There has been plenty of talk within the profession lately about education, employment rates and the burden of debt. Those discussions may be the impetus, at least in part, for the "Burden of Debt" survey being conducted by the American Association of Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine (AAAOM). The AAAOM provided details of this survey in email correspondence with AT:
"The Burden of Debt survey, recently published by the American Association of Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine, is part of a project that we at AAAOM had been putting together for some time now. Essentially, this project is looking for insight and, hopefully, solutions into better borrowing strategies and overall professional financial health. Recently we have had more and more members reaching out to us about their unique personal struggles regarding building their careers while trying to pay down student loans. In some cases, the loan debt is massive and seriously affecting the quality of life of that practitioner. Clearly we needed to find a way to respond, but with useful, real-world strategies.
"However, we need more data. In order to search for solutions, we need facts, variables, and quantifiable data, as opposed to anecdotal data from emails and hearsay. We needed to see:
"This survey is just the first step in our research. We do not take this subject lightly, and want to give it as much due diligence as the weight of it deserves. The results of this survey should hopefully identify patterns in borrowing and repayment. Once these patterns are more fully explored, then we can start to look for better solutions for AOM graduates and professionals for their financial health. As always, we look forward to your input."
To take the AAAOM Burden of Debt survey, click here.
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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