Lombard - This week marked an historic ceremony, with acupuncture and oriental medicine students each receiving a caduceus pin for their white coat. The caduceus is a traditional symbol for the healing professions, and dates back to the time of Hippocrates.
While the university has held pinning ceremonies in the past for DC and ND students (which are now combined with the current White Coat Ceremony scheduled each trimester), the Thursday, October 20th ceremony marks the first such event specifically for MSOM and MSAc students. President James Winterstein personally presented each AOM student with their pin, with the assistance of Vice President for Administrative Services, Ms. Tracy McHugh.
In addition to the recitation of the NUHS Student Oath, the ceremony included words from Assistant Dean for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, Dr. Frank Yurasek, as well as an address from Dr. Winterstein.
Both gentlemen pointed to the historic role played by National University in acupuncture education in the United States. Dr. Winterstien recounted how four years prior to President Nixon's trip to China, two chiropractic physicians who had traveled to China wrote a book on acupressure. In 1970 National's former president, Dr. Joseph Janse, had dispatched a group to China to study acupuncture. Upon the group's return, National conducted two clinical studies on acupuncture from 1970 to 1972. In 1972, National successfully petitioned the State of Illinois to allow it to teach courses in acupuncture. National was the first educational institution in Illinois, and in the United States, to receive such authorization.
With the opening of its MSAc and MSOM programs in 2006, National University has brought those initial efforts to their full fruition. "Acupuncture and oriental medicine have earned their prominent place in integrative medicine, and we are proud of our faculty and students in these fields for their professionalism and dedication," says President Winterstein.
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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