I watched last night a program here in Japan that covers lots of usually health-related topics in an entertaining, but reasonably scientific method, ie they do lots of medical tests and small-scale trials (15-30 people or so), and have lots of guys in white coats explaining the results. (It's "Aru-Aru Daijiten" I'm talking about, if there's anyone else in Japan who can explain it better!)
The average program is about how eating a decent amount of avocado/bonito/seaweed can boost various functions, but this week they did reflexology, both the Taiwan Method and the UK (actually American, don't ask!) Method.
They claimed it to be a world's first proper examination of reflexology, and subjected people to a bunch of CAT scans, PET scans, Barium Meals, etc to see what the effect of the foot massage was on the organs it claimed to affect.
My Japanese is a bit bad, so I may have missed some of the details, but for instance they showed with an endoscope, someone's stomach contractions improving under massage, then with some non-invasive tchnique, intestinal contractions falling into sync (or getting into a regular rhythm, or something). Similarly a before and after Barium Meal showed better processing of the liquid.
A PET scan during massage showed the hippocampus (? somewhere in the core of the brain) being more active during the time, although they did point out that the massage shops that do reflexology are relaxation-friendly - soft lights, soft music, aroma oils, etc, which might lead one to conclude that the whole process is just a mild hypnosis and suggestion techniques. Do the practitioners talk to the patient about what they're doing to get the patient to visualise things?
Anyway, the show was reasonably non-woo-woo - they only mentioned at the beginning that there said to be an energy connection between the soles of the feet and the parts of the body. In fact, they did use the English word "Energy", probably because it sounds as mystical to them as the Japanese "Ki" does to us!
The average program is about how eating a decent amount of avocado/bonito/seaweed can boost various functions, but this week they did reflexology, both the Taiwan Method and the UK (actually American, don't ask!) Method.
They claimed it to be a world's first proper examination of reflexology, and subjected people to a bunch of CAT scans, PET scans, Barium Meals, etc to see what the effect of the foot massage was on the organs it claimed to affect.
My Japanese is a bit bad, so I may have missed some of the details, but for instance they showed with an endoscope, someone's stomach contractions improving under massage, then with some non-invasive tchnique, intestinal contractions falling into sync (or getting into a regular rhythm, or something). Similarly a before and after Barium Meal showed better processing of the liquid.
A PET scan during massage showed the hippocampus (? somewhere in the core of the brain) being more active during the time, although they did point out that the massage shops that do reflexology are relaxation-friendly - soft lights, soft music, aroma oils, etc, which might lead one to conclude that the whole process is just a mild hypnosis and suggestion techniques. Do the practitioners talk to the patient about what they're doing to get the patient to visualise things?
Anyway, the show was reasonably non-woo-woo - they only mentioned at the beginning that there said to be an energy connection between the soles of the feet and the parts of the body. In fact, they did use the English word "Energy", probably because it sounds as mystical to them as the Japanese "Ki" does to us!