Are meridians blood vessels?

As we all know, there are a lot of meridians distributed throughout the human body, collectively known as the twelve meridians. Clinically, the human body will have many meridian diseases. In traditional Chinese medicine, it is said that if the meridians are blocked, there will be pain. If the meridians are blocked, the patient will easily experience pain. For example, patients who are often bedridden are prone to calf meridian pain. Many people confuse meridians and blood vessels. Are they the same thing?

Are meridians blood vessels?

no. For more than half a century, scholars at home and abroad have been exploring the issue of meridians tirelessly. The first problem they encountered was whether the meridians mentioned by the ancients really exist. At that time, some people believed that the meridians mentioned by the ancients were the blood vessels in modern anatomy, and that there was no independent meridian system. On the other hand, some people abroad claimed to have discovered the entity of meridians, but this was later proved to be an illusion by Chinese scholars.

In the 1950s, people discovered a strange phenomenon in acupuncture: some people would experience a sensation of moving along the meridians when receiving acupuncture treatment. Later, this phenomenon was officially named the meridian sensory transmission phenomenon, and people who can produce this phenomenon are called "meridian sensitive people", but this type of people only accounts for a very small part of the population. The discovery of the phenomenon of sensory transmission along the meridians has overturned the view that meridians are blood vessels, because blood vessels obviously cannot form this phenomenon of sensory transmission along the meridians. In addition, people have also found that the skin resistance along the meridian routes is lower. These phenomena have laid a certain foundation for verifying the objective existence of meridians.

According to traditional Chinese medicine, meridians are channels that circulate qi and blood, connect internal organs with the body surface and all parts of the body, and are a regulatory system for human body functions. Meridian science is also the basis of human acupuncture and massage, and is an important part of traditional Chinese medicine.

The original meaning of "jing" is "vertical silk", which means path. Simply put, it is the main path in the meridian system, which exists inside the body, runs through the upper and lower parts, and connects the inside and the outside; the original meaning of "luo" is "network", which simply means the auxiliary road branching out from the main road, which exists on the surface of the body, crisscrossing and spreading throughout the body. "Lingshu Pulse Degree" said: "The meridians are the inner, the branches and horizontal ones are the collaterals, and the branches of the collaterals are the sun meridians." This means that the pulses are called "meridians", "collaterals" and "sun meridians" according to their size and depth. The main contents of meridians include: twelve meridians, twelve collateral meridians, eight extraordinary meridians, fifteen collateral meridians, twelve meridian tendons, twelve skin areas, etc. Among them, the twelve meridians are the main ones in terms of meridians, and the fifteen collaterals are the main ones in terms of collaterals. They crisscross the body, connecting the inside and outside of the human body, the internal organs, and the limbs into an organic whole.