It has been said that there are only two positions in life. You are either moving ahead or standing still. This seems to be only partially true, however. In reality, you're never really standing still; you are actually moving backward, while life and civilization continue to move forward.
This little expression seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy in the world of health care. You're either moving forward (a situation which is becoming increasingly difficult in the information age), or you're struggling not to stay too far behind.
One reason many of us are struggling to stay ahead is the effect technology is beginning to have on our profession. Can you remember a time when there was no technology - no computers, no Internet, no personal digital assistants reminding us of some otherwise unimportant meeting that we're already 15 minutes late for? When I first became involved in this profession, "Windows" meant those nice rectangular panes of glass I used to clean with a bottle of Windex and some paper towels, not some bug-laden computer operating system.
Digging back into my memories, I can remember a time when I was assigning a class project. A student named Al Stone asked if he could create a website as his project. That little project turned out to be acupuncture.com, which became one of the most popular acupuncture sites on the Internet.
Sadly, acupuncture.com is no more. Recently, it was sold to an organization in Santa Monica and is slowly being integrated into a larger site known as www.healingpeople.com. We wish them success in their future endeavors.
The loss of acupuncture.com has left a void for thousands of people looking specifically for the latest acupuncture news and research online. While that site has slowly ceased to exist, the print version of Acupuncture Today has become a source of news, information and insight for the profession in its own right.
It was only logical, therefore, that we try to fill that void by creating a website of our own, and that's just what we have done. Beginning the first part of July, you will also be able to browse us online at acupuncturetoday.com. Among the features you'll find there:
Other sections are currently under development. In the coming months, acupuncturetoday.com will expand to include a site map, advertising information, an acupuncturist directory, online classified ads for practitioners and students, and AT Expo, a virtual exhibit hall for suppliers of acupuncture products and services.
Technology has changed how we do things, but not necessarily what we do or why we do them. We still value that personal touch, and we still strive to deliver the best service possible to our patients and students.
With acupuncturetoday.com, we'll be able to deliver that personal touch to millions of people. The profession deserves nothing less.
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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