Dr. John Chen is a recognized authority on western pharmacology and Chinese herbal medicine. He graduated from the South Baylo University School of Oriental Medicine in 1990 and the University of Southern California (USC) School of Pharmacy in 1994. He has also received extensive postgraduate training in China specializing in herbology and internal medicine.
Dr. Chen is an assistant professor at USC School of Pharmacy, Yo San University, Emperor's College and Los Angeles College of Chiropractic. He also serves on the American Association of Oriental Medicine's (AAOM) herbal medicine committee.
Dr. Chen is the lead author of Chinese Medical Herbology and Pharmacology (2003, Art of Medicine Press) and Chinese Herbal Formulas and Applications (2008, Art of Medicine Press). You can contact him with questions and comments at john.chen@evherbs.com.
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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