Search for Medical Applications of Qigong with the Qigong Database

Qigong is the ancient art of health maintenance and healing that originated several thousand years ago in China. Qigong (pronounced chee gong) embodies two principles, Qi -- the vital energy of the body -- and gong the practice and training of the Qi. A person practices Qigong by a combination of exercises including meditation, visualization, breathing and movement. A skilled practitioner of Qigong is able to project Qi to improve the health of another person. The ultimate goal of Qigong is to improve the functions of the body in a balanced way.

Beginning about 1980, extensive clinical and experimental research on medical applications of Qigong was carried out by scientists in China. Most of these studies were reported only at international conferences, and only a few were published because suitable scientific journals are not available in China. The Qigong Database[TM] is a compilation of references to most of these studies as well as to reports in scientific journals, books and Medline. Most of the references contain abstracts in English that may be several pages in length with tables of data and statistical analysis. The Qigong Database provides the only record in English of the vast amount of research on Qigong from China as well as from other countries. The Database contains reports of therapies that have been tried and claimed to be effective. These reports can be used as a guide for improving health and for deciding what further research may be required to confirm promising applications of Qigong. While few research studies on Qigong conform t o strict scientific protocol, the collection of research is too large and significant to be ignored.

The entire collection of 1,660 references in the Qigong Database[TM] (version 5.0) can be searched using any key word(s). The abstracts contain information on how Qigong has been applied to treat different medical conditions and on the philosophy and theory of Qigong. The importance of Qigong in treating some medical applications is illustrated by the frequency that some health-related terms appear in the Qigong Database, as shown in the table. A term may appear multiple times in one citation, for example, in the title as well as in the abstract.