By Kiiko Matsumoto, LAc & Monika Kobylecka, LAc In the United States, as many as 50-70% of kids wear braces; many adults also use these and other orthodontic devices. Requests to take pressure off a painful or tight TMJ are all too common in our practices. While wearing enamel-protecting night guards shields the teeth from …
I was sitting at the desk in my office when a woman in her seventies suddenly appeared in the doorway and asked me, “Excuse me, do you treat cancer patients?” As I was looking for the right words to form my answer, the woman made that task easier for me. “You see, my husband has lung cancer, and he is undergoing chemotherapy. His doctor is happy with the results because my husband’s metastases have stopped spreading. Before starting the treatment, however, he was active and energetic, but now he spends most of the day in bed. Can acupuncture help?”
Pediatrics as a specialty is one of the oldest topics discovered in the Chinese medical literature. Sabine Wilms discusses that as early as the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), there is mention of pediatric treatments in at least 19 volumes within the Imperial Library, (Venerating the Root, Part 1, 2013). Sun Simiao was a notable author in the early Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) who emphasized the treatment of children and women above any other medical issue.
Katy visited our center with a seemingly disparate collection of symptoms that were causing her distress. She described a pattern that was episodic in nature and involved abdominal bloating, belching, acid reflux, loose stools, shallow breathing, and palpitations. A cardiologist had ruled out serious heart disease and she’d been offered beta-blockers for what had been diagnosed as pre-ventricular contractions (PVCs) and occasional tachycardia.
We are presently experiencing a quantum evolution in our perceptions of the aging process, which involves the elimination of outmoded ideas about what it means to be elderly. This paradigm shift has been facilitated by half a billion Baby Boomers1 worldwide who have provided a powerful stimulus for a collective change to the ‘face of aging’. This is not the previous silent generation, but an outspoken, entitled demographic, which, by force of their sheer numbers, is amending existing conscious and unconscious social contracts.
What is a marriage? Two people joining together to be more than either one alone. Of course, that’s just one aspect of a marriage. In addition to the union of two people, we use the term “marriage” to describe other types of joining, such as a marriage of form and function, marriage of words and art, or the provocative William Blake title of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. This article discusses the marriage of acupuncture and psychology.
Acupuncture and aromatherapy are two individual modalities that have been used for thousands of years to successfully treat a gamut of conditions and diseases. But what happens when they are combined together in one treatment? Is the treatment session more effective? Is there no difference at all? Does it increase patient satisfaction and comfort? I set out to answer these questions in 2011 while obtaining a doctoral degree in acupuncture and Oriental medicine. Here I will share with you what I discovered and suggest that yes, combining aromatherapy with acupuncture can make a treatment more effective.
Tendonitis is the single most diagnosed chronic connective tissue disease in Western medicine. It affects every major joint within the body and can make the most well conditioned athlete limp to the sidelines, as the pain can be overwhelming. Whether it afflicts a professional golfer or weekend tennis player, tendon pain is a huge problem affecting all sports. In our everyday lives, tendon pain also creates major problems. According to statistics of Workers Compensation injuries in California, repetitive motion disease (aka tendonitis) is the leading diagnosis for claims and disability in the state.
This is written out of appreciation for a living treasure. Master Herman Kaus has been teaching martial arts for over 60 years. A former world competitor in Judo and Karate, Master Herman shifted his focus to Tai Ji and push-hands to reap the benefits of martial arts with less distraction. I was blessed to be his push-hands student at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine (PCOM) and around the San Diego area from 2002 to 2005. Now, a decade later, the essence of what he teaches remains at the core of my clinical work and my life.
It is true that acupuncture has a relative risk that is low. The reporting of adverse events in clinical trials as well as safety surveys has helped establish a positive safety record in the West (White 2004; MacPherson et al. 2001), China (Birch et al. 2013; He et al. 2012), and Japan (Yamashita et al. 2001); in the treatment of children (Adams et al. 2011; Jindal et al. 2008) as well as for pregnant women (Park et al. 2014). Patients may experience minor side effects such as feeling relaxed, elated, tired, or having point sensation or itching etc. (MacPherson and Thomas 2005) or slight bleeding and hematoma on needle withdrawal (Witt et al. 2009).