Pelvic pain has a prevalence of >25% in women and >15% in men, and up to 50% of cases are undiagnosed, demonstrating that there is a definite need for pelvic care awareness among health care practitioners. As holistic practitioners, acupuncturists offer a safe space for clients and are often the practitioners clients seek out when nothing else has worked. Thus, acupuncturists are presented with an opportunity to serve an underserved population.
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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New research suggests acupuncture can help women undergoing IVF become pregnant and deliver a child – at higher rates than women not receiving acupuncture. In the review study, published in Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics, researchers analyzed 25 trials involving 4,757 total patients. Pregnancy outcomes evaluated in the studies were clinical pregnancy rate and live birth rate.
One of the most popular topics in both allopathic and integrative medicine at the moment is the issue of “long COVID.” I will cover some important clinical considerations on Chinese herbal medicine in cases of long COVID in future columns; however, in this column let’s focus on the issue of long-term psychological stress and its impact on health.
As modern medical standardization continues, the field of traditional Chinese medicine has the advantage of comprehensive personalization. For rare or complex cases, deeper consideration of constitution is invaluable. Proper constitutional assessment, especially with first-time clients, can guide desirable and predictable outcomes. This leads to a higher rate of return, and greater trust between you and your patient.
Though the creation of a financially sustainable, health-promoting model feels far away today, we are casting a vision for a full return on health, believing that this compels us to keep one foot firmly rooted in caring for the sick and the other foot firmly founded in maintaining health. Shifting from a fee-for-service model to value-based care using a phased approach is paramount.
Coercive control, also known as mind control, thought reform, undue influence, or colloquially referred to as a “cult,” is a growing and concerning phenomenon, especially in the United States. In essence, coercive control is pervasive, underscoring the importance for health care practitioners to be keenly aware of this issue, and to actively educate both patients and colleagues about the potential for abuse inherent in such relationships.
I was motivated to write this article after hearing yet another story of a male practitioner in our field making inappropriate comments about sexual behavior in his treatment room. Over the years, I’ve gathered stories about various men practicing in our field who have exhibited inappropriate behavior toward female patients. As health care practitioners who hold a unique role of body touch and emotional processing, we owe it to our profession to bring this to light.
As an acupuncturist, you might not be billing insurance, but even for those who primarily operate on a cash basis, it is important to have a foundational knowledge of insurance because it can broaden the scope of accessibility to your services. Let’s examine the different ways that an acupuncture practice might access insurance payments – especially the differences between and how to optimize in-network and out-of-network insurance.
When learning traditional East Asian medicine, we are taught the four pillars of diagnosis: inspection, auscultation and olfaction, inquiry, and palpation. When it comes to palpation, there is often a quick mention of feeling the acupuncture channels, and then the focus moves on to pulse diagnosis. Little to no time is spent palpating the channels – or the skin for that matter.
Acupuncture, often viewed skeptically by those entrenched in Western medicine, can present a daunting prospect for patients unaccustomed to its therapeutic benefits. For individuals like my patient who was diagnosed with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (SPSS) over 17 years ago, embracing alternative treatments became a lifeline in her journey toward healing.
According to the World Health Organization’s first global report on sepsis (2020), “When sepsis is not recognized early and managed promptly, it can lead to septic shock, multiple organ failure and death. … Even sepsis survivors are not out of danger: only half will completely recover, the rest will either die within 1 year or be burdened by long-term disabilities.”
