Our profession has a wonderful history of cultural diversity in its practice and theory. The teaching faculty at our educational institutions reflects that diversity, which rewards us with a rich weave of Oriental medicine information and teaching skills. Many of our finest faculty are practitioners first and teachers second; their dedication to our profession and our students allows us to pass on this precious tradition and experience.
Along with this tremendous asset comes a troubling problem. We are not approaching our profession with enough cohesion and attention to academic teaching standards. I feel that we could all benefit greatly by a strong national teachers association for Oriental medicine. It need not have any political aspirations or goals, but instead could concentrate on assisting our profession in our educational skills. The Council of Colleges of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine has started this process with a dialogue between faculty at one of its national meetings. I would like us to take this start and run with it.
We must be the driving force for our profession. It is in our best interest to be vitally concerned about our teaching abilities and how to continually improve them.
The faculty of our profession's colleges and the mentors of practitioners have always been the backbone of our education and quality of care. We have a debt of gratitude to all those who have given so much of themselves to help our medicine thrive and prosper. Let's spend some time and energy to put our heads together collectively to spearhead an educational forum for the profession.
I welcome your comments and input about this issue.
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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