Participation is an essential component of advocacy to policymakers and the public. The American Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine has asked for AOM practitioners to consider volunteering their skills to demonstrate acupuncture on legislators and members of the public on Acupuncture Awareness Day. Details available here and registration for the event is also available on the AAAOM Web site.
The event will be held April 23, 2009 at the California State Capitol, 12th & L Streets, Sacramento, Calif. (Across from The Hyatt Regency Capitol Park)
Schedule of events:
Awareness Day and Rally Activities 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Acupuncture demonstrations, AOM product/services displays, fact sheets, presentations and discussions, and press events.
Capitol Rotunda Reception 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
There will be a hosted, catered, wine and hors d'oeuvres reception in the elegant historical Capitol Rotunda where participants can celebrate the brave journey traveled - honoring leadership and the open road to the mainstream of American health care. Sponsored by: Assembly member Mike Eng, 49th District
There will also be a keynote address, delivered by Dr. Choi Seung Hoon, dean of the College of Oriental Medicine, Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Korea. He was also the 2004 Appointee: Regional Advisor in Traditional Medicine at the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific. Sponsored by AAAOM and Acupuncture and Integrated Medical Society (AIMS), California State Oriental Medical Association (CSOMA) and others.
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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