Many of us, here on the East Coast, are experiencing another big snowfall as I write this. Where I live, we already have almost 5 inches on the ground, and it’s still snowing hard! Remember those spring-like days of just a few days ago? Well, that wasn’t just spring-LIKE – that was spring, showing itself!
For the Chinese, Spring arrives in early February, usually coinciding with the Chinese New Year. It is not a date on the calendar, but an energy that emerges, gradually and subtely, deep beneath the snow, the hardened ground, unseen at first. It is a movement, not a fixed date. It is about light, and stirrings, reaching upward, emerging. The little vines and seedlings are beginning to creep and crawl under the ground, rising toward the surface. Here, in the west, we say it’s spring when we actually see the first daffodils, crocuses, or forsythia buds.
Within our own bodies, stretching our tendons and muscles and imaginations, the beginnings of new plans, and new ideas all are the expression of spring energy bubbling to the surface. In fact, as the movement of spring begins inside each one of us, just like it is beginning beneath the snow and frozen ground, some of us experience what is referred to as “spring fever.” An acupuncture point on the bottom of the foot (ouch! ahh!), which is a spring point within the winter pathway, is named, “Bubbling Spring.”
Spring fever usually means some itchiness to get outside, to experience the warmth of the sun again. For some of us, feelings of irritability, impatience, grouchiness, headaches, aching and painful muscles flare up. Many of my patients at this time of year, come in complaining of feeling these things. I explain to them that this is spring expressing itself within them, and is, to some degree, perfectly normal. A little adjustment with an acupuncture needle, in Bubbling Spring or another well-chosen point, will flip the re-set button.
Look for the signs of spring in nature and in your own body. They are everywhere. The light has changed just a bit, the air has a different feel, the birds are singing a new song, and, closely studied, the buds are beginning to form. I have already heard reports locally of daffodil and forsythia sightings…and it’s not even February!
Think of the famous YinYang symbol. If the white area is spring/summer and the black is Fall/Winter, notice how there is a little bit of one inside the other. So, inside the dark/winter side is a little smidge of the light/spring. It is always there, even if sometimes we can’t see it. As the small white circle grows and grows, it eventually takes over and becomes it’s opposite. Yin and Yang is always moving – from one to the other, ever changing, ever evolving. Just like us, just like life. Isn’t nature wonderful?!
(NaturalNews) A recent study conducted by Henry Ford Hospital in Michigan revealed that acupuncture has even more benefits than previously thought for patients with breast cancer. In addition to reducing hot flashes better than drug therapy, acupuncture is effective at boosting the sex drive and overall sense of well-being in women undergoing intensive breast cancer treatment.
Published in the Journal of Oncology, the study highlights the superiority of acupuncture in improving the quality of life for breast cancer patients without imposing negative side effects like drugs do. Dr. Eleanor Walker, lead author of the study and division director of breast services in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Henry Ford, confirmed this to be true when explaining the details of the study.
Two groups, one receiving acupuncture for their symptoms and the other receiving Venlafaxine drug therapy, were observed over a 12 week period. Initially, all the women experienced a 50 percent reduction in hot flash and night sweat symptoms. At the end of the treatment period, however, the group that received Venlafaxine experienced an immediate increase in symptoms while the acupuncture group did not.
The purpose of the study was to focus on alternative treatments to Venlafaxine that would better alleviate the negative side effects of breast cancer treatment and ultimately encourage women to continue participating in it.
According to the National Cancer Institute, 13 percent of women will develop breast cancer during their lifetime. Since conventional treatment is long and difficult, researchers hope to alleviate some of the associated misery with methods other than drug therapies that only make the situation more difficult.
Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Once again, another clinical study scientifically demonstrates the power of acupuncture to make real, measurable improvements in the health and lives of patients.
It’s no surprise, of course: Acupuncture has been used safely and effectively for over five thousand years in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and literally hundreds of clinical trials conducted over the last twenty years have shown it to be remarkably safe and effective in treating a variety of health complaints from back pain to infertility.
Acupuncture works because the body reacts to stimulation with a healing response (well, that’s only part of the reason acupuncture works, actually). A skilled acupuncture practitioner can initiate a healing response in the patient that no drug, no surgery and no medical intervention could ever accomplish.
That’s what’s really interesting about acupuncture: It doesn’t do any healing. Rather, acupuncture stimulates the body to heal itself. This idea fails to be recognized at all in conventional medicine, which continues to follow the long-outmoded belief that the doctor heals the patient and that, astonishingly, the patient has no role in his or her own healing.
Practitioners of acupuncture knew thousands of years ago what many western doctors still haven’t figure out today: The patient is the healer. The doctor is merely an initiator of the patient’s own self-healing ability.
