Effects of Five Daily Activities on Harmonic Analysis of the Radial Pulse

Pan-Jen Chen; Han-Kuei Wu; Po-Chi Hsu; Lun-Chien Lo; Hen-Hong Chang

doi:10.1155/2020/6095674

Effects of Five Daily Activities on Harmonic Analysis of the Radial Pulse

Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2020 Sep 27:2020:6095674. doi: 10.1155/2020/6095674. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Pan-Jen Chen¹, Han-Kuei Wu^{2

3}, Po-Chi Hsu^{1

3}, Lun-Chien Lo^{1

4}, Hen-Hong Chang^{4

5

6}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chinese Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung 40402, Taiwan.
² School of Post-Baccalaureate Chinese Medicine-Internal Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung 40402, Taiwan.
³ Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Kuang Tien General Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan.
⁴ Department of Chinese Medicine, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung 40447, Taiwan.
⁵ Graduate Institute of Integrated Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung 40402, Taiwan.
⁶ Chinese Medicine Research Center, China Medical University, Taichung 40402, Taiwan.

Abstract

All daily physiological activities have some effects on the body, and traditional Chinese medicine believes that pulse diagnosis can reflect the circulation of qi and blood throughout the body. This study aimed to explore the effects of five physiological activities, namely, sleep, exercise, ingestion, defecation, and shower, on pulse waves of the radial artery. Thirty test subjects were recruited for the study, and a wearable pulse signal measurement device was used for self-measurement of radial artery pulses before and after various physiological activities. All collected data were subjected to fast Fourier analysis, which transformed each wave from its time domain to frequency domain of 10 harmonics to describe the changes in pulse waves. The results were as follows: exercise and sleep had larger but opposite effects on the pulse waves; defecation and sleep relaxed the body and had the same trend of effect on the pulse waves. Both exercise and ingestion require energy to proceed, and both exert a burden on the body, and the pulse waves showed the same trend of changes. In contrast, shower had a little effect on the pulse waves. Preliminary observation in this study showed that relaxation of the body could increase high-level harmonics, whereas stress could increase low-level harmonics. Further studies are warranted to unravel the physiological significance of this finding.