A contemporary understanding of Chinese Medicine (CM) regards CM diagnosis as a functional vegetative state that may be treated by vegetative reflex therapies such as acupuncture. Within this context, traditional mind-body exercises such as Qigong can be understood as an attempt to enhance physiological proprioception, by combining a special state of “awareness” with posture, movement, and breath control. We have formerly trained young auditing flutists in “White Ball” Qigong to minimize anxiety-induced cold hands and lower anxiety-induced heart rate. Functional changes occurred 2–5 min after training and were observed over the whole training program, allowing the children to control their symptoms. In our current work, we report that warm fingers and calm hearts could be induced by the children even without Qigong exercises. Thus, these positive changes once induced and “conditioned” vegetatively were stable after weeks of training. This may show the mechanism by which Qigong acts as a therapeutic measure in disease: positive vegetative pathways may be activated instead of dysfunctional functional patterns. The positive vegetative patterns then may be available in critical stressful situations. Qigong exercise programs may therefore be understood as an ancient vegetative biofeedback exercise inducing positive vegetative functions which are added to the individual reactive repertoire.

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Rationale. Poststernotomy pain and impaired breathing are common clinical problems in early postoperative care following heart surgery. Insufficiently treated pain increases the risk of pulmonary complications. High-dose opioids are used for pain management, but they may cause side effects such as respiratory depression. Study Design. We performed a prospective, randomized, controlled, observer-blinded, three-armed clinical trial with 100 patients. Group 1 (n = 33) and Group 2 (n = 34) received one 20 min session of standardized acupuncture treatment with two different sets of acupoints. Group 3 (n = 33) served as standard analgesia control without additional intervention. Results. Primary endpoint analysis revealed a statistically significant analgesic effect for both acupuncture treatments. Group 1 showed a mean percentile pain reduction (PPR) of 18% (SD 19, P < 0.001). Group 2 yielded a mean PPR of 71% (SD 13, P < 0.001). In Group 1, acupuncture resulted in a mean forced vital capacity (FVC) increase of 30 cm3 (SD 73) without statistical significance (P = 0.303). In Group 2, posttreatment FVC showed a significant increase of 306 cm3 (SD 215, P < 0.001). Conclusion. Acupuncture revealed specific analgesic effects after sternotomy. Objective measurement of poststernotomy pain via lung function test was possible.

All biological-medical treatments need a ground regulation in the intermeshed control loop system in animate matter. The focus of our contribution is to suggest a possible mechanism in this interconnected system that will work in order to supply/assist a higher ordered servo loop. Bonghan ducts indicate similarities to so-called meridians or conduits that are the central part in Chinese Medicine for the energy Qi. It is assumed that the nervous system demands a highly redundant and rapid communication system (RCS) probably established via the extracellular matrix (ECM) and triggered by a threshold value for the entire body. Metabolic processes could work in the picosecond's range while the nervous system is on the time scale at least one order of magnitude lower; probably most of them in the millisecond range. Long-range coherent electromagnetic phenomena and recent experiments indicate a structured superconducting-like system with the Josephson-effect behavior in biological systems. In the ECM are the components proteoglycans and glycosaminoglycans (PG/GAGs) and among them the ubiquitarian hyaluronic acid plays probably an important role and can behave as liquid crystals while the charge transport is performed via proton "jumping" in the proton-chains. Therefore, the water molecules have to be confident on a nanometer scale, lowering their energy states, and set up a phase transition with a rapid jumping of the protons through the water-carbon-chains. These partial chains could probably be modeled by tiny pyramids of the atoms. We propose that in order to set up those long-range coherent effects, a vortex is created. By doing Qi Gong, an energetic vortex through the body is established and the entire body can be modeled by two-base plane-faced pyramids acting as a tunable cavity resonator obeying electrodynamics laws. Therefore, the phenomenon's of pyramids should be considered in animate and inanimate matter in order to achieve long-range coherent effects, which by now controversially discussed and to go new ways to come over the clutter.

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