Blog Posts
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The Line Between Medical and Spiritual
Worth the suffering...
What's Your Priority in Life?
Know Thyself for a Healthier, Happier Life
The Quick and Easy Thing You Can Do Today to Improve All Aspects of Heatlh
How Evil (Big and Small) Continues To Exist and What You Can Do To Stop It
Today is a new day (change is gonna happen)
Getting to Chicago
The Good and Bad of the Momentum of Health Choices
From the Facebook Fanpage
Molecular Effects of Acupuncture
The Power of Relaxing
Placing the Cart Before the Horse (or Acting Before Knowing)
Further Thoughts on Freedom and Health
Personal Freedom and Health
So I've been studying the Anahata cakra (the "Heart chakra")...
Addressing Misinformation on Herbs
In case you missed it, Part II (Posts from the Facebook Fanpage)
Medicine and Treating the Individual
High Quality Reviews of the Acupuncture Treatment of Pain
Acupuncture Research - Headaches
Drug-Resistant Organisms
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High Quality Reviews of the Acupuncture Treatment of Pain
A March, 2011 overview aimed at evaluating and summarizing transparent and rigorous Cochrane reviews of acupuncture in the treatment of pain. All the reviews were of high methodological quality and eight of them concluded that acupuncture is effective for migraines, neck disorders, tension-type headaches, and peripheral joint osteoarthritis (1).
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1. Lee, M. and Ernst, E. (2011). Acupuncture for pain: an overview of Cochrane reviews. Chinese Journal of Integrative Medicine, 17(3), 187-9. Retrieved from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21359919.
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Drug-Resistant Organisms
I've been running across a lot of info on MDROs (multidrug-resistant organisms), lately. These are organisms, mostly bacteria, that have become resistant to antibiotics (likely through overuse) and are, thus, difficult to treat.
As drug therapy is the main form of treatment in modern biomedicine, the resistance to drugs, by those little organisms, is a real problem. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), options for treating patients with MDRO infections are often "extremely limited" (1).
(Medscape offers a nice synopsis of the excitement over the discovery of antibiotics and their usefulness in medicine followed and counterbalanced quickly by antibiotic resistance -
The discovery of antibiotics and their widespread application in healthcare early in the 20th century was doubtless one of the most pivotal events in the history of medicine. The practice of medicine was no longer limited to diagnosing disease; with this new and formidable weapon, many diseases could be treated and cured. It appeared that bacteria could be stopped from causing severe illness and death in humans.Keep in mind, these bacteria don't cause a problem for most healthy people. Infections are most likely to occur where the organism is present and:
This jubilance was short-lived. It was not long before bacteria revealed their remarkable ability to evolve and evade destruction, a phenomenon known as antimicrobial resistance. As antibiotics were increasingly used to treat illness, the degree and complexity of antimicrobial resistance also grew. An entire pool of antimicrobial resistance genes developed to provide a ready supply of mechanisms that allowed microorganisms to swiftly outmaneuver each new antibiotic that came along. (2))
- There is an open wound in the skin,
- There is an IV, catheter or other invasive device in place, or
- The person has a suppressed immune system. (3)
And, as MDROs are often spread by direct contact, washing your hands goes a long way.
(For more an antibiotic resistance, see Antibiotic Resistance Questions & Answers, from the CDC, as well as the sources listed in the footnotes.)
I've posted some information on Chinese herbs, and their clinical use in Chinese herbal medicine, on my facebook page (for example, how China is beginning a program to "research and develop traditional Chinese medicine to fight super bacteria" (4)), and I've addressed research on the antibiotic properties of some herbs in blog posts, e.g., Herbs vs Bugs.
I believe the future of safe and effective medicine lays in the appropriate integration of powerful systems of healing, each supporting and complementing the strengths and weaknesses of the other.
The existence of MDROs and, specifically, how we deal with them, creates an ideal opportunity to begin to develop (and maybe even flex) some of that integration muscle (for example, through approaching the diagnosis of infected patients through multiple and varying lenses, thus, opening up the treatment possibilities beyond just antibiotics, or acknowledging other views on the nature of health and illness, such as the traditional Chinese holistic model where mind and body are merely aspects of an underlying reality and not isolatable entities, themselves, thus creating new potentials for preventative medicine...)
