Autoimmune diseases are commonly understood as a process whereby a person's immune system attacks his or her own body. It is sometimes seen as an allergic response, in which the body is allergic to some part of itself. Often, the organs (such as the brain in multiple sclerosis), or the joints (as in rheumatoid arthritis) are attacked. There are a multitude of autoimmune diseases, affecting millions of people. However, I don't believe the body is making a mistake. I don't believe it is actually attacking itself, or is allergic to itself.
My understanding of autoimmune diseases is that they are not a case of the body mistakenly attacking itself, but rather an attack of the immune system on a lingering pathogenic factor (LPF). In a nutshell, LPFs are often a virus or other infection that lingers in the body, causing a low-level chronic infection. Such chronic conditions tend to do a lot of damage slowly over a period of many years, leading to all kinds of serious diseases and ultimately to death. LPFs usually have a presence in a particular location in the body, such as an organ or part of the brain, or in the blood. The immune system attacks, but is unable to eliminate the pathogen. When the immune system attacks an LPF in the thyroid, for example, it creates a constant festering in that organ. The same is true of any location in the body. LPFs don't always show up on Western medical tests. I discussed LPFs in two previous columns in Acupuncture Today. Please refer to the web site for more background on LPFs.
I use an energetic testing method to detect the presence of LPFs in the body. This sort of testing can also tell me where in the body the pathogen is located, by using the pulse. (See my previous article, "Allergy and Medical Divination" in the October 2000 issue.) With this method, it is also possible to detect when the LPF is leaving the body.
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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