The American Acupuncture Council (AAC) surprised attendees at the annual meeting of the American Association of Oriental Medicine (AAOM) on Oct. 23, 2004 by announcing a 10-year, $1,000,000-plus commitment to advance the acupuncture profession. While the AAC has always supported the profession in the past, its commitment of $1 million over the next 10 years is expected to have a significant impact on the future of acupuncture and Oriental medicine in the United States.
According to AAC President Philip Stump, the reason for the $1 million commitment is simple.
"The acupuncture profession can only grow to its full potential with adequate funding for research, consumer education and legislation," Stump said. "With the proper resources, we can begin to demonstrate the benefits of all aspects of Oriental medicine and communicate those benefits to the consumer public. In addition, we must both establish and defend our rights to deliver that care in every state in this country.
"As leaders in acupuncture malpractice insurance for nearly two decades, we understand the need for long-term commitment. We believe our new 10-year program of funding and support will make a real difference both for the individual acupuncturist working to build a practice, and for the acupuncture profession, as we work to enhance its prominence in mainstream American health care."
The AAC, in conjunction with the AAOM, have designed a program to enhance the profession in several areas:
While there have been a number of significant grants for research and other activities, the AAC commitment provides the continuous investment of substantial dollars required to move the profession forward in a number of key areas. In years to come, this program will likely be considered one of the catalysts that takes acupuncture and Oriental medicine to a new level in the American health care arena.
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.
| Digital Exclusive
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?
| Digital Exclusive