Tina Chen is the sister of John Chen, the regular "Herbs and Herbalism" columnist for Acupuncture Today. Tina graduated from South Baylo University and the University of California at Irvine, and received extensive postgraduate training at Anhui Hospital, First Tienjin Hospital and Guananmen Hospital in the People's Republic of China. She is a licensed acupuncturist and is certified by the World Health Organization in traditional Chinese medicine, with specialties in herbology and internal medicine. She is currently a professor of Chinese herbology at South Baylo.
Structured water (H3O2) can be considered a fourth state of water between liquid and solid. It has the hexagonal structure of ice; however, missing a critical bond, it behaves more like a gel than a solid, but retains some of its crystalline structure.
In the past five years of my clinical practice, I have seen an astonishing upsurge in the chronic use of proton-pump inhibitor (PPI) medications for the gastrointestinal issue diagnosed by allopathic medicine as GERD. It is not uncommon to encounter patients taking these prescriptions for five-plus years.
Working with chronically ill patients entails acknowledging the reality that not all patients will survive their diagnosis. Chinese medicine and acupuncture play a crucial role in palliative and end-of-life care, addressing medication and disease side effects, alleviating pain associated with death, reducing anxiety and stress, and helping patients find peace during the dying process.
