Though millions of dollars annually are spent on the war on cancer, to my knowledge not a dime has ever been spent researching a major clinical find: An acupuncture point known as Root of Tumor (or Pee Gun) whose sole action involves the dissolution of tumors and the undoing of cancer. Perhaps this should change.

The point and its method of treatment was taught to me by Dr. James Tin Yau So in 1978. Dr. So was the bearer of a renowned acupuncture lineage in China and an immensely experienced clinician for whom the New England School of Acupuncture (oldest in the country) was founded in 1975. A beloved teacher whose devoted students number in the thousands, Dr. So may be considered the father of acupuncture in the US.

Within Dr. So’s clinical lineage, Root of Tumor (or Pee Gun) has a long history of empirical validation. An “extra,” or non-meridian point, even within Traditional Chinese Medicine theory its action is not readily accounted for. According to Dr. So needling of the point is forbidden. Instead, Pee Gun is treated by direct (scarring) moxibustion (the burning of an herb, Artemisia vulgaris) on the skin). Done properly this is not as bad as it sounds as the heat builds gradually and is over just as it is about to become painful).

The following verbatim account given by a patient who also happens to be a close friend illustrates Pee Gun’s action:

Following a biopsy December 17th, 2006 I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.  At the time of the biopsy my hemoglobin was 7.4.  I was incredibly tired, itched a lot and had terrible night-sweats, all common symptoms of NHL. 

 New Year’s Eve 2006-2007 was spent with friends in Boston.  Their home on the second floor required a climb of about 16 steps, a trip I could only make on my hands and knees and was exhausted when I reached the top.  I could barely stay awake for the event, even after an afternoon nap.

New Year’s morning, at about 9AM, we drove our children to Logan airport, about a forty-minute trip.  I drove there and back and almost immediately went to bed and slept for several hours into the afternoon.

When I awoke, Jerry asked if I would be interested in having an acupuncture treatment.  He said it was not a common treatment but one he learned from the founder of the acupuncture school he attended. 

I sat with my back to him. My husband and Jerry’s wife helped distract me from the pain of having moxa burned 14 times on 2 places on my back.  The process must have taken about a painful hour, after which I again took to sleep for a few hours.

When I woke up I drove my husband and myself to meet other friends for dinner in a neighboring town.  There we partied until late into the night and only left because my husband reminded me that our hosts would be waiting up for us to arrive.  When we got there I bounded up the stairs I could only have slowly climbed hours before.

 January 4th was my first meeting with the oncologist.  To every one’s surprise my blood count was 9 that day.  When I began chemo February 5th with my blood count 10.2, I knew that the acupuncture treatment was largely responsible for my road to full health.  I went back to playing tennis February 15th, 10 days after my first of 6 chemo treatments, fully energized and full of stamina for the 1 1/2 hours of play.  I have been cancer free for 8+ years. Ms. ML.

Dr. So taught acupuncturists to fearlessly treat seriously ill people and moxibustion was a principal weapon.

The point’s location:

Three and a half cun (finger division measured according to width of the patient’s middle finger’s crease between first and second digits when the finger is bent) bilateral from under the 12th thoracic vertebrae.

Please note that not all practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine are trained in or comfortable performing this treatment. To have Pee Gun treated find an acupuncturist with experience and skill in direct moxibustion.

My suspicion is that intense heat stimulus to Pee Gun is anti-oxidative and promotes cancer cell apoptosis. For research and also clinical purposes it is likely that in place of direct moxibustion a less onerous method of treatment such as laser heat stimulaton could work.

IF YOU ARE A CANCER RESEARCHER SEEKING MORE INFORMATION OR AN ACUPUNCTURIST DESIRING TRAINING IN THE USE OF THIS POINT,  PLEASE CONTACT ME.

We all could stand to know: What exactly is going on within the body approximately three inches lateral to under the twelve thoracic vertebrae?

While awaiting our answer, as they almost but do not quite say in the television drug commercials…

Talk to your acupuncturist about the anti-tumor point, Pee Gun!

Posing and Then Answering the Right Question in the Health Care Debate

The business model of our health care system is a jackal. If you grind down its teeth you neither shrink the jackal’s ravenous appetite nor curb his predatory bent. So why persist in seeking to reform this beast? Rather than profit health care should be designed to reward prevention, efficiency and safety. It is time to euthanize the jackal.

* The wrong question to ask:

How can we curb spending and control health care costs?

* The right question to ask:

How can we eliminate perverse incentives?

Simply put: Since each and every one of us is at risk to becoming sick or growing old and infirm, health care and long term care ought to be viewed as utilities rather market frontiers. Indeed, this is as it sensibly is much the world over. We do not scream “Socialism!” when government bodies construct roads, schools or sewage systems that benefit everyone. An outcry against socialism might be appropriate where the government attempts an incursion into beliefs and activities that are genuinely private and personal such as religious expression, the creation of art, or sexual activity.

