THE APPOINTMENT STARTS in a PEACEFUL AND COMFORTABLE
reception area.
reception area.
ANYONE WHO SAYS THAT THEY KNOW AND UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING ABOUT ACUPUNCTURE HAS NOT READ, STUDIED or EXPERIENCED ENOUGH. AS A PRACTITIONER. I ONLY UNDERSTAND ENOUGH TO HELP tHE PATIENT TO thE BEST OF MY ABILITY.
AT THE MEETING OF THE SOCIETY OF ACUPUNCTURE RESEARCH: BEJING 2014 AND THE SYMPOSIUM OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF MEDICAL ACUPUNCTURE: ANAHEIM, california, 2016, THERE WERE several presentations that contained MANY NEW AND DIFFERENT FINDINGS EXTENDING THE UNDERSTANDING AND PRACTICAL USE OF ACUPUNCTURE.
Acupuncture is one part of a tradition of Oriental medicine that has been practiced for hundreds of years. Throughout these years practitioners of acupuncture and oriental medicine explained how acupuncture worked using the best understanding of what was happening using the information available at the time. Many explanations appear foreign to our modern western scientific view of the world. However these traditions have stood the test of time because they have proven useful to treat millions of patients over the millennia. The traditions must be respected.
In some instances the Chinese medicine professionals seem to be like prophets in describing physiological truths that were not scientifically proven until
the 20th century. The Nei-jing, an early classic of Chinese medicine, tells us that the kidney controls the bones and bone marrow. It was not until 1977 that Eugene Goldwasser, Ph. D. of the University of Chicago described and isolated the protein erythropoetin. Erythropoetin is a protein synthesized by the kidney which powerfully stimulates the bone marrow cells to produce red blood cells. today erythropoetin synthesized in the laboratory is an important pharmaceutial that is injected and promotes red blood cell synthesis. This keeps the red blood cell count up without the need for transfusion of another person's blood.
Since the 1940''s the effects of acupuncture have been analyzed and explained using terms and modern concepts of neurophysiology and neuroanatomy, endocrinology, biochemistry, anatomy, physics, systems theory and mathematics to name a few frameworks useful to explain some of the effects of acupuncture.
To practice acupuncture at a high level of competence, a physician trained and experienced in Western scientific concepts has to be able to see things through two filters. Some concepts make perfect sense when explained in terms of biochemistry, endocrinology, neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. Other concepts can only be understood in terms of the esoteric and sometimes undefinable Chinese language terms like qi, jing, essence. Failure to use both filters prevents the practitioner from formulating treatments utilizing the entire range of possibilities for treatment. The practitioner can formulate more treatment plans because the practitioner is familiar with the discoveries of modern Western medicine as well as the potential deep magic that acupuncture treatment can potentially accomplish.
