Osteomalacia has been a major health problem for many years, and its cause was previously thought to be degenerative. The aging process can be delayed but not reversed, which means that osteophytes are fundamentally untreatable. This etiological theory once caused clinicians to lose confidence in the treatment of osteophytes, and also caused medical researchers to believe that research into the treatment of osteophytes was once a futile endeavor. After a lot of clinical practice and research, acupuncture medicine believes that the root cause of osteophytes is an abnormal change in the mechanical state of the human body – an imbalance in the internal force balance of the human body. The basic elements are: (1) the important role of mechanical factors in the human body’s life activities and the impact of mechanical factor imbalance on life activities. (2) Adaptation and regulation of the body to changes in the internal and external mechanical state. ③The result of the body’s antagonistic regulation of abnormal changes in the mechanical state of soft tissues – osteophytes. (iv) The three stages of this adaptive change are sclerosis, calcification and ossification. The above new understanding was proved to be valid by clinical experimental studies on the mechanism of osteoarthritis treatment by acupuncture. Specific studies include: the induction of cytokine production by chondrocytes in vitro by continuous compressive stress (to investigate whether the new understanding of the cause of osteoarthritis in acupuncture medicine is “imbalance of force balance” at the cytological level); a controlled clinical study on the treatment of osteoarthritis by acupuncture; and a study on the clinical mechanism of osteoarthritis by acupuncture. This understanding is free from the shackles of traditional understanding, and clarifies that osteophytes are not caused by degenerative changes in the human body, and after repeated research, testing, and clinical verification, it is confirmed that mechanical factor malfunction is the root cause of osteophytes. This point is also an important basis for the treatment of osteophytes by acupuncture medicine.