Mary J. Rogel, PhD, DiplAc, LAc, played a major role in legalizing acupuncture in Illinois. She was the Chairman of the Illinois Board of Acupuncture for 14 years, and served for many years on the Board of the Illinois State Acupuncture Association. Mary graduated from the Midwest Center for the Study of Oriental Medicine in 1986 and has a full-time acupuncture practice in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. She is a licensed provider of acupuncture continuing education in Illinois, editor of Oriental Medicine Journal, and a teacher with the online and in person Panacea Community. Mary also holds a PhD in social psychology from The University of Chicago.
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.
| Digital Exclusive
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?
| Digital Exclusive