We have frequently obtained good results with difficult pain using an improved acupuncture anesthesia method, cutaneous meridian stimulation, in which the patients himself can administer stimulation. However we have had a great variety of experience using these methods. There have even been cases in which therapy had no effect whatsoever. It has long been known that the effects of stimulation produced analgesia, (SPA) one form of acupuncture anesthesia, vary remarkably from person to person.
In one hand it has been indicated that the pain-killing effects are related with the endogenous morphine-like substances however recently Takeshige and colleagues, believing that the individual differences in effect are based on the activity of the individual's amino peptidase, administered the peptidase interferrent, D-phenylalanine (DPA) and proved experimentally that so doing causing a change from ineffective to effective in SPA results.
We studied the effects produced by DPA on the cutaneous pain threshold using transcutaneous nerve stimulation, by administering DPA in cases in which the pain threshold did not rise due to transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation alone. The subjects of the study were 9 healthy volunteers between the ages of 24-30 with no neurological diseases and 8 stubborn pain patients. The stimulation points were 2, right LI-4 and right LI-10. Stimulation was administered using a spike-type conductor rubber external electrode.
Results
1. Looking at changes in the pain threshold due to transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation only, it was observed that in 11 of 17 cases there was almost no change or slight fluctuation around the pain threshold.
2. Upon administering 4g. DPA to the 6 cases in which the pain threshold did not change and administering transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation in the same manner as before, the threshold rose in 1 case.
3. The serum concentration of phenylalanine increased 5 times that of pre-medication levels.

[Object and Subjects] We studied the effects of both electrical and massage (frictional) stimulation on the dorsal region (e.g. BL 13, BL21 and BL23) in experimental dietary obese rats for three weeks as a simple obesity model.
[Results] The electrical and massage (frictional) groups showed reduced (p<0.01) body weight compared with non-treated obese rats, the control group. The electrical stimulation group decreased in body weight more than the massage (frictional) stimulation group. Food intake per 100 g of body weight did not differ between the three groups. There was no significant difference in leptin concentration in the blood pre-and poststimulus, but a tendency for it to decrease was seen in the stimulus groups (p=0.074). This might be diagnosed as normalized hyper-leptinemia and /or leptin-resistance.
These results suggest the existence of action mechanisms for weight decrease originating in electrical and mas-sage (frictional) stimulation, which obviously is different from the case of “the auricular acupuncture stimulus”.
[Conclusion] In conclusion, the possibility of a new application of the “ANMA·massage·SHIATSU” treatment was apparent from this result.

Tuberculous spondylitis, or so-called Pott's disease, seems to be overlooked because of a lack of severe inflammation in the insidious generating process and tends to cause non-specific symptoms, such as back pain, fever, weakness, and weight loss. Diagnostic delay is common and the results can be disastrous. Discriminating between Pott's disease and other diseases, such as malignancy and pyogenic infection, is difficult. However, the inflammatory process in Pott's disease tends to spare the disk space, while that of pyogenic infection typically affects the area. Herein, we present a patient with Pott's disease who showed the characteristic clinical and radiological findings.

A 78-year-old woman who had a history of left deep venous thrombosis was referred to our hospital with a sudden hemoptysis. Thoracic computed tomography showed a solitary pulmonary nodule in the right lower lobe. Based on her medical history of deep venous thrombosis, she was tentatively diagnosed as having pulmonary embolism and successfully treated by inserting an inferior vena cava filter and anticoagulant therapy with warfarin [Please confirm whether previous sentence is correct]. However, the lung nodule on thoracic computed tomography was still depicted four months later. With suspicion of a malignant tumor, including possible lung cancer, a right segmentectomy was performed. Pathological assessment of the resected specimen showed the tumor was derived from the right bronchial wall, but was not ruptured into the intratracheal lumen, as well as coexistence with intraalveolar hemorrhage near the tumor. The lung nodule was diagnosed as bronchial schwannoma. Thus, the origin of the hemoptysis was found to be pulmonary embolism due to deep vein thrombosis, and not by bronchial schwannoma, which was also present in the lung.

A 47-year-old woman with body temperature 35.6 ℃ took the 3rd COVID-19 vaccine shot at our clinic on Day 1. Since she felt chills and suffered from genital bleeding on Day 3, she visited our clinic to take a gynecological examination. Her temperature was 37.1 ℃ at that time. On Day 15, she suffered sustained symptoms of chills and general fatigue, and she went to another internal medicine clinic to take a medical care. However, her condition was unexplained and she was referred to a general hospital. On Day 16, she came to our clinic to confirm results of the gynecological examination. Her symptoms persisted even though the data showed no problems, so we prescribed her saikokeishikankyoto (SAKK) for only 3 days. On Day 19, SAKK dramatically improved her symptoms. On Day 37, her temperature was 36.2 ℃ without any symptoms.