I am quite excited for our future!
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1. Siegel JD, Rhinehart E, Jackson M, Chiarello L. Multidrug-resistant organisms in healthcare settings, 2006. Available at: www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/pdf/ar/mdroGuideline2006.pdf. Accessed May 17, 2011.
2. Antimicrobial Resistance: A Primer. Retrieved from www.medscape.com/viewarticle/729196.
3. Multi-Drug Resistant Organisms (MDRO): Overview. Retrieved from www.nationaljewish.org/healthinfo/conditions/mdro/index.aspx.
4. China to develop traditional Chinese medicines to fight super bugs. Retrieved from english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/7139719.html.
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Acupuncture Research - Headaches
Acupuncture, as one modality of the comprehensive medical system referred to as Chinese (or "Oriental") medicine, and frequently combined into a singular AOM (Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine), has a long clinical history of treating pain of all types.
In addition to this deep base of evidence, there is much modern research on the effectiveness of acupuncture in treating pain (for example,
back pain and
chronic low back pain,
pain in cancer patients,
pain associated with the menstrual cycle, and
pain associated with carpal tunnel syndrome).
As a practicing acupuncturist, I can attest to the effectiveness of acupuncture in treating headaches, of all types, and modern research is showing this, as well. The journal Neurological Sciences reports that systematic reviews suggest acupuncture is both effective and cost-effective for migraines, as well as tension headaches (1).
Keeping in mind that acupuncture is extremely safe and has a negligible frequency of serious side effects, it is clearly a first-line choice in the treatment of headaches.
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1. Schiapparelli, P. et. al. (2011). Acupuncture in primary headache treatment. Neurological sciences, 32 Suppl 1, S15-8. Retrieved from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21533705.
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Medicine and Treating the Individual
A hallmark of Chinese medicine is an emphasis on tailoring treatments to an individual. Over the last couple thousands years, the medicine has seen different schools of thought arise on methods and approaches to treatment, yet text after text, master after master emphasize modifying the general therapeutic intervention to the individual's unique presentation.
The best example of this may be where a patient presents with a set of symptoms placing them, diagnostically, under a broad disease category and its representative herbal formula.
From there, however, the totality of the patient's complex disease "pattern" is discerned, describing how this disease is presenting in this specific individual. This may incorporate constitutional tendencies, history of health, mood, lifestyle, etc. Based on the overall picture, the basic herbal formula may have constituent herbs added or removed and the dose of each herb adjusted to match the patient's state exactly.
It is for this reason, this individualizing of treatments, that Chinese medicine can make the relatively uncommon claim of high effectiveness alongside great safety and low incidence of adverse reactions.
I have recently posted some articles on modern biomedicine's investigation into more individualized treatments on my Facebook page, including Individualized Guidelines: The Potential for Increasing Quality and Reducing Costs and Improving Practice Guidelines With Patient-Specific Recommendations, both from the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Another great article, from a medical anthropological perspective, has been brought to my attention. In Anthropology in the Clinic: The Problem of Cultural Competency and How to Fix It, the importance of the physician's investigation into the patient's individual, unique experience is stressed:
If we were to reduce the six steps of culturally informed care to one activity that even the busiest clinician should be able to find time to do, it would be to routinely ask patients (and where appropriate family members) what matters most to them in the experience of illness and treatment. The clinicians can then use that crucial information in thinking through treatment decisions and negotiating with patients. (1)
The adapting of clinical intervention, be it in the formulation and dosing of herbal therapies or the assessing how, exactly and personally, an illness impacts a patient's life, to that person receiving treatment, I hope, is the wave of the future in medicine of all types.
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1. Kleinman, A. & Benson, P. (2006). Anthropology in the Clinic: The Problem of Cultural Competency and How to Fix It. PLoS Med 3(10), e294. Retrieved from www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0030294.
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