The NCCAOM launched its new website and logo, along with a new designation for those nationally certified—NCCAOM National Board-Certified Acupuncturist. As the profession progresses in 2019 it's likely that national board certification will be a requirement for more employers.
Last year the Veteran's Administration (VA) added jobs for acupuncturists; however, a stipulation for employment rested on board certification.1 Another big player in the acupuncture field, Modern Acupuncture, also requires national board certification for employment. If 2018 is an indicator for what's to come it's likely acupuncturists will need this designation if they want to move ahead in certain areas of health care.
As the NCCAOM has been working diligently on helping acupuncturists move forward, they have also been gathering feedback from volunteers and various stakeholder groups to make some branding changes. The logo, now multi-colored, has a sleeker look, and the website has been updated with new navigation tools for a better user experience.
For more information please visit NCCAOM.org.
Reference
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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