Acupuncture: Questions and Answers with an Expert

… and Answers about … In April 2003, I was … by Anupam Sharma, a … with the magazine from India, Fourth … which reaches 171,000 readers monthly both there

Questions and Answers about Acupuncture

In April 2003,Guest Posting I was interviewed by Anupam Sharma, a journalist with the magazine from India, Fourth Dimension, which reaches 171,000 readers monthly both there and abroad. I thought you’d like to read it, because I answered a lot of the commonly asked questions about acupuncture that I haven’t written about on the Pulse of Oriental Medicine (PulseMed.org), and because you probably won’t be able to get that magazine.

Anupam Sharma (AS): Dr. Brian Carter, Thank you for the prompt reply and agreeing to do this interview. Tell me, doctor, how does Acupuncture work? Please explain the science behind this traditional method of healing

Brian B. Carter (BBC): Acupuncture is based on Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine (CM) has its own system of diagnosis and treatment, and acupuncture is only one therapy within that medicine. Those who have developed CM since before 2500 B.C. (when our first literary work, the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine, was written) used both symptoms and signs to diagnose disease before treating it. They developed a unique form of diagnosis called ‘pattern differentiation.’ Patterns are sets of specific symptoms and signs. For us, finding the signs includes the feeling the pulse and looking at the tongue.

For acupuncture specifically, there is also diagnosis according to the channels. It’s actually a very complicated system of theories… not as simple as it first seems. That complexity allows for a sophisticated flexibility in diagnosis and treatment that can adapt to most clinical situations. According to modern science, acupuncture works via the immune and nervous systems. It has local peripheral nervous system and central nervous system effects. Professor and physicist Zang-hee Cho has begun to use PET scans to map the brain loci affected by specific acupuncture points. Acupuncture affects neurons, electrolytes, neuro-transmitters, and neuropeptides. But even once all that data is in, the traditional system of channels and pattern differentiation will still be the clearest map of how acupuncture works. The biomedical view of physical phenomena is not always well-integrated.

My best analogy is that your brain is a computer, and the acupuncture points are the keyboard; you do the right points, and that tells the brain how to change the configuration of the mind and body.

AS: In which diseases is acupuncture the most effective?

BBC: Most people are familiar with acupuncture’s effectiveness for pain. Most importantly for pain, it can prevent chronic pain syndromes where the nervous system still produces pain signals even in the absence of the original problem. In 1997, the NIH came up with a list of diseases for which the scientific literature supported efficacy, which included nausea and vomiting, pain, tennis elbow, menstrual cramps, and fibromyalgia.

That list was much shorter than what acupuncture has traditionally treated, of course. Since 1997, even more studies have shown effectiveness for early post-stroke, acute spinal cord injury, as an adjunct in alcoholism, labor pain, migraine, post-surgical nausea and vomiting, and as part of a smoking cessation program. These are the highest quality studies: randomized placebo-controlled trials (RCT’s) with more than 33 subjects per group. There are plenty more studies that don’t meet that high standard, but still may offer valuable insights for clinical practice.

There is currently a study of acupuncture for high blood pressure going on at Harvard, and early reports are that it’s very effective. I personally got a diabetic man disqualified from his free blood pressure medication study with a modern Chinese point prescription. Our weekly acupuncture treatments brought his blood pressure down below the study’s minimum requirement. Acupuncture also is great for a number of psychological conditions. There are 17 other RCT’s currently ongoing, all funded by the National Institutes of Health.

AS: Do you think that the modern western medicine has failed in curing certain kind of diseases like backaches, mental tension, or headaches?

BBC: It always depends on the cause. For backaches, we need an x-ray to see if the spine is involved. For a backache or headache due to a tumor, I would certainly want MRI’s and CT scans, and surgery. Of course, for cancer, we can do drug or Chinese herb chemotherapy. Or you can do drug chemo with supportive herbs to boost the immune system. For headaches, acetaminophen, aspirin, and NSAID’s are very useful, though acetaminophen is the leading cause of liver failure in hospitals, and NSAID’s can cause stomach ulcers. The new triptan drugs for migraines are very helpful for the acute migraine, but may not be as good as acupuncture and herbs for preventing recurrence. For any stubborn problems, or those for which western medicine cannot find the cause, acupuncture and herbs are superior.

