Good Acupuncture Includes Dry Needling
Dear Editor:
I read Michael Zakko’s article on treating tennis elbow [“An Acupuncturist’s Guide to Treating Tennis Elbow,” June issue]. I’m an acupuncturist who does not understand why he compares dry needling favorably with acupuncture. He asserts that dry needling of trigger points is different than traditional acupuncture.
I do trigger-point work on tennis elbow with great success. He says that you would want to go get dry needling if the onset of the condition was acute. That’s absurd. Good acupuncture includes dry needling. Dry needling is an aspect of acupuncture.
As a profession, we are being infringed upon by PTs and DCs who want to take a key part of acupuncture away from us. We need to not support dry needling as separate, and I ask that Acupuncture Today consider this.
Jeff Olson, LAc, MAcOM
Washougal, Wash.
Praising the Art of Harmonious Design
Dear Editor:
Thank you, Mark Miller, for sharing your detailed and enlightened description of the inspiring qi-filled space you designed for Jenn Paschaen, LAc, for her busy street-level Chicago practice. [See “Using Synergy for Healing Spaces” in the January issue.] Your creative use of shoji screens, light and qi flow all reflect the dojo ideal you acquired through aikido.
Those of us steeped in Japanese medicine experience this harmonious sense of design from day one at the core of a teaching and healing practice. In my early days of zen shiatsu training, I even acquired the art of vacuuming the dojo carpet as a meditation!
Your article prompts us all to re-examine our clinics beyond the basic rules of sanitized spaces and antiseptic sprays. Do our clients feel safe and calm in a space created to enhance healing?
Thank you, Mark and Jenn!
Pam Ferguson, Dipl. ABT,
AOBTA, GSD- CI, LMT
Austin, Texas
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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