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On December 7, 1999, the U.S. FDA reclassified the status of acupuncture needles from class III (investigative devices subject to investigative device exemptions…) to class II (special controls). “The classification regulation (21 CFR 880.5580) for solid, stainless steel, acupuncture needles requires that these class II devices must comply with special…

The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics recently announced that acupuncturists will have their own unique occupational code in the 2018 BLS Handbook. The new Standard Occupational Code (SOC) is 29-1291, will be included in the next edition of the BLS Occupational Handbook, which will be published in 2018.

In response to the epidemic rates of opioid and heroin addiction, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) set new guidelines for physicians regarding treatment for pain. In an attempt to reduce the amount of opioids being prescribed, the CDC has listed guidelines for pain management that identify specific…

Acupuncture should play a more prominent role in U.S. healthcare during and after this post-Affordable Care Act era when chronic care and population health management are key concerns for all healthcare providers. To detect differences between patients treated for chronic symptoms with acupuncture only versus acupuncture plus conventional treatment, as…

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A large study published in January 2016 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that men who are vegans had a 35% lower risk of developing prostate cancer compared to non-vegan men. The study followed more than 26,346 men who are part of the Adventists Health Study-2. During the…

Typical treatments for low back pain involve large muscles like the quadratus lumborum, iliopsoas, and piriformis. However, there are situations when a very small muscle, the multifidus, can play a significant role in the diagnosis and treatment of low back muscular or spinal injury.

Sleepless nights, anxiety, mood swings, euphoric energy bursts, obsessive thinking, and a strange feeling in his chest. That is what Matt was experiencing when he first entered my practice. Rather than being concerned, he was loving every minute of it. He came to see me for a knee injury but…

Recently I’ve been thinking about all sorts of things which are hidden from our daily direct experience. That general category is what links nearly everything that catches my attention and then demands some kind of investigation. I’ve mostly written about the ways in which the mysterious worlds of acupuncture and…

One of the most common trends to see in clinical medical practice and public health is the cycles of health “buzzwords.” These come and go depending upon the current cultural zeitgeist. One year, “parasites” are causing all the issues, and the next year it’s “candida.” Currently, the ones I see…

Treat locally or distally? This question has frequented my thoughts for the treatment of pain throughout my acupuncture career. Each style has strengths and weaknesses, thus the versatile practitioner would do well to forgo dogmatic adherence to any one style in deference to the needs of the individual patient.

My last article discussed perception and its relationship to the primary channels. Before we get to the channels most commonly used to treat sensory disturbances, the small intestine and triple heater, we should first talk about the bladder channel. The bladder is a major crossroads within the primary channel sequence…

Anti-aging is a concept that we hear in reference to skin rejuvenation and growing older on a daily basis. Aging begins as soon as we are born; therefore “pro-aging” is embracing all stages of life gracefully, with vitality, wisdom, joy, and gratitude as the goal. This “enlightened aging” is a…

Anxiety, also referred to angst or hysteria, goes by many names. One, popularized by the sagacious Zhang Zhong Jing, who many practitioners of Chinese Medicine may be familiar with, is known as Restless Zang/Fu disorder. Anxiety disorders which include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and a myriad…

Q: I do not always use physical medicine services but in my state I do have a scope of practice that allows me to provide many of these services. I am trying to understand what “direct one-on-one patient contact” means in relation to physical medicine services. Specifically, the timed services…

ISO-TC-249: You may look at these letters and numbers and wonder what they are and what they might mean. They turn into: International Standards Organization- Technical Committee – 249. There is a global organization called The International Organization for Standardization. ISO is the world’s largest developer of voluntary international standards…