Acupuncture Girl

“This makes the lack of insurance the third leading cause of death for the near-elderly, following heart disease and cancer.”

Umm, no.

I don’t believe that ‘lack of insurance’ is the real culprit.  People *with* insurance get screwed all the time when it comes to the care they need.  Insurance premiums are not regulated and insurance coverage seems set to automatically deny every claim submitted, if at all possible.  So I hope our healh care system can get rid of the legalized gambling that is the health insurance business.  (“The House Always Wins” would make a good motto for that industry!).

I think “Lack of access to affordable health care” and a culture that does not care about health as much it does corporate profit are the real killers.

What I love about Community Acupuncture is that which makes affordable health care available to regular folks in the form of Acupuncture.  It is so affordable, you don’t need insurance to go check it out!

_———————excerpt———————————

• in the 15-year period since the nation last debated health reform, more than 294,000 American adults (25 to 64 years old) died prematurely due to a lack of health coverage,

• uninsured adults are 25 percent more likely to die prematurely than adults with private health insurance,

• uninsured Americans between age 55 and 64 are at much greater risk of premature death than their insured counterparts.

This makes the lack of insurance the third leading cause of death for the near-elderly, following heart disease and cancer.

The report quantifies these deaths as “needless.” While thousands of families feel the pain of this loss, the ongoing tragedy is too often invisible to the general public.

“When people witness a tragic event that leads to multiple deaths, we raise our voices in indignation, and the nation rallies in response,” Pollack said. “We cry out for investigations. We seek causes. We call for swift punishment for the guilty, and removal of the inept. Yet, unseen, thousands will die needlessly and prematurely over the next decade because our terribly flawed health care system excludes these ordinary Americans.”

More beauty!!  Watch it when you feel low and uninspired.  We are nature.  Nature is within us, nature is us.  See your beauty reflected in these photos.

As reported in ScienceDaily (Feb. 12, 2010)

—Excerpt—-

Doctors at Rush University Medical Center are offering pediatric patients diagnosed with chronic illnesses acupuncture therapy to help ease the pain and negative side effects like nausea, fatigue, and vomiting caused by chronic health conditions and intensive treatments. The confluence of Chinese and Western medicine at Rush Children’s Hospital is part of a study to analyze and document how acupuncture might help in reducing pain in children and increase quality of life.

“Treating children with acupuncture is a new frontier,” said Dr. Paul Kent, pediatric hematology and oncology expert, Rush Children’s Hospital. “We are looking to see if there is an effective pain management therapy we can offer that does not have the serious side effects that can be caused by narcotics and other serious pain medications.”

The lack of options for pain management in children has been reported as one of the most difficult aspects of providing care to pediatric patients. Research indicates that up to 70 percent of pediatric patients experience pain and those with chronic illnesses often do not have adequate relief or prevention of pain.

“Acupuncture could be a potential solution to this dilemma of controlling pain in pediatric patients,” said Angela Johnson, Chinese medicine practitioner at Rush.

Acupuncture is the use of tiny, hair-thin needles which are gently inserted along various parts of the body. The therapy is based on the premise that patterns of energy flowing through the body are essential for health. This energy, called Qi, flows along certain pathways. It is believed that placing the tiny needles at points along the pathways reduce pain and improve the healing process.

The National Institute of Health (NIH) has published a statement concluding that acupuncture is effective for treating adults for nausea following chemotherapy and for pain after dental surgery. The agency also said that the therapy might be useful in treating other health issues such as addiction, migraines, headaches, menstrual cramps, abdominal pain, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, arthritis, low-back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome and asthma. In some pediatric studies, both patients and parents have stated that acupuncture treatments were both helpful and relaxing.

…

“Many children with chronic or acute health issues turn to complementary or integrative approaches after all other conventional treatment options are exhausted,” said Johnson. “Parents should be aware that integrative therapies like acupuncture can be helpful from the onset of disease and can have a tremendously positive influence on a child’s quality of life.”

Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by Rush University Medical Center.

Under the moonlight, in a village somewhere in the Golden Triangle, the Ka-ren Shaman moved slowly and methodically. He was showing us the movements taught him by his Shaman, which had been passed down through the tribe for generations. The Shaman moved strikingly similar to a Tai Chi master.

…

Lyme Disease is a tough pathogen to defeat, whether using Western meds or Chinese medicine.  Here is some advice from an herbalist.

——excerpt——-

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, Lyme disease is treated as toxic fire. These fire toxins are treated with extreme heat clearing herbs. From the western point of view, fire toxins include aggressive entities such as bacterial and viral infections but are not limited to them. They can be amoebic parasites and even just toxins of chemical nature or metal particles. Likewise, from a western point of view, the heat clearing herbs have been proven to have a very effective anti-viral and antibacterial action as well as a “cleansing of the blood” effect on other small particles.

Below is a TCM protocol for Lyme Disease grouped into three parts:

Clearing The Toxic Fire (Killing The Bacterium)

Based on the best of TCM protocols, here is a “clear toxic heat” formula for use as an anti-toxin or “fire quenching agent.” These amazing herbs have been successfully used against fire toxins such as malaria, pneumonia, diphtheria, septic angina, typhoid fever and others.

The 6 herbs used in this formula to clear toxic heat are 5:1 extracts of:
Chuan xin lian - Andrographis paniculate (a very effective anti-toxin heat clearing herb with anti-spirochetal action in particular)
Huang Lian - Coptis chinensis (Anti-toxin heat clearing)
Jin Yin Hua - Flos Lonicerae japonicae (Anti-toxin heat clearing)
Da Qing Ye - Folium Isatidis (Anti-toxin heat clearing)
Ban Zhi Lian - Scutellaria barbata; Herba (Anti-toxin heat clearing)
Tu Fu Ling - Smilax glabra; Rhizoma (Anti-spirochetal action)

As part of this protocol it is also important to take 2 grams twice daily of Hu Zhang powder (Natural resveratrol from Knotweed in 5:1 extract). It is positive against Leptospirosis, Treponema denticola (spirochetes in oral flora), Bartonella (Buhner) and many gram neg and gram pos bacteria.

