Coffee Morning at Well4ever - Raffle Prizes!

Well4ever Clinic Putney: Coffee Morning at Well4ever - Raffle Prizes!: Hi ppl, Just 2 days to go to the World's biggest coffee morning, or at least putney's biggest ;) I want to quickly announce the prizes ...

Well4ever Clinic Putney: World's Biggest Coffee Morning at Well4ever

Well4ever Clinic Putney: World's Biggest Coffee Morning at Well4ever: You're all invited to join us at Well4ever on Friday the 30th September 2011 between 10am - 1pm. This is the first year we are hosting this ...

9000 Needles Documentary Film - A Family's Acupuncture Journey To Stroke Recovery

You don't get to see acupuncture, herbs and Chinese medicine  feature in too many movies unless like me you're partial to Kung fu films, Hong Kong cinema and Chinese historical epics. So I feel I must share with you this acupuncture documentary that I seen recently, its called 9000 Needles, and I'll let you know why later though I think you can guess.

This isn't a Jet Li joint, a Jackie Chan day in a life or anything like that, but a real story of a real guy called Devin Dearth, a 40 year old father of 3, who has a brain stem bleed and is told he'll probably never walk again.

The American health care system being broken, his insurance company wont pay for his rehab and the only option left for his family is to take him to China and try a rehab program in a Teaching Hospital in Tianjin, China.

This is an emotional story of a family going through some really tough times, and shows the sheer determination and strength of the human spirit to cope and fight thru. You'll cry with his family and cheer him on as he makes progress, and you get a chance to see him go thru the treatment which includes lots of acupuncture, Chinese herbs, cupping, bleeding, herbal soaks, tui na, physical therapy and more.


His Chinese doctors are absolutely brilliant, they kinda remind me of some of my teachers, and they poke him with 9157 needles in his 3 months stay, there or thereabouts, hence the name.

You can see 9000 Needles on the big screen at the Colchester Arts Centre, for one night only!  Friday July 8th 2011 at 19:30 for £10  Check it out!

Here is a 5 minute cut from the film and thanks to Devin and the entire Dearth family for the inspiration.

Mushrooms in London

 Got some really cool fungi pics of some polypores from Eva she took last week on a walk with Robin in North London that I want to share with you. 

I think they are polyporus squamosus, also known as Dryad's Saddle, though they could probably pass for polyporus craterellus, have a look at these images and see what you think, your comments appreciated.

Also, maybe we can start a new thread here,  after the storm last week, and with this being a Bank Holiday weekend, you may find yourself taking a walk in the park or camping out in nature, why not take a pic of the mushrooms you spot and email me or post'em in comments, and we can all try (all 12 of us ;)  to identify them and vote for the best ones. 

The winner will get Paul Stamets book, Mycelium Running, which I mentioned in the last post.

ps. RIP Gil Scott-Heron, a true legend.

Gil Scott - Heron

How mushrooms can save the world

Reishi Mushroom (Ling Zhi)

As you know, as an herbalist i use and recommend mushrooms to my patients at clinic very regularly, sometimes as a food like some of the tastier ones Shiitake and Chanterelles, other times as tinctures or powders or capsules of the mushroom mycelium like the Reishi, Cordyceps & Kombucha for their powerful beneficial effects on our immune system and as natural antibiotics and antivirals. I will discuss all of the above in detail in future posts.

I think it makes sense that this first herbal post will give props to the first species to move from the oceans to land, as the gateway species about 1.3 billion years ago. As Paul Stamets says fungi have always survived the extinction cycles on earth because they can survive in the dark, they are the grand molecular disassemblers in nature: they break down plants, minerals and animals into soil, they sequester CO2 and have an amazing healing effect not only on the human body but on the environment they inhabit on a global scale.

Old Growth Forest Agarikon mushroom

There is nobody better to explain this than Paul himself, who is a true visionary and greenovator, also known as the mushroom guy for his incredible work with mushroom mycelium and fungi. His work, patents, and research has huge implications in vast fields from medicine: in treatment of smallpox, pandemic avian flus, H5N1, on the one hand, all the way to cleaning up environmental brown fields and disasters such as the oil gulf spill of last year or the Japanese nuclear plant radioactive cleanup efforts right now! Note especially his work with rare Old Growth Forest's mushroom Agarikon (Fomitopsis officinalis) - the one in the picture is about 50 years old from a forest in the pacific northwest of United States.

For more info go to Paul's website www.fungi.com
or read his book Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save The World
'This book is a manual for the mycological rescue of the planet...the mycorestoration revolution'.


As for video you can find his talks on youtube, but i really like his talk on Ted: 
Paul Stamets on 6 ways mushrooms can save the world | Video on TED.com

Water H2O

Just realized that it was world water day this week on march 22nd so though i usually stick to acupuncture herbs and chinese medicine i think this deserves a mention.

If you've ever been to clinic you'll know we always offer you water when you come in, and encourage you to drink more water when you emerge from your acu-bubble back to your busy life :)

As much as i love acupuncture and herbs, we can actually survive without them, but a week without water and we're pretty much gone. Water is the one thing that we can't do without, all 7 billion of us. So let me give you a few interesting water facts:

• A quarter of the worlds population is without safe drinking water.
• Less than 1% of the water treated by public water systems is used for drinking and cooking.
• In the time it took you to read these first three facts another child has just died in the developing world from unsafe drinking water.
• Water makes up 75% of the human brain. 75% of trees are also made from water!
• You could live for a month without food, but you would be dead after a week without water!
• Once it evaporates, a water molecule spends around ten days in the air.
• 97% of the worlds water is salty or otherwise undrinkable, 2% is stored in glaciers and the ice caps, the remaining 1% is left for humanity's needs.

check out water-treatment.org.uk for more info...

