acupuncture

THE FIVE ELEMENTS. Another basis of Chinese theory is that the world and body are made up of five main elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water.
These elements are all interconnected, and each element either generates or controls another element.
For instance, water controls fire and earth generates metal. Each organ is associated with one of the five elements.
The Chinese system uses elements and organs to describe and treat conditions.
For instance, the kidney is associated with water and the heart is associated with fire, and the two organs are related as water and fire are related.
If the kidney is weak, then there might be a corresponding fire problem in the heart, so treatment might be made by acupuncture or herbs to cool the heart system and/or increase energy in the kidney system.
The Chinese have developed an intricate system of how organs and elements are related to physical and mental symptoms, and the above example is a very simple one.
Although this system sounds suspect to Western scientists, some interesting parallels have been observed. For instance, Western medicine has observed that with severe heart problems, kidney failure often follows, but it still does not know exactly why.
In Chinese medicine, this connection between the two organs has long been established.
MEDICAL PROBLEMS AND ACUPUNCTURE.
In Chinese medicine, disease as seen as imbalances in the organ system or chi meridians, and the goal of any remedy or treatment is to assist the body in reestablishing its innate harmony.
Disease can be caused by internal factors like emotions, external factors like the environment and weather, and other factors like injuries, trauma, diet, and germs.
However, infection is seen not as primarily a problem with germs and viruses, but as a weakness in the energy of the body that is allowing a sickness to occur.
In Chinese medicine, no two illnesses are ever the same, as each body has its own characteristics of symptoms and balance.
Acupuncture is used to open or adjust the flow of chi throughout the organ system, which will strengthen the body and prompt it to heal itself.
A VISIT TO THE ACUPUNCTURIST.
The first thing an acupuncturist will do is get a thorough idea of a patient's medical history and symptoms, both physical and emotional.
This is done with a long questionnaire and interview.
Then the acupuncturist will examine the patient to find further symptoms, looking closely at the tongue, the pulse at various points in the body, the complexion, general behavior, and other signs like coughs or pains.
From this, the practitioner will be able to determine patterns of symptoms which indicate which organs and areas are imbalanced.
Depending on the problem, the acupuncturist will insert needles to manipulate chi on one or more of the twelve organ meridians.
On these twelve meridians, there are nearly 2,000 points that can be used in acupuncture, with around 200 points being most frequently used by traditional acupuncturists. During an individual treatment, one to 20 needles may be used, depending on which meridian points are chosen.
Acupuncture needles are always sterilized and acupuncture is a very safe procedure.
The depth of insertion of needles varies, depending on which chi channels are being treated. Some points barely go beyond superficial layers of skin, while some acupuncture points require a depth of 1-3 in (2.5-7.5 cm) of needle.
The needles generally do not cause pain. Patients sometimes report pinching sensations and often pleasant sensations, as the body experiences healing.
Depending on the problem, the acupuncturist might spin or move the needles, or even pass a slight electrical current through some of them.
Moxibustion may be sometimes used, in which an herbal mixture (moxa or mugwort) is either burned like incense on the acupuncture point or on the end of the needle, which is believed to stimulate chi in a particular way.
Also, acupuncturists sometimes use cupping, during which small suction cups are placed on meridian points to stimulate them.
How long the needles are inserted also varies. Some patients only require a quick in and out insertion to clear problems and provide tonification (strengthening of health), while some other conditions might require needles inserted up to an hour or more.
The average visit to an acupuncturist takes about 30 minutes.
The number of visits to the acupuncturist varies as well, with some conditions improved in one or two sessions and others requiring a series of six or more visits over the course of weeks or months.

Acupuncture Shoes

According to Chinese traditional medicine theory, body aging starts with the aging of feet!It is easy to judge a person healthy or not by just a glance at his walking steps: If he walks slowly or unsteadily, he must be weak or sick! If he walks fast and steadily, you can not help saying:" Oh, this guy is so energic and strong!" So when people want to keep strong and healthy, he should first keep his feet strong and healthy. On the baseboard of the feet, there are 68 acupuncture points which is in charge of the functions of different body organs. If people seldom move , the acupuncture points will age, so do the other body organs, then the whole body does! The massage slippers are developed based on this theory. It has wooden sole. The massage parts - 136 wooden nails with round top fixed on the sole. It can massage every acupuncture points of the baseboard, thus strengthens the functions of the body organs! It is very nice health care appliances. When you wear the slippers, you can do massage at the same time and keep healthy. Doing massage is so easy!