Continually Removing The Toxins From The Joints:

Xu Duan (ChineseTeasel Root) taken with a “Clear Toxic Heat” formula will help drive the spirochetes from the joints into the blood stream (where it can be killed by the heat clearing herbs). Xu Duan Teasel in tincture form is the best way your body can absorb it.

Maximizing Your Immune System With a Strong Defense:

There must also be an effective formula for the immune system that is suitable for long term use. Reishi mushroom and Chinese Astragalus 5:1 (Called Strong Defense) are perfect.

Together all these herbs become the building blocks of a true hard working lyme disease protocol that, although formulated from ancient herbs, becomes “cutting edge” in fighting this toxic fire we call Lyme Disease.

Sources: This protocol is based entirely on author’s research and knowledge of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

About the author

Christopher Gussa is a formulator of Natural Medicine. He is also a TCM practitioner and Certified Master / Clinical Herbalist for 30 years. He is certified in both Western Herbal Therapy and Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine.
Chris Gussa: “Plant Cures is currently working with over 9,000 medicinal plants to bring about healing through the true science of combining the whole energies of whole plants. A plants energy is from its whole part. (flowers, fruit, leaves, stems, roots etc) While the “science” of seeing some of the isolated molecular constituents in food and herbs can be interesting at times, there is no “one magic ingredient” in any plant.

Acupuncture is amazing for pain relief!  And so, apparently, is my other favorite activity, yoga.  I love the practice of focusing on breathing when confronted with chronic pain, and the awareness of how other activities relate to the coming and going of pain.  This is very consistent with how I as an acupuncturist approach the topic of pain with my patients.

Follow the link to Yoga Journal to check it out, and some of my favorite parts are excerpted as teasers, below:

——excerpt——-

I learned how to focus on my breath and feel sensations without resisting them. I remember the first time I tried breath mindfulness during a bad pain episode, and it helped. I went back to the next class so excited to explain to everyone how the pain had been so intense, and yet I had the experience at the same time that it was OK, that I was OK, and I could handle it. What a revelation!

I started applying mindfulness acceptance of sensations to my yoga practice. Practicing mindful yoga extremely useful, because the poses created so many intense sensations! It was a perfect way to learn a new way of relating to discomfort.

Now, my pain is extremely mild and not daily. I only get a few debilitating headaches a year. The pain isn’t gone, it’s just a completely different experience. It has no hold on me, my emotions, and what I am able to do. And I almost never have to take pain medication, whereas I used to take it daily. But it’s actually kind of a miracle.

Paying attention to my body in yoga also helped by making me more aware of how other things, like food and sleep, influence my pain. It’s given me more mindful awareness of cause and effect in my body and mind. This lets me make better choices about how I take care of myself. People with pain often feel betrayed by their body, and this was certainly true for me. Yoga can help you restore trust in your body, and learn how to listen to your body.

Why is yoga a good idea for people who have chronic pain as opposed to other treatment options?

Yoga is so helpful because chronic pain doesn’t play by the same rules as acute pain from a recent injury or illness. It is more strongly influenced by stress, thoughts, and emotions. And the pain doesn’t necessarily reflect a single identifiable “problem” in the body, like a compressed disc or an infection. It usually reflects a systemic change in how you experience pain that may involve your muscles, nerves, hormones, and brain. So chronic pain is rarely “fixed” with a single medical intervention like surgery. It is usually a more gradual process that requires a holistic approach, including medicine, social support, and mind-body or psychological approaches.

How is the approach in yoga for chronic pain different from approaching any other kind of pain?

The biggest difference is you’re not looking to fix some part of the body. It’s not a “stretch your back to get rid of your back pain” approach. It involves every possible tool of yoga, including breathing, relaxation, movement, meditation, philosophy, and self-reflection. It’s recognizing that yoga’s healing power comes from it’s ability to change the way your breathe and move, yes, but also how you feel, think, and relate to yourself and to pain. It’s being open to the possibility that meditation or breathing has a good a chance of reducing your back pain as a stretch!

This feels like a huge advancement in the treatment of disease, so I’m reposting it.

Excerpt:

Switch That Turns on the Spread of Cancer Discovered

ScienceDaily (Feb. 15, 2010) — Reporting in Nature Cell Biology, researchers describe the discovery of a specific protein called disabled-2 (Dab2) that switches on the process that releases cancer cells from the original tumor and allows the cells to spread and develop into new tumors in other parts of the body.

The process called epithelial-mesenchymal transdifferientiation (EMT) has been known to play a role in releasing cells (epithelial cells) on the surface of the solid tumor and transforming them into transient mesenchymal cell: cells with the ability to start to grow a new tumor.

This is often the fatal process in breast, ovarian, pancreatic and colon-rectal cancers.

Searching to understand how the EMT process begins, Ge Jin, who has joint appointments at the Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine and the Lerner Research Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, began by working backwards from EMT to find its trigger.

The researchers found that a compound called transforming growth factor-ß (TGF-ß) triggers the formation of the Dab2 protein. It was this protein, Dab2, that activated the EMT process.

He discovered that when the researchers knocked out Dab2, EMT was not triggered.

“This is the major piece in cancer research that has been missing,” Jin said.

