The therapeutic effects of auricular acupressure could be affirmative, but the evaluation index is lack of objectivity. This study is to evaluate the change of the activity between sympathetic and parasympathetic nerve system, so that we could learn effects of the auricular acupressure on autonomic nervous system.
A cross-over comparison research design was applied in this study and 33 health adult volunteers were selected for the study models. Each volunteer received two stages of heart rate variability (HRV) test. At the first stage, each volunteer did not give any intervention during the testing procedure. And the second stage, the auricular acupressure on bilateral Ear Shenmen points was applying by putting the seeds of Wang Bu Liu Xing while the testing procedure was on.
The result showed that after acupressing the Ear Shenmen point, the five items existed significant difference. That included the heart rate in HRV(p<0.001), number of pairs of adjacent NN intervals differing by more than 50 ms divided by the total number of 5-min NN intervals, PNN50 ( p<0.01), high frequency,HF ( p<0.01), the ratio low frequency /high frequency,LF/HF(p<0.05) high frequency power in normalized units, HF n.u. (p<0.05).
The result proved that acupressing the Ear Shenmen point could increase the activity of parasympathetic nerve system. Therefore acupressing the Ear Shenmen point might have a protective function on the heart of health adults.
