Auriculotherapy

Auriculotherapy
Acupuncture points in the ear.
Alternative therapy
Benefits	Placebo

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Auriculotherapy (also auricular therapy, ear acupuncture, and auriculoacupuncture) is a form of alternative medicine based on the idea that the ear is a micro system, which reflects the entire body, represented on the auricle, the outer portion of the ear. Conditions affecting the physical, mental or emotional health of the patient are assumed to be treatable by stimulation of the surface of the ear exclusively. Similar mappings are used in many areas of the body, including the practices of reflexology and iridology. These mappings are not based on or supported by any medical or scientific evidence, and are therefore considered to be pseudoscience.^[1][2][3][4]

History

Auriculotherapy was proposed in the “Treatise of Auriculotherapy” (1957), by the neurologist Paul Nogier.^[5] The developments were made by clinical trials based upon a phrenological method of projection of a fetal Homunculus on the ear, for reference of physical complaints and points for medical treatment. Nogier soon presented his discovery to the public, where members of the Chinese Army picked up the map and took it to the barefoot doctors of China, farmers with minimal training in basic medical and in paramedical skills, and so provide medical services in rural China.

Moreover, Nogier then published what he called the “Vascular Autonomic Signal”, a distinct change in the amplitude of the pulse, easily felt with the tip of the thumb at the radial artery. That mechanism would only produce a signal upon the introduction of new information to the electromagnetic field of the patient. Nogier then was working with the principle of matching resonance, and said that he could use the vascular autonomic signal to detect the active points of the auricular microsystem.

References