As far as mental tension or stress goes, acupuncture and herbs work wonders. Western medicine uses sedatives and antidepressants. Most people don’t want to be sedated, some antidepressants have debilitating side effects like impotence, and others are difficult to come off of safely… some even will create a dependency of sorts such that you get a rebound depression after you’ve been off of them for a number of months.

AS: Alternative healing methods like yoga and meditation and acupuncture becoming more popular among the people in the west? If yes, why?

A lot of people like yoga because it’s physical. Meditation is hard for fast-paced noisy-headed Americans. Most people say they just can’t stop thinking. They don’t realize that they’re always thinking like that. We’re over-stimulated here.

Acupuncture is nice because it helps you stop thinking, reduces anxiety, produces calmness. You can meditate while the needles are in. Acupuncture is more popular here than Chinese herbs are because more MD’s accept it. There’s enough scientific evidence, and a number of MD’s are practicing acupuncture full-time. Americans still don’t understand herbal formulas, or the system of medicine that underpins Chinese herbs. They’re used to going to a health food store and buying the latest single herb for a single symptom. And there aren’t enough Chinese style herbalists in the U.S. to expose everyone to it yet.

AS: How long have you practiced acupuncture?

BBC: I’ve only been practicing a few years. I follow the idea that we need to learn true classical Chinese medicine before we can innovate intelligently, so I have a couple of mentors (Philippe Sionneau and Robert Chu) who have been practicing for about 10 years each. The formal school education is just the beginning. Our generation has a lot of translating to do to get Chinese medicine into English. Probably less than 1% of the literature has been translated. We have some of the most important and basic works, but we still have a lot to learn.

My job as I see it is to be a communicator. I have written hundreds of articles on my site (The Pulse of Oriental Medicine, www.pulsemed.org) and in other magazines that have reached more than 100,000 English-speaking patients. I have books and radio appearances in the works. There’s too much for any one of us to know everything, so I keep in touch with a broad range of experts – translators, scholars, MD’s, authors, so that I’m speaking authentically and accurately.

AS: Do you think acupuncture offers a better treatment than the allopathic medicine? If yes, then why isn’t it as popular as the latter?

BBC: Even in its country of origin, Chinese medicine has lost some popularity. When the communists took over in the 1950′s, they almost destroyed the traditional medicine. They wanted to catch up with the west and get our approval. But when Mao Tse-Tung got facial paralysis, it was acupuncture that fixed him. So he ordered the systemization of TCM. Now there are 3 branches of medicine in China: Chinese, Western, and the combination of the two. The latter is the most interesting, and probably the future of all medicine. For example, you can have an elevated Alk Phos level (a liver function test), with no western gallbladder pathology, but have symptoms of pain or discomfort along the Chinese acupuncture Gallbladder channel.

I don’t think we should say either acupuncture and western medicine is better. Each has their strengths and weaknesses. And to be accurate, we have to say that most of Chinese herbal medicine is allopathic, because allopathic means treating with opposites. We reduce excesses, and strengthen deficiencies, for example. What we do need to do is cooperate; practitioners of various kinds of medicine should work together for the benefit of each patient. To only use one kind of medicine is more of a religion than a medical practice. Chinese medicine practitioners need to learn what western medicine is good and bad at, and vice versa. Same goes for chiropractors, Ayurveda, Homeopathy, massage, etc.

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How is Functional Medicine Different From Traditional Medicine

Do you know the difference between functional medicine and conventional medicine? Let’s take a look at how functional medicine is filling the gaps in traditional medicine.

Copyright (c) 2014 LifeWorks Integrative health

Functional medicine is a science-based and natural way to bring people back to a healthier state. Functional medicine is patient-centered medical healing. However,Guest Posting instead of looking at and treating health problems as isolated illnesses and diseases, functional medicine treats individuals who have a number of bodily symptoms, imbalances and dysfunctions.

