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Southern California University of Health Sciences (SCU), in Whittier, Calif., is launching a daytime acupuncture and Oriental medicine (AOM) program in September 2007. This new daytime program is offered in addition to the current evening program, enabling SCU to better serve students through expanded options for taking classes.

I am writing this article to share my research and understanding of hyperlipidemia. The statin drugs that are used to lower cholesterol are, by far, the most profitable drugs produced by the pharmaceutical companies. These drugs generate nearly $20 billion in annual revenues.

In a perfect world, after a patient visits a TCM clinic, a prescription (if formulated) and acupuncture and/or herbal medicine are administered, resulting in the amelioration of the patient’s presenting complaint. Unfortunately, this is not often the case in the West. In my clinical experience, the average Western patient brings…

This is the second article in a four-part series on xiao chai hu tang . Part one , with a complete list of references, appeared in the July 2007 issue.

Stress is one of the most prevalent influences in our lives today. In Australia, for example, neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders resulted in 49,415 hospitalizations in 2001-2002, while 95 percent of hospital consultant episodes were a consequence of adjustment disorders and reactions to severe stress. 1 Our daily lives are…

The revised CMS 1500 (8/05) form was put into mandatory use as of July 2, 2007.

As soon as I got to read and review Lorie Eve Dechar’s book, Five Spirits , I knew I wanted to interview her for this column. In addition to acupuncture and TCM, Lorie is trained in Jungian archetypal psychology and is a serious practitioner of Zen. She maintains a practice…

A couple of months ago, I received a series of phone calls from a woman out East whose mother had suffered a stroke and was in a care center near here (Iowa). The daughter was a recipient of acupuncture and thought acupuncture might help her mother recover faster and more…

Chinese medicine is more (and less!) than the symptom-sign complexes used to identify imbalances of the zangfu (vital and hollow organs). Current clinical doctrines arise from several themes of modernization that cloud the eyes of most contemporary people to the magical possibilities for healing discussed during the history of Chinese…

Where is your practice now? Did you just graduate? Are you thinking about starting your practice? Have you already started your practice? No matter the developmental stage of your practice of traditional medicine, you may need a jump start. What does that mean to you? For the purpose of discussion…

In the fall of 2005, Trudy McAlister received the Patient of the Year Award from the AAOM for her philanthropic work. Earlier that year, Mrs. McAlister made generous contributions that led to the establishment of a scholarship fund for students of Oriental medicine. She also endowed the fund with a…

“The Oprah Winfrey Show” recently featured acupressure as part of the show’s recurring health segment titled “Ask Dr. Oz.” The May 21 episode followed up on a February show in which Dr. Mehmet Oz, vice chair of surgery and professor of cardiac surgery at Columbia University, and founder and director…

Practitioners and other devotees of Oriental medicine are well-aware of acupuncture’s many health benefits - the profession has literally thousands of years of clinical success stories. The challenge in today’s evidence-based health care culture is the lack of solid, well-designed research to scientifically support these success stories, particularly for certain…

In the July issue of Acupuncture Today , we reported that the Food and Drug Administration was close to issuing a final ruling on good manufacturing practices for dietary supplements. The issue concerning the acupuncture community was how this rule would affect individual herbalists and Oriental medicine college pharmacies -…

The National Hospital of Traditional Medicine in Hanoi, Vietnam, will mark its 50 th anniversary with this year’s scientific conference June 6 through June 7. The Hanoi conference will be comprised of more than 400 scientists, professors, medical doctors and speakers from China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Canada, Italy and, of…

It is common for acupuncturists to have a patient who complains of serious pain. After the first treatment, the patient will feel immediate relief from their serious pain. However, at the second visit, the patient would often say, “Although I felt relief temporarily, the pain returned.” So no acupuncturist who…

Some years ago, after considerable hounding by the publisher of a national health magazine, I finally got around to sitting at the kitchen table one gloomy Sunday afternoon to write out a long-promised article on acupuncture. I put together a couple of graphics and a cover letter, and the article…

In clinical practice, we may wonder why a particular formula isn’t working well, despite our carefully planned herbal strategy. Treating wind heat or wind cold, for example, might seem straight- forward. Yet cold symptoms occasionally get worse after the patient drinks an herbal formula. There is more than meets the…

This article is based on the Chinese pathology lecture “Positive Negative Pain” given by Dr. J.D. van Buren of the International College of Oriental Medicine. Special thanks to Pauline van Buren for review of this material.

Xiao chai hu tang (Minor Bupleurum Decoction) is one of the most commonly used herbal formulas today. Historically, it was used to treat shaoyang syndrome. Today, it is used to successfully treat many disorders including hepatitis, liver fibrosis, liver cancer, jaundice, cholecystitis, cholelithiasis, pancreatitis, nephritis, acute tonsillitis, parotitis, stomatitis and…