The following is but a partial iteration of all too common examples of perverse incentives within our health care system:

• Acupuncture, a modality is known to be a safe, inexpensive, preventive, and powerful means of care for numerous conditions. It succeeds by alleviating pain and suffering while also addressing a condition’s root causes and connecting the dots between seemingly unrelated ailments. Rather than rewarding acupuncture’s broad based, holistic effects, conventional medical research not only ignores acupuncture’s broad benefits but actually punishes this blessed modality for the broad range of its clinical effects. This is because drug research erroneously validates only reductionist hypotheses and explanations.
• Our Drug Culture demanding new pharmaceuticals annually is at the root of numerous evils. New marketplace drugs are no improvements on the old, but merely serve to renew patent ownerships, thus building in escalating costs. Additional evils include a bias against holistically oriented medical research, a perverse incentive to addict multitudes of individuals to potentially harmful vaccines, and hormonally based drugs, drugs for dubious conditions such as Attention Deficit Disorder and meaningless conditions such as shyness. The drug culture promotes an idiocy that our immune system is at odds with our well being as in the inculcated fear of fever, which means only that the body has mobilized against a pathogen. It promotes a view that drugs rather than an active lifestyle, sound nutrition and stress reducing activities are indispensable to health. Most perversely of all, the general public ultimately is obligated to subsidize the advertising costs attendant to its own brainwashing as these are passed along to the health care consumer.
• Insurance cannot be reformed given our health care system’s dependence on profit. Don’t get me started! There are no profits attached to reimbursing for the future benefits attached to preventive medicine, or securing the needs of individuals with “preexisting” conditions. Insurance incentives are to accept premiums from healthy individuals and avoid the currently or potentially sick except at extortionist rates. Because insurance executives and physicians sit on the boards of insurance companies insurers persist in economically irresponsible behaviors such as not reimbursing for safer and less expensive modalities s such as acupuncture and homeopathy while pushing people into more dangerous interventions such as surgery and its necessary aftercare.
• The Demise of Public Health. Growing up in New York City I still recall the existence of public health infirmaries in various neighborhoods. One by one these vanished for much the same reason that the auto industry succeeded in destroying New York’s efficient and energy-clean public transportation trolley car system. At various times in our history the American Medical Association has gone to court in order cripple public health medicine, meaning the appropriation of public monies for one-on-one health care. As a result, American public health care has remained dwarfed: it covers only vaccinations and quarantines. In other countries such as Great Britain, public health care has grown until it has finally formed the foundation of a national health care system. This allows doctors to treat in hospitals and public settings where because they are on government salary they need not be pharmaceutical industry puppets and remain freer to practice sensibly.
• Long Term Care. Because our system rewards the delusional belief that none of us will ever grow old, or that the elderly are always someone else’s burden we are incented to become taxation misers, asset hiders, government and social service agency despisers, and poverty-stricken family member impersonators. Treating long term care as a utility would cost each of us pennies on the dollar a month. It would properly remunerate and adequately train the hardworking caregivers in whom we trust the desperate needs of our infirm parents and relatives. This change in perspective would serve to humanize our culture while restoring its economic and moral sanity.

Acupuncture a Powerful Integrative Oncology Tool

The following article submitted to Homeopathic Wisdom by Jack Bleeker, a Research Coordinator at mesothelioma.com is a welcome reminder of the relevance of acupuncture with regard to problematic disease conditions, in this case mesothelioma:

Integrative Oncology is the combination of “mainstream” care and evidenced-based complimentary therapies to control cancer-related pain and symptoms [source: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Integrative Medicine]. Complementary therapies, while not given the attention that more traditional cancer therapies may receive, are perhaps equally important while undergoing treatment for certain types of cancer. Patients diagnosed with difficult to treat malignancies will often use these types of therapies in conjunction with traditional treatment options, which include surgery, chemotherapy, or radiology, to form a more comprehensive and effective treatment regimen. Among the most effective alternative therapies utilized by those diagnosed with cancer is acupuncture.

Acupuncture has long been utilized as a general pain reduction method for thousands of years, originating in the Far East and gradually being utilized throughout the world. Effective cancer treatment often depends on the patient’s ability to not only defeat the cancer through various methods but to also maintain their health and mental spirit throughout the course of treatment.

Often, the symptoms and effects of the cancer itself on the body are insignificant compared to the pain and other side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. Patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiation are often fatigued, experience a lack of appetite and weight loss, and may become depressed.  For cancer patients experiencing these and other side effects, acupuncture is extremely beneficial. According to the ancient theories of Chinese medicine, “qi,” or “life energy,” flows through energy channels within the body known as meridians. These channels connect the body’s internal organs, and if these meridians become “blocked,” or an individual’s qi cannot flow properly, disease will set in. Acupuncture is said to relieve blockages and restore the natural flow of qi, and ultimately restoring one’s health.

Cancers such as mesothelioma, which are often unable to be removed by surgical means, are often treated with some combination of chemotherapy and radiation [the combination of chemo drug Alimta® and anti-cancer drug Cisplatin® is a popular mesothelioma treatment method]. While these potent drugs can be effective in eliminating some of the tumor mass and growth, they also profoundly affect the health of the surrounding tissue. Symptoms experienced by those undergoing mainstream cancer treatments include fever, nausea, and debilitating pain.

Patients who undergo acupuncture in conjunction with mainstream cancer therapies have experienced dramatic reductions in pain and feel that their energy and mental wellbeing was restored. Cancer patients who feel energized, are pain-free and have a solid state of mind are more likely to withstand traditional methods of cancer treatment and have an increased survival rate.

Acupuncture is said to be so effective, in fact, that the World Health Organization [WHO] has recognized acupuncture as a successful intervention for adverse reactions to radiation and chemotherapy. The National Institute of Health [NIH] also agreed that acupuncture may relieve nausea and pain experienced by cancer sufferers, and the organization supports acupuncture clinical trials.

While this ancient method of therapy may be extremely effective for some, acupuncture may not be recommended for all cancer patients. Those who have a history of endocarditis, neutropenia or thrombocytopenia should not undergo acupuncture. Individuals with lymphedema or those who have a pacemaker should speak with a physician before beginning any course of acupuncture therapy.

While oncologists like Dr. Valerie Rusch of the Cancer Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City continue to work towards a cure, those who practice the ancient art of acupuncture will be working to help cancer sufferers experience a better quality of life and an increased rate of survival.

Information about the benefits of acupuncture for <a href=”http://www.mesothelioma.com”>mesothelioma</a> patients from Mesothelioma.com