An exciting study has been published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine regarding the probability of U.S. medical physicians recommending "complementary health approaches" to their patients. For their study, the authors used "physician-level data" from the "2012 Physician Induction Interview of the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS PII), a nationally representative survey of office-based physicians."1
More than 22 percent (22.4%) of medical physicians surveyed recommend acupuncture to patients, according to the study. Massage therapy is the most-recommended complementary health approach (30.4 percent), followed by chiropractic / osteopathic manipulation (27.1 percent), herbs / nonvitamin supplements (26.5 percent) and yoga (25.6 percent).
Don't' worry about acupuncture's place on the list; consider what it means for you and your AOM practice: Approximately one of every five medical physicians recommends acupuncture to their patients.* Knowing this, now would be a good time to reach out to medical physicians in your community to see if they are receptive to working together. Chances are good that you'll connect with at least one MD who is looking to refer patients to you.
There has never been a better time for AOM practitioners to create professional relationships with medical doctors. Many MDs are looking for ways to get themselves and their patients escape the literal death grip of the pharmaceutical industry, particularly opioid manufacturers.
Political medicine and the pharmaceutical industry have historically been opposed to complementary health approaches, but medical physicians are seeing through the propaganda and forming their own opinions. So reach out and see which MD(s) in your community are willing to work with you. It will be a win-win-win for you, them and your patients.
*Interestingly, female MDs are even more likely to recommend acupuncture than male physicians, per the study.
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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