Most tumors are epithelial in origin and have epithelial markers on their surface. The EMT process takes place when some of those cells dislodge from the surface and undergo a transformation into a fibrous mesenchymal cell maker with the ability to migrate.

“EMT is the most important step in this process,” said Jin. He was part of a six-member research team, led by Philip Howe from the Department of Cancer Biology at the Lerner Research Institute in a National Cancer Institute-funded study.

The research group studied the biological processes that initiated the cancer spread by using cancer cells in animal models.

“It’s a complicated cascade process,” Jin said.

“If we can understand the signaling pathway for modulating EMT, then we can design drugs to delay or halt EMT cells and control tumor progression,” Jin said.

Beyond cancer, Jin said. “The process we discovered may lead to understanding how other diseases progress.”

Journal Reference:

1. Arindam Chaudhury, George S. Hussey, Partho S. Ray, Ge Jin, Paul Fox and Philip Howe. TGF-ß-mediated phosphorylation of hnRNP E1 induces EMT via transcript-selective translational induction of Dab2 and ILEI. Nature Cell Biology, February 14, 2010

Excerpt from      CLINICAL PSYCHIATRY NEWS • December 2008

————————————-excerpt———

Traditional Acupuncture Improve PTSD Symptoms in Veterans
BY PATRICE WENDLING

Brief exposure to acupuncture significantly
improved the symptoms of post traumatic
stress disorder when this treatment was compared
with usual care in a randomized controlled trial in 55
veterans.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) acupuncture was evaluated for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because current treatments are only modestly effective, and some evidence exists for the efficacy of acupuncture in depression, anxiety, insomnia, and chronic pain syndrome, said Col. Charles C. Engel, MC, USA, who is director of the Department of Defense deployment health clinical center at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington.

In addition, roughly 10%–17% of soldiers returning from the Iraq War experience PTSD in the year after deployment. The median time to care for most veterans is 12 years.

“I’ve done drug trials [and] psychotherapy trials, and this is the easiest trial in terms of recruitment,” Dr. Engel said at the annual meeting of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. “Patients were excited about this as a modality.”

Dr. Engel and his associates randomized 55 active-duty personnel with PTSD to usual care (medication or psychosocial therapy) or eight 90-minute TCM acupuncture sessions delivered twice weekly for 4 weeks, plus usual care. The acupuncture sessions, which included needling and patient-practitioner interaction, were standardized for the first four sessions and individualized for the second four sessions. All practitioners held a master’s degree in TCM acupuncture.

The mean Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) score at baseline was 76.2 in the acupuncture group and 70.0 in the usual care group, while the mean PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C) scores were 58.1 and 55.4. The civilian version was deliberately chosen because people in the military may have PTSD from multiple causes, only one of which is combat, Dr. Engel explained at the meeting cosponsored by Boston University.

Most of the patients were male (64.3% in the acupuncture group and 74% in the usual care group), the mean age of the two groups was 37 and 33 years, and 68% of all patients were recruited from primary care providers.

Patients with moderate to severe brain injury were excluded, as were those who had had a psychological trauma during the 30 days prior to randomization.

The analysis was based on 19 of 28 (68%) acupuncture patients and 24 of 27 (89%) usual care patients.

Compared with usual care, acupuncture was associated with significantly greater decreases in PTSD symptoms on CAPS and PCL-C, and these improvements were maintained through the 12-week follow-up, said Dr. Engel, who is also with the department of psychiatry, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Md. The mean PCL-C decreases were 19.4 at the end of treatment and 19.8 at the 12-week follow-up in the acupuncture group, compared with 4.0 and 9.7 in the usual care group. Cohen’s d measures of effect sizes both before and after treatment and between groups were large (all greater than 1.0), he noted.

Symptoms of depression and pain also significantly improved in the acupuncture group, compared with the usual care group. The 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) scores for mental functioning improved significantly with acupuncture. There was a trend toward improvement in physical functioning on the SF-36, but it likely didn’t reach significance because the sample was fairly healthy physically and didn’t have much room to improve, Dr. Engel said in an interview.

The investigators are interested in conducting a large multicenter trial that would involve a sham acupuncture arm in addition to the usual care and regular acupuncture arms examined in the current study.

VET-HEAL, a research program of the Samueli Institute for Information Biology, in Alexandria, Va., provided funding for the study. Dr. Engel reported no relevant conflicts of interest.

A course of acupuncture reduced hot flashes in women with a history of breast cancer by more than half while improving sleep and quality-of-life measures to a similar extent as hormone therapy in a Swedish randomized trial.

Particularly noteworthy was the durability of acupuncture’s benefits. Nine
months following conclusion of the 3- month course of acupuncture sessions,
most patients continued to have a significant reduction in hot flashes and improved
measures of well-being, Dr. Jessica Frisk reported at the San Antonio
Breast Cancer Symposium.

She added that in her clinical practice, acupuncture has become her first-line treatment for hot flashes. Hormone therapy (HT) is more effective; indeed, it essentially eliminated hot flashes in the women randomized to the HT study arm. But Scandinavian breast cancer patients now reject Hormone Therapy as an option because of reports of an associated increased risk of breast cancer recurrence.

“They want other things—and acupuncture is quite a safe treatment,” said Dr. Frisk, a general surgeon at Linköping (Sweden) University.

Methods:  She reported on 45 women with hot flashes who had been diagnosed with breast cancer a mean of more than 4 years earlier. In all, 27 women were randomized to 12 weeks of electrostimulated acupuncture, and 18 women to 24 months of HT. The acupuncture program consisted of two 30-minute sessions per week for the first 2 weeks, followed by once-weekly sessions for the next 10.

