On March 25, 2009, the American Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (AAAOM) signed a contract with Sam Brunelli, of Team Builders International (TBI), to serve as its new lobbying firm. Brunelli brings to the table an extensive portfolio of experiences and contacts. He served President Ronald Reagan as director of Intergovernmental Affairs in the Department of Education. In 1988, he became the executive director and CEO of the American Legislative Exchange Counsel. During his eight-year tenure, the ALEC became the nation's foremost legislative organization dedicated to limited government, state sovereignty and free-market enterprise. In 1996, Mr. Brunelli formed Team Builders International to lobby at the federal, state, and local level.
In addition to his lobbying experience, Brunelli also has direct experience with the benefits of acupuncture treatment. After college, he was a walk-on left defensive end and left offensive tackle, starting for the Denver Broncos for nearly a decade. Having received acupuncture with considerable success as a past NFL football star, he highly respects its use in sports rehabilitation.
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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