Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA, 46th district) has become the 42nd co-sponsor of HR 818, the Federal Acupuncture Coverage Act of 2005. A five-time co-sponsor of the act from previous sessions of Congress, Rep. Rohrabacher is the 12th member of California's congressional delegation to co-sponsor H.R. 818.
Rep. Rohrabacher is also one of the most outspoken advocates of acupuncture in Congress. On June 24, 2003, in a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rohrabacher referred to several forms of healing, including acupuncture. "The American people need to have these available to them, these and other vehicles, for a good, healthy life." Rep. Rohrabacher's reference to acupuncture was also published in The Congressional Record.
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.