Results for the Acupuncture group: 

• The median number of hot flashes dropped from 9.6 per 24 hours at baseline to 4.3 per 24 hours at week 12 in 19 women who completed the 12-week course of acupuncture. 
• The median hot flash frequency at 1 year was 4.9 per 24 hours in 14 women who had no additional acupuncture sessions beyond the initial 12 weeks.
• At 2 years’ follow-up, seven women had a median hot flash rate of 2.1 per 24 hours without ever having had an additional acupuncture treatment. The others had similar results with occasional acupuncture booster sessions.
• Median scores on the Kupperman Index of 11 menopausal symptoms improved from a baseline of 24 to 12 after 3 months of acupuncture therapy and to 13 at 1 year. 
• The median score on the Psychological and General Well-Being Index in the acupuncture group improved from 78 at baseline to 79 at 12 weeks and 85 at 1 year.
• Patient ratings of distress because of night sweats went from a median of 5.1 on a 10-point scale at baseline to 1.3 after 12 weeks of treatment. The patients treated with acupuncture reported waking median of 3.2 times per night at baseline, 2.2 times per night after 12 weeks, and 1.6 times per night at 1 year.

In the Hormone Therapy (HT) group, all patients completed treatment.

• The median number of hot flashes per 24 hours went from 6.6 at baseline to 0 at 12 weeks.
• Scores on the Kupperman Index improved from 23 at baseline to 6 at both 12 weeks and 1 year.
• Median scores on the Psychological and General Well-Being Index went from 75 at baseline to 90 at 12  weeks and 93 at 1 year.

Although there was no placebo arm in the randomized trial, Dr. Frisk considers it highly unlikely that the observed benefits in the acupuncture group were due to the placebo effect.

“These women had menopausal  symptoms for a mean of 6-7 years, some
for more than 20 years. Then you give them acupuncture, and 4 weeks later
their vasomotor symptoms have at least halved,” she noted in an interview.

Based on a report from OB.GYN.News, Feb 1, 2009

To view a video interview of Dr. Frisk, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=
yiNwsd5b30E. ■

If you doubt the rigor of scientific studies looking at acupuncture, take a look at this study, published in ANNALS OF ALLERGY, ASTHMA & IMMUNOLOGY

Excerpts:

Objective:

The primary objective of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of acupuncture in addition to routine  care in patients with allergic rhinitis compared with routine care alone. In addition, we investigated whether the effects of
acupuncture differ in randomized and nonrandomized patients, whether the treatment effects last for a longer period, and whether specific patient and physician characteristics are associated with particular treatment outcomes. The effectiveness of acupuncture in allergic rhinitis was not demonstrated  in pragmatic trials before. However, after reviewing the results of the prior trials on the efficacy of acupuncture in allergic rhinitis, our hypothesis was that acupuncture in addition to routine care is more effective than routine care alone in patients with allergic rhinitis.

Discussion:

Patients with allergic rhinitis treated with acupuncture in addition to routine care showed significant improvements in disease-specific and general quality of life compared with patients who received routine care alone. Physician characteristics,
such as the level of formal acupuncture training or certification, did not influence treatment outcomes. To our knowledge, the present study is by far the largest
randomized trial of acupuncture in allergic rhinitis to date,  including approximately 7.5% of physicians specialized in acupuncture in Germany.

Our finding that the formal qualification of the physician and the years of acupuncture experience had no significant influence on treatment outcome was supported by other trials of the present acupuncture research initiative and could
be interpreted as a further indication that formal acupuncture training has only a limited role for the treatment effect. However, these results should be interpreted with caution and not as a well-supported conclusion because this finding was
not the main focus of the study and the indicators in the present study might not adequately reflect the quality of a physician’s treatment. Our study provides further evidence that acupuncture is a safe intervention. This finding is in
agreement with previous large surveys and trials.

Safety of Acupuncture:

“In 10.8% of patients, 529 adverse effects were reported after
acupuncture (minor local bleeding or hematoma, 69%; pain,
eg, needling pain, 9%; local infections at needle insertion
place, 4%; vegetative symptoms, 2%; and other, 16%). No
life-threatening adverse effects were reported.”

Conclusion:

“Acupuncture can be considered an effective and safe treatment option for patients with allergic rhinitis.”

This study pre-dates the Turkish one cited previously.

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Urology. 2003 Jun;61(6):1156-9; discussion 1159.

Acupuncture ameliorates symptoms in men with chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome.

Chen R, Nickel JC.

Trillium Medical Center, Acupuncture Foundation of Canada, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

Comment in:

• Urology. 2004 Jan;63(1):212.

OBJECTIVES: To determine in a pilot study whether acupuncture improved pain, voiding symptoms, and the quality of life of men with chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome.

METHODS: Men diagnosed with chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (National Institutes of Health [NIH] criteria) who were refractory to standard therapy (antibiotics, alpha-blockers, anti-inflammatories, phytotherapy) were referred for acupuncture therapy. The treatment protocol involved three sets of acupuncture points totaling 30 points (8 points were electrically stimulated) given alternatively twice weekly for 6 weeks. The patients completed the NIH Chronic Prostatitis Symptom Index (CPSI) at baseline and the CPSI and subjective global assessment at 6 weeks (end of treatment), 12 weeks, and at least 6 months after the baseline assessment.

RESULTS: Twelve men underwent a minimum of 6 weeks of acupuncture treatment. The average follow-up (from baseline) was 33 weeks (range 24 to 52). A significant decrease occurred in total NIH-CPSI (28.2 to 8.5), NIH-CPSI pain (14.1 to 4.8), NIH-CPSI urinary (5.2 to 1.3), and NIH-CPSI quality-of-life (8.8 to 2.3) scores after an average of 33 weeks of follow-up. Ten patients (83%) had a sustained greater than 50% decrease in NIH-CPSI at final visit (average 33 weeks). Ten patients (83%) reported marked improvement on the subjective global assessment at 12 weeks. At an average of 33 weeks, 8 patients (67%) had sustained marked improvement on subjective global assessment evaluation. No adverse events were reported in this pilot study.