Acupuncture

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consensus Development Program was established in 1977 and is designed to assess health technology. The program organizes major conferences that produce consensus statements and technology assessment statements on controversial issues in medicine important to health care providers, patients, and the general public. The following statement is from the NIH Consensus Development Statement on Acupuncture on November 3-5, 1997.
Acupuncture as a therapeutic intervention is widely practiced in the United States. There have been many studies of its potential usefulness. However, many of these studies provide equivocal results because of design, sample size, and other factors. The issue is further complicated by inherent difficulties in the use of appropriate controls, such as placebo and sham acupuncture groups.
However, promising results have emerged, for example, efficacy of acupuncture in adult post-operative and chemotherap nausea and vomiting and in post-operative dental pain. There are other situations such as addiction, strok rehabilitation, headache, menstrual cramps, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain, osteoarthriti, low back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and asthma where acupuncture may be useful as an adjunct treatment or an acceptable alternative or be included in a comprehensive management program.
Findings from basic research have begun to elucidate the mechanisms of action of acupuncture, including the release of opioids and other peptides in the central nervous system and the periphery and changes in neuroendocrine function. Although much needs to be accomplished, the emergence of plausible mechanisms for the therapeutic effects of acupuncture is encouraging.
The introduction of acupuncture into the choice of treatment modalities that are readily available to the public is in its early stages. Issues of training, licensure, and reimbursement remain to be clarified. There is sufficient evidence, however, of acupuncture's value to expand its use into conventional medicine and to encourage further studies of its physiology and clinical value. This statement is representative of the opinions of current standard medical practice.

acupuncture

Description:

Pediatric Acupuncture. Kym Kleiman performs a

child's balancing treatment at Liferoot Acupuncture

Clinic in Tucson, AZ.

Description:

Kym Kleiman performing prenatal Acupuncture at the Liferoot Acupuncture Clinic in Tucson, AZ.

Acupuncture

After reviewing the existing body of knowledge, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) removed acupuncture needles from the category of "experimental medical devices."

The FDA now regulates acupuncture needles, just as it does other devices such as surgical scalpels and hypodermic syringes, under good manufacturing practices and single-use standards of sterility.
                                             The program organizes major conferences that produce consensus statements and technology assessment statements on controversial issues in medicine important to health care providers, patients, and the general public. The following statement is from the NIH Consensus Development Statement on Acupuncture on November 3-5, 1997.

Acupuncture as a therapeutic intervention is widely practiced in the United States. There have been many studies of its potential usefulness.

However, many of these studies provide equivocal results because of design, sample size, and other factors.

The issue is further complicated by inherent difficulties in the use of appropriate controls, such as placebo and sham acupuncture groups.

Acupuncture

One of the major challenges in acupuncture research is in the design of an appropriate placebo control group

In trials of new drugs, double blinding is the accepted standard, but since acupuncture is a procedure rather than a pill, it is difficult to design studies in which both the acupuncturist and patient are blinded as to the treatment being given. The same problem arises in double-blinding procedures used in biomedicine, including virtually all surgical procedures, dentistry, physical therapy, etc.

Blinding of the practitioner in acupuncture remains challenging. One proposed solution to blinding patients has been the development of "sham acupuncture", i.e., needling performed superficially or at non-acupuncture sites. Controversy remains over whether, and under what conditions, sham acupuncture may function as a true placebo, particularly in studies on pain, in which insertion of needles anywhere near painful regions may elicit a beneficial response.

A review in 2007 noted several issues confounding sham acupuncture

Acupuncture therapy

Acupuncture has been used to treat a variety of illnesses for more than 2,000 years. Acupuncture is a component of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) system of medicine. As such, a diagnosis based on TCM is generally made prior to the administration of acupuncture needles. This TCM diagnosis, which is much different than diagnosis in Western medicine, is based on a practitioner's observation (of the pulse and tongue) and a thorough patient interview. The patient interview is useful for assessing the body's balance of yin and yang (hot or cold properties), for evaluating deficiency or excess patterns of disease, and for determining the state of the body's internal organs and channels. Once an assessment is made, a series of acupuncture points is selected to improve the balance of yin and yang, to harmonize a deficient or excess condition, and to nourish the organ or channel involved in the disease process. Stimulation of the selected acupoints (situated along 'meridians' in the body) by inserting needles is believed to promote the flow of energy through the system, and thereby restore the body's balance.

