What if Acupuncture was included in every insurance plan as part of “Essential Health Benefits”?

From the American Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine’s (AAAOM) website:

In 2010, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, a health insurance reform law intended to ensure access to quality and affordable health insurance for all Americans.

Starting in 2014, most health plans will be required to offer a comprehensive package of items and services to patients, known as “essential health benefits” (EHB). Under the new law, EHB must cover certain specific services including emergency services, maternity and newborn care, prescription drugs as well as preventive and wellness services, among others.

The AAAOM strongly supports designating acupuncture as an EHB!  Do you as well?

The deadline to submit your comments is right around the corner, on Jan. 31.  You can email your thoughts to EssentialHealthBenefits@cms.hhs.gov.  Please specifically state in the email that you want acupuncture included as an Essential Health Benefit.  If you have experienced the benefits of acupuncture yourself, or know someone who has, please explicitly state these benefits in the email as well.

Thanks for taking the time to ensure that acupuncture is included in the essential health benefits!

To learn more, read the position statement of AAAOM.

The past few weeks I’ve been focusing on our Jing, which is stored in our Kidneys, and is related to the Water Element in Chinese Medicine. This week, I’m going to teach you a simple, pleasurable meditation exercise that you can do outside the acupuncture clinic, to increase your kidney function, build your vital Qi to enhance health and immunity, and connect back into your peaceful center. This peaceful center is known to acupuncturists as the lower “Dan Tian”.

Last week, I wrote about our Jing, how In Chinese Medicine it’s connected to our Kidney energy, and therefore the Water Element, and the season that we’re in right now, winter.

Acupuncturists know that we want to do everything possible to avoid tapping into and therefore depleting our Jing—the root of all energy—so this week,  I will go into a little bit more detail on some foods you can eat to keep your Jing strong.

While Acupuncture theory believes that there is no such thing as having too much Jing, and that therefore all of us can benefit from eating the right foods, please remember that there is never one food or food type that is right for everyone! You are all different, and some of the foods in this email are completely inappropriate depending on your own diagnosis.  If you’re my patient, you should know what you’re diagnosis is, so follow the guidelines accordingly.

Jing is a concept that I don’t talk about much in the acupuncture clinic, but according to Chinese Medicine, it has everything to do with the elemental season we’re in now, Water.  It is all wrapped up with the kidney energy, and for those of you who read my winter seasonal article, you know that the kidneys, the Water Element, and Winter, are all related.

We’re in the middle of winter, and that means in my acupuncture clinic I am commonly treating issues which have to do with the kidneys and bladder, the two organs associated with the Water Element, according to Chinese Medicine.

Those issues can be obvious, such as frequent or difficult urination; or they can be mysterious to the non-Chinese Medicine practitioner, such as headaches in the occipital region of the head, feelings of deep and intractable coldness and/or fatigue, unremitting and chronic diarrhea, infertility, or low grade back pain not due to an injury or strain.

According to acupuncture theory, each organ has a channel of energy that travels throughout the body, and points along this channel can be used in acupuncture for treating that organ.  This is why we may not even use acupuncture needles at the area where the actual pain or discomfort is—for example the patient with the occipital headaches—but instead choose points on the opposite end of the body, and along the kidney or bladder channel, which have been empirically shown for thousands of years to treat those headaches. Only someone skilled in Chinese Medicine diagnostics would be able to diagnose the actual reasons for those headaches, and actually treat them from the core, thus resolving them; unlike the western medicine approach which is to simply give a bandaid to temporarily take away the pain.

Right now, many of my patients seem to have kidney imbalances at the root of their issues, with some conglomeration of the aforementioned symptoms.  The best thing is, typically patients think they’re just coming in for their most debilitating issue, even if they have all or many of the above symptoms.  For one person it may be their headaches which impact their lives the most, for another it may be the diarrhea, for the next it may be the fatigue.  But in the treatment process, they start to understand that their symptoms are all related and therefore must be treated together, and one by one they notice their symptoms improving together as treatment progresses.  Many of my current patients are dealing with the above issues…or, should I say were, as they are all improving steadily and getting their lives back as their symptoms and overall energy, and therefore outlook on life, is improving.