CONCLUSIONS: Acupuncture appears to be a safe, effective, and durable treatment in improving symptoms in, and the quality of life of, men with chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome refractory to treatment. A larger controlled study is required to confirm these encouraging initial results.

Pain Med. 2010 Jan 22.

[Epub ahead of print]
Effectiveness of Acupuncture in Patients with Category IIIB Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome: A Report of 97 Patients.

Tugcu V, Tas S, Eren G, Bedirhan B, Karadag S, Tasci A.

Department of Urology, Bakirkoy Dr. Sadi Konuk Training and Research Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey.

Abstract Objective. Chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS) is of significant interest in urology and unfortunately, the therapy modalities recommended are not fully effective. Therefore, we undertook a pilot study to determine whether acupuncture improves the pain, voiding symptoms, and quality of life in men with category IIIB CP/CPPS.

Design. Prospective, one-group trial, cohort study.

Setting. Outpatient urology clinic. Patients and Interventions. Ninety-seven CP/CPPS patients received six sessions of acupuncture to the BL-33 acupoints once a week. The National Institute of Health Chronic Prostatitis Symptom Index (NIH-CPSI) was completed by each patient before and after the treatment and on 12th and 24th weeks following the treatment.

Outcome Measures. Mean values of total CPSI score, pain subscore, urinary subscore, and quality of life subscore after the treatment and on follow-up after the treatment were compared with the baseline values.

Results. There was a statistically significant decrease in all of the subscores evaluated at all periods compared with the baseline. Eighty-six patients out of 93 (92.47%) were NIH-CPSI responders (more than 50% decrease in total NIH-CPSI score from baseline) at the end of the treatment.

Conclusions. The results of this study suggest that acupuncture appears to be a safe and potentially effective treatment in improving the symptoms and quality of life of men clinically diagnosed with CP/CPPS.

NOTE:

The American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) is the medical specialty society representing physicians practicing in the field of Pain Medicine. As a medical specialty society, the Academy is involved in education, training, advocacy, and research in the specialty of Pain Medicine.

The practice of Pain Medicine is multi-disciplinary in approach, incorporating modalities from various specialties to ensure the comprehensive evaluation and treatment of the pain patient. AAPM represents the diverse scope of the field through membership from a variety of origins, including such specialties as anesthesiology, internal medicine, neurology, neurological surgery, orthopedic surgery, physiatry, and psychiatry.

We all have heard that drinking more water is healthy, and yet, we don’t do it.  Well, I came across this blog post that shares not only the why, but the how!

Remember, in addition to drinking more water (and less alcohol/soda/caffeine), you may want to:

• consistently get more sleep
• eat fewer processed foods/fast foods and more fresh whole foods (see Michael Pollan’s work for more advice on eating)
• walk or other gentle daily exercise, like yoga or tai chi
• meditate
• live within your means
• cultivate rhythm in your life, creating regular rituals and consistent daily habits.

EXCERPT:

How to form the water habit

So you’re convinced that water is healthier, but you’d like to know more about how to make drinking water a daily habit.

Here are some tips that have helped me:

• How much water? This is a debatable question. What’s clear is that the old recommendation of “eight 8-ounce glasses a day” isn’t right, for several reasons: that amount includes all dietary water intake, including food and non-water beverages; it also ignores a person’s body weight, which is an important factor in figuring the amount; it also varies if you are sick or exercise. It’s also not good to just drink when you’re thirsty — you’re already dehydrated by then. Best is to form a routine: drink a glass when you wake up, a glass with each meal, a glass in between meals, and be sure to drink before, during and after exercise. Try to generally keep yourself from getting thirsty.
• Carry a bottle. A lot of people find it useful to get a big plastic drinking bottle, fill it with water, and carry it around with them all day. I like to keep a glass of water at my desk, and I drink from it all day long. When it’s empty, I fill it up again, and keep drinking.
• Set a reminder. Set your watch to beep at the top of each hour, or set a periodic computer reminder, so that you don’t forget to drink water.
• Substitute water. If you would normally get a soda, or an alcoholic beverage, get a glass of water instead. Try sparkling water instead of alcohol at social functions.
• Filter. Instead of spending a fortune on bottled water, invest in a filter for your home faucet. It’ll make tap water taste like bottled, at a fraction of the price.
• Exercise. Exercising can help make you want to drink water more. It’s not necessary to drink sports drinks like Gatorade when you exercise, unless you are doing it for more than an hour. Just drink water. If you’re going to exercise, be sure to drink water a couple hours ahead of time, so that it will get through your system in time, and again, drink during and after exercise as well.
• Track it. It often helps, when forming a new habit, to keep track of it — it increases awareness and helps you ensure that you’re staying on track. Keep a little log (it can be done on an index card or a notebook), which can be as simple as a tick mark for each glass of water you drink.

Henry R. Black MD presents a lecture about the benefits of reducing salt - not just sodium - in your diet, by a gram.  This would reduce MIs, coronary heart events, kidney disease, and strokes in people young and old, saving 20,000 - 100,000 lives “without any real risk”. This is comparable to cutting tobacco consumption in half, losing five pounds, or giving everyone anti-hypertensive drugs.

How to do this:

• reduce processed foods (sneaky source of salt!)
• don’t add salt to your food with the salt shaker

See http://www.communityacupuncturenetwork.org/clinics to find a Community Acupuncture Clinic near you!

