On the Front of Integrative Medicine

People around the world show great interest in integrative medicine. We're excited to promote it and see how far it goes!

This original article is from NCCAOM.org

By Bill Reddy, Dipl.Ac. (NCCAOM)®, L.Ac.,
Director, Integrative Health Policy Consortium (IHPC)

The Integrative Health Policy Consortium (IHPC), where NCCAOM is a “Partner for Health,” has been monitoring a number of federal bills that affect our profession or the public health of the nation.  Below is a summary of our recent efforts.

Things are looking up for CAM use in the US military. The Department of Defense Appropriations Bill of 2016 contained the following statement:

“Complementary and alternative (CAM) therapies are now recognized as vital among those modalities for the treatment of pain for their efficacy, broad patient acceptance, minimal adverse effects and low cost.  Yet the development of system-wide policies and practices for their integration remains unfulfilled.  The committee strongly encourages DVCIPM to accelerate the research on and integration of CAM therapies for the management of pain and directs the Assistant Secretary of Defense (health affairs) to provide a report to the congressional defense committees not later than 180 days after enactment of this act on the status of their integration.”

Furthermore, the bill has appropriated $278M for a Peer-Reviewed Medical Research Program including “Integrative Medicine” and “Non-Opioid Pain Management” among others.

IHPC, in cooperation with Samueli Institute, is monitoring this bill.

24 y/o Female Suffered from Postprandial Vomiting

There will be a case conference held by 台灣中醫病理學醫學會 (Taiwan society of TCM pathology) in my alma mater in Taichung tomorrow, Dec 13,2015.

I will present an easy case. She is a 24 y/o Taiwanese student who suffered from abdominal distension, acid regurgitation with postprandial vomiting for years. The result of panendoscopy (PES) acquired in our hospital showed GERD, LA grade A in 2010. Another PES result showed GERD with superficial gastritis in 2013.

She received drug treatment and the result is not good enough for her and she stopped her medication. She came to my clinic five months ago because her father ,who suffered from constipation and insomnia, is also my patient. I used some herbs to treat her “Liver Qi Stagnation” 肝氣鬱滯 and “Upward Perversion of Stomach Qi” 胃氣上逆.

The frequency of her vomiting reduced from three times a day to less than one time a day after two weeks herbal medicine treatment. We now try to maintain the effect and try to make her sleep better. Sometimes it’s hard for patient to cure since lots of diseases/symptoms are caused by daily life habits. Therefore, it is always very important for us to educate patients how to adjust their way of life so that they could lead a better life with or even without the help of acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine.

The effect of Chinese herbal medicine on GERD is pretty good!

Don't Sell Anything You Wouldn't Buy Yourself.

My youngest son is now 1Y3M, he suffered from intermittent cough with the sound of sputum in his lung for a couple of days. Therefore, I prescribed some herbal medicine for him. Although I choose those herbs in the flavor of "sweet." it's by no means an easy task for us to feed a toddler herbal medicine powder. We blended the powder in his food or mix with his formula. We were also surprised that sometimes he can take two or three sips form a straw. Attaboy!

I had been prescribing and doing acupuncture for my family members since I became a licensed TCM doctor. I'm glad I use Chinese herbal medicine to cure my mom's epigastric pain due to gastric ulcer. I also relieved her shoulder and upper limb pain by acupuncture. My father suffer from OA knee and insomnia, Chinese herbal medicine do relieve his symptom, although it took longer time for him. Not to mention the common cold or GI symptom that we usually encountered. I also do massage and manipulation on my wife very often when she complain about soreness in her neck, shoulder and back. When I get sick once in a while with URI or GI symptom, I prescribe TCM powders for myself.

I remember this quote from the book "Poor Charlie's Almanack" : 

Don't sell anything you wouldn't buy yourself.

I'm glad my family trust me and I can help them with their problem.
I love my career!