Dr. John Chen and the folks at Elotus has created and compiled a most informative source page on how TCM is dealing with COVID-19. You can gain a good understanding of the virus and its workings as well as its treatment from both western and Chinese medicine perspectives from the video and document links on this page. Meanwhile I am preparing some of the herbal formulas detailed there that are used by hospitals in China for prevention and early stages of infection.

I'm writing this on the eve of my 21 year old niece's scheduled deployment to Iraq.

My first contact with veteran patients was in 2006 under the mentorship of Dr. Niemtzow. I followed Dr. Niemtzow while he made his rounds at Walter Reed treating wounded soldiers from the Afgan war. I was impressed with their idealism, humility and patriotism.

It was not until a year ago that the VA opened it's door to acupuncture as a way to treat pain so to alleviate dependence on opioids. I got myself certified as a provider. Pain is on top but Acupuncture treats many other conditions and I find myself treating Parkinson's Disease, PTSD, Erectile Dysfunction and other problems that my patients bring in.

I am confident that one day the value of Acupuncture and Oriental Mediicine in promoting well-being will be appreciated and accepted as a frontline intervention for all diseases not only by the VA but by Medicare.

This was the second time I treated this condition. Both were successful. Above is Mother's news for me. I blogged about treatment of my first patient too:

I will let my patient tell her story:

"I am a 79 year old woman with Stage I spondylolisthesis at L 4-5. Right spine and right ankle pain kept me uncomfortable during the day and awake at night. Worst of all was the dagger in the Right buttock at the piriformis muscle.  I also had a lot of pain at the left side of my neck below the ear.  Often I wore my surgical corset and took Tylenol and Aleve and force myself to walk in pain.  Sometimes I could not walk more than 60 feet before pain made me stop. In desperation, I scheduled for spine surgery. Then my daughter, who is a physician, gave me valuable information and advice and I decided to pursue healing with natural and alternative medicine. I cancelled the surgery and started to get acupuncture from Lok Kwan.

Lok Kwan followed a protocol used by the Mayo Clinic in an ongoing study of the efficacy of acupuncture for spondylolisthesis. Lok Kwan told me it was a tried and true protocol that involves needling the lumbar points along the Bladder Channel followed by flexion traction of the spine. The only thing he did differently was that he did the flexion traction by hand rather than with a machine. Doing it manually gave him continuous feedback so he could fine tune the treatment.

In August 2018, I started to receive this treatment from Lok Kwan 2x/week. After eight weeks of acupuncture treatment the pain in the right buttock muscle diminished from intolerable to almost nothing.  Pain in neck almost disappeared. I still see Lok Kwan twice a week. I keep daily notes to keep track of my progress and effectiveness of the treatment. I continue to gain strength, balance and comfort from treatment to treatment. I am very happy with my decision not to have the operation and chose acupuncture instead."

Even though hypertension may be controlled by medication the side effects may be serious enough for the patient to seek alternative treatments. There are also those cases where medication does not work. Or the combination of meds stops working and has to be redesigned, often experimentally. Acupuncture treatment can take care of chronic hypertension without any bad side effects.

Micro Acupuncture can be an effective treatment treatment for many eye problems even where allopathic medicine fails. Here's the report for one patient after only one treatment for an eye that had gone through multiple surgeries and could only see fuzzy shapes before treatment. The top picture is report from patient's daughter. Patient can see objects and color now after only one treatment. The bottom picture shows acupuncture on my own hand. I only used two of the points for patient's treatment.

I am happy to report that in last two months a pair of autistic twins with aphasia have made such qualitative improvements in both speech and social behavior that I would qualify them as 'breakthrough'. They indicate new neuronal circuitries have been formed and we expect expanded gains to come in a rapid way.