I tend to think that this industry, the ‘health care’ industry, really needs a different name to capture what they really do.   They promote neither health nor caring. The link takes you to a blog where the author reacts to a report on the industry’s profits and customer base.  You can also follow a link to the report itself.

In my own profession, acupuncturists debate the merits of accepting insurance from their clients.  Most of the ones I have had the conversation with do not take insurance, having found that from a provider’s perspective, collecting the fees is rife with delays, disingenuous examinations of the files, and denials for technicalities.  There has been an even more interesting conversation in which folks say that the way insurance operates is so reductionist and disease-focused that it is at odds with the basic philosophy of acupuncture (perhaps especially the Daoist and Five Element Acupuncture schools).  Some folks have rejected the entire model of taking private patients entirely, and have gone to the “Community Acupuncture” model, which charges from $15-$40 per treatment, no insurance accepted, with the patient determining how much they actually pay per treatment.

I picked up a copy of the movie “Patch Adams” at a thrift store (VHS - 75 cents), and watched it last night.  I had forgotten about his vision for the yet-to-be-built Geshundheit! Institute.  Look at his vision for ‘health care’, and then read the statistics from the report on the so-called health care industry.

Patch Adams writes:

There would be no charge for the care. Barter was also not an option. In fact, we wanted to eliminate the idea of debt in the medical interaction as a way to begin recreating human community. We didn’t want people to think they owed something; we wanted them to think they belonged to something. We could not conceive of a community that did not care for its people. This also meant a refusal to accept third party reimbursement, both to refuse payment and to sever the stranglehold that insurance companies had on how medicine was practiced. We would have nothing to do with malpractice insurance, which forces fear and mistrust into every medical interaction. We espouse the politics of vulnerability and are clearly aware that we can only offer caring and never promise curing. In such a flagrantly imperfect science, we need the right to make mistakes. The loudest cry of patients was for compassion and attention, which was a call for time.

Having said all this, here are the statistics according to ‘Health Care for America Now’.

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excerpt:

The five largest U.S. health insurance companies sailed through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression to set new industry profit records in 2009, a feat accomplished by leaving behind 2.7 million americans who had been inprivate health plans. For customers who kept their benefits, the insurers raised rates and cost-sharing,and cut the share of premiums spent on medical care.

Vickers AJ, Rees RW, Zollman CE, McCarney R, Smith C, Ellis N, Fisher P, Van Haselen R. Acupuncture for chronic headache in primary care: a large, pragmatic, randomised trial. British Medical Journal 2004 328:744-7

excerpt from an article summarizing the research:

A new study, involving 401 migraine and chronic headache sufferers, suggests that acupuncture is more therapeutic than standard care. The group was split, with half given 12 acupuncture treatments over three months and the rest were treated by their doctor, and were given drugs when needed.

After 12 months, the acupuncture group had less severe headaches, had 22 fewer days of headaches, used far less medication, made fewer visits to the doctor for their headaches, and had fewer days off work sick.

The new study, by Andrew Vickers at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, endorses earlier ones, but it can be regarded as the most rigorous and scientific yet undertaken.

Nine sources are cited below, and I am struck that this is all research published prior to 1985.  I know there is much more recent stuff out there!  But start with this article, excerpted below:

• “The Influence of Acupuncture Stimulation during Pregnancy: The Induction and Inhibition of Labour,” J J Tsuei et al, Obst and Gynae 50: 479, 1977
• A P & NA Zarkin, Medicina, Leningrad, 1988
• SK Yip et al, Am J of Chin Medicine 4: 257, 1976
• V F Markelova et al Zh Nevropatol Psikhiatr 84: 1313-1316, 1984
• J A Stern et al, Annals of New York Academy of Science 296: 175, 1977
• M Hydod & O Gega in Am J of Chin Medicine 5: 63, 1977
• Chinese Medical Journal 98: 221, 1980
• Shanghai College of Traditional Medicine, Acupuncture: A Comprehensive Text, Eastland Press, Seattle, 1984

Author Harald Gaier is a registered naturopath, osteopath and homoeopath.

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If specific restrictions are observed, acupuncture can be an ideal therapeutic tool during pregnancy, labour and after birth.

Numerous carefully controlled studies provide proof that a striking array of the body’s biochemistry can be stimulated by this ancient form of needle stimulation, in ways that always nudge the various systems back into balance and without causing the body to respond negatively or unnecessarily (e g “The Influence of Acupuncture Stimulation during Pregnancy: The Induction and Inhibition of Labour,” J J Tsuei et al, Obst and Gynae 50: 479, 1977).

Iron deficiency anaemia often bedevils pregnant women, causing uterine contractions. Acupuncture has been shown to not only sedate the uterine muscles, but also promote a gradual increase in the haemoglobin levels (A P & NA Zarkin, Medicina, Leningrad, 1988).

During labour, it’s known that contractions are helped by the release of the hormone oxytocin (the same hormone that helps to release milk during breastfeeding). In the work quoted above, the Zarkins demonstrate an 84.9 per cent success rate in the use of manual acupuncture stimulation from between 90 minutes to six hours to raise these oxytocin levels. Other studies have shown success by using the less fatiguing electro stimulation, where electrodes are attached to needles for a stronger effect (SK Yip et al, Am J of Chin Medicine 4: 257, 1976).

Serotonin, another hormone, also plays a significant part in labour by stimulating uterine muscle fibre and helping to create awareness of pain. One study found that acupuncture was effective in pain relief by normalizing serotonin levels ( V F Markelova et al Zh Nevropatol Psikhiatr 84: 1313-1316, 1984).

