SP-10 (Xue Hai) Sea of Blood

What does SP-10 Xue Hai do?

Xue Hai SP-10 is the blood point of the Spleen channel of Foot Tai Yin — the point the tradition reaches for when blood is stagnant, hot, or disordered. Its name, "Sea of Blood", states the claim directly. Sacred Lotus sources & references record no five-shu, Source, Luo or Xi-Cleft classification for SP-10; its standing rests entirely on the Spleen's classical relationship to blood, the organ that both produces blood and keeps it inside the vessels.

• Invigorates the blood and dispels stasis — its primary action, for fixed pain, clots, and menstrual disorders of a stagnant type.
• Cools the blood — the action that carries most of its dermatological use. In Chinese medicine, heat entering the blood level produces red, hot, itchy eruptions; SP-10 is the standard point for that pattern.
• Harmonises menstruation — for irregular, painful, absent or excessive periods, generally where blood rather than qi is the disordered element.
• Benefits the skin — for urticaria, eczema and other itching eruptions, on the reasoning that persistent itching is a wind-in-the-blood phenomenon and is treated by cooling and moving blood rather than by treating the skin surface.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (channel and the recorded actions above); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture, p. 196; Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion, p. 160; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

What is SP-10 Xue Hai used for?

Xue Hai SP-10 is used for two things above all: menstrual disorders and itching skin conditions. That pairing looks odd from outside Chinese medicine and is entirely coherent inside it — both are read as disorders of blood, one of its movement and one of its temperature. The indications recorded in our sources are listed below and describe traditional use, not proven treatment.

• Irregular menstruation
• Dysmenorrhoea (painful periods)
• Amenorrhoea (absent periods)
• Uterine bleeding
• Urticaria (hives)
• Eczema
• Erysipelas
• Pain in the inner aspect of the thigh

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing indication record); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion, p. 160; Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture, p. 196.

How is SP-10 Xue Hai used in practice?

Xue Hai lies on the inner side of the thigh, two cun above the upper inner corner of the kneecap, on the bulge of the inner thigh muscle — the muscle that stands out when the leg is straightened and the thigh tensed. Our sources record two routes to it: the measured one from the kneecap, and a quick method in which the practitioner cups a palm over the patient's kneecap with the thumb on the inner side, the point falling under the thumb tip.

• With LI-11 Qu Chi — the point combination most associated with dermatological practice in modern Chinese medicine, and the one worth understanding properly. LI-11 is the He-Sea and Earth point of the Large Intestine channel and works on the heat side, clearing heat, eliminating wind and draining damp; SP-10 works on the blood side, cooling and moving it. Between them they cover the two halves of the standard Chinese-medicine explanation of an itching rash, which is why they appear together in the great majority of published acupuncture protocols for urticaria and eczema.
• With SP-06 San Yin Jiao — the Spleen channel's own blood pairing for menstrual disorders; SP-10 moves and cools the blood while SP-06 reaches the three yin organs behind it.
• With BL-17 Ge Shu — the Hui-Meeting point of blood, added when blood stasis is marked or chronic.
• With LIV-03 Tai Chong — where the blood disorder sits on a background of constrained Liver qi.
• With DU-20 Bai Hui — a pairing that appears in the modern experimental literature on inflammatory skin disease rather than in the classical texts.
• With Bai Chong Wo — the extra point held here as "Hundred Insect Burrow", which lies one cun higher on the same muscle bulge and shares almost the whole of SP-10's skin territory. Practitioners frequently use them together or interchangeably for itching.

SP-10 carries no five-shu or special-point classification in our records, so it has no category peers in the usual sense. Its standing comes from its name and its use: it is the Spleen channel's blood point in the same way BL-17 is the Bladder channel's, and the two are the pair most often named when a treatment needs to reach blood directly.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (location and cross-referenced point records); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture, p. 196; Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion, p. 160; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

Where is SP-10 located?

• A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 196): 2 cun proximal to the superior border of the patella, in the tender depression on the bulge of the vastus medialis muscle, directly above Yinlingquan SP-9.
• Chinese Acupuncture and Moxibustion (p. 160): When the knee is flexed, the point is 2 cun above the medio-superior border of the patella, on the bulge of the medial portion of m. quadriceps femoris. <br /><br /> Or when the patient's knee is flexed, cup your right palm to his left knee, with the thumb on the medial side and with the other four fingers directed proximally, and the thumb forming an angle of 45° with the index finger. The point is where the tip of your thumb rests.

How is SP-10 Xue Hai needled in the textbooks?

Reference record only — this documents what the standard texts state, not instruction for a reader. Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion records perpendicular insertion of 0.5–1.2 cun at SP-10, with moxibustion noted as applicable. Deadman & Al-Khafaji record a comparable perpendicular range into the muscle bulge of the vastus medialis.

• Angle documented: perpendicular.
• Depth documented: approximately 0.5–1.2 cun.
• Moxibustion: documented as applicable.
• Position: the references locate the point on the raised belly of the inner thigh muscle, which means posture matters — see the discrepancy noted below.

