Community Service, with Pins & Needles

As might be expected, people who enter our field are usually community-oriented, and hope to use their skills for the greater good. This goal is one of the motivations that Eran & I share in our work and outlook on life.

As many of you know, we established a weekly free drop-in acupuncture clinic at the downtown Senior Center -- now chugging along for more than a year. This is similar to many other of our colleagues all over the world who volunteer in both formal & informal service venues, on an occasional or regular basis.

Additionally, in the future, as our practice supports it, we would like to hold "community day clinics" at our clinic on 2nd street. Although we created our modest fees with the idea in mind of reducing the financial barrier to our form of health-care, we know that even these fees are still too high for some folks. Our future plan is to offer special clinics 2-4x/month of our regular services but at very discounted prices to folks living with incomes around the federal poverty level (FPL). Stay tuned for more details!

What follows is a short list of groups that deliver direct-care acupuncture services to various needy communities, and which always welcome donations!

Acupuncturists Without Borders (AWB)
Created with the goal of providing PTSD relief in the aftermath of disasters, AWB has recruited licensed acupuncturists to travel to sites of disasters (New Orleans after hurrican Katrina, southern California after wildfire damage and Haiti after the earthquake). Volunteers focus on providing NADA ear acupuncture treatments. As one of its future plans, AWB hopes to train local health providers in Haiti in the NADA protocol. AWB welcomes volunteers and donations.

Alternative Healthcare Access Campaign (AHAC)
Co-founded by Chris in 1999, AHAC provides free treatments delivered by licensed acupuncturists (including both Chris & Eran in the past), massage therapists and naturopathic doctors provide free treatments services at homeless shelters & encampments and service venues (drop-in centers, etc.) in the Seattle area. AHAC welcomes volunteers and donations of money & treatment supplies.

Global Alternative Health care Project (GAHP)
GAHP sends professionals to remote communities to provide free Chinese medicine treatments. GAHP has has programs in Bali, Nepal, Navaho Nation-land, and Jackson Hole, WY. GAHP welcomes volunteers and donations of money & treatment supplies.

GUAMAP (Guatemala Acupuncture and Medical Aid Project)
In the true “barefoot doctor” tradition, GUAMAP recruits Spanish-speaking acupuncturists to train & monitor indigenous health promoters in rural Guatemala. Since the 1990’s, GUAMAP-trained health promoters have provided over 10,000 treatments to people in rural Guatemala. GUAMAP welcomes volunteers and donations of money & treatment supplies. (Little known fact: one of Chris' high school classmates is on the Board of this fine group!)

Kang Wen Community Clinic (KWCC)
Founded in 1987 by acupuncturists as one of the first complementary medicine to provide treatments to people with HIV & AIDS, KWCC later expanded its mission and outreach to offer quality AOM treatments at a real sliding-scale to the greater community. About 75% of its patients have incomes at or below the Federal Poverty Level and are able to access treatments at $10. Both Chris & Eran have volunteered their skills at this clinic. KWCC very much welcomes volunteers and donations of money & treatment supplies.

Mindful Medicine Worldwide
Founded in 2009, MMW seeks to bring long-term integrative health care to people of developing areas, domestically and internationally, by establishing and operating integrative health care clinics. Professional volunteer practitioners provide medical services and healthcare education to patients at 3 clinics in Nepal and on the Burmese-Thai border, as well as participate in educating local lay people to be integrative health workers within their communities. Mindful Medicine Worldwide is rooted in a practice of mindfulness, education, research and training. MMW welcomes volunteers and donations.

The Pan-African Acupuncture Project
Modeled after GUAMAP, this project was founded by acupuncturists in 2003, and focuses on training local health workers in acupuncture techniques. International acupuncturists are recruited to come to training sites in Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia and has created a training manual with special sections to address the care of HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria. The Project welcomes volunteers and donations.

OMMMMMMMMMMMM: Meditation and Pain Perception

My father passed this neat article on, about the impact of even a small amount of meditation training on one's perception of pain. The study's results showed significant decreases in pain perception (40% less pain intensity & 57% less unpleasantness) -- which changes were also documented on MRI scans.

Brain scans have also been used to measure the effect of acupuncture on pain perception, as in this article, and this blog about acupuncture and carpal tunnel syndrome pain.

Sleep & Calories

A new Columbia University study investigated the link between sleep deprivation & overeating. It's a small study (26 participants) but resulted in an average caloric intake increase of about 300 calories. (Approximately an 11-15% increase over an average daily caloric intake!)

"Sleep-deprived People eat 300 more calories a day."

The Incredible Voyage (2010 version)

For those of you who don't know about this, Google Labs has just created a human body browser -- called "Google Body Browser."

It's a fun little software to look through bones, muscles, organs, neural segments, etc. Happily, it is has a search box in the upper right corner, so you can type it in and find out just exactly WHERE your hippocampus is! (And you thought it was a field of hippopotamuses, yes?)

