Category: Acupuncture Articles

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the opioid crisis “is a serious national crisis that affects public health as well as social and economic welfare.” Every day millions of lives are affected and many are lost due to opioid addiction and overdose. While Doctors of Medicine (MDs) are doing their part to reduce the amount of opioids available, we have to ask ourselves, as educators and practitioners in the field of Traditional Chinese Medicine what we can do to end the epidemic.

Acupuncture & Integrative Medicine College (AIMC) seeks to educate our students and our communities on what Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) can do to help move our society toward an alternative answer.

Traditional Chinese Medicine …

Many people know that acupuncturists practice acupuncture, but few know what the day-to-day life looks like. Acupuncture is full of many different approaches, so no two days are the same. Each professional acupuncturist can choose to run their practice how they please, but here are some of the common job responsibilities that acupuncturists have in common:

Meet with patients in 30 to 60 minute-long appointments
Review health information & discuss treatment options
Perform acupuncture & other treatments for patients
Update patient records
Manage practice, employees, and work space
And meet continuing education requirements

Acupuncturists are licensed primary care providers, so they have the opportunity to oversee more than simply performing acupuncture practices. Acupuncturists do not focus only on particular diseases or troubles, but they watch carefully and prescribe …

It is widely agreed that acupuncture originated from China more than 2000 years ago. However, for thousands of years acupuncture had been practiced in other Asian countries as well.

In Japan, acupuncture has been an important part of their medical practice and system for over 1400 years. However, it was in fact, a Chinese monk-physician named Chiso that brought acupuncture along with other medical techniques to Japan in the 6th century. During this time, China was far more advanced in the practice of acupuncture than Japan but since then acupuncture in Japan has evolved in its own very unique way.

Between 1868 and 1988, approximately 4000 medical books were imported from Japan to China. Many of these were Chinese medicine texts which were re-imported …

Every day over 140 Americans die from accidental drug overdose. Alarmingly, 65% of those deaths are from an opioid drug overdose. In 2016 alone, the annual death toll due to an opioid overdose was 64,000. This is a 22 increase from the previous year. The overuse of opioids to treat pain has become so dangerous that on October 26th, 2017, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared the opioid crisis a nationwide public health emergency (Department of Health and Human Services, 2017).

As a result, the opioid addiction epidemic has increased awareness and interest in alternative pain management care such as acupuncture. Today, it’s estimated that more than “700 addiction centers offer acupuncture as an alternative and/or adjudicative therapy” (Esmaeili, Motlagh & Ibrahim et …