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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…

Most of the texts acupuncturists study in school are translations of works that are hundreds to thousands of years old. They offer diagnoses and treatment prescriptions for syndromes common in Asia, well before the advent of modern society. It is amazing how much power and value there is for modern…

In March, more than 200 delegates met at the Royal College of Physicians in London for the 10 th East-West Integrative Medical Conference. The conference, organized by the Chinese Medical Institute and Register (CMIR) and sponsored by AcuMedic Foundation, welcomed representatives from all over the world including the U.K., U.S.,…

My teachers told me to spend the first 20 years of my practice studying works by the ancestors. Looking back into history to find greatness is as old as Confucianism. But what happens after you have spent multiple decades reading medical writings? I was then taught to give those books…

By any measurement, heart disease is a major killer in our culture. In 2004, the latest year for statistics, coronary heart disease caused 452,300 deaths, the single leading cause of death in the United States. There are 15,800,000 people who are alive today with a history of heart attack and/or…

As I begin to write this column, I am starting to observe the upswing of the wellness revolution. This is happening in the U.S., as well as in other countries. I am asking myself several questions about the traditional medicine profession and I want to know what you think. Are…

The Virginia Tech massacre has, I’m sure, prompted scores of instructors to soul search and review past and present classes for troubled, disturbed students who might and who could harm themselves or others. The question is how far should an instructor go to ensure the student receives the appropriate counseling…

As many readers of Acupuncture Today know, I have long been a vocal critic of the quality of acupuncture and Oriental medicine (AOM) education in the U.S. and Canada. For a number of years, I placed the blame for the educational failings of our profession squarely on the shoulders of…

As acupuncturists, you certainly are aware of, and believe in, the benefits of acupuncture and Oriental medicine to help your patients. But what do your patients bring to the treatment table in terms of expectations and how might that affect their outcomes?

It’s sometimes difficult to grasp the totality of an issue that has been brewing for years. Currents of change might sway things one way, and then another. What once seemed so clear-cut can appear blurry and those once in agreement might end up standing on opposite sides of the issues…

We’ve all had the experience of feeling a patient’s pulse and noting it to be irregular. This is a common experience. We may feel a missed beat, or perhaps an extra beat, sometimes followed by a pause. Or the patient may have a rapid pulse rate, sometimes approaching twice the…