Abstract
Dear Editor,
I read with interest the editorial by Dr. Niemtzow in the June 2012 issue. 1 Who comes to us asking for preventive acupuncture? People do. When they have really experienced what it can offer, when they have experienced the sense of well-being, when their skin is softer and smoother, when they look and feel younger, when they see the glow in their eyes, and when others comment on their healthy and bright complexion, they do. A 42-year-old woman with numbness and tingling in her arms and legs, having seen two neurologists and having been free of symptoms after acupuncture, comes and asks for treatment at regular intervals to get that feeling and appearance of general well-being, even though she is asymptomatic. These are not isolated instances, but 20 minutes of acupuncture cannot achieve that. It takes me 40–60 minutes to treat a patient in the holistic way; I do one case at a time.
We have come to this world with the capacity to heal. The daily onslaughts of life tilt our equilibrium and that produces illnesses. All that we have to do is to bring back that lost equilibrium, our body will then do the healing (the Hippocratic Doctrine of Equilibrium which modern medicine often ignores). Every time one takes any medicine, either chemical or natural, that equilibrium is disturbed, and the next time another onslaught comes, it adds to the existing disequilibrium, and that process goes on. Acupuncture is unique in that it neutralizes the lost equilibrium.
I started practicing acupuncture in 1964. I have not used pharmacy medicines since that time, and neither has my wife, since our marriage, nor my two daughters who are in the medical field. Imagine the savings in health care costs for the government, if more people did the same. I do not have any illnesses, but I have used homoeopathic medicines to complement acupuncture—they both work through Life Force.
Acupuncture is a holistic system and has to be practiced that way. In a case of migraine, relieving the pain alone is not the answer. It is a Liver Disharmony; this could be related to Kidney deficiency, and there could be other related Disharmonies. All have to be addressed before we can reestablish that lost equilibrium. Pulse and Tongue signs come to our rescue here in getting the holistic totality. Many acupuncturists shudder at the thought of pulse diagnosis. It appears complicated, especially in textbooks, but on closer inspection 85% of all cases we see in our everyday practice will come under some 10 Chinese syndromes. Others are rare (about 50 of them and their innumerable combinations). One does not have to be a genius to recognize a Wiry Pulse of Liver Excess, a weak rear Pulse of Kidney deficiency, or a Choppy (rough) Pulse of Blood deficiency. The tongue signs are also easy to recognize—a look at a few pictures will make one realize how simple it is to learn these signs.
This year, the New England Journal of Medicine had its 200th anniversary, and it published articles that highlighted developments in modern medicine in those 200 years. Acupuncture has existed for more than 5000 years, and the amount of “progress” we have had in those years is relatively small. We have learned more about their mechanisms of action, but the basic treatments have essentially remained the same. This is because acupuncture was born out of inspiration. Animals have instincts; humans have reasoning, and that is science. Inspiration is sixth sense. That inspiration is far ahead of all science. What was born out of inspiration 5000 years ago does not have much room for expansion. It was already far ahead of its time, but we can have progress in reasoning out their modes of action. Having said that, one should not ignore the tremendous contribution made by Paul Nogier to auriculotherapy and Rapid Acupuncture, such as Battlefield Acupuncture, which is my last refuge in intractable cases. Even though these techniques give much-needed pain relief from injuries, they all have associated blood stasis at a deeper level, which forms the nucleus of serious disorders such as tumors and malignancies later on, that has to be addressed by holistic methods.
Concentrating a little more on articles related to fundamentals in acupuncture, with special emphasis on its holistic philosophy, will be a much-needed welcome change in the right direction.