Happy 4th of July!

For those planning to celebrate this Independence Day with traditional grill outs, booze, and intense audi-visual stimuli, we will be here to help! Check out the new research showing how acupuncture helps increase exercise tolerance in heart disease.

Acupuncture ups exercise tolerance in heart patients

ANI, Jul 2, 2010, 10.00am IST

A new study indicates that acupuncture can improve exercise tolerance in patients suffering from chronic heart failure.

Dr. Johannes Backs, physician and study director at the Department of Internal Medicine III (Cardiology, Angiology, and Pneumology - Medical Director: Professor Dr. Hugo Katus) of Heidelberg University Hospital conducted the clinical pilot study.

Patients with this disease suffer from shortness of breath and fatigue brought on by physical exercise.

The needles do not increase the heart’s pump function, but they seem to have an influence on skeletal muscle strength and thus can increase the walk distance that heart patients can cover.

In a study where patients were given ten sessions of acupuncture on points that boost general strength according to Traditional Chinese Medicine, the results showed that these patients could walk longer distances, recovered more quickly and tended to feel subjectively less exhausted.

The scientists now plan to study whether relatively low-cost acupuncture can improve the prognosis for cardiac patients over the long term.

The findings have been published in the medical journal Heart .

Source

Happy 4th of July!

For those planning to celebrate this Independence Day with traditional grill outs, booze, and intense audi-visual stimuli, we will be here to help! Check out the new research showing how acupuncture helps increase exercise tolerance in heart disease.

Acupuncture ups exercise tolerance in heart patients

ANI, Jul 2, 2010, 10.00am IST

A new study indicates that acupuncture can improve exercise tolerance in patients suffering from chronic heart failure.

Dr. Johannes Backs, physician and study director at the Department of Internal Medicine III (Cardiology, Angiology, and Pneumology - Medical Director: Professor Dr. Hugo Katus) of Heidelberg University Hospital conducted the clinical pilot study.

Patients with this disease suffer from shortness of breath and fatigue brought on by physical exercise.

The needles do not increase the heart’s pump function, but they seem to have an influence on skeletal muscle strength and thus can increase the walk distance that heart patients can cover.

In a study where patients were given ten sessions of acupuncture on points that boost general strength according to Traditional Chinese Medicine, the results showed that these patients could walk longer distances, recovered more quickly and tended to feel subjectively less exhausted.

The scientists now plan to study whether relatively low-cost acupuncture can improve the prognosis for cardiac patients over the long term.

The findings have been published in the medical journal Heart .

Source

Tales from the Undertrained and Over-initialed

This story has been posted all over The Book of Face today by some fellow acupuncturists, and in keeping with my last blog entry I am following suit. Enjoy!

Abbreviated Courses In Acupuncture For Physicians Pose A Serious Problem

• Sometimes, understanding one’s background can clarify their particular point of view. So in the spirit of “full disclosure” I would like to tell you a little about mine.

  I began my medical career in 1979 when I received my MD degree from Albany Medical College. I trained in diagnostic radiology at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, DC. I entered private practice and spent 20 years doing full-service hospital radiology. It was at the end of these 20 years that changes occurred in my life, changes that made me look at my direction and commitments. It was at that time in my career when I discovered acupuncture, and the power this medicine has to heal. Please understand, I was awestruck at the conditions acupuncture could effectively treat —- conditions that from my previous medical training I knew were precisely those no one wanted to get stuck with because there was no effective treatment. I am a fellowship-trained interventional radiologist, and I have put needles into arteries, veins, solid organs, abscesses, tumors, pleural cavities, peritoneal cavities….you name it. But I had never felt the pull of Qi on a needle, I had never intentionally manipulated a needle to achieve a specific energetic effect, I had never contacted the energy of a meridian, nor used needles themselves, as instruments of healing. Here was a whole new science to learn. And the amazing thing is that it has a 3000 year history with millions upon millions of people undergoing clinical trial in China for 30 centuries!

  Read More

Tales from the Undertrained and Over-initialed

This story has been posted all over The Book of Face today by some fellow acupuncturists, and in keeping with my last blog entry I am following suit. Enjoy!

Abbreviated Courses In Acupuncture For Physicians Pose A Serious Problem

• Sometimes, understanding one’s background can clarify their particular point of view. So in the spirit of “full disclosure” I would like to tell you a little about mine.

  I began my medical career in 1979 when I received my MD degree from Albany Medical College. I trained in diagnostic radiology at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, DC. I entered private practice and spent 20 years doing full-service hospital radiology. It was at the end of these 20 years that changes occurred in my life, changes that made me look at my direction and commitments. It was at that time in my career when I discovered acupuncture, and the power this medicine has to heal. Please understand, I was awestruck at the conditions acupuncture could effectively treat —- conditions that from my previous medical training I knew were precisely those no one wanted to get stuck with because there was no effective treatment. I am a fellowship-trained interventional radiologist, and I have put needles into arteries, veins, solid organs, abscesses, tumors, pleural cavities, peritoneal cavities….you name it. But I had never felt the pull of Qi on a needle, I had never intentionally manipulated a needle to achieve a specific energetic effect, I had never contacted the energy of a meridian, nor used needles themselves, as instruments of healing. Here was a whole new science to learn. And the amazing thing is that it has a 3000 year history with millions upon millions of people undergoing clinical trial in China for 30 centuries!