"Medical Acupuncture" -- acupuncture training for M.D.s

I came across this interesting post discussing the abbreviated acupuncture training for M.D.s and the viewpoint that it creates under-trained practitioners, with a shallow understanding of the theoretical foundations of the science of acupuncture.

The author, Dr. Marilyn Walkey, has an impressive background -- she has been a medical doctor for more than 20 years, who initially took a "medical acupuncture" training course, and then actually enrolled in AOM school to become a fully-qualified acupuncture practitioner.

(For those of you who don't know, acupuncture practitioner training in the U.S. is 2000+ hours of didactic & clinical training -- usually this is a graduate degree academic program. This is in contrast to medical acupuncture courses, which are usually 200-300 hours of training -- although chiropractors in the state of Florida can qualify for chiropractic acupuncture certification after 100 hours of additional training -- as per the DOH's Acupuncture Certification Application.)

Dr. Walkey's view is that the profession of acupuncture in the U.S. is being under-represented by the sub-field of "medical acupuncture" and that patients who are being treated by it may be missing the benefits of this medicine.

Food Rules (an old-fashioned book review!)

I just read Michael Pollan's Food Rules, a fun little book that was created as a companion to his In Defense of Food.

The book approaches the basic (important, yet also an object of obsession) issue of food & eating habits. Mr. Pollan analyzes our (modern Western) culture's relationship to nutrition and diagnoses it as ailing.

("Populations that eat a so-called Western diet -- generally defined as a diet consisting of lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of refined grains, lots of everything except vegetables, fruits and whole grains -- invariably suffer from high rates of the so-called Western diseases: obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.")

In response to the simple questions What do we eat? How should we eat? Mr. Pollan proposes some simple "rules" -- many of them culled from generations of human experience. The very, very abridged version of these rules is "Eat Food. Mostly Plants. Not too much."

One aspect that I found striking in this book is Pollan's assessment of the modern world's widespread weight gain -- we tend to consider being overweight or obese a personal problem, and certainly those of us who are are acutely aware of our own avoirdupois, but actually this is a cultural -- not individual -- trend: the percentage of overweight and obese Americans is growing at an alarming rate. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) calls it an "epidemic" -- the U.S. overall obesity rate is now 26.7%, with variations by region and ethnic group, and as the pounds accumulate, the other health issues pile on.

Michael Pollan's little book is a reminder that the "solution"to this health crisis is completely (almost, of course there are some endocrinological exceptions) in our own hands; we can have self-control and we can reinforce it by making specific decisions.

These are a few of the Rules which especially tickled my fancy:

• #7: Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce.
• #13: Eat only foods that will eventually rot.
• #19: If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't.
• #21: It's not food if it's called by the same name in every language. (Think Big Mac, Cheetos or Pringles.)
• #25: Eat your colors.
• #30: Eat well-grown food from healthy soil.
• #34: Sweeten and salt your food yourself.
• #37: "The whiter the bread, the sooner you'll be dead."
• #46: Stop eating before you are full.
• #57: Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does.
• # 60: Treat treats as treats.
• #64: Break the rules once in a while.

Eye of Newt & Toe of Frog ...

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.


Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
(Macbeth by W. Shakespeare; Act IV, Scene 1)

I think that there is a general impression that Chinese herbal medicines (CHM) are made from all sorts of super-icky things (and there's no dispute on the errors of overuse of tiger bones and rhino horns!) Actually, about 85-90% of the most commonly used herbs in the Chinese materia medica (which is roughly counted as 1500 items) are plant-based. We have roots, twigs, leaves, flowers. I often like to joke when dispensing bags of raw herbs that they are "lawn sweepings" -- but good for you!

Because it is a traditional cultural use medicine, some of the theories that CHM is organized around include the "signature effect" (not unique to the Asian materia medica), the thinking that an herb source's form will indicate its use. Some reflections of this are theory are:

• flowers & plants that succesfully struggle to grow high on mountains are more "yang" & can tonify such a deficiency
• aerial plant parts, or branches are used to treat a patient's limbs
• "bleeding flees from black" (charred herbs are styptic)
• dense and juicy tubers or fruits can nourish "yin"
• small, wriggly bugs (yes, bugs) can seek out blood stagnation in the tiny channel collaterals.

These types of theories partially inform the theory of the herbal medicine that we practice (other theories and classifications of herbal substances are more based on empirical observation of their uses). Interestingly, a lot of the modern pharmacological research being conducted in Asia is meant to "prove" in biochemical terms the veracity of these old theories (and seems to frequently do so).

Chinese herbs don't hold the franchise on the"ick" factor -- some modern pharmaceuticals have gross origins too! Some of these include fish semen (used to treat heparin overdoses), rat poison (Coumadin), pregnant mares' urine (Premarin).

bulbous buttercup

Note: Please, those of you who are taking Coumadin, please do become familiar with its side effects, as this drug can have very serious risks (gangrene or death).

p.s. It is actually thought that some, or most of the ingredients in the witches' brew listed above were actually names of plants. "Eye of newt" may have been mustard seeds; "toe of frog" a reference to bulbous buttercup; "tongue of dog" a plant in the borage family, and so forth!