Acupuncture Expands into New Hampshire Hospital
Portsmouth Regional Hospital, located just south of the Maine/New Hampshire border, has been one of New England's leaders in the integration of Eastern and Western healing. In recent years, the hospital has introduced a reiki program to reduce stress in preoperative patients, and a women's lecture series that has provided information on modalities such as hypnotherapy and massage.
In its latest endeavor into the complementary care arena, Portsmouth Regional has announced the appointment of Dianna Flight, LAc, Dipl.Ac. as its Director of Acupuncture Services. A 1991 graduate of the New England School of Acupuncture, Flight previously ran a private practice in Marblehead, Massachusetts and served on the staff of Union Hospital in Lynn, Massachusetts. She is also a member of the New Hampshire Acupuncture Licensing Board, and has training in both traditional Chinese medicine and Japanese acupuncture.
"We're very excited this program is growing the way it is," chimed in Nancy Notis, the hospital's marketing director. "It's especially important to educate our physicians about acupuncture so they can feel comfortable referring Dianna."
Dr. Flight will work under the supervision of the hospital's anesthesiology department, and will treat both inpatients and outpatients. "Our primary focus at this point will be on oncology patients, many of whom experience a lot of nausea after chemotherapy," she said. In time, hospital administrators plan on expanding coverage of acupuncture services to include pain management, occupational health, and other specialties.
Distinguished Professor to Take Sabbatical at CIMU
China International Medical University in Los Angeles, California has invited Dr. Zhen Qin, a world-renowned professor of neurology at Hua Shan Hospital and Shanghai Medical University in China, to take a sabbatical at the university for the next few months. While at CIMU, Dr. Qin will provide advice on the treatment of Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and other neurological disorders by integrating traditional Chinese medicine with Western forms of healing.
Dr. Qin has studied and practiced acupuncture extensively since the late 1950s. He has over 45 years of clinical experience in neurology and more than 40 years of experience in the practice of mental interoceptive guidance, a form of qi gong. In 1990, he presided over a plenary session during the International Symposium on Qi Gong Health Preservation and Qi Gong Techniques in Peking. Last year, he helped organize the first Sino-American Neurology Conference in Shanghai. He has also published several articles on the use of acupuncture in treating epilepsy, neurodermatitis and other neurological diseases, as well as changes in electroencephalogram readings and cerebral blood flow during the practice of qi gong.
TCM Conference in Germany
The European Working Group for Classical Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine, in association with the European Association of Traditional Chinese Medicine, will hold its 32nd annual TCM conference in Rothenburg, Germany May 22-27. The conference's main themes will be the usage of TCM in pediatrics and toxic heat syndromes, with additional courses on acupuncture; pharmacology; diet; tui na; and qi gong. A total of 78 seminars and lectures will be offered, 32 of which will be taught in English.
For more information, contact:
Gerd Ohmstede, BAc
Maria-Theresia-Allee 41
D-54064 Aachen, Germany
Tel: 49-02-41-74554
Fax: 49-02-41-709580
E-mail: ohmstede@tcm-kongress.de
or visit the conference's website at www.tcm-kongress.de.
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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