Sources for this story include: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_relea…
Tuesday morning, I had my first appointment with an acupuncturist. I was nervous and curious and not a little worried that I’d get another one of “those” doctors – you know the ones – they know better than you. As you sit there, half-dressed on the examination table, they stand there and talk to you as though you were a child with a learning disability. They explain things in technical detail with as much medical jargon as possible (and an evil twinkle of glee behind their eyes that says, “I’m smarter and better than you because I’m a doctor”).
If you ask a question, they politely scoff and whatever vague excuse for an answer they give you is accompanied by a smug and very falsely patient smile. You can almost see the word “idiot” being projected between your heads, transporting you instantly to a time when you used to sit on the floor in your parents’ livingroom and watch “Sesame Street”’s silouhetted heads spell out basic words. If you question anything they’ve said because you might actually know what you feel in your own body better than they since you do have the advantage of first person POV, the answer is almost inevitably preceded by a derisive snort.
This is, of course, not to say that all doctors are that way. Far from it. In fact, one of my best friends dating all the way back to my college days is now a doctor. She’s fantastic with all her patients and she knows that I’m a good enough friend that if ever she did get jaded enough to start acting that way, I’d be the one to let her know.
Luckily for me, this doctor was nothing like that either. He was a very kind, knowledgable man who sat patiently and listened, a rare quality in a doctor past the first sentence or two. Typically, when a doctor makes a decision, his/her mind snaps closed like a heavy book. You can almost hear it happen. The rest are questions that you try to answer while still squeezing other important information into the encounter but you somehow know the good doctor’s filter trapped them and flicked them away like bothersome gnats. They hear the words they want to and the rest float up and into oblivion while they bend their heads studiously and scribble things no one else could possibly read down on a notepad. I find I always have an obsurd urge to tilt my head until I am between the paper and the doctor’s face and force him/her to actually look at me and acknowledge me as another human being.
Then you wait. Sitting there in one of those awful “gowns” that tie in the back – why is that, anyway? I can tie the one at the back of my neck with no issue but the other makes me twist my arms or body around in unnatural and uncomfortable ways and no matter how tightly you tie them, you still feel a breeze and know your unmentionables are “hanging out to dry” so to speak.
The gowns in the acupuncturist’s office were like luxury gowns as far as I was concerned. The ties went all the way around to the sides and I had no difficulty with them. He put me on the table and was very quick and efficient with his needles – I barely felt them at all. Once he put them in the tightest muscles in my back, I actually felt them relax. They just let go all at once and I literally felt like I’d melted into the table. I didn’t feel like I could move. It was bliss. No mere massage could have done this.
When I left, my legs were wobbly because the muscles were all so relaxed and I couldn’t believe how good it felt. You know how you feel after you go on a ride at an amusement park and laugh the entire time? That was as close as I can come. I was extremely sore that night and all the next day but the doctor called me first thing in the morning and he explained that a first experience is different for everyone and that it was normal to feel that way. Today I do feel better. I go back tomorrow and I cannot wait. I highly reccommend it to anyone who has ever felt stressed to the breaking point.
Fair warning, dear readers, today’s blog is about our bodies … and stuff. Read on with great trepidation, for once you start you won’t want to stop, unless something better grabs your attention.
On my way home from work Friday night I started thinking about how there have been lots of times in my life where I’ve had something great, like the perfect outfit or the world’s most relaxing massage, and then when it was gone or over I missed it and wished I’d appreciated it more when I had it.
It occurred to me that there may come a time when I will wish I had spent time appreciating the body that I have. That’s right, I’m talking about my human, physical form. I’m young and healthy and when I’m older or, depending on what you believe comes after life, when I’m dead, I may wish that I’d spend time really enjoying and appreciating what it feels like to be in this body now.
I started to really pay attention to what it felt like to be me from the inside out: the slightly sore muscles from recent work outs, the way it feels to move my hands, seeing clearly out of my eyes. How does it feel to be tall (or short or in between)? Am I hungry? What exactly does that feel like? Is it the same for everyone?
The odd thing was that as I concentrated on how it felt to be me my body relaxed, physically and mentally. My thoughts slowed down and I was suddenly calmer. It was a great feeling and I’ve been working on keeping that feeling up ever since.
Keeping any thought going for a long period of time is a challenge. We all know our society is set up to constantly distract us with shiny and desirable objects and our focus softens if we don’t work hard at keeping it sharp.
