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TCM says that the Qi follows the Shen. Where we direct our attention, we direct our energy as well. Energy is a finite substance that can be depleted by those who are adept at capturing your attention. There's more in the Salon:
Just when you thought it was safe to get acupuncture, along comes this news release frightening the general public with yet another authoritative MD's warning that acupuncture may kill you. The premise here is that people are falling asleep at the wheel after their acupuncture treatments. Let's do a survey, let's count how many people have died due to car accidents while under the influence of over-the-counter anti-histimines and compare that to how many people have died (if any!) due to falling asleep at the wheel following an acupuncture treatment. Look, if you get really sleepy as a result of your acupuncture treatment, pull over and take a nap. Did I really have to tell you that?
(link) [news.bbc.co.uk]
A new study suggests ginkgo supplements do nothing to quickly improve memory in healthy people, a finding that goes against years of well-publicized claims that helped turn the supplements into a multimillion-dollar industry. GANCAO.NET wonders what would happen if the same herb was tested on people who actually have memory problems? Perhaps the problem with this research is that most medicines actually work when there is a need, not when there is no need. Giving aspirin to people who don't have a headache will not take away their headaches. Does that mean that aspirin doesn't work?
(link) [msnbc.com]
The FDA wants to put warning labels on Ephedra products. Can I help write the copy? How about "Use of this product is safe when applied to traditional indications such as common cold, asthma, or facial edema." Needs more bite, doesn't it? How about "Use of this product can result in death earlier than anticipated". Nope, too much bite. I'm sure the FDA will come up with something.
Research at the child psychiatry branch at the National Institute of Mental Health has noted that ADHD kid's brains are 3-4% smaller than those of the general population. Judith Rapoport, author of the study, told United Press International that the findings of smaller brains "provide support in conjunction with other data like genetics that there is a clear biological factor in ADHD." We call it a Jing deficiency which is the precurser to the health and apparently the size of the central nervous system. This precurser is also a precurser to the bodily fluids and cooling mechanisms in the body. Without them, an individual is said to suffer from empty heat which leads to irritability, restlessness, hyperexcitability and many of other signs and symptoms you can see in the ADHD patient.
Researchers at the University of Bristol in the UK have discovered that exercise can lower the incidence of a number of cancers and assist in the recovery from cancer treatments. TCM theory recognizes that many cancers are a stagnation of blood, giving rise to a lump which ends up being called a tumor in biomedicine. Blood stagnation is often a response to a lifetime of stress. Exercise can address the physiological responses to stress and prevent the creation of tumors since movement addresses stagnations in the body. Not all tumors are blood stagnation though, and when biomedicine can differentiate the stagnation tumors from the phlegm tumors from the stagnation due to deficiency type tumors as TCM practitioners do, perhaps they'll discover which cases will benefit by exercise and which cases can actually be aggravated by exercise.
(link) [news.bbc.co.uk]
A trend among infertility clinics is to include psychological counseling as the link between stress and infertility can not be ignored. Its about time, too. TCM identified the effects of stress on fertility about a million years ago, that's why so many of our fertility patients conceive after Qi activating (stress reduction) herbs and acupuncture treatments.
(link) [International Herald Tribune]
Researchers at the Finnish Institute for Occupational Health report a statistical link between work stress (specifically, the effort-reward balance) and heart disease. TCM says that stress causes Qi stagnation which is kind of a neurological issue, but given time, that can become Blood stagnation which could be located in the chest giving rise to what biomedicine calls heart disease. TCM does have therapies for heart disease, Qi stagnation and Blood stagnation, but you'll need permission to take an hour off of work to visit your acupuncturist...
(link) [news.bbc.co.uk]
Swedish scientists have found an undefined particle in the spinal fluid of schizophrenics. This particle may be the thief or the victim. It may be causing schizophrenia or it may be caused by schizophrenia, or neither. They just don't know yet. GANCAO.NET wonders how this particle would react to She Xiang, Yuan Zhi, or Shi Chang Pu. These TCM herbs treat "phlegm misting the Heart orifices" which is one of the TCM differentiations for schizophrenia.
Jing is one of those substances in the body unique to traditional Chinese medicine. It's in charge of the growth cycles in the body. If anything's supposed to happen at a certain time in your life, it's gotta be Jing behind it all. Jing enables us to grow up and become reproductive. Once we're ready to pass our Jing on to the next generation, we begin to lose it. As life progresses we become old and grey thanks to the depletion of our Jing. We can slow that depletion but as of yet, we haven't figured out how to stop it. Research at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center and Fox Chase Cancer Center, both in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have noticed that the grey matter begins to shrink at age 20 and shrinks steadily thereafter while the white matter doesn't show any signs of aging till middle age when it begins shrinking at a rate that incrases more quickly than the grey matter. These measurements could someday prove to be a biomedical marker for one aspect of Jing as Jing is also called the organic foundation for the production of Marrow. The TCM concept of Marrow includes the spongy material in the bones, but also includes the so-called "Sea of Marrow" which is the brain, presumably both grey and white matter.
(link) [docguide.com]
The less you move, the more likely your blood will clump up. Once it does that, it can clog up other structures in the body that can cause a stroke or death. TCM treatments focus on stimulating the flow of blood throughout the body, lifestyle changes can prevent the need for this kind of therapy too. Movement (i.e. exercise) stimulates blood circulation and prevents against these kinds of pathologies. In some cases, the problem (in whole or in part) is due to the stagnation of phlegm in the body. TCM phlegm isn't always mucus or something you cough up. It can be any fatty lump. Plaque inside the arteries would fall under the broad category of phlegm accumulation. This too can lead to ischemic pathologies such as what killed this taxi driver. Phlegm is generally considered dietary or metabolic in origin, much like biomedicine views the atheroschlerosis relationship to cholesterol.
(link) [news.bbc.co.uk]
Acupuncture points are located based on the "cun" or anatomical inch. The length of the cun depends on the size of the patient. In much the same way, researchers in New York have discovered a relationship between the size of a man's index finger and the size of his penis. I'm not sure who is funding this research, but I'm thinking that only the glove and condom industries will benefit.
Its time once again for the annual discussion on Ephedra/Ma Huang. Shall we leave it on the shelves for those who want to lose weight, or shall we remove it from the shelves because of those losing their lives? GANCAO.NET says regulate the stuff so that we (me and my L.Ac. friends) can continue to use it safetly. This is a TCM herb! It isn't for weight loss, energy gain, or any of the uses that is seen in the miracle cures on-line. Its for wheezing and asthma due to the common cold. It also has some diuretic properties that make it effective for facial edema, again in the context of a respiratory infection.
(link) [Plastic.com]