Before today’s content starts, Dr. Clove would like to show you a picture first:
Does it look familiar? Have you ever seen similar pictures on the walls of massage shops, large and small, on various websites, or even in the circle of friends of people around you?
Today’s topic is this foot massage.
From the capital to the small town, From luxury clubs to roadside shops, plantar reflex area such easy-to-understand pictures appear in every corner of China. Many people are keen to press without illness and even press if they are ill. The author’s Tianhe District of Guangzhou City, searching for [plantar massage] in this area on a review website, can find more than 500 shops, and the competition can be said to be very fierce.
However, everyone’s understanding of foot massage may have been wrong all along. First of all…
The birthplace of foot massage is not in China?
Although foot massage practitioners like to claim that foot massage originated in China 4,000 years ago, the earliest foot massage recorded in medical history actually appeared in Egypt in 2300 BC.
At that time, ancient Egyptian doctors believed that by massaging hands or feet, pathological changes in other parts of the body could be diagnosed and treated.
At the beginning of the 20th century, with the establishment of Pavlov’s conditioned reflex theory, this ancient foot massage seemed to find a new theoretical basis.
In 1913, an American doctor named Dr. William Fitzgerald created a zone therapy. He believed that there was a certain bioenergy connection between the sole of the foot and various regions of the body. Therefore, by massaging the sole of the foot, it was possible to diagnose or treat a certain part of the body.
His therapy also believes that if there is a tumor in the brain, the sole of the foot can be massaged in areas related to the brain, thus effectively treating the tumor (Dr. Clove:? ? ? ).
Later, the doctor scaled 10 parts of the human body to the sole of the foot (5 on each of the left and right soles). In the 1930s, another American physiotherapist, Eunice Ingham, further subdivided the map of the plantar reflex area and called the therapy Reflexology.
There are still many massage therapies such as Reflexology abroad. The common characteristics of these therapies are: the theory is not accurate and the effect is not accurate, but there are always some people who firmly believe it.
In the streets and lanes of the United States, Japan and other countries, some advertisements for massage therapy can often be seen. Massaging the sole of the foot is also an important means for many health care institutions to survive.
The history of foot massage in China is actually… very short?
Different from the same strain of massage abroad, massage, which is considered by many Chinese as a unique health care method in China, once disappeared in Chinese history.
According to the records of < < Han Shu > >, the earliest massage monograph in China was < < Huang Di Qi Bo Massage Sutra > > (lost) in Qin and Han Dynasties. Massage reached its peak in Sui and Tang Dynasties, and the government also set up a special massage department. However, after that, massage, a therapeutic method, began to decline slowly.
In the 5th year of Qin Long in the Ming Dynasty (1571), the then State Health Planning Commission and the highest medical education institution, Tai Hospital, re-divided medicine and deleted massage. By the 15th year of Wanli (1587), massage had been removed from the national system, and some massage techniques and theories had been diverted to bone setting and pediatric massage.
Massage was eliminated by orthodox traditional Chinese medicine, mainly because accidents caused by massage occurred from time to time. Zhang Jingyue, a medical scientist in the Ming Dynasty, wrote in < < classics > >:
Today, when I see the flow of massage, I don’t know the interests. I use strong methods to try my best to trap people, open people’s joints and leave people’s vitality. There is no such thing as this. The sick also take the law for granted, that is, they are unbearable and reluctantly endure it. Most of them are weak by the strong, but the weak can’t afford it. Instead, I can’t get rid of the disease, but I can do more harm. If I use this generation, I must be cautious.
Massage has no definite effect, but also because special pain will bring pain to the patient. Not only can it not cure the disease, but the more massage the disease, the more serious it may be.
Therefore, in ancient China, massage was mostly a leisure activity.
At that time, if the common people were really ill, they also turned to regular hospitals for treatment. Besides, in that age when men and women were paying attention to giving and receiving, it was impossible for those foot massage shops to let the opposite sex directly perform foot massage.
What we know now is that foot massage, which has blossomed everywhere in cities and towns of the motherland, came after the reform and opening up in the 1980s.
In a short period of 30 years, China has one million foot care shops with more than 30 million employees.
According to an analysis report issued by a consulting company, the industry revenue of China’s pedicure industry in 2014 was 216 billion yuan, a growth rate of more than 10%, and is expected to reach 287 billion yuan by 2017.
The effect of foot massage is not magical either.
However, the most important thing is always but:
No matter in China or other countries, foot massage has never been recognized by the medical profession.
At present, the consensus reached by the medical profession is that massage can relieve some pains and promote blood circulation, but there is no evidence that massage can effectively treat diseases.
Not only can it not cure diseases, foot massage also has some problems-for example, it will [diagnose] some problems that do not actually exist at all, thus causing unnecessary worries or over-treatment.
There are some diseases, Due to the problem of nerve distribution, It does cause symptoms of feet or hands, such as cervical spondylosis. Some patients with cervical spondylosis may suffer from numbness of fingers or hand movement disorders due to brachial plexus nerve. Similarly, some patients with lumbar disc herniation, due to compression of lumbar nerves, may also suffer from leg and foot problems.
There are also some systemic diseases that can also cause local diseases, such as some diabetes mellitus. Due to peripheral nerve and peripheral vascular diseases, foot numbness and ulcer may eventually occur, which is called diabetic foot.
However, not all organ diseases can cause foot problems. Massaging the sole of the foot cannot diagnose and treat the diseases of these organs as shown in the initial figure.
The simple summary is that the plantar reflex area lacks anatomical basis, and in real practice, there is no reliable evidence to prove that various diseases can be treated by plantar massage.
Foot massage, a health care method, originated from ancient Egyptian doctors, developed by American physiotherapists, and flourished in China’s massage younger sister. It is simply a model of combining Chinese and Western cultures and making foreign things serve China. There are even some foreign friends who have traveled thousands of miles and come here, hoping to spend a hundred dollars to experience this traditional Chinese health care with a long history of 30 years.
Many Chinese people are always willing to believe in these simple and easy-to-understand therapies that can cure all kinds of difficult and complicated diseases. In addition to foot massage, there is also the beating therapy that was once popular all over the country-every morning in the park or downstairs of the community, you can always see a few old men and women with crane hair and childlike looks waving their arms and beating hard on their bodies.
In fact, the theoretical foundation of foot massage and slapping therapy is the same. They all think that there is some indescribable connection between internal organs of the human body on the body surface. Through internal diseases and external treatment, some magical effect can finally be achieved. From migraine to tumor, from children’s fever reduction to lying-in women’s milk, there is no problem that slapping cannot deal with.
Xiao Hongci, a famous mentor of this therapy, was arrested by the British police in London last month because his slapping therapy was not only ineffective, but also killed.
Therefore, if you feel comfortable with foot massage, then people with healthy feet often press it. However, if some people really believe that the soles of the feet correspond to the organs of the body, they can treat diseases in other parts of the body and even some chronic diseases through massage, then Dr. Clove can only give you four words: take care of yourself.