Think of your most difficult patient – the one you try to motivate and work so hard with to develop a realistic treatment plan with achievable and measurable goals. Week after week, you see this ...

A person can be allergic to anything, including oneself. What does this mean - that you break out in hives in your own presence? Not usually. It is possible to be allergic to your own body chemicals: ...

Most Americans have some back discomfort in their lifetime. Back pain is most often caused by a muscle or ligament strain or spasm; a disk problem; spondylosis; or stenosis. Stress can also be a ...

In contemporary applications of acupuncture in North America, it is becoming increasingly common to hear patients complain that they are being challenged by their insurance carrier with the comment ...

What's the deal with salt? You know you need some of it, but everywhere you see advertising and headlines telling you to eat less of it. You might have salt cravings but you feel guilty indulging in ...

The number of acupuncture schools in the United States has continued to grow since the creation of the Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (ACAOM) and the Council of ...

I learned an important principle from my great Taoist Master Sun Hak. He taught me that all people "leak" Jing, and that we can mitigate or stop this leaking, and as a result strengthen our life force ...

In my last article, I examined menstruation from the TCM perspective. Here, we are going to break down the cycle further and look at how TCM views each part of the cycle. The goal of this is to better ...

The source text specifies to cook the ingredients in 12 cups [2400 mL] of water until 6 cups [1200 mL] of the liquid remain. Discard the residue and cook the strained decoction again until it is ...

Recently, I have received several requests for information on battlefield acupuncture. The term battlefield acupuncture was first used in 2001 by my friend and colleague Col. Richard Niemtzow MD, PhD, ...

Some of the cases termed "lower back pain" are in reality piriformis syndrome. In piroformis syndrome, the piriformis muscle gets tight (due to overstretching, trauma, prolonged bad posture, etc.) and ...

One way to view the "channel" system of acupuncture is to compare it with the way rivers, streams, reservoirs and underground springs function in nature, which then become a metaphor for the functions ...