Part of the reason that I even came to be thinking about appreciating my body was because my husband, who is now in a masters program studying acupuncture, has his Qi Gong class on Friday nights and he’d told me that very day that this class had proven to be his most challenging. In that class they practice meditation and being able to focus was one of the hardest things for him. I’ve tried it and it’s hard for me too. One of two things generally happens: the mind wanders or I fall asleep. But if you want to figure out what should be on your grocery list or what so-and-so meant by the comment they made about your outfit earlier in the day you should definitely attempt to meditate.
Focusing on appreciating my body helped a lot with keeping my thoughts on one track, for a while.
Sure, it’s an ongoing practice. But at the risk of sounding like some new age person with an uncomfortably fervent affection for trees, I really felt like I got a lot out of that experience and I thought I’d share it with you this week.
Give it a try… or don’t. But if you do, feel free to comment below and tell me about it.
I just wanted to give an update to those of you following my acupuncture visits.
It was another early morning for me, on a Saturday, to which I’m not used to. Of course, to the average person, 11 a.m. is not early. But I’m working part time right now and my hours do not require me until later in the day. This is a farther drive than my work, so it’s even earlier than I’m used to getting up. Since I would normally sleep in on the weekends, getting up at 9:30 to make it to the 11 a.m. appointment is not easy for me. I’m hoping I get used to this. And for those of you that don’t understand why I would need so much sleep, let me explain it like this: My body works hard at destroying what it can during the day. It tries to damage my joints, ligaments and organs. So sleeping is a chance to undue some of that damage, or if nothing else, give my body some time to rest from RA’s damaging effects. So yes, because I’m a natural night owl, waking up with to the loud “BEEP, BEEP, BEEP,” is fairly hellish.
But I’m on a quest. And that quest is to find out if I can stop the inflammation in my hands and feet. And if the answer is acupuncture then GREAT, and if it isn’t, then I’ll keep looking. I think Michael is a talented physician and if nothing else, he’s very sympathetic and caring. When I first sit down for evaluation, he takes a look at my hands and feet, and without hesitation, touches the inflamed joints trying to feel for any improvement. He asked me if there was any change in my joints after my first visit. I told him that for about one hour, my joints in my hands, not feet, were stiffer and more painful but after that hour, they seemed to have less inflammation than normal. He told me this can happen and not to worry and this is part of the natural healing process. Knowing this already, I wasn’t worried. I know from all the supplements I take that getting more inflammation at the beginning of a treatment can and often does, make you temporarily worse. So the fact that this had made me worse for only an hour, I thought, “Piece of cake”. Again however, he chose to only do acupuncture on my hands and feet, in fear that I might experience what I had the very first time I visited a different physician, which ended up in a three week flare. He wants to take things slow with acupuncture so that not only do I get improvement, but don’t have to deal with unexpected inflammation.
Again, two needles on each hand were placed in the raised parts of my palms. And again, needles were placed in my feet but in slightly different spots. I experienced pretty near the same thing as the last time…. Pain and inflammation seemed to increase during the treatment in my hands. My feet again, for one reason or another, did not experience any pain or inflammation. This time I was surprised that the inflammation in my hands lasted only about a half an hour (after treatment) and for the rest of the day I experienced less inflammation and more relief than my average day. My feet seemed to be unchanged. I do have a couple of spots on the outer parts of my feet…the bunions that are inflamed ever since RA began. So I have no idea why these spots aren’t “awakening”.
I believe in giving everything a good shot and at $25 a session, I can’t refuse this kind of opportunity. I plan on sticking with this for at least one month, if not two, depending on my finances. I hope sometime soon that I can share with all of you, a story of amazing relief from the acupuncture. But if that doesn’t end up happening, then if nothing else, I’m relaxing, truly relaxing for that hour each time I visit. I have a good feeling however, that I will experience tremendous relief from this, so I’m keeping my hopes up! If anyone has a story to share, please do!!
Seemingly unbeknownst to acupuncture researchers around the world, the question of efficacy beyond that of placebo of inserting small needles millimeters into a patient’s skin has been answered by a number of large, well-designed, randomized and appropriately blinded clinical studies. Acupuncture has simply not been shown to be effective for any condition. The trail leading up to these trials is littered with anecdotal evidence, poorly conceived methodologies and weak treatment effects, not to mention a complete lack of a plausible mechanism of action for a near totality of the claims of benefit. But a disheartening number of people, including medical professionals at prestigious academic centers, have been duped.
