With A.B. 918, legislation that would replace California's acupuncture licensing exam (CALE) with one or more National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine exams as determined by the board, generating considerable debate, the legislation has become a two-year bill. This is generally reserved for legislation introduced early in the first half of a session that may not be able to meet specific progress deadlines mandated by the legislature.
According to the California State Oriental Medicine Association in announcing the change to its members: "In the world of legislative policy, this means:
Introduced on Feb. 17, 2021, by Assembly member Sharon Quirk-Silva, A.B. 918 would "amend Section 4938 of the Business and Professions Code, relating to healing arts" to require that an applicant for an acupuncture license in California, among other stipulations, obtain "a passing score on one or more examinations administered by the [NCCAOM], as determined by the board based on the skills, standards, and knowledge required for licensure pursuant to this act." Among several concerns voiced thus far regarding the current bill text is whether CALE should remain as an exam option.
Click here to track the progress of A.B. 918, including any amendments from the original and its progress through the California Assembly & Senate.
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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