Speaking of outlook, when people have severe daily debilitating symptoms, fear is a common emotion that crops up, adding to the impact on their lives.  And indeed, fear is the emotion associated with the Water Element, Winter, and kidney imbalance.  As their kidneys get restored and their symptoms start improving, patient’s outlook and emotional state begins to improve as well.

As I’ve written in my last blog post, and will continue in my next post, the kidneys store our root qi deep inside our body.  This qi easily gets drained, which will bring on the imbalance which causes these medical issues.  Having them resolved from the core is the best way to treat them; naturally, without harmful drugs, or invasive treatments.  By simply increasing the vital Qi in the body, acupuncturists see many issues easily resolve on their own.

Being in tuned with the Water Element keeps us balanced in winter

It’s the midst of winter and all is elusive…the days are short and dark, the fields barren.  Not much occurs on the surface, and when we are in rhythm with the patterns of nature, our lives reflect this dormancy as well.  In this time of rest, and especially in our do-ing culture, it is all too easy to underestimate the subtleties of power and transformation that are brewing beneath the surface.

According to the Taoist roots of Chinese Medicine and 5-Elements acupuncture theory, we are now in the season associated with the Water Element. When asked their favorite season, most people proclaim “Summer!”.  Who doesn’t enjoy hanging out in that time of Fire, of parties, celebrations, and sunshine?  But ask who loves winter, and you’re mostly met with sullen answers filled with longings for spring.  So let’s look towards the power of Water, and draw on it to help us through this often trying season.

Water is depth.  It is associated with the transformative processes of life, death, and rebirth.  Many philosophers are Water types, who are quite pleased to spend their days engulfed in quandaries into the nature of existence.  They understand that something deep and intense is happening beneath the surface–something unknown, and they seek to bring this awareness and acceptance into their daily existence.  Many, in times of profound emotion, report dreaming of being engulfed in waves, or drowning in the ocean’s waters. It is natural in these times of intensity to be overwhelmed with fear, and indeed fear is the emotion associated with Water.  But when our Water element is balanced, rather than living in fear, we are able to be in the philosopher’s state of awe, and can ponder the unknowns of life and death without being swept away by overwhelm.

Physically, the Water element is about our growth, development, and reproduction, and is related to the Kidneys and Bladder organs, and to our bones.  It is common for issues related to these organs to arise or worsen during their peak season, and indeed, I treat them more in my acupuncture practice during the winter months.  For example, during the winter people may experience more dramatic issues with frequent urination.  Because the Kidneys store our vital life force energy, or Qi, fatigue is common in winter.  When this Qi is depleted, such as in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or adrenal burnout, it is hard to even find the energy to carry out our daily functions.  Also related to our Kidneys are sexual energy (there can be impotence, low sex drive, or infertility), “grasping the lung Qi” (there can be asthma or shallow breathing), and temperature regulation (there can be extreme cold or heat, as in hot flashes).

Follow these tips for balancing your Water element:

• Food Therapy:  focus your meals around foods which balance your kidneys.

-For those prone to cold: warming foods such as cloves; fenugreek, fennel, and anise seeds, black peppercorn, ginger, cinnamon, walnuts, black beans, onion family (garlic, onions, chives, scallions, leeks), quinoa, chicken, lamb, trout, and salmon.

-For those prone to heat: Millet, barley, tofu, string bean, black bean, black soybean, mung bean and its sprouts, kidney beans, and seaweeds.

• Address feelings of fear and overwhelm through using the 5 elements: The element that “controls” Water to keep it from getting out of hand is Earth, which is about grounding, nourishing, and receiving.  The stronger your Earth element is then, the stronger an ally it is in preventing feelings of fear from paralyzing you.  Take extra care in winter to prioritize activities and time with those who are especially nourishing to your soul.
• Spend time near water: Sounds too simple to be effective? Remember, Water is about subtleties…about what’s happening beneath the surface without our “efforting”.
• Schedule some acupuncture appointments to help gain greater awareness of your own state of balance, and to deal with Water or Kidney/Bladder health issues: Treatments received to address those issues during this time of year will have enhanced effects.

We must look a little deeper to find the magic of winter, but beckoning the power it contains, we find that come spring, we are nourished and filled with what we need to get out there and make our place in the world once again!

