The 11th annual meeting of the Society for Acupuncture Research (SAR) will be held this October 1-3 at the Radisson Miyako Hotel in San Francisco, California. SAR is the foremost acupuncture research organization in the country, and is dedicated to improving the quality and awareness of research in acupuncture, herbal therapy and other modalities of Oriental medicine. Top researchers in these disciplines from the U.S., as well as Europe and Asia, will present the latest developments in basic research and clinical trials.
The symposium is co-sponsored by the Institute for Health and Aging, the University of California at San Francisco, and the Quan Yin Healing Arts Center. Highlights of the conference will be keynote lectures by Donald I. Abrams, MD, chief of hematology at San Francisco General Hospital ("West Meets East: Issues in Researching TCM and CAM Interventions") and Suzanne Dibble, DNSc, RN, adjunct professor at the Institute for Health & Aging and Physiological Nursing ("Research Challenges of Acupressure and Acupuncture Trials"). In addition, a pre-symposium workshop, " How to Critique Clinical Trials of Acupuncture," will be held October 1 by Hugh MacPherson, PhD, LAc, and Richard Hammerschlag, PhD, sponsored by SAR and CAER, the research arm of the Tri-State College of Acupuncture. The symposium will also feature panel discussions on herbal research, community-based research and school-based research, poster presentations, a complimentary luncheon, and an evening reception at the Quan Yin Healing Arts Center.
The SAR symposium provides a unique opportunity for acupuncture researchers, practitioners and educators to meet, exchange information and establish collaborative networks for future projects. For more information and to register for the conference, please go to the SAR's Web site (www.acupunctureresearch.org).
Although joining SAR is not required to attend the conference, anyone interested in research in acupuncture and Oriental medicine is invited to visit our Web site for information on the benefits of and procedure for joining the society. Special student rates are offered for the conference registration fee and for joining SAR. Educational and commercial institutions with an interest in acupuncture are also invited to become institutional affiliates, the benefits of which are detailed on the SAR Web site.
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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