Acupuncture in the Supportive Care of Colorectal Cancer Survivors: Four Case Studies, Part 2
Beverley de Valois and Rob Glynne-Jones
Colorectal cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers worldwide, yet there is little information about using acupuncture to support people living with and beyond the disease. A philanthropically funded hospital-based outpatient acupuncture service facilitated long-term treatment for colorectal cancer survivors experiencing consequences of cancer treatment. In this two-part paper, the authors present four case studies illustrating how acupuncture affected a range of troublesome symptoms experienced by patients who had completed cancer treatments (surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy). This is part two of the article, and discusses two cases with multiple long-term consequences and comorbidities.
The cases are enriched by comments written by the patients themselves and by their oncologist, providing a broader view of the effects of acupuncture treatment.

Read the whole article

NADA Acupuncture at Al Manaar Mosque post Grenfell
Rachel Peckham
NADA acupuncture has been used across the globe to help people suffering trauma following a catastrophic event. Following 9/11, an integrative stress management programme was set up close to the World Trade Center site to offer treatment for the community in Manhattan and New York. Between 2001 and 2007 there were 40,000 visits to the programme. People chose their treatments: 1 per cent chose counselling, 44 per cent chose massage/energy therapy and 55 per cent chose to have NADA acupuncture.

NADA GB and World Medicine are running a NADA clinic one morning a week at the Al Manaar Cultural Centre in North Kensington to offer treatment to the community in the aftermath of the Grenfell fire. Over a 24-week period, data collected so far shows there have been 322 treatments given to 126 people. People are returning for treatment, some every week. A large proportion are reporting that it is helping them.

Tribute to Giovanni Maciocia
Interview with Aruna Sahni
As a tribute to Giovanni Maciocia (1945-2018) we are reproducing Aruna Sahni’s interview with him from EJOM Vol 4 No 4. It provides a personal account of not only the early years of acupuncture in the UK but his own involvement in those years. We have all benefitted from his curiosity, scholarship and commitment as he sought to expand his own knowledge and his work helped develop the clarity that we all so desperately needed in the late 70s and 80s when so little information about Chinese medicine was available in the West. He made Chinese medicine accessible, helping adapt Chinese medicine for a Western mindset and rightly became one of the most highly respected teachers of acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine in Europe. He even helped introduce Chinese herbal medicine to the UK through inviting key figures such as Ted Kaptchuk to teach here. Giovanni’s contribution was enormous, through his books which have become standard textbooks in innumerable colleges worldwide, his inspirational teaching and his willingness to share his wisdom and expertise. As students, practitioners and patients, we all owe him a huge thank you.

Wind: East and West
Kim Wells
This article examines the connection between Traditional Chinese Medicine’s concept of external Wind and Western Medicine’s concept of inflammatory immune response, looking for parallels or correspondence between them. It makes the claim that there is a fair degree of correspondence between these two concepts in several respects though not in others. It also addresses the broader contexts in which these concepts are rooted by examining the Chinese concepts of the wei qi defensive system and Wind in general; and also Western Medicine’s view of the immune system and the functions and scope of the inflammatory response.

TCM Treatment for Essential Hypertension: Clinical and RCT Investigations into Electroacupuncture
Fritz Hudnut
Hypertension is a large problem in American society, as it is worldwide. The author initiated an in vivo exploration of electroacupuncture (EA) protocols to treat high blood pressure and found good clinical response from a range of point protocols using 2 Hz frequency. Along with discussion of the author’s use of EA, Dr Peng Li’s Long-Lasting Reduction of Blood Pressure by Electroacupuncture in Patients with Hypertension: Randomized Controlled Trial, from 2015, will be reviewed. In addition the UC Irvine team of Longhurst/Li/Zhou have done a series of RCT investigations of EA for hypertension using the same choice of EA frequency, which they found to be ‘significantly beneficial’ across a number of studies, recommending that ‘further studies are warranted’.
Irrespective of the positive findings, EA remains open to question from both within and without the acupuncture community here in the United States, as many classicists of various persuasions continue to consider it as a ‘new technology’ even in the 21st century, i.e. an untested modality.
However, there is now RCT evidence to show solid cardiovascular benefits to the use of EA for the treatment of essential hypertension (EH).

Engaging Vitality: An Approach to More Effective Engagement with Qi
Dan Bensky and Charles Chace
This article describes an approach to qi palpation based on osteopathy called Engaging Vitality. The central premise of Engaging Vitality work is that if the concept of qi is to be taken seriously then it should be palpable. In osteopathy the process of appreciating the human body is known as listening, a term that combines a sensibility of critical evaluation with mindful and empathetic attunement. The Engaging Vitality approach employs a repertoire of palpatory techniques drawn from osteopathy to help acupuncturists listen to the qi more effectively, to set their own preconceptions aside and simply respond to what the qi is trying to tell them.