Acupuncture has also been shown to help release natural morphine like substances such as leuenkephalin which reduce the severity of pain during delivery (N Aronin et al, J Neurosci 1:561; 1981). Another study demonstrated acupuncture’s effectiveness in general pain relief, compared with Valium, morphine and aspirin (J A Stern et al, Annals of New York Academy of Science 296: 175, 1977).

Other scientific investigations confirm the usefulness of acupuncture in helping for pain relief (e g, M Hydod & O Gega in Am J of Chin Medicine 5: 63, 1977), even anaesthesia during caesarean section (Chinese Medical Journal 98: 221, 1980).

Besides pain relief, acupuncture has also been proven to help successfully turn a fetus that is lying in the wrong position, as with a breech birth (the Shanghai College of Traditional Medicine, Acupuncture: A Comprehensive Text, Eastland Press, Seattle, 1984). The same text provides evidence of the usefulness of acupuncture for morning sickness and infertility.

Excerpt:

Acupuncture: - It works, and here’s why

… the report of a trial that demonstrates that acupuncture can genuinely relieve pain.  The main ambition of the study was not, however, to test whether acupuncture is a pain-reliever - enough trials have already established that. Instead, it set out to discover why it works.

Up to now most scientists (and doctors) were convinced that acupuncture works only at the placebo level - in other words, the patient believed that acupuncture would work, and so felt better as a result. But the new study has discovered that the brain responses are different to acupuncture compared with ‘dummy’ acupuncture, which simulates ‘real’ acupuncture.

Study group leader Dr George Lewith said that acupuncture achieved similar results to those of pharmaceutical drugs for chronic conditions - but without the potential adverse reactions.

In his new trial, Dr Lewith tested acupuncture on a small group of arthritis sufferers, each of whom had sessions of real acupuncture, and two dummy versions, which involved using blunt needles that either failed to puncture the skin or retracted like a stage dagger when it touched the skin’s surface. Scientists who monitored the participants’ brains during treatment discovered that pain-relieving natural opiates were released during both the real and dummy acupuncture sessions, but that only the real acupuncture triggered other brain activities that also helped the patient.

So it seems that acupuncture works at a level that goes beyond the placebo effect, which is more than can be said of pharmaceutical drugs. Dr Lewith has pointed out that the antidepressant Prozac works in 80 per cent of cases - but 70 per cent were because of the patient’s expectations, and just 10 per cent could be attributed to a chemical change caused by the drug.

Conventional medicine? It’s all placebo, isn’t it?

Excerpt:

Energy Medicine
This energetic view of the body is not entirely new to Western medicine. The basic concepts were present in the work of “vitalist” scientists such as Galvani, Hahnemann, and Mesmer, who were active in the 17th through 19th centuries. Vitalism was gradually pushed out of the relm of accpeted medical science in the 19th and 20th centuries due to apparent inefficacy, but the real problem was inadequate instrumentation and a medical paradigm that made no room for energetic processes. Technology has advanced to a point where devices can successfully and consistently measure biological energy. The body’s energetic processes have always been there and were always important, as the history of acupuncture suggests. It is now time to standardize and integrate energetic practices into modern health care and make energy medicine an essential part of medical science.

The basic premise of energy medicine (also called bio-energetic medicine) is that energetic processes, including electrical and magnetic processes, vibrational resonance, and bio-photon emission, are essential to life processes. Bio-energy functions as a carrier of “bio-information” and is crucial to biological self-regulation. With this in mind, there are at least three areas where medical practitioners could find useful applications: 1) gearing all treatment to preserve the well-being of the electro-magnetic energy network of the body, 2) use of beneficial, external energies in amounts similar to that already present in body in order to balance or reinforce natural energetic functions, 3) use of greater amounts of external energy to actively influence body function by way of the energy network, correcting functional imbalances. Traditional acupuncture belongs to category 2, and many modern meridian-based techniques belong to category 3.

According to what we have observed in our research, a complete, bio-energetic definition of meridians includes four facets, or “units”: structure of the organ of origin, function of the organ, the electro-magnetic pathway, and emotional/vibrational interaction. All four are crucial to the creation and existence of the meridians. An organ, by its physical existence and functioning, relases energy (chi) and creates an electro-magnetic field. This energy contains information about the organ and its activity, so both the physical structure and the functioning of the organ affect the quality and strength of the energy and information that are created. This is the source of the meridians. An imbalance in one meridian often brings about imbalances in others, and other factors, including emotions, can effect individual meridians and the meridian network as a whole. Each meridian can be viewed as existing individually or as a part of the intricate meridian system and can be treated as such, though the synergistic totality of the meridian system is always of primary importance. It is precisely for this reason that diagnostic and therapeutic procedures based on meridian theory are successful at approaching the body holistically.

© Professor Julia J. Tsuei M.D., F.A.C.O.G.Share Copyright 1996 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Reprinted, with permission, from IEEE, ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY Magazine, Volume 15, Number 3, May/June 1996.

Excerpts:

Research at the Shanghai Institute has demonstrated acupuncture’s effect on various biological systems, including the digestive tract, cardiovascular system (helpful in hypotensive states), immune system (phagocytosis), and the endocrine system (the secretion of ACTH, oxytocin, vasopressin, norepinephrine, follicle stimulating hormone, prolactin, and 17-hydroxycorticosteroids) [3].