Diseases such as diabetes, cancer and fibromyalgia may appear to just be diseases. However, according to functional medicine, the causes of these disease lie in an altered physiology that is the result of imbalances and dysfunctions within the body. Almost always, the cause of a disease and it’s symptom are related to an underlying dysfunction or imbalance in the body’s systems.If you were to visit with a doctor, conventional medicine is just going to treat the disease or illness. Rarely will treatment with conventional medicine lead to long-term relief and an improved and healthier lifestyle.

With functional medicine, the underlying cause is identified and treated. Because of this, the patient has a much better chance of improving their health. By using scientific principles, functional medicine treatment is able to use advanced diagnostic testing and treatments other than prescription medications and surgery to restore balance to the body.The overall goal of functional medicine? To help ensure a patient’s lifelong, optimal health.

How Functional Medicine is Filling the Gaps in Health Care

It probably comes as no surprise that today’s health care system has gaps. Today’s health care system is in trouble because it follows a medical management model. This medical management model works well when it comes to acute health problems. When it comes to chronic health problems, today’s conventional medicine is much less successful. If you have a heart attack, pneumonia or need life-saving surgery, the quick-thinking used by doctors in modern medicine is something that we are all very thankful for. Life-saving technology, surgery and antibiotics are necessary in certain instances. We should all be very grateful for these interventions should we ever find ourselves in a serious medical emergency or in need of antibiotics to cure an infection.

However, conventional medicine often quickly reaches for medications, surgery and other acute treatment options when another approach is needed. When it comes to those with chronic, debilitating ailments — including heart disease, diabetes or arthritis, a different approach is needed. This is where functional medicine comes into play.

The Functional Medicine Approach to Healing:

To help alleviate chronic medical conditions, the functional medicine approach is grounded in two scientific principles.Add what is lacking in the body to help bring it’s physiology back to an optimal state of functioning.Remove anything that impedes the body from moving forward to a goal of optimal physiology.In short, the goals of functional medicine is to find a natural approach to bringing the body back to a healthy state. In order for the body to be brought back to a healthy state, functional medicine identifies the reasons why the body is malfunctioning. Functional medicine addresses those issues in a way that is appropriate for each individual patient.In many cases, functional medicine practitioners will use advanced laboratory testing to help identify the root causes (or multiple cases) of a patient’s health problems.

Listening to a patient’s symptoms and asking questions of their food choices, activities and lifestyle can also be very helpful in helping a functional medicine practitioner to determine the cause(s) of a patient’s chronic pain. As far as treatment goes, functional medicine practitioners use a combination of natural agents, nutrition changes, lifestyle changes, spiritual counseling, emotional counseling and pharmaceuticals. Natural agents can include supplements, homeopathics, herbs and nutraceuticals. Education also plays an important role in returning a patient’s physiology back to an optimal state. Education helps to empower patients to take charge of their own health. When patients are in charge of their own health and well-being, there is likely going to be much greater success when it comes to treatment.

Functional Medicine and Treating Symptoms vs. Treating the Person

In today’s conventional medicine world, medication is used to get rid of patient’s symptoms. In many cases, the symptoms return when a patient stops using the medications. For example, think of medications used to treat arthritis. When a patient stops taking their medications, they are likely going to experience the pain of arthritis all over again. This is where functional medicine is different. Instead of just masking the problem with medication, function medicine aims at restoring the body’s natural function.

While functional medicine practitioners may prescribe pharmaceuticals, these medications are only prescribed to move the patient in the right direction. This is so the patient will not always be dependent on prescription medications. For instance, conventional medicine doctors would typically prescribe a medication like Prilosec for treatment of acid reflux or heartburn. As soon as the patient stops taking this medication, their symptoms will return. On the other hand, a functional medicine doctor may discover that the patient’s heartburn is actually caused by a bacteria. By treating the bacteria and removing it from the body, the heartburn could very well be put to a permanent end.

It is important to realize that with functional medicine, treatment may vary greatly from patient to patient. Another important thing to remember about func

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