This is, unfortunately, what we have come to expect with an inert therapy surrounded by a number of placebo inducing trappings such as undeserved positive press coverage, meritless state licensure, true-believing practitioners confidently spouting mystical or pseudoscientific jargon, and the laying on of hands in a relaxing environment. Just look at the practice of chiropractic, which is equally unscientific and unproven outside of acute lower back pain, for which it has been shown to be as good as but not better than conventional therapy (or doing nothing!). You can’t go 5 blocks in any direction without seeing a sign for one of these offices, usually containing a silly slogan like “Chiropractic Keeps My Spine Off My Nerves!” or “Got Chiropractic?”. But back to acupuncture.
The reality of acupuncture research is a frustrating one for medically oriented skeptics such as myself. We have difficulty seeing the world through the eyes of a true-believer in a treatment modality, because belief based on anecdotes and ideology, rather than acceptance based on plausibility and evidence, is so foreign to the way we think. If the evidence doesn’t support the practice, why does it continue? And why do researchers, like Dr. Florian Pfab, of the Technical University of Munich, continue to churn out studies like the one recently reported on in Reuters Health involving the use of acupuncture for atopic dermatitis? The answer to the first question is simple: reason is insufficient to change a thought pattern not brought about by reason in the first place. In regards to the second, I fear that these researchers know on some level that the only means of producing positive scientific support for their already firmly held belief is to ignore the foundations of science-based medicine.
The study being credulously reported on by Amy Norton of Reuters Health, most likely inspired by a press release sent by the parties involved, seems to have been published twice. It appeared in a supplement to the November 2008 European Journal of Integrative Medicine and was again accepted for publication in the European Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (Allergy) in late 2009. In both abstracts, the background is essentially identical. One calls itch “a complex and unpleasant sensory experience that induces the urge to scratch”, and the other refers to it as simply “a major symptom of allergic skin disease.” Both abstracts make the unfounded claim that acupuncture has been shown to have an “effect” (the earlier version called this effect positive) on histamine-induced itch in healthy volunteers. What has been shown is that itch, like pain, nausea and pretty much any symptom with a predominantly subjective component, responds to placebo and/or distraction.
Both abstracts describe the investigation of acupuncture on allergen-induced itch and wheal/flare response in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover trial. It is quite unclear from the abstracts, which is all I have access to unfortunately, whether this actually occurred. Both studies involved exposing 30 subjects with eczema to an allergen stimulus, in this case a skin prick containing house dust mite or grass pollen, both before and after receiving one of two experimental treatments, or nothing. The two experimental treatments involved so-called true or verum acupuncture, where needles were placed in specific points linked by traditional chinese medicine to improving this sort of problem, and sham acupuncture, where needles were placed in points not associated with benefit in cases of allergic skin reactions. The “no acupuncture” group was provided complementary issues of the European Journal of Integrative Medicine or something equally unlikely to improve a subjects health. Okay, I made that part up.
The severity of the itch in all three groups was recorded on visual analog scales in both studies. The difference between the publications becomes apparent in the next step. In the earlier version, after 10 minutes the size of any wheal/flare reaction was measured in addition to skin temperature, and an itch questionnaire was completed by the patient. In the more recent publication, wheal/flare size was also recorded but now skin perfusion as measured by LASER-Doppler, and not skin temperature, was included. The questionnaire results were also included.
Both abstracts report that mean itch intensity was decreased in the true acupuncture group compared to the sham and no acupuncture groups, and that sham acupuncture was better than none. The results, reported as significantly lower still fall close enough for there to be a distinct possibility that, based on the simple fact that were only around ten participants in each arm of the trial, there was in reality no difference at all between the groups. But taken at face value, the more rational interpretation is that there are varying degrees of placebo effects. We don’t know based on the abstract whether or not the person performing the acupuncture was blinded or if the blinding of subjects was sufficient. Based on the track record of this type of research, and on the design of another study by the lead author, I have my doubts. All it would take to lead to this kind of result would be for those receiving sham acupuncture to know it based upon practitioner cues. This issue could be resolved by asking participants which arm they thought they were in upon completion of the trial.
Both true and sham acupuncture were found to “significantly” decrease subsequent itch when given prior to allergen exposure compared to not receiving acupuncture. This isn’t suprising as placebo is already well established as effective in ameliorating the subjective experience of itching. It is also well established that placebo can effect the appearance of an allergic response. So it is also not suprising that wheal and flare size was smaller in the true and sham acupuncture group compared to doing nothing. But, once again, with such small study numbers, these results are essentially meaningless. Much larger and better designed studies, with innovative methods of obtaining reliable acupuncture placebo, have already been performed which look at a variety of outcomes. They show that not only does it not matter where you put the needles, it doesn’t matter if you even insert the needles. I am still left wondering what is the point of all this.
