The Acupuncture Poll's question for May2002 was:
"How often do you, an acupuncturist, receive acupuncture from someone else?"
Results:
These results are based upon 194 responses. As this is a voluntary, non-scientific survey, caution should be used in generalizing the results. Here is a sample of the comments made by those who took the survey and how they voted:
Once or twice a month: It is important to keep up your own pulse readings and monitor your own health. I do this each week, or whenever I believe I am out of balance or "off-color." To this end, I recommend all patients to come in and have their pulses read and balanced every season for preventative care. This is acknowledged TCM practice. If we don't look after ourselves, how can we care for our patients?
More than once a week: When I need treatment, I will commit to a two-to-three times per week treatment schedule for three to six weeks.
Less than once a month: I get a treatment once a season or if I am sick. I get massage once every week or so, and practice tai chi chuan and ba gua. The latter two activities have been key in maintaining and increasing my health. I treat myself with herbs as necessary. I do my best to be as strong, vital and stagnation-free as I can. My patients seem to get better faster when I am.
For more information on the Acupuncture Poll, contact Acupuncture Today at editorial@acupuncturetoday.com.
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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