If you want to know/do more have a look at WaterAid's site, their London office is around the way near oval and their vision is of a world where everyone has access to safe water and sanitation.  

I believe everyone should have access to safe clean water too, and i'll leave you with a couple of documentary films about water:

Flow: For Love of Water


Blue Gold: World Water Wars

In Praise of the Lowly Clinician

been meaning to write for a while now but clinic has just been choka so been busy being an acupuncturist & herbalist, running a clinic and all the rest of it or as Jake Paul Fratkin puts it a 'lowly clinician'...
so if you'd like to know what its like and why i've been too busy to write have a read of his article in Acupuncture Today:   In Praise of the Lowly Clinician

Acupuncture in London-Acupuncture Research Resources Vol.III

Acupuncture for back pain - the evidence: from NICE to NEJM

 
You may have heard that NICE recommends acupuncture as the treatment choice for persistent low back pain.

So what is NICE and why are they being so nice?

NICE is The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), an independent body which job it is to provide guidelines to the NHS (the National Health Service in the UK) on the use of treatments and care of patients. The reason they are backing acupuncture for the first time is firstly and most importantly because it works, and secondly because its cost effective. Simples...

In the same statement NICE also: "advises against injections into the back or taking an X-ray of the lumbar spine for non-specific low back pain." So please think twice before you opt for cortisone injections into your back and consult with your GP and your Specialist to make sure it is the appropriate treatment for your condition.  

Here's a link to the NICE summary page of the Low Back Pain clinical guidance statement and documents.

And if you're really interested and want to read the entire guidance document follow this one, you'll need some time for this one.

What this means for you is, if you live in the UK and suffer from low back pain, and you haven't given acupuncture a try for your back pain yet, now is the time! 

You could even try and ask your GP, on that basis, if they would consider referring you and/or paying (your GP holds the CAM budget for the surgery's patients) for your course of acupuncture treatment. They might not but it doesn't hurt to ask, and remember to mention NICE guidelines :)

This guideline will be up for review in 2012 so its up to us (patients and acupuncturists) to prove that NICE made the right decision last year and continues to back acupuncture as a treatment choice for back pain, and maybe that will open their eyes to back acupuncture treatment for other conditions as well.

Acupuncture in London-Acupuncture Research Resources Vol.II

Acupuncture for pain - the evidence. And yes, you can see it!

I recently read this article in NCCAM site on acupuncture for treatment of pain with some fascinating research into the effects of acupuncture on the brain which I'd like to share with you.

Remember the notion, pain occurs in the brain. Not where you think it hurts...

By using the most sophisticated brain imaging tech top neuroscientists and radiologists can get their hands on (fMRI, PET, MEG) they are able to see changes that occur in the hypothalamus and the amygdala, these are areas in the brain which maintain pain. 

Even if these devices are not quite sophisticated enough to 'see the qi' yet, they are able to detect its effects in the brain.

The scientists involved are top researchers at the finest american institutions. What they are doing is very cool because it is these baby steps of true integrative medicine east and west that are paving the way torwards the 21st century medicine of the future. 

Check out the following quote from the article:

" Qi, meridians, yin, yang. How can researchers study acupuncture, a 2,000-year-old form of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) based on foreign concepts that seem impossible to measure, let alone define?

To Richard Nahin, Ph.D., M.P.H., NCCAM's Senior Advisor for Scientific Coordination and Outreach, the answer is obvious: "We don't necessarily have to understand the concepts of qi or meridians to study the safety or efficacy of acupuncture."

Harvard Medical School neuroscientist (and practicing acupuncturist) Vitaly Napadow, Ph.D., L.Ac., agrees. "I firmly believe that everything can be studied with the scientific method. Unfortunately, we don't currently have a 'qi meter.' So, in my research, we don't focus on meridians or qi. We take a neuroscientific approach to study how acupuncture functions through the nervous system."

" Powerful imaging techniques—fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), PET (positron emission tomography), and MEG (magnetoencephalography)—are now available to reveal areas of the brain affected during pain and to map the impact of acupuncture in patients experiencing pain. "

Bruce Rosen, M.D., Ph.D., principal investigator of an NCCAM Center of Excellence on Acupuncture and Brain Activity at Harvard Medical School. "

 NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH • NATIONAL CENTER FOR COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE

Click here to read the full article in the NCCAM newsletter

Acupuncture in London-Acupuncture Research Resources Vol.I

So can you show me some proof? 
   Does acupuncture do what its says on tin? 

In a word, the answer to both questions is a resounding YES!

Acupuncture has been consistently and continually practiced in China and beyond for at least the last 2500 years for which we have very good evidence (and probably even much longer, but we'll leave that for a future post).

During most of that time the Chinese Doctors of the last 2 millennia collected many hundred of thousands of case studies as well as experiential and empirical knowledge of what worked and what didn't.

They had not though been as obsessed as we are in the West in RCTs (Randomised Controlled Trials) as the be all and end all of 'evidence' that the medicine is based on. So although there is indeed a huge mountain of evidence that acupuncture works its only in the last few decades that the Western methodology of testing what works in medicine has become prevalent.

That said there is a growing amount of good quality research done all over the world which I can point you towards. I'd like to start locally with our very own NHS, with whats become an annual update on acupuncture produced and collated by NHS Evidence which is a great little resource, follow the link below to check it out:

The 2010 Annual Evidence Update on Acupuncture aims to identify, organise and present all relevant systematic reviews and large-scale randomised controlled trials (RCTs) published between February 2009 and February 2010.