The Internal-Stitching of the Interstitium
“The human body is enmeshed in an intricate internal web of living spaces known as the interstitium. These fractal-like structures create a vast honeycomb network of fluid-filled openings within and between tissues and organs that spans the body and acts as a thoroughfare. A sophisticated system of connective tissue, including collagen and various other extracellular matrix proteins, supports the continuity of this network. The interstitium is increasingly being recognized as a fundamental anatomical structure and body-wide communication system”.
You would be forgiven in thinking that the above quote came from an esoteric Chinese medical theory book. but it did in fact come from the well-respected western scientific journal ‘The Scientist’. You might have also thought that it would be impossible for scientists to discover a new organ within the human body in this day and age but this is just what researchers recently think that they have found. They’ve found a network of fluid-filled spaces in tissues that hadn’t been seen before. These fluid-filled spaces were discovered in connective tissues all over the body, including below the skin’s surface, surrounding the muscles and going deep in to the organs.
The reason why it has taken medical science so long to discover this system is clear. Generally when a biologist looks closely at the human body, he does so by taking a very fine slice of tissue and examining it under a microscope. This cross-section of cells is revealing in many ways but it is also lacking in one fundamental manner – it is dead. When scientists prepare these samples for the slides, they often treat them with chemicals that drain away the fluids and causes these new found spaces to collapse. In this way the actual living processes that occur within the cells and the body as a whole can be missed. Remarkably, doctors and surgeons, who routinely encountered the interstitium during operations were taught to ignore it. Portions of this body-wide net would be discarded and disregarded as unimportant as it didn’t fit within their existing framework of knowledge.
Further investigations have also shown that these collagen structures that make up the interstitium are piezoelectric. This means that it can covert a mechanical force into electrical current that can carry charged molecules. Any movement of the collagen will therefore generate an electrical charge. Any movement of the body will therefore create energy.
As an acupuncturist all of this is sounding very familiar. The metabolism of the body’s fluids already has its own organ that is known as the San Jiao or the Triple-Burner. This organ amongst other things distributes and maintains the fluid passages throughout all of the body. The massive network of connective tissue of collagen and other structures is known collectively as the Huang. This is a term that is often used in the Chinese arts such as Tai Chi and Qi Gong and can be felt and experienced as a mesh-like wet-suit that encompasses the entire body and is seen as a way for conscious information to travel through the system. The acupuncture meridians themselves flow along lines of connecting collagen and because collagen is more conductive than the surrounding tissues, electrical energy will always travel faster through it. The ancient Chinese somehow managed to map these pathways out in incredible detail, not just along the surface of the skin, but deep in to the internal organs as well, which has resulted in the acupuncture charts that we still study and use today.
This ‘new’ discovery of the interstitium has led to some scientific researchers claiming that they can now explain how acupuncture actually really works. This is however a typical ethnocentric view point to hold. We in the west are often guilty of evaluating other cultures according to the preconceptions that originate in the standards and customs of our own culture. Wouldn’t it be better to take the viewpoint that maybe, these ancient people had an intelligence that was in certain ways maybe far superior to our own. They didn’t have to take the direction of killing and dissecting the body to understand it, because they had the ability and sensitivities to go inwards and investigate it as a whole living system. Instead of saying ‘We now know how your funny little ancient medicine actually works,’ we should be saying something along the lines of ‘Wow, you were right about this all along, what else can you tell us about it?’ Because believe me, they certainly have a lot more that they can tell.