The earlier version of the study found no difference in skin temperature between groups after exposure to allergen. Suspiciously in the second version of what is the same study otherwise, skin perfusion rather than temperature was measured. The authors report that skin perfusion, which is being used as a marker for allergic response, was significantly decreased in the true acupuncture group compared to no acupuncture. Skin perfusion for the sham acupuncture isn’t included in the abstract. This difference between the two, otherwise identical, studies is problematic. Why would the authors not include the negative skin temp results in the second version and insert the claimed positive skin perfusion results. Is this simply a means of squeezing multiple publications out of one study, which is commonly done and quite shady in my opinion, or is it that the authors omitted negative results because of pro-acupuncture bias. What other outcome measures were obtained? Were they negative as well?
The conclusion of the authors is naturally positive, and also completely irrelevant. Conclusions are irrelevant in all studies. Many times they don’t jibe with the results. For instance, one recent acupuncture study showed that true acupuncture was no better than placebo. The authors claimed that both worked! They followed with the standard study boilerplate call for further investigation into why placebo acupuncture is effective. As I mentioned at the onset of this post, the questions being asked by acupuncture research have been answered. Most of them, as in the study on eczema, didn’t warrant being asked. Small studies with questionable or absent blinding are almost always wrong, especially if the treatment effect is small and the mechanism of action is implausible.
The Reuters Health article, also based on the early view online release of the paper in Allergy which I based this post on, and email correspondence with lead author Florian Pfab, is typical of mainstream coverage of alternative medicine. It gives a two sentence explanation of what eczema is, glosses over methodology, quotes the author, refers to acupuncture as ancient but throws out a possible but unproven “modern explanation”, and ends with the ubiquitous call for more research. A simple phone call to one of many well-known skeptical resources on acupuncture, or a quick google search for that matter, was all that would have been necessary to avoid such a worthless piece of pseudojournalism.
Today, I took a phone call from a woman asking about the cost of acupuncture treatments. After giving her the information and asking her a few questions, there was a silence… and then I heard her crying.
I paused and asked if she was ok; she confessed that her husband had just been deployed to Iraq. She told me she was so stressed that she’d almost accidentally set her house on fire today! As she cried, she told me that she needed SOMETHING to calm her nerves. My heart ached for her; I told her to just come in and we’d work out the budget. I know acupuncture will help help her, and it won’t be long before she feels better.
You know, after that patient called, I began to think about the bigger picture – life is so challenging in our world today! There are still a countless number of our soldiers being deployed around the world; many people have been laid off from jobs in the past year and have had problems finding something else; many small (and large!) business owners have been clutching to every penny, nervous that it’s close to the last. Wow; for a few moments I was overwhelmed by the thought of it.
What about you? How are you doing?
All too often, when we’re in trouble, anxious, grieving, and/or depressed, we feel all too alone in the world, shut ourselves in, and everyone else out. Right now, there are so many of us dealing with tough situations – if you are one of the many, know that you are far from alone!
Acupuncture is a great treatment to help you to cope – not just from an emotional perspective, but from the medical perspective, as well. When considering it from an Eastern medicine perspective, sadness deeply affects both the Lung and Heart pathways. The Lung pathway moves the Qi (pronounced chee), and the Heart meridian moves the Blood. Sadness induces Qi deficiency and dissolves Qi, which in turn eventually causes the Heart Qi to be deficient. When this is happening, an acupuncturist finds that the front wrist pulse of the patient is very weak on both wrists – the left wrist is related to the Heart, and the right wrist is related to the Lungs. After prolonged sadness, Qi deficiency and stagnation can happen, which will cause what practitioners call Heart Fire. When the Qi and blood are not flowing properly, depression can happen, causing the Heart Fire to manifest. This causes the patient to feel stressed, and can begin a domino effect – possibly causing heart palpatations, insomnia, and even high blood pressure. Acupuncture gets the blood flowing again, in turn alleviating the physical problems while also helping the patient to feel better.
So before you’re juggling a pile of medications that will only put a Band-Aid on the problem, try acupuncture! It will work on the actual physiological effects of the depression and help you better deal with your problems without causing you to walk around like a zombie… so you can continue to connect with others, which will better help you get through this rough period.
If the white area is spring/summer and the black is Fall/Winter, notice how there is a little bit of one inside the other. So, inside the dark/winter side is a little smidge of the light/spring. It is always there, even if sometimes we can’t see it. As the small white circle grows and grows, it eventually takes over and becomes it’s opposite. Yin and Yang is always moving – from one to the other, ever changing, ever evolving. Just like us, just like life. Isn’t nature wonderful?!
Today, I took a phone call from a woman asking about the cost of acupuncture treatments. After giving her the information and asking her a few questions, there was a silence… and then I heard her crying.