The third time is a charm—the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced it's newest director, Dr. Helene Langevin.
This appointment comes after Stephen Straus, MD (the first director), who had no background (or interest) in complementary or alternative medicine modalities, and Josie Briggs, MD (the second director) who although had no background in complementary medicine, involved herself with the Veterans Administration and proactively sought treatments from various modalities, including acupuncture.
For those unfamiliar with Dr. Helene Langevin, earlier this year she co-authored, "What is the Point? The Problem With Acupuncture Research That No One Wants to Talk About." The paper argues that failure to use clear terminology and rigorously investigate the subject of acupuncture points has hindered acupuncture's growth as an evidence-based therapy.
As the new NCCIH director, Dr. Langevin will oversee the Federal government's lead agency for scientific research on the diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not generally considered part of conventional medicine.
The NIH director, Dr. Francis S. Collins said, "Helene's distinguished career and leadership in the integrative health community, along with her research on the role of nonpharmacologic treatment for pain, makes her ideally suited to lead NCCIH. We are so pleased to have her join the NIH leadership team."
Langevin will begin her new role in November 2018 after she closes out her job at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital.
For more information visit nccih.nih.gov.
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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