Chinese Medicine

Tim Castles - Reuters
Wednesday, August 13, 2008

LONDON (Reuters)
- Prince Charles said the widespread use of genetically modified crops would
the "biggest disaster environmentally of all time" in a newspaper
interview published on Wednesday.

Astonishing advances in physics and cell biology have recently toppled the philosophical underpinnings of conventional biomedicine. A new energy-based vitalistic philosophy emphasizing the organizing role of body, mind and spirit is arising from the ashes of materialistic science.

This philosophical Phoenix wears the cloak of Oriental Medicine. Once thought to be in the domain of genes, the control of anatomy, physiology and behavior are now causally linked to the energy fields and environment.

The latter half of the 19th century and through the end of the 20th century has been a time of great political, economic, cultural, and scientific transformation in China. Chinese medicine, the shining gem of traditional science, has had to endure many assaults in this process, sinking the field into a quagmire where it had to fight bitterly for its own survival. This course of events can be called "The Century When Traditional Chinese Medicine Was Tied up in the Straightjacket of Utter Delusion.

Treating Infertility with Chinese medicine has been recorded in our ancient texts and on the backs of turtle shells for thousands of years. Western medicine has been treating disease for a couple hundred years. Reproductive medicine is one of our newest sciences. The first “test tube” baby was born less than thirty years ago. Over the recent five years, some conclusions have been made regarding the utility of acupuncture in conjunction with assisted reproductive technology. These reports come directly out of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine’s Fertility & Sterility Journal:

QUESTION: Do you know what would happen if you combined acupuncture with hypnosis? Would using both at the same time work better than either one alone?

DR. WEIL: You raise an interesting question -- one that my colleague Steven Gurgevich, PhD., has been investigating. Steve teaches mind/body medicine at the Program in Integrative Medicine (PIM) at the University of Arizona, and he is a faculty member of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. He became interested in combining acupuncture with hypnosis through a chance personal experience. One morning, Steve was having a bad day with a headache. Elad Schiff, MD, a certified acupuncturist from Israel who was also a PIM fellow, suggested performing hypnosis with Steve. Schiff also brought out some of his acupuncture needles.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Acupuncture can help relieve menstrual
pain and improve the quality of life for some women, a new study from
Germany shows.

Because the acupuncture patients were compared with a control group
who received no therapy, rather than a "sham," or fake, version of the
treatment, the placebo effect could have played a role, Dr. Claudia M.
Witt of Charite University Medical Center in Berlin and her colleagues
acknowledge.

Acupuncture has a measurable, if mysterious, effect on the brain, UK scientists have found. The study adds to evidence that patients benefit from acupuncture not simply because of their expectations.

The research team used brain imaging to show that treatment with genuine needles activates brain areas beyond the ones that light up when trick needles are used. "This is the first brain-imaging study that has shown an effect beyond placebo," says George Lewith, an expert in complementary medicine at the University of Southampton who led the study.