Safety reference. SP-10 lies over thick muscle on the inner thigh, well away from any body cavity, and carries no organ or pneumothorax hazard; it is among the lower-risk points in routine use. The femoral vessels run considerably deeper and more medially in the thigh than the point sits, but the region is well supplied with vessels and bruising is the ordinarily documented occurrence. Our sources record no pregnancy contraindication for SP-10 — that caution attaches to LI-04 and SP-06, not to this point — but SP-10's recorded action of invigorating blood means practitioners commonly treat it with the same caution they apply to blood-moving treatment generally in pregnancy. Standard clean-needle practice applies. Acupuncture is performed by qualified practitioners; this record documents the literature and is not a technique guide.

Source: Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion, p. 160; Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture, p. 196; Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing needling record).

What does the name Xue Hai mean?

Xue Hai means "Sea of Blood" — xue, blood, and hai, sea. The name is a claim about function rather than a description of terrain: it marks the point as the place on the Spleen channel where blood gathers in quantity and can therefore be reached and moved. It belongs to a small family of "sea" names in the point nomenclature — REN-06 Qi Hai, "Sea of Qi", is its counterpart on the front of the body — and in each case the sea image means abundance and accessibility rather than any anatomical feature.

How is SP-10 located, and is there disagreement about it?

Our recorded location places SP-10 two cun above the upper inner corner of the kneecap, on the bulge of the inner thigh muscle, and gives the palm-cupping shortcut as an alternative. That is retained here as our reference location.

Discrepancy flagged: our location record specifies the knee flexed, while a methodological review published in Zhen Ci Yan Jiu argues that SP-10 should be located with the knee extended and the inner thigh muscle contracted, measuring two cun from the base to the tip of the patella, and concludes that the palm-cupping shortcut is a useful approximation but produces frequent errors and cannot replace proportional measurement combined with surface landmarks (PMID 35218631). The paper's own premise is that the position of SP-10 is agreed while the method of finding it is not — so this is a live disagreement about locating technique rather than about where the point is. Our location is kept and the published position is recorded alongside it.

How does SP-10 compare with LI-11 for skin conditions?

These two are the standard skin pairing in Chinese medicine and they are not interchangeable. LI-11 Qu Chi approaches an eruption from heat: it is the He-Sea and Earth point of the Large Intestine channel, the tradition's principal heat-clearing point, and its recorded actions combine clearing heat, cooling blood, eliminating wind, draining damp and stopping itching. SP-10 Xue Hai approaches the same eruption from blood: cooling it, moving it, and treating the itching as a consequence of wind stirring in heated blood. In pattern terms LI-11 is the choice where the heat is systemic — fever, a hot red acute eruption, heat visible elsewhere — and SP-10 the choice where the presentation is chronic, dry, dark or clearly tied to the menstrual cycle. In practice most protocols use both, and the modern experimental literature has studied them as a pair rather than separately. A third relative, the extra point Bai Chong Wo held here one cun above SP-10, carries almost the same recorded actions — cooling blood, expelling wind, stopping itching, draining damp from the skin — and is essentially SP-10's dermatological specialisation.

Is there research on SP-10 Xue Hai?

Point-specific human research on SP-10 is thin. Almost everything published either studies it as one point in a multi-point protocol, or studies it in animals. That should be said plainly rather than dressed up.

• Animal mechanism, psoriasis. Electroacupuncture at DU-20 and SP-10 in an imiquimod-induced psoriasis-like mouse model was reported to reduce skin lesion severity, epidermal thickening and T-cell infiltration, with effects linked to substance P and its NK1 receptor (PMID 38223807). A related study from the same field examined electroacupuncture and angiogenesis in psoriasis mice (PMID 38897801). These are mechanistic animal studies of the SP-10 pairing, not clinical evidence.
• Animal mechanism, urticaria. Acupuncture pre-treatment at LI-11 and SP-10 in a rat urticaria model was reported to affect mast cells and IL-33/ST2 signalling (PMID 37186193) — again the classical pairing, again in animals.
• Clinical, protocol level. A systematic review of acupuncture for chronic urticaria included 6 trials and 406 participants and reported improvement in global symptoms against drug comparators, while noting a high overall risk of bias and a low level of evidence (PMID 27314024). SP-10 appears in these protocols but is never the isolated variable. An older clinical review in Archives of Dermatology observed that LI-11, SP-10, SP-06 and ST-36 are the four points most commonly prescribed for urticaria in Asian practice, and stated candidly that the clinical observations behind that practice lacked control groups and standard classification (PMID 9828874).
• Method. The locating study cited above (PMID 35218631) is, in fact, the only substantial recent point-specific paper on SP-10 in the indexed literature — and it is about how to find the point, not about what it does.

The honest summary: SP-10's dermatological reputation rests on long clinical tradition and on animal mechanism work, with no well-powered human trial isolating this point. The site does not claim more than that.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (name, location record and cross-referenced point records); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture, p. 196; Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion, p. 160; PubMed PMID 35218631, 38223807, 38897801, 37186193, 27314024, 9828874, each checked as active and not retracted; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.