with a fever, cough, and a sore throat. After he spent a while resting, most of his respiratory symptoms subsided. However, he was stuck with lingering chest congestion and fluttering heartbeats (palpitations). When he exercised, his palpitations became more obvious.
The heart discomfort made it difficult for him to rock climb and left him distressed.
After checking his conditions, Liu found that the young man not only experienced palpitations during exercise but also had symptoms of psychological tension. Liu decided to treat him by starting from his pericardium meridian. Liu needled his pericardium meridian and prescribed Chinese herbal medicine. In little more than two weeks, the young man’s heart symptoms were cured, and he was able to rock climb again.
Why were his heart problems cured by treating his pericardium meridian with acupuncture?
The word pericardium is derived from the Latin words “around (peri)” and “heart (cardium).” As its name implies, pericardium is the membrane enclosing the heart. It’s the guard that protects the heart. And “meridian” can be interpreted as a “channel of energy.”
Usually, our emotional ups and downs will cause the energy in the body to fluctuate strongly, which can damage the heart. In Western medicine, we’d talk about the detrimental effects of different hormones triggered by stress. People who are emotionally unstable and often stressed tend to have unhealthy hearts. The negative energy of the SARS-COV-2 virus will also damage the heart after infection. In particular, many people with post-COVID-19 symptoms (long-COVID) often still have residual viruses in their bodies, and these microscopic parasites continue to attack the heart.
The energy of the pericardium meridian can protect the heart from damage and prevent bad energy from entering the heart. When Liu needled the pericardium meridian for this young man, he was strengthening the energy of his pericardium meridian to fight against the viral energy.
According to traditional Chinese medicine, the “heart” doesn’t refer to only the heart itself, but also the person’s state of mind. Therefore, besides treating chest congestion, palpitations, and angina, the pericardium meridian can also improve mental tension and insomnia.
Harvard Study Confirms Existence Of Pericardium Meridian
Traditional Chinese medicine places great importance on the meridians, and many concepts of healing are closely related to them. However, the meridians are invisible to the naked eye, so conventional Western medicine still holds reservations about their existence.
However, in March 2021, a paper published in the medical journal Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a collaboration between Harvard Medical School and the Institute of Acupuncture and Moxibustion of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences (CACMS), observed the possibility of the pericardium meridian’s existence for the first time.
The pericardium meridian is one of the “12 meridians.” It starts in the chest, follows the midline of the forearm, travels to the palm of the hand, and ends at the tip of the middle finger. It has nine acupoints: Tianchi, Tianquan, Quze, Ximen, Jianshi, Neiguan, Daling, Laogong, and Zhongchong (from PC-1 to PC-9).
In the study, 15 healthy volunteers were recruited, and two Chinese physicians marked the pathways and acupuncture points of the pericardium meridian on their hands and arms and used a low resistance detector for further confirmation. Afterward, they injected fluorescein into the volunteers’ pericardium meridians and observed the direction of the fluorescein’s movement with a special camera.