Two more members of Congress have joined as co-sponsors of HR 818, the Federal Acupuncture Coverage Act of 2005, bringing the total number of co-sponsors to 38. The newest co-sponsors are:
Ms. Sanchez is the 10 th representative from California to co-sponsor HR 818, and the eighth member of the House Government Reform Committee to co-sponsor the legislation. The House Government Reform Committee is one of three committees currently investigating the merits of the bill. All told, representatives from 17 states and two U.S. territories have signed on as co-sponsors of HR 818.
For more information on the status of the Federal Acupuncture Coverage Act, visit http://thomas.loc.gov, and enter "HR 818" in the "Search Bill Text" box.
Fertility acupuncture sometimes gets presented as a narrow protocol: a handful of reproductive points applied uniformly across patients. What this case reinforced for me: The most powerful work happens when we read the whole picture. The hormone data, the constitutional tendency, the sleep, the digestion, and the menstrual pattern, so we can treat the environment the ovaries live inside.
Mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) affects more than 15% of the U.S. population but evades most practitioners’ radar. Just five years ago, it wasn’t even on my radar, despite already having 20 years of experience as a clinician at that time. The more I dug (similar to leaky gut and post-COVID syndrome), the more I found my patients were suffering from this disorder.
The motivation behind our practice of medicine is important, impacting not just our experience but also the experiences of those we treat. It is perhaps for this reason that the aspiration to help not just some, but all beings heal, has historically been an important part of the medical tradition. To explain this, we need to consider how medicine is interwoven with other social domains.