With 2022 coming to a close, let's take a short walk through the past year – a year featuring tremendous achievements that position the acupuncture profession – and every acupuncture practitioner – for continued success in the new year and for years to come.
State Legislative Victories
The most comprehensive state acupuncture bill passed in Arizona this year. Nancy Barto de facto state senator for health freedom, authored and shepherded it through the state legislature. In 2022, this incredible woman also administered the Healer's Oath to the first class at Phoenix Institute of Herbal Medicine and Acupuncture (PIHMA) to graduate with their professional doctorate degree.
The state of Colorado also expanded its scope of practice in 2022 by adding full herbal practice.
These events are noteworthy for the acupuncture profession not just in Arizona and Colorado, but nationwide. State legislative victories are victories for the entire profession.
A Year of Rebirth
This has been a year of rebirth for the profession. Both the Florida State Oriental Medicine Association (FSOMA) and Pacific College of Health and Science (PCHS) celebrated in-person seminars this year (Acupuncture and Asian Medicine Conference and Pacific Symposium, respectively). It was wonderful to see each other in person again.
Numerous schools also received reaccrediation for their existing programs in 2022, including several new programs. This shows tremendous confidence in and growth by our profession.
I encourage you to visit the Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (ACAOM) website and review the rigorous requirements for our acupuncture schools.
Professional Standards
This was also a year to recognize the three primary organizations that regulate national standards for acupuncture in the U.S., with all three organizations celebrating their 40thanniversaries in 2022 ACAOM, recognized by the Department of Education, has 15 pages of laws and regulations for compliance. The Council of Colleges of Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine (CCAHM) ensures CDC, OSHA and HIPAA national standards are upheld. And the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM) provides national certification of acupuncture professionals, and updated its code of ethics this year to reflect the profession and its input.
The World Health Organization (WHO) also released the long-anticipated traditional medicine diagnostic codes for the world to use in 2022, after a delay from the year before. The 408 codes add to the WHO's 361 standardized acupuncture points, 4,000 terms in multiple languages, and guidelines for training for acupuncturists. U.S. acupuncturists will be learning these codes over the next several years so they can be integrated into ICD-11.
International and national standards, new codes and supporting documents are all helping our medicine gain the respect of other professions.
Continually Keeping You in the Loop
Acupuncture Today turned 22 years old in 2022, and continues to provide the profession with news features, clinical articles, research and more that help improve your care, grow your practice and spread the good word about our medicine. A great big "thank you" goes out to everyone who has supported AT, contributing content and is helping the profession move forward.
Ongoing Education: Legislators and The Public
H.R. 4803, the Acupuncture for Our Seniors Act, gained bipartisan sponsorship this year. Our federal lobbyists are working hard to get new sponsors to sign on to the bill. Legislators, acupuncture practitioners and students have all been educated about why the legislation matters, and what it will accomplish for acupuncturists and Medicare patients.
Also in 2022, the ASA helped states get proclamations for National Acupuncture Day by providing uniform wording. These proclamations took our education of state legislators and the public another step further.
As you read this, midterm election also have just taken place, bringing us new faces who need to be educated about the power of our medicine; and old faces who need to be reminded. Our federal lobbyists are delivering welcome packets to new legislators and their staffs as the first step in this critical process.
Let's Make 2023 Even Better
As we move forward into the new year, let's do so with an attitude of gratitude, and expand the profession to help others reach new levels of health. Acupuncture helped throughout the COVID-19 pandemic; now let's help patients recover, physically and emotionally. Best wishes for a happy, healthy, successful 2023!
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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