OK, so I admit it, I love shopping.  I love seeing all the colors, the new designs of things, the cool little handy gizmos that I can use around the house.

But the holiday season takes shopping to a whole other level.  Typically, I try to avoid the whole thing…the frantic crowds, the shallow focus of our consumerist culture that leaves me feeling frazzled, drained, and disconnected.  It’s become cliche to say that we are a culture whose values have become quite skewed.  But I will say it anyway to remind us this Metal season of things we can do to stay balanced. Indeed I believe that our outward focus, and our focus on “things” is partly to blame for our health issues…we forget to focus inside, toward what we really need to feel vibrant, healthy, and valuable.  And the less valuable and the more crappy we feel, the more likely we are to put our focus towards outer fulfillment, which just continues the vicious cycle.

What does the Metal element tell us about all of this, and what tips can it give us for the holiday season? Before we go into this further, I’d like to share an article I sent you last year over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Tomorrow, in the United States, families and friends will gather around tables large and small to give Thanks together.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays (revisionist history aside). It is two full days during which many of us are liberated from work and school. It comes at a time when the days are getting shorter, trees have lost their leaves and we’re pulling the sweaters out from the back of our overstuffed closets. It’s the perfect time to cozy up and nest with friends and family. And, of course, remembering those who can’t be with us.

Each Thanksgiving, I think of Marie Tellismond. Two years ago on Black Friday, Marie lost her 34 year-old son, Jdimytai Damour. Jimmy-as his friends called him-was trampled to death while trying to protect a pregnant woman from a stampede of bargain shoppers at a New York Walmart.

Now, I’ve never met Marie Tellismond, but as a fellow mother, I am pretty sure she would give anything to have a day with her son again.  Losing, or even coming close to losing someone we love, makes us get our priorities straight really, really fast.

Most of us have a choice this Friday that Marie no longer has.  We can chose to leave the warmth of our beds before dawn, to sit in our cars in a parking lot at some mall and to spend the day searching for low prices on products which we don’t really need and often don’t event want, but getting them is all part of the Black Friday Frenzy.  Or we have a choice to stay put with loved ones, to play board games and eat leftovers and maybe even play a game of football together.

If we’re going to figure out how to build an economy and society that is healthy for people and the planet, this Friday is a good place to start.  Let’s opt out of the frenzy this year.

The Metal element reminds us to focus on what is valuable in our lives…and I mean, deeply valuable…not just the value of our homes, jewelery and possessions.  Qualities like loyalty, faithfulness, sincerity. Togetherness, Appreciation, Humor, Compassion. These are the qualities we can share with each other through the ups and downs of the economy, and through the holiday season which can become busy and harried. The Metal element asks us to pay attention to the aspects of life that inspire us, and to focus our attention there.  What if we applied that to holiday giving?

Have you ever tried, rather than giving a “thing” over the holidays, to give time together? A home-made certificate for a drive down to Denver to just go to a fabulous hole-in-the-wall restaurant that your friend would love? Or, for example, a day together at a pottery studio where you can make each other mugs glazed in each person’s favorite colors…a memory of your day spent together.  Time together is one of the “things” that we are so needing in our independent, “me” culture, and the thing that we are born wired for.  Sadly, it’s what is also missing in many of our lives.  But aren’t our heros many times the people who stood up for others, pulled through for someone else in a circumstance of grave danger?  It’s how we stand up for each other and stake our claim on our humanity that wets our eyes and warms our hearts, creating stories we remember for lifetimes and tell over and over through the years.

If a day or activity together isn’t realistic or appropriate, what if you were to just sit and meditate on the qualities of each person in your life that you want to gift this year, and write those qualities down that you most appreciate.  Does a memory come to mind of your most meaningful time together…how you knew that person was someone you could trust no matter what?  Your funnest memory?  What if you were to take the time and really write that story down in a card to them, and include that with their gift.  That is the kind of depth that the Metal Element is seeking.  Raw truth.  The grit that makes life real.

