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It is with a degree of sadness that I open this month’s column by reporting on the passing of a recent graduate and contributor to Acupuncture Today, Marc O’Regan. Marc was a longtime resident of Santa Barbara, California, where he was a paramedic and physician assistant before attending Santa Barbara…

On Dec. 12, 2005, an Orange County Superior Court jury in Santa Ana, Calif. found American Whole Health, a managed care company, liable for damages of $210,000 for unauthorized taking and use of names and addresses of providers from the Web site of MPA Media, the publishers of Acupuncture Today.

In the March issue, Acupuncture Today spoke with Dr. Michael McCoy, the executive director of the National Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Alliance, about changes in the Alliance over the past few years, and the impact of a doctoral program on the acupuncture profession. In the final part of our two-part…

The High Falls Garden Fund has been awarded a $200,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation for a three-year program titled “Botanical Studies for Oriental Medicine.” Building on the foundation of an earlier project, the purpose of the botanical studies program is to provide educational support for students and practitioners…

Since the first U.S. practice laws were passed in Maryland, Nevada and Oregon in 1973, the acupuncture profession has succeeded in having acupuncture legislation passed in more than 40 states and the District of Columbia. Until recently, Michigan was one of the few states that did not have an acupuncture…

On Feb. 8, 2006, after an extensive confirmation process revealed that the security of hundreds of test questions in its exam database had been compromised, the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM) took the unprecedented step of cancelling its entire series of February exams. In response, the…

The following is a continuation of my interview with medical intuitive Terry L. Tipton. For those of you who are interested, the first part of our interview appeared in the February issue of Acupuncture Today.

I just started an acupuncture program at our local health center situated in a fairly rural area. Although it’s a free care program subsidized by the health center, there has been surprisingly low enrollment in the program. Could you offer some suggestions that may work in a non-urban area for…

Classical Five-Element Acupuncture is set apart from other systems of acupuncture by its core premise of diagnosing and treating a patient’s fundamental Causative Factor - the element among the five that is the source of imbalance. In addition, this system recognizes that the level of a patient’s imbalance (physical, mental,…

Does your practice suffer from a stagnant number of patient visits each week? This problem is symptomatic of poor practitioner-patient communication. Most new patients know nothing about how acupuncture works, but have high expectations about the results. Because they are more familiar with the immediate effects of pharmaceutical products and…

A patient presented with typical lower back pain following an overexertion episode when lifting a box. On the basis of this presenting complaint and after examination, the patient was diagnosed with lumbar strain and sprain, but I was required to spend about an hour and 10 minutes on an examination…

At the end of each year, as the holidays arrive and we prepare for the challenges of the year ahead, reflection on life seems to be in the wind. Why have we chosen this profession? What does our work give to our community and to ourselves? Are we doing enough…

Social entrepreneurship is one of the most exciting concepts to emerge in the last decade, especially for self-employed people and small business owners. Closely related to the sustainable business movement, social entrepreneurship reflects the belief that not only does a healthy business have a triple bottom line of “people, planet…

Competitive swimmers must train long hours and, in many cases, multiple times a day in order to achieve their goals. It has been estimated that these athletes swim approximately 6-8 miles (10,000-14,000 meters) a day, 6-7 days a week. Some distance swimmers swim close to 24,000 meters a day, which…

The Acupuncture Poll’s question for December 2005 was: On average, how many patients do you treat during a typical day in practice?

I recently returned from an excursion to Toronto, Canada. Now that I’m safely back in the states, I am of the opinion that with the possible exception of China, Toronto may have more acupuncture and Oriental medicine regulations than anywhere else in the world.

Looking at the face is as important a diagnostic tool as listening to the pulse. When observing the face, there are three aspects that are noted. First is the physical structure - the size, shape, and placement of bone and cartilage. This corresponds to “man.” Second is the glitter of…

The Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Society of Massachusetts (AOMSM, formerly the Acupuncture Society of Massachusetts, or ASM) recently sponsored a public seminar, “Ancient Medicine in a Modern World,” in Brookline, Mass. Under the direction of president Ra’ufa Clark, the AOMSM is re-invigorating professional activity across the state by providing educational…

Impingement syndrome is one of the most common diagnoses among people with shoulder problems. It affects the rotator cuff, a group of muscles and tendons that secure the arm to the shoulder joint and allow the arm to rotate. People diagnosed with impingement syndrome usually experience pain in the area…

In 2004, Dr. Michael McCoy succeeded Tierney Tully as the new executive director of the National Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Alliance. Not only did the Alliance acquire a person with more than two decades of management and educational experience when Dr. McCoy was hired, they added to their ranks something…