| In the United States. The protocol that I’m using is perhaps the most popular. I do remember a Swedish group before me that developed a protocol for dry mouth, but it required many, many treatments, and needles all over the body. There was no real guarantee that the treatment would be successful, where with the treatment that I have developed, it is very rare when it fails.
What other protocols have you developed?
The other thing is the battlefield acupuncture. I completed developing that in 2001. The basis is that there are various systems for treating pain using ear acupuncture. These systems originate from the Chinese, the French and the Germans, and they’re complicated. For instance, in the French system, as illness becomes more chronic—whether it has to do with pain, or a skin condition, or psychological condition—the points begin to change position on the ear. So you have to be very much aware of where to look to find these points.
Are you saying that you don’t just have to use different points, each with a standard location on the ear, but that, in fact, the place on the ear that a particular named point is located—the point location itself—changes?
Yes. Say, for instance, you have elbow pain. Maybe you developed arthritis two months ago. As that evolves over a period of time, an activated point that may need to be treated in the ear, begins to change its anatomical location. Consequently, you can understand how complex this can become for the acupuncturist trying to treat the patient. There is a French system, a German system, and a Chinese system. In many cases, they essentially contradict each other. This can be very difficult for people trying to learn and execute this clinically.
Battlefield acupuncture is based on the principle that pain, for the most part, is processed in the central nervous system, in the brain. By interrupting the signal in the brain, or interrupting its processing, one has the possibility of attenuating pain. There are five ear points that I use for battlefield acupuncture, which never change. Needles are placed at these points and within a few minutes there is rapid pain relief, extremely rapid. Probably more so than what you would expect doing traditional ear acupuncture employing the French, German, or Chinese systems. And these are the only five points that you have to learn, instead of hundreds of points with each of the other systems.
So that has great practical value for someone who has been injured, on the battlefield or elsewhere.
The Air Force has an ongoing project now, where we have taught just these five points to physicians who are not acupuncturists, so that they can use them adjunctively in their practices. For instance, in family medicine, where they have many patients that come in with pain syndromes that are not responding to medications. They’re able to use this protocol successfully, which for them is extremely helpful. They reduce the patient’s pain so there’s a lot of gratification. Both parties are happy, the physician and the patient.
In general, do you find that the effects are lasting?
It depends on the pathology of the patient. Some patients come in with very advanced pathology. If you have a deformed joint or a bulging disc, acupuncture is not going to change this. It’s almost like taking a giant Tylenol without any side effects. Over a period of time, we notice that with many patients, the remission period will increase. On some of our younger population of patients, we find that there is a curing effect from the acupuncture, in the sense that the patients’ pain goes away. They may still have a bulging disc, they may still have the arthritis, but they don’t require any more pain treatment. Which I find to be truly amazing.
Is it that a reflex within the nervous system has been uncoupled, or a decrease in inflammation?
I don’t think we understand the mechanism at this point. |
