A student stands over a patient, needle poised. They have a “perfect” prescription: a textbook combination of points harvested from a lecture slide on chronic lower back pain. But as the needle meets the skin, the student hesitates - the symptom of a quiet habit that has taken hold of our profession. We routinely say we “prescribe” points. It sounds efficient. It echoes the authority of biomedical culture and fits neatly into the insurance field. But vocabulary is never neutral; repeated long enough, it dictates behavior.
Mark Reinhard, BSEE, LAc / EAMP
Mark Reinhard, an acupuncturist with more than 30 years of experience, practices in Kent, Wash. He has taught electroacupuncture at the Northwest Institute of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (his alma mater), the Seattle Institute of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, and Bastyr University. Mark is also an electrical engineer (Georgia Tech, 1981 graduate), which he says is particularly relevant since many of acupuncture's effects are bioelectrical in nature. He is currently designing and building various electroacupuncture machines, and has been using frequency-specific microcurrent in practice for the past several years.