I posted:
: Just "doing"
: acupuncture is near worthless if there isn’t a decent (East-Asian
: Traditional Healing) diagnosis and treatment plan. What does her
: doctor say?
Robert responded:
: Why would you not expect an acupuncturist to give a decent diagnosis?
: That’s what they’re trained to do.
:
: >Plenty of acupuncturists are not up to treating such a thing.
:
: Why not? I think most acupuncturists would take offense at this.
: How about, "plenty of "East-Asian Traditional Healers" are not up
: to the task." Doesn’t feel to good, does it?
Acupuncturists _are_ East-Asian Traditional Healers–I’m not making a
mutually-exclusive statement here, Robert. Plenty of acupuncturists did three
years of school and know next to nothing about treating serious disease.
Plenty is not all, thankfully–but if your acupuncturist doesn’t give a
diagnosis and treatment plan on request, they may well be part of that
plenty.
: >may not remove the underlying problems, so it worth her while to
: continue to try and ’solve’ (as in dissolve) her Blood Stagnation
: pattern, whole. To do that, she certainly needs a diagnosis. WHY is
: her Blood Stagnation so acute? If she hasn’t demanded a diagnosis
: from her acupuncturist, she isn’t getting her money’s worth. If
: s/he cannot give one, she is probably wasting her money.
:
: This is true. Of course, any doctor practicing any healing method
: should provide a proper diagnosis. What’s your point? —
: ********************************************************************
: ********* Robert Greenstein
My point? They often DON’T. A large part of my practice is people who have
gone to acupuncturists religiously for two years for nothing. An example is a
client in San Francisco who was treated by a Chinese acupuncturist/herbalist
for two years for chronic colds and malaise. The diagnosis: Heat!
The man is deeply Kidney Yang deficient and only thirty years old. Six months
of steak and mustard meals, Rehmannia 8, and about ten other herbal formulas
in fairly big quantities (not all at the same time of course), and his life
is his again. A portion of that time period was spent rebuilding his Spleen
Qi from all the Cold herbals he drank for two years. That acupuncturist was
puzzled…just couldn’t get the Heat to go away. Interestingly, I did achieve
a further improvement in his case with Tian Wang Bu Xin Dan. So there was
some Heat present, but it was due to Yang failing to Consolidate Yin–not
Kidney Yin Deficiency Heat as diagnosed.
Others of my clients received NO diagnosis in their two years. One
acupuncturist I worked with for a short while used to come out of his
consultations and ask me in a whisper "what do you think is wrong with her? I
think it’s something with her Yang, or her Blood, or could it be her Yin or
her Qi?" I kid you not. This man has a ’successful’ practice here.
In another recent example, the MD acupuncturist who failed to diagnose the
collapsed Lung case last December that I wrote about here, or worse (in ETH
terms), failed to note that this woman had very deep Heat lodged all the way
down to her bones that brought about the collapse to begin with.
So don’t take what I say amiss. I know several excellent practitioners. I
know a lot of poor ones. The TCM schools in California turn out a lot of
lousy doctors, I’m sorry to say. Part of the reason is a lack of faith in the
tradition, appreciation for the necessity to study East-Asian history and
language, and TCM’s overemphasis on the Liver, which I believe follows from a
failure to note that the U.S. (and the West) is a Wood culture, while China
(and agrarian cultures) is an Earth culture. Therefore, conditions that would
be very serious Liver problems in China are run-of-the-mill here. Usually, it
is the lifestyle that needs addressing, not the Liver.
P_Iann…@lamg.com (Paul Iannone, P.O.B. 66843, L.A., CA 90066).