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I spent a beautiful fall day coaching a group of eight CEOs on how to lower stress and enhance longevity. The retreat was to conclude with acupuncture treatments. Although my plan to administer acupuncture was in the event marketing piece, I ran into some surprising resistance as the time grew…

As a business coach to many acupuncturists over the past few years, it has become apparent to me that there are essentially two kinds of practitioners. The first group accounts for roughly 5-10 percent of all the acupuncturists currently in practice. This group is thriving. They enjoy a high-volume, high-income…

I recently met Richard Martinez, MD, of the Program in Health Care Ethics, Humanities and Law at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. Rick is a compassionate man who has expertise in forensic psychiatry and ethics. He has written a paper that I believe can provide a good model…

Shi Quan Da Bu Tang (All-Inclusive Great Tonifying Decoction) is one of the most commonly used herbal formulas today. Historically, it was used to treat qi and blood accompanied by yang deficiency and cold manifestations. The original source is from the Tai Ping Hui Min He Ji Ju Fang(Imperial Grace…

It has been two years since the FDA’s Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) requirements became regulations. These are those guidelines that are going to update and change some of the methods practiced in the schools and offices of Oriental medicine practitioners. Yes, these are the ones in relation to herbs,…

In the United States, spinal cord injuries (SCIs) affect approximately 250,000 individuals, with an estimated 12,000 individuals sustaining these injuries a year. Decades of research has been dedicated to the development of medical treatments that enhance short- and long-term survival from these injuries, along with improved understanding and pathophysiology of…

Acute combat-induced posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder diagnosed in 24 percent of injured combat veterans serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Onset of PTSD directly relates to multiple and lengthy combat-related deployments and trauma. Approximately one in six soldiers shows signs of PTSD on leaving Iraq and Afghanistan.…

The idea to market and promote NCCAOM certification started several years ago when the staff designed a course to enable diplomates to utilize their certification to promote their practice. The course provided practitioners with tips and methods to bring more awareness to the medicine. Frustrated with the little amount of…

Wellness seems to be the current buzzword on everyone’s lips. The larger question, however, is precisely what will be needed to truly achieve wellness. On Feb. 23, 2009, concurrent with the Institute of Medicine’s Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public (see the Public Health column), two…

Steven

When I decided to write this piece about Risk Management, I spoke with a couple of people in the department that came to me for treatment, as all hospital staff (and, as you will see later, all county workers) could do. I told them about some early disturbing experiences and…

In part one of this article (December 2008), I discussed the possibility of making a shift in our basic clinical viewpoint that involves discovering and seeing the place of basic wellness, and even goodness in our clients, and then building our treatments from that premise. If they are alive, these…

A headline caught my attention: “Economy Takes Toll on Mental Health.” It described the recent phenomena of San Francisco Bay Area psychologists and other mental health therapists seeing the effects of the recent economic events impacting their patient’s lives. One local therapist said, “Last week every one of my clients…

ACTCM Vice President Represented at Conference and OCOM Reduces Clinic Fees.

If you are an acupuncturist looking for ways to grow your private practice, we encourage you to do a little market research and see what other practitioners are doing to promote themselves. If you surf the Web or look at various display ads, you’ll probably notice rather quickly that most…

One of the most intrigue puzzles in Chinese medicine is that nobody has yet found any trace of meridians, despite the incredible usefulness of meridians in diagnosis and treatment of diseases. We favor the explanation that meridians are made up of aligned stable water clusters that have an electric dipole…

This is the intention for which I feel some acupuncturists long, with phrases such as “We need to be recognized as an equal in the profession,” or “We should be given the same stature as an allopathic physician.” Should we be responsible for bringing our Western medical knowledge up to…

As you are reading this article, the 2009 Spring Flush (harvest) should be well underway. According to the Chinese lunar calendar, there are predictions of an early spring season. My first tea tour of the year will be spent watching thousands of villagers out laboring in the fields, valleys and…

In the November 2008 issue of Acupuncture Today, of 182 respondents to the question of Do you want more articles on practice building, 90 percent were interested in more information. Sometimes I am truly amazed at the apparent apathy within the profession in regard to the need to develop ongoing…

An ovarian cyst is an abnormal collection of fluid (clear or bloody) with a thin wall that can appear in or on an ovary.1 They range in size from 2 mm to greater than 10 cm; from the size of a pea to a cantaloupe. They are almost always benign,…