You may have heard that East Asian medicine practitioners take pulses as part of the patient intake. But what are they doing? East Asian pulse diagnosis is much different than the western approach of using the pulse to measure the heart rate. In fact, it has many more dimensions. While rate is valuable, there are other characteristics of the pulse (qualities or textures) that are useful in understanding what is going on in the body. Pulse diagnosis helps practitioners choose certain acupuncture points and herbal formulas. In this way, treatments are highly individualized to what a person needs in this moment, here and now.
There are 6 pulse positions representing various Organ systems. Be careful not to confuse the Organ systems with the organs as we understand them in biomedicine. While there is some overlap, the Organ systems represent meridian pathways and are understood within the Chinese medical theoretical/conceptual framework. The three pulse positions on each wrist are called “cun,” “guan,” and “chi.” These are Chinese measurement terms representing their locations on the wrist, from the radial styloid process at the top about three finger widths proximally towards the elbow.
RIGHT LEFT Cun: Heart/Small Intestine Cun: Lung/Large Intestine
Guan: Spleen/Stomach Guan: Liver/Gallbladder
Chi: Kidney yang/Triple Burner Chi: Kidney yin/Pericardium
Typically the yin organs (listed first in the chart above) are given preference when doing pulse diagnosis, but in some styles, such as Jeffrey Yuen, the yang organs are given preference and there are specific needling systems based on these ideas.
A person’s pulses can be described using words such as fast, slow, floating, deep, wiry, slippery, thin, thready, forceful, or soft. The practitioner must use their clinical experience and their academic knowledge to interpret the pulses. Pulse diagnosis is only one way that practitioners gather information. Usually, tongue diagnosis and interview are combined with information about the pulses to paint a more fully colored landscape of someone’s body ecology. Observation of people’s faces (colors, shapes), tongues (color, coating, and vessels), skin and hair quality (dry, oily, lustrous), body position, vocal sounds, smells, and many other characteristics, combined with information from the review of systems and “ten questions” interviews all assist the practitioner in determining the overall diagnosis and treatment. They are then able to choose an effective combination of acupuncture points and herbs to balance this person’s system.
acupuncture: a combination of pulse, tongue, and interview diagnostic tools helps practitioners choose a combination of acupoints that will be helpful for each individual
The practitioner observes and listens closely to the pulses. It is thus an exceptionally scientific approach. Like any fine instrument, these skills take years to develop. Some people who are really good at taking pulses can tell you the year of your life when various events occurred, such as a broken bone or even heartbreak. It is an incredibly fascinating and useful clinical tool. And yet just like the pulses are listened to like an instrument and tuned with the use of acupuncture points and herbs, the use of beauty, balance, and metaphor within the theoretical framework of this medicine make it an art as well as a science.
herbs: a combination of pulse, tongue, and interview diagnostic tools helps practitioners choose a combination of herbs that will be helpful for each individual
I hope this brief synopsis on pulse diagnosis was interesting for you and lit some curiosity within!
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