We used infrared thermor to take imageries of naked upper bodies of volunteers after drinking each tea. In preliminary experiments, the body of male volunteer M0 was scanned to adjust the methods. Temperature distributions (around 27 ~ 35℃) after drinking twelve teas were obviously different on M0 (Fig. 1B, Supplementary Table 1). Noteworthily, shapes of some organs were clearly shown as the temperature rose, e.g., heart, kidney, thymus, lungs, spleen, stomach, thyroid, gallbladder. The shapes of liver, duodenum, colon, and urinary bladder were not quite clear, but hot points within the areas of these organs were found. This proved that different teas may lay effects on different organs. The correspondence between teas and organs matches the hypothesis very well. Interestingly, only the shape of the right kidney was shown in the imagery. The left kidney of volunteer M0 might be blocked by a kidney stone of 10 mm in diameter. After he drank the yellow tea going to Little Lunar kidney meridian for a month, shape of both kidneys appeared and the kidney stone disappeared confirmed by type-B ultrasonic check (Fig. 3A). The fingers were also heated clearly after drinking teas, especially those teas corresponding to hand side meridians. The highest temperature appeared in different fingers, for example, middle fingers for black teas, thumbs for white teas, index fingers for blue teas, etc., which also matched the hypothesis. Some parts of the body were always heated. For example, lips and esophagus were heated because of touching the warm tea soups directly. Navel, armpits, shoulders, etc. always showed high temperatures because of less exposure or concentrated arteries. Some high temperature lines matched the meridian lines quite well, such as the thymus meridian line on the dorsal side. The area of the four bladder meridian lines on the center of the back was much hotter than the ventral side after drinking the green tea for bladder. However, most of the lines were not quite clearly shown, because they are thin and deep in the body. A special example of experiment showed quite clear heart meridian (Fig. 3E) after drinking an extremely old yellow tea with an age around 137 years (confirmed by radiocarbon dating), but this tea sample was not enough for all volunteers. Several herbs were also tested for meridian activity, however, weak (Fig. 3D), partial (Fig. 3B) or mixed (Fig. 3F-H) meridians were observed. These imageries of preliminary experiments suggested that the correspondence between the tea types and the temperatures of the fingers and the organs exists. Therefore, the experiments on more volunteers (17 males and 25 females) were performed.
We derived the highest temperature data from all fingers, three areas of palms, and the skin areas above the twelve organs. The data of the hands were taken from both ventral and dorsal sides. Generally, the temperatures of thumbs are higher than other fingers, and those of the little fingers are the lowest. Therefore, we standardized the data for further analyses. Average of ventral, dorsal, right, and left data of each kind of finger was used in the following analyses as there were no significant differences among the four data after standardization (Supplementary Fig. 1). For each area of the body, we compared the standardized temperatures after drinking different teas. The male samples showed a very clear correspondence between teas and the hot areas (Fig. 4) while the female samples showed much weaker signals (Supplementary Figs. 2, 3), which might due to the shielding of more subcutaneous fat of the female volunteers [20]. Among the males, different fingers reached highest temperatures after drinking different teas, e.g., thumbs after white teas, index fingers after blue teas, middle fingers after black teas, ring fingers after red teas, and little fingers after yellow and green teas. For each type of tea, we examined both hand side meridian and foot side meridian teas. Most of the hand side teas caused the highest temperatures on the corresponding fingers except for red tea and green tea of which foot side teas caused the higher temperatures. The gaps between the highest temperature and the others of each finger were mostly significant (Supplementary Table 2). This result matches the meridian hypothesis well.
To examine whether the meridian lines behind the fingers were always heated as were seen in sample M0, we derived the data of palms. Among the male samples, significant higher temperature was observed in palm center after drinking hand side black tea than most of the other teas. Significant differences were also found between hand side green tea and foot side white tea or hand side yellow tea in hypothenar area. In thenar area, no significance was found (Fig. 4B). Among the female samples, there were significant higher temperatures in ulnar side of hand after drinking red or green teas (Supplementary Fig. 2, Supplementary Table 2). This indicates a less match between observed temperature rise and the meridian hypothesis in the palm than in the fingers.
Obviously, the temperatures above different organs rose after drinking different teas among male samples, although such heating effect will sometimes be blocked by kidney stones, gall stones, splenic cyst, hepatic adipose infiltration, etc. All the temperatures above the organs increased after drinking the hypothetic corresponding teas, except for those above bladder and spleen (Fig. 4C). The highest significances were observed for data of thymus, kidney, colon, liver and duodenum following the hypothesis. No significance was found for stomach. For lung, significance was found only between hypothetic lung meridian white tea and kidney meridian yellow tea. Also the temperature above gallbladder was clearly higher after drinking the hypothetic gallbladder meridian red tea than after liver meridian black tea. Above thyroid, data of the hypothetic HPT meridian red tea was significantly high, while those of stomach meridian blue tea, thymus meridian black tea, and gallbladder meridian red tea were significantly low (Supplementary Table 2). Therefore, we concluded that different teas will activate different organs after drinking, following the meridian hypothesis.
Moreover, we would verify whether the whole meridian would be heated at the same time after drinking a certain tea. If so, the temperatures of the fingers and above the organs would be significantly correlated. We performed a correlation analysis on all the temperature data of body areas (Fig. 5). Among males, the only significant positive correlation was between index finger and colon. There was no negative correlation between the hypothetic connected finger and organ. This result meant that the temperature of a meridian did not increase in the same time after drinking a tea. A possible explanation is that as ions in a tea drain along the meridian, temperatures of different parts will increase in succession when the ions arrive at that part. In one photo, there would usually be only one part in the highest temperature, either the organ or the corresponding finger.
Interestingly, significant negative correlations appeared within areas of truncus, palm, or fingers. The strongest negative correlations were between spleen and lung, duodenum and lung, liver and colon, gallbladder and colon, thyroid and liver, heart and gallbladder, heart and duodenum, hypothenar and palm center, thumb and index finger, thumb and middle finger. This indicated the mutual exclusion among the meridians. In addition, the strongest positive correlation was between heart and lung. Duodenum, spleen, liver, and gallbladder were also strongly correlated. This might be caused by the heat conduction between adjoining organs. Similar but less strong correlations were found among females (Supplementary Fig. 4).