Acupuncture Therapy

The traditional acupuncture points are no more real than the black spots a drunkard sees in front of his eyes."
The meridians of acupuncture are no more real than the meridians of geography. If someone were to get a spade and tried to dig up the Greenwich meridian, he might end up in a lunatic asylum. Perhaps the same fate should await those doctors who believe in [acupuncture] meridians."
Felix Mann tried to join up his medical knowledge with that of Chinese theory.
In spite of his protestations about the theory, he was fascinated by it and trained many people in the west with the parts of it he borrowed. He also wrote many books on this subject. His legacy is that there is now a college in London and a system of needling that is known as "Medical Acupuncture". Today this college trains Doctors and western medical professionals only.
Medical acupuncture has caused much controversy amongst traditional practitioners; the British Acupuncture Council wished for it to be called 'treatment using needles', and removing from it the title 'Acupuncture', as it is so different to traditional methods but have had to retract this after pressure from the medical profession. Mann proposed that the acupuncture points related to the nerve endings and he reassigned the points different uses. He altered the theory so that the treatments given are no longer individual to each client, a central premise of traditional theory. Traditionally the needle combinations differ according to the age of the client, the length of time they had the condition, the type of pain they experience and their health history. In medical acupuncture none of this is addressed and the presenting symptom is treated using a set group of points.
A few Chinese scientists we met maintained that although Qi is merely a metaphor, it is still a useful physiological abstraction (e.g., that the related concepts of Yin and Yang parallel modern scientific notions of endocrinologic [sic] and metabolic feedback mechanisms).
They see this as a useful way to unite Eastern and Western medicine. Their more hard-nosed colleagues quietly dismissed Qi as only a philosophy, bearing no tangible relationship to modern physiology and medicine.
George A. Ulett, MD, PhD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of Missouri School of Medicine states:
"Devoid of metaphysical thinking, acupuncture becomes a rather simple technique that can be useful as a nondrug method of pain control. He believes that the traditional Chinese variety is primarily a placebo treatment, but electrical stimulation of about 80 acupuncture points has been proven useful for pain control.
Ted J. Kaptchuk, author of The Web That Has No Weaver, refers to acupuncture as "prescientific." Regarding TCM theory, Kaptchuk states:
"These ideas are cultural and speculative constructs that provide orientation and direction for the practical patient situation. There are few secrets of Oriental wisdom buried here. When presented outside the context of Chinese civilization, or of practical diagnosis and therapeutics, these ideas are fragmented and without great significance. The "truth" of these ideas lies in the way the physician can use them to treat real people with real complaints.
According to the 1997 NIH consensus statement on acupuncture:
"Despite considerable efforts to understand the anatomy and physiology of the "acupuncture points", the definition and characterization of these points remains controversial. Even more elusive is the basis of some of the key traditional Eastern medical concepts such as the circulation of Qi, the meridian system, and the five phases theory, which are difficult to reconcile with contemporary biomedical information but continue to play an important role in the evaluation of patients and the formulation of treatment in acupuncture.
At least one study found that acupuncture "seems to alleviate pain just barely better than sticking needles into nonspecified parts of the body and concluded that some of acupuncture's effects may be due to the placebo effect.
According to The Straight Dope, a popular question-and-answer newspaper column published in the Chicago Reader:
Traditional acupuncture theory is a quaint patchwork of folklore with about as much relevance to current medical practice as medieval European notions about the four bodily humors. While it may be useful as a guide to future research, no scientist would regard it as satisfactory as it stands.

Acupuncture Therapy

The acupuncturist decides which points to treat by observing and questioning the patient in order to make a diagnosis according to the tradition which he or she utilizes. In TCM, there are four diagnostic methods: inspection, auscultation and olfaction, inquiring, and palpation.
Inspection focuses on the face and particularly on the tongue, including analysis of the tongue size, shape, tension, color and coating, and the absence or presence of teeth marks around the edge.
Auscultation and olfaction refer, respectively, to listening for particular sounds (such as wheezing) and attending to body odor.
Inquiring focuses on the "seven inquiries", which are: chills and fever; perspiration; appetite, thirst and taste; defecation and urination; pain; sleep; and menses and leukorrhea.
Palpation includes feeling the body for tender "ashi" points, and palpation of the left and right radial pulses at two levels of pressure (superficial and deep) and three positions Cun, Guan, Chi (immediately proximal to the wrist crease, and one and two fingers' breadth proximally, usually palpated with the index, middle and ring fingers).
Other forms of acupuncture employ additional diagnostic techniques. In many forms of classical Chinese acupuncture, as well as Japanese acupuncture, palpation of the muscles and the hara (abdomen) are central to diagnosis.

Acupuncture therapy

Classical texts describe most discuss of the main acupuncture points as existing on the twelve main and two of eight extra meridians (also referred to as mai) for a total of fourteen "channels" through which qi and Blood flow. Other points not on the fourteen channels are also needled. Local pain is treated by needling the tender "ashi" points where qi or Blood is believed to have stagnated. The zang-fu of the twelve main channels are Lung, Large Intestine, Stomach, Spleen, Heart, Small Intestine, Bladder, Kidney, Pericardium, Gall Bladder, Liver and the intangible SanJiao.
The eight other pathways, referred to collectively as the qi jing ba mai, include the Luo Vessels, Divergents, Sinew Channels, ren mai and du mai though only the latter two (corresponding to the anterior and posterior sagittal plane of the torso respectively) are needled. The remaining six qi jing ba mai are manipulated by needling points on the twelve main meridians.
Normally qi is described as flowing through each channel in a continuous circuit. In addition, each channel has a specific aspect and occupies two hours of the "Chinese clock".
Flow of qi through the meridians

Flow of qi through the meridians
Zang-fu	Aspect	Hours
Lung	taiyin	0300-0500
Large Intestine	yangming	0500-0700
Stomach	yangming	0700-0900
Spleen	taiyin	0900-1100
Heart	shaoyin	1100-1300
Small Intestine	taiyang	1300-1500
Bladder	taiyang	1500-1700
Kidney	aoyin	1700-1900
Pericardium	jueyin	1900-2100
San Jiao	shaoyang	2100-2300
Gallbladder	shaoyang	2300-0100
Liver	jueyin	0100-0300
Lung (repeats cycle)