL of acupuncture points and meridians in the human body. We proposed to study changes of ultra-weak luminous intensity of acupuncture points and meridians before and after needling stimulation, and the delayed effect of UPE phenomenon, etc., trying to reveal their regularities and essence. In this paper, the prospect of application of UPE to acupuncture research is also discussed by combining newly acquired results of some biological substances of acupoints in experimental studies.