The primary reason for the slow acceptance of acupuncture is the lingering suspicion that there is no substantial, scientific reality behind it because a demonstrable mechanism of action has yet to be found. For the most part, early attempts to “explain” acupuncture have been either thinly disguised denials or have embraced and verified acupuncture only partially, disproving traditional acupuncture as much as validating it. The most prevalent example of the former is the argument that any effect acupuncture may have is psychogenetic, a placebo effect. This has been disproven by successful studies of acupuncture in animals, many examples of which can be found in Kuo and Kuo. [2] Two important forms of partial validation of acupuncture are the neuralphysiological and neurohormonal schools. The neuralphysiological school defines acupuncture points on “roughly dermatome basis; partially involv[ing] ‘long’ reflexes to distant parts of the body, which implicates a distribution by specific spinal segments or nerves; and are partially via unknown connections.” [8] This could explain remote stimulation, but as the quote suggests, it is a very incomplete explanation. Neurohormonal theories center on the release of neurohormones triggered by the pain and microphysical damage caused by needle insertion. This has been used primarily to explain acupuncture-induced general analgesics, but it can explain little else.

Both of the above explanations are attempts to use structures and concepts acceptable to the mainstream medical community to explain acupuncture. But in grafting acupuncture to Western medical theory, aspects foreign to orthodox medicine are simply jettisoned. Because of the emphasis on genetics, anatomy, physiology, and bio-chemistry in modern medicine, and a near complete denial of energetic processes in the body, chi (body energy) and meridians (paths of body energy flow) are either ignored or considered fallacies with some metaphorical or pneumonic value. Emphasis is placed by most researchers on the needle and the physical effect of its insertion into the skin, but this side of acupuncture is not essential. According to our research, acupuncture is essentially manipulation of bodily energy as it flows through the meridian system. The acupuncture needle is only one of many possible tools used to accomplish this. In the remainder of this article, “meridian theory” will be understood to include acupuncture theory and practice. “Meridian” is used to stand for both the meridian itself and the acupuncture points along the meridian.

A bio-physical or bio-chemical approach to acupuncture robs it of its actual foundation, and because of this acupuncture research to date has been only partially successful. Fortunately, advances in physics, electro-magnetism, quantum-mechanics, and bio-energetic research have enabled researchers to develop a paradigm that for the first time successfully explains the majority of acupuncture related phenomena. [9] We have embraced this bio-energetic paradigm not simply because it can explain more of acupuncture phenomena, but because it is a true description of acupuncture’s mechanism of action and is an important facet of all life processes. The only way to address acupuncture successfully and scientifically is through the meridian system.

This four-article series will attempt to give a fairly complete representation of meridian theory research based on the bio-energetic paradigm. This, the first article, covers traditional acupuncture, early research into the electrical properties of acupuncture points, and basic EDS Test (EDST) methodologies. The theoretical foundation for the bio-energetic paradigm is discussed in two articles by Physicist Kuo Gen CHEN. The fourth article is a review of research into an application of bio-energetic properties called the electrodermal screening system (EDSS). In that article Dr. F.M.K. Lam, Prof. Pesus Chou, and I hope to demonstrate the effectiveness of the EDSS as a screening/diagnostic method and offer evidence of the causal connection between acupuncture points, meridians, and internal organs.

Text excerpt below from http://inventorspot.com/articles/neuroscientists_study_effects_acupunture_and_give_it_nod_37520

In acupuncture, the feeling of de qi is comparable to the sound of a sweet spot on a baseball bat or golf club. It’s the nirvana of one whose pain has just been lifted.  It may be reached by inserting or jiggling a needle in the pressure point that corresponds with area affected by pain. For example, a needle in a point behind the knee may relieve pain in the lower back.

Western medicine has been late to incorporate acupu`ncture into its prescriptions for pain relief.  But a study undertaken by neuroscientists at the University of York and the Hull York Medical School in Great Britain, may help to change some attitudes of medical professionals in the West.

The investigation utilized the technology of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the brain scans of subjects who experienced relief of back pain with subjects who experienced increased pain in response to “needling.”  Subjective responses were also recorded from the group participants and compared to their scans.

The fMRIs showed the differences between pain activation in the brain and pain deactivation corresponding to the subjective experience of pain and de qi.

Dr Hugh MacPherson, of the Complementary Medicine Research Group in the University’s Department of Health Sciences, says: “These results provide objective scientific evidence that acupuncture has specific effects within the brain which hopefully will lead to a better understanding of how acupuncture works.”

In response to this research, the British National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence published guidelines for doctors stating that they should “consider offering a course of acupuncture comprising a maximum of 10 sessions of a period of up to 12 weeks” for patients with lower back pain.

While this study focused on patients with back pain, current clinical trials are being planned for patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and for depression.  Other studies in the U.S. show that acupuncture may be an effective treatment for migraines and osteoarthritis of the knee.

I’m researching the efficacy of acupuncture to treat PTSD.  I’ve found several studies that indicate it has been tested in randomized controlled clinical trials, and I’ll be posting the abstracts from these. Overall, they seem to indicate that acupuncture works.

From the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, vol. 195, no. 6, pp. 504-513,

June 2007
ABSTRACT:
The purpose of the study was to evaluate the potential efficacy and
acceptability of acupuncture for PTSD. People diagnosed with PTSD were
randomized to either an empirically developed acupuncture treatment
(ACU), a group cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), or a wait-list
control (WLC). The primary outcome measure was self-reported PTSD
symptoms at baseline, end treatment, and 3-month follow-up. Repeated
measures MANOVA was used to detect predicted Group X Time effects in
both intent-to-treat (ITT) and treatment completion models. Compared
with the WLC condition in the ITT model, acupuncture provided large
treatment effects for PTSD (F [1, 46] = 12.60; p < 0.01; Cohen’s d
= 1.29), similar in magnitude to group CBT (F [1, 47] = 12.45; p <
0.01; d = 1.42) (ACU vs. CBT, d = 0.29). Symptom reductions at end
treatment were maintained at 3-month follow-up for both interventions.
Acupuncture may be an efficacious and acceptable nonexposure treatment
option for PTSD. Larger trials with additional controls and methods
are warranted to replicate and extend these findings.