  Read More

Doctors, excuse me, CHIROPRACTORS, using "Biomedical Acupuncture" as a Loophole for Practice

And not just chiropractors. Dentists, occupational therapists, physicians, and physiotherapists can all get on the medical acupuncture bandwagon. Some of these programs range from a whopping underwhelming 300 hour certificate to a dismal weekend course. Of course the proponents of this farce claim that acupuncture theory is too esoteric because it does not rely on sound anatomy and physiology.

Funny, I took A&P as well as biology, chemistry, biochemistry, lab data, western physical exam, nutrition, psychology, surface anatomy, and western pathology when I was in school. And those were not even 25% of my nearly 3000 hour graduate program!

But of course, this is all old news. The Medical Acupuncture Association has been around for ten years. And this is hardly the first time I have ranted about other disciplines encroaching on our territory without proper training.

What has me hot under the collar this time is the claim TCM is anecdotal while biomedical acupuncture is scientific - check out this zinger of a story.

The fact these "dry needling" techniques they teach in these seminars stems from over 3000 years of acupuncture theory and practice is apparently of no consequence. Oh yes, it is okay to jab needles into muscles and random trigger points (that's ashi points, those that have a real education in acupuncture know that already) and claim it has a "real" effect because it is causing a micro-trauma that stimulates the body's healing response. Not like that qi stuff that stimulates the body's healing response, no sir. When the point is needled, you are feeling the exact same sensations whether you call it a major quadratus lumborum trigger point or "Pi Gen," the difference is that in TCM, you are not just treating the branch symptom, you are treating the root cause.

The other reason I am so irritated is I just know insurance is going to start covering this nonsense. I already live in a state where legitimate acupuncturists cannot get in-network but at least chiropractors are banned, in theory, from practicing acupuncture without an acupuncture license for the moment (although they STILL put themselves in the phonebook under "physicians MD and osteopaths OD").

While the AAAOM is working to get professional parity through supposed acupuncture doctoral programs, our profession, which still does not have a national title and basic scope of practice, may just get pulled out from under us.

Doctors, excuse me, CHIROPRACTORS, using "Biomedical Acupuncture" as a Loophole for Practice

And not just chiropractors. Dentists, occupational therapists, physicians, and physiotherapists can all get on the medical acupuncture bandwagon. Some of these programs range from a whopping underwhelming 300 hour certificate to a dismal weekend course. Of course the proponents of this farce claim that acupuncture theory is too esoteric because it does not rely on sound anatomy and physiology.

Funny, I took A&P as well as biology, chemistry, biochemistry, lab data, western physical exam, nutrition, psychology, surface anatomy, and western pathology when I was in school. And those were not even 25% of my nearly 3000 hour graduate program!

But of course, this is all old news. The Medical Acupuncture Association has been around for ten years. And this is hardly the first time I have ranted about other disciplines encroaching on our territory without proper training.

What has me hot under the collar this time is the claim TCM is anecdotal while biomedical acupuncture is scientific - check out this zinger of a story.

The fact these "dry needling" techniques they teach in these seminars stems from over 3000 years of acupuncture theory and practice is apparently of no consequence. Oh yes, it is okay to jab needles into muscles and random trigger points (that's ashi points, those that have a real education in acupuncture know that already) and claim it has a "real" effect because it is causing a micro-trauma that stimulates the body's healing response. Not like that qi stuff that stimulates the body's healing response, no sir. When the point is needled, you are feeling the exact same sensations whether you call it a major quadratus lumborum trigger point or "Pi Gen," the difference is that in TCM, you are not just treating the branch symptom, you are treating the root cause.

The other reason I am so irritated is I just know insurance is going to start covering this nonsense. I already live in a state where legitimate acupuncturists cannot get in-network but at least chiropractors are banned, in theory, from practicing acupuncture without an acupuncture license for the moment (although they STILL put themselves in the phonebook under "physicians MD and osteopaths OD").

While the AAAOM is working to get professional parity through supposed acupuncture doctoral programs, our profession, which still does not have a national title and basic scope of practice, may just get pulled out from under us.

Acupuncture and Spinal Nerve Cell Recovery

More research is coming out demonstrating acupuncture is an effective modality to help prevent further death and destruction of nerve cells in patient's with spinal cord injuries. I tried to locate the original research report, but my online sources were not forthcoming. It looks like Kyung Hee University is doing some pretty interesting digging into the effects of specific points like H7 demonstrating decrease in anxiety related to nicotine withdrawal (St36 failed to produce results), GB34 for Parkinson's Disease, and GB34 and GB39 stimulation after perfusion following an ischemic attack.

Acupuncture could help spinal recovery: study

By QMI AGENCY

A 2003 study showed acupuncture - a traditional Chinese medicine that treats pain by inserting and manipulating long, thin needles into various points of the body - can improve the sensory and motor functions of people with spinal cord injuries.

More recently, researchers at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, South Korea, tried to find out why. The study's results were published in the most recent edition of Neurobiology of Disease.

The researchers damaged the spines of 75 rats. One third were treated with acupuncture.

After 35 days, the rats that received the needle treatment stood and walked better than those that did not.

What's more, the acupuncture-treated rats had less nerve cell death and lower levels of the protein that causes inflammation.

The researchers hypothesize that the needles cause a stress response in the body that lessens inflammation. The inflammation that occurs after spinal cord injuries causes nerve cell death and lessens the chance of recovery.

Source: Toronto Sun