If none of these seem appropriate, and you really want to buy them something they’ll love but don’t know what to get, instead of just combing the malls to find a gift that will do, try googling “inspiring gifts for ____________”.  I’ve done that many times and gotten great, meaningful ideas for history buffs, golfers, artists, etc.  These are gifts I know they will use and that will add value to their lives.

We will soon be leaving the Metal season behind and entering the Water season.  So as you do your shopping over the next couple weeks, remember to ponder gifts which inspire you and bring value to your lives.  Hopefully this will leave you less frazzled and harried, and will turn your holiday season into the meaningful and rich time it is supposed to be!

One of the most common issues I treat in my acupuncture clinic is fatigue, and the conglomeration of symptoms that commonly go along with it. Because we are currently in fall season, and the energy is waning everywhere around us, I thought I’d focus my success stories of this week around fatigue, since more and more people are coming in for treatment at this time of year for this issue, and see me throughout the winter to keep their energy and spirits up.

I will profile some of the patients I am currently treating, combining their common issues into just two examples which demonstrate how the same symptoms can come from two very different underlying imbalances.

Patient A: Menopausal woman, extreme fatigue to the point of barely having the energy to make it through her daily tasks, anxiety, insomnia, restless leg syndrome, low grade headaches, general tension throughout body.

The patients I am profiling in Patient A have a grouping of the above symptoms.  A few of them have all of the above symptoms, while some of them have only the fatigue and anxiety or depression.  The common theme between all of them is underlying stress, or liver imbalance.  The problem with liver imbalance is that often, it is not actually an issue of having depleted Qi, or energy.  It is that the body is so busy constraining the Qi and locking it up, creating the tension that goes all through the body creating the above symptoms.  One of the jobs of the liver according to Chinese Medicine is to keep our Qi flowing smoothly through our whole body, so we actually have access to it, and our organs get the Qi they need to function well, and we feel high energy.  When the liver gets locked up due to stress, the Qi gets busy doing pesky things like bottling up our energy in our muscles and organs.  These patients are generally very easy to treat and resolve quite nicely, since our main job is to get that liver Qi moving, which acupuncture is very good at.  Since I am currently treating several patients with the above symptoms and underlying diagnosis, I can attest to how well they resolve.  All of my current patients are doing very well, noticing an almost immediate increase in their energy and overall sense of well-being, as well as a reduction or elimination in all of the above symptoms.

Patient B: Menopausal woman, extreme fatigue to the point of barely having the energy to make it through her daily tasks, depression, low grade headaches, digestive weakness including bowel issues and/or generalized bloating and discomfort.

You will notice that Patient B has very similar symptoms to Patient A. The difference is that their underlying imbalance is completely different.  While Patient A is actually an “excess” type patient, having that constrained energy throughout her body, Patient B is a “deficient” type, having a lack of Qi overall.  This patient’s underlying imbalance is related to her spleen, which in Chinese Medicine is actually the main organ responsible for creating Qi in the body.  Due to overwork which taxes our system, as well as our poor American diets, many people suffer from Spleen Qi depletion.  Because in our system, the spleen relates to the digestive organs, when it is weak, we can not get the nutrients from our food, and since food is our source of energy, or Qi, over time, we get more and more depleted, eventually resulting in low energy or even fatigue or chronic fatigue situations.  In this case, just moving the Qi around as for patient A will get us nowhere…we need to actually boost up the Qi, increasing the digestive function so that nutrients taken in will eventually result in increased energy.  Like Patient A, these patients also respond very well to Chinese medicine, although in my experience, generally slower.  The body needs time to boost up what has been missing for a long time.  All of my patients with depleted spleeen Qi combine their acupuncture with Chinese herbs, helping to boost our work in the clinic and bring exponential healing.  These patients will generally continue to see me throughout the fall and winter to continue to boost up their Qi.  Happily, I can say that they are all responding well.

Fatigue is one of the most tricky issues to treat with western medicine, as it doesn’t really have any options or even drugs that patients can take.  Energy seems to be an elusive thing in today’s culture, and is something that no pill can help us “fake” having.  The stimulants like coffee that we use to mitigate our fatigue only increase the problem in the long term. And trendy supplements such as ginseng shots, in the wrong hands (like Patient A) can wreak havoc and make the situation much much worse.  Ginseng is a very hot and aggresive herb, and in people with liver imbalance, who already tend to be hot and constrained, it will just bottle them up more and make all their symptoms worse.  In the Patient B type, it may or may not be beneficial, because it can still be very problematic since it usually needs to be combined with other herbs to make it digestible, and in menopausal women who are already hot it will just make them hotter.

