November 2012 Newsletter

Thank You

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday, because I love all of the wonderful food and the opportunity to celebrate with friends and family. I am grateful to be able to come to work and help people feel better. Each of you make my work so meaningful, and it continues to be a pleasure to help you meet your health care goals.

Newsletter

One of my goals of the newsletter is to provide you with information. If you have a topic that you would like me to include in a future version, please send me your requests. In addition, please feel free to send this onto any friends or family who might find the information useful.

Pain Relief

Acupuncture is most commonly associated as a tool to treat pain. Most of the studies that have been completed focus on trying to identify whether acupuncture is truly effective or just a placebo. Well good news... The New York Times summarized the findings of a recent study, which is the most rigorous and detailed research on the subject to date. The megadata analysis study found that acupuncture outperformed placebo treatments and standard care when used by people suffering from migraines, osteoarthritis, chronic back, neck and shoulder pain.

Monthly Tip:

Ancient Meridians

Pain relief is the most common reason and widely accepted reason for people in the United States to seek treatment. In helping reduce or eliminate pain, I will use either a direct approach or an indirect approach. The direct approach refers to placing needles around the area of pain whereas indirect refers to placing needles an area away from the painful part of the body. There are a few reasons to treat away from the painful area. For example, the area may too inflamed to needle, too sensitive to needle, unable to reach the area in pain, or there might be a better response by treating the body at a distal location.

Often when I am working on patients I will check other parts of the body to see if there is any tenderness. It is a common response for someone to ask me "how did you know it would be tender there?" One of the best ways I have heard this described is to use the analogy of turning on a light. You can either turn on a light by screwing in a light bulb (direct approach) or you can turn on the light switch (indirect approach).

Part of my treatment approach involves using Dr. Tan's treatment approach which is based on the belief that the body can be healed by balancing meridians. This treatment approach identifies which meridian the pain is located and how to use corresponding meridians to treat the pain with the least amount of needles possible. Depending on which meridian is affected, I would determine the part of the body to treat. This is done by using mirror images for the body. For example, shoulder pain can often be treated at the hip and vice versa.

Below is an example of the various corresponding parts of the body.

Looking forward to seeing you soon.

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