Luckily, acupuncturists are readily available in most communities as a primary care option for fatigue.  And fall and winter is the perfect time to add acupuncture onto your self-care regimen, to ensure a healthy cold season that sets you up for energy and vigor once spring sets in again.

As we have hit cold season full-force, the past couple weeks I’ve been focusing on what we can do to keep our immune systems strong, and herbs we can take if we’ve come down with a cold. Today I’d like to share another tip, which can be used right when you first feel the cold symptoms coming on.

Many of the herbs that are given to knock out a cold, are diaphoretics, or in other words, herbs that make you sweat.  Chinese Medicine believes that this sweating action removes the pathogen from those outer layers of the body that have been invaded.  For this same reason, acupuncturists often prescribe sweating through baths when a person is not sweating on their own during a cold.

So if you get a cold, pay attention to if you’re already sweating.  If not, then as soon as possible, draw a very hot bath, throw in a fist sized piece of ginger which has been cut into chunks, (or alternatively a cup of epsom salts if you do not have ginger), and sit in the bath for 15 minutes.  After you get out, without drying off, wrap yourself in your towel and a bath robe, and go and lay under covers for another 5-10 minutes to continue the sweating.  Take a hot shower to rinse off the sweat and dry off.

This treatment is useful for the wind-cold type of common cold, as the cold contracts the pores and inhibits sweating, locking in the pathogen and creating body aches and often stiff necks and/or occipital headaches.  This is NOT a treatment to be used of the body is already feverish, and there is already sweating.  Typically, a person who needs this therapy will have chills rather than fever and the hot bath will feel very good.

Hopefully, we’re all doing things that are keeping our immune systems up so we don’t get a cold in the first place.  But if you do find yourself with those tell-tale signs, then this could be an effective treatment to wipe a cold out before it gets a chance to get deep into the body.

I hope you’ve all been staying warm and cozy through our first couple snow storms of the year! As the weather gets colder, many people come to me for a few seasonal “tune-up” treatments to prepare their body for winter and ward off illness. While Chinese medicine has its own theory for why acupuncture and herbs can be effective for raising immunity, even scientific studies are finding proven links between acupuncture and immune system improvement.

In the medical journal, “Evidence Based Complementary Alternative Medicine”, 2007 Dec;4(4):447-453), Japanese researchers documented that after acupuncture treatments, there was a statistically significant increase in the activity of T cells, B cells, macrophages, and natural killer (NK) cells; all of which are part of the immune system. This means that acupuncture can regulate the immune system and promote the necessary functions related to immunity in the human body.

I love it when western studies back up what the Chinese have empirically known for thousands of years! While we may not explain it in the same way, we do see the same effects.

Acupuncturists think of your immune system as an energetic shield on the outer layer of the body, which protects the system from invasion from “evil Qi” (pathogens, etc.). We call it “wei qi”. When a person’s wei qi is weak, it is easy for pathogens to invade the body and cause illness. Wei qi is primarily related to the lungs; and the season of Metal, which we are in now, is also related to the lungs. For this reason, it is an especially beneficial time of year to make sure your wei qi is strong…treatments you get during this season will have a magnified effect on nourishing and balancing the lungs, assisting your wei qi in protecting you from illness.

So while western studies may use fancy terms and talk about cellular activity, we talk about the same functions but in terms of having strong energy (qi). Because no organ is an island, usually when someone has weak lungs, or wei qi, we can trace it back to other deficiencies in the body as well. By treating the body as a whole, overall health and wellness is promoted, and energy is increased.

There are many other things that one can do to increase their qi and promote health–specifically for their lungs during this Metal season–which I have been writing about in my last few emails. To take advantage of this season, try to incorporate some of those activities and foods into the next several weeks, before winter, the Water season hits. And if it’s been a while since you’ve been in, it may be time for a few “seasonal tune-up” treatments to put you at your best before the holidays hit!