Welcome to San Diego Acupuncture
Select Health Group is a full service acupuncture clinic serving residents of downtown San Diego, the East Village, South Park, Hillcrest, Cortez Hill, Bankers Hill and nearby areas. Our acupuncture specialists have many years of experience in utilizing acupuncture to treat a wide variety illnesses and disease and have helped many people to maintain good health. We invite you to read more About Us and view profiles of our acupuncturists.
Featured Acupuncture Articles
In an effort to aide persons who are interested in acupuncture treatment as a method for maintaining health, our staff has put together a compendium of articles related to acupuncture. We hope you find these articles useful. Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns, or would like more information on the services we offer or on acupuncture in general.
Latest Acupuncture & Health News
» Herbs: Toxicities And Drug Interactions
Title: Herbs: Toxicities And Drug Interactions
Category: Doctor's Views
Created: 11/22/1998 6:38:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 9/9/2009
» Medical Students Supportive of Alternative Medicine (HealthDay)
HealthDay - WEDNESDAY, Jan. 20 (HealthDay News) -- A new national survey finds that
most medical students think that knowledge of complementary and
alternative medicine could help Western doctors do a better job.
» Back Pain Pictures Slideshow: Myths and Facts About Back Pain
Title: Back Pain Pictures Slideshow: Myths and Facts About Back Pain
Category: Slideshows
Created: 9/14/2009 3:54:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 9/16/2009
» After horrible deaths caused by medical radiation mistakes are uncovered, medical group issues (sort of) an apology
(NaturalNews) In late January, the New York Times published a startling and groundbreaking series of reports by investigative reporter Walt Bogdanich who has uncovered case after case of people who suffered devastating consequences -- including horrendously painful, torture-like deaths -- because of medical mistakes related to radiation treatment. In response to these articles, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) just issued a statement saying the group and its members "deeply regret that these events have occurred, and we continue to work hard to reduce the likelihood of similar events in the future."
Nowhere in the statement does the AAPM acknowledge specifically what events they are talking about -- and they do not even mention the almost incomprehensible human suffering connected to these unnamed "events". Instead, the AAPM is clearly most interested in pacifying the public so they won't be worried about the dangers associated with medical radiation.
As the statement puts it, the AAPM "seeks to reassure the public on the safety of radiation therapy, which is safely and effectively used to treat hundreds of thousands of people with cancer and other diseases every year in the United States. Medical physicists in hospitals and clinics across the United States are board-certified professionals who play a key role in assuring quality during these treatments."
That reassurance is likely to mean little to the friends and relatives of people killed by medical radiation. No doubt, these patients were assured before their treatment began that their radiation was state-of-the-art western medicine, delivered by highly trained medical professionals.
Horrifying deaths caused by "medical" radiation
For example, Bogdanich reported on the heartbreaking tale of Scott Jerome-Parks who was literally irradiated to death. While he was being treated for tongue cancer, staff in a New York City hospital didn't notice a computer error was directing a linear accelerator to zap Jerome-Parks' brain stem and neck with off-target beams of high-dose radiation on three consecutive days.
He was left deaf, almost blind, burned, and unable to swallow. His teeth fell out among the ulcers lacing his mouth and throat. He died, in excruciating pain, weeks after his radiation "treatment" at the age of 43.
The very day a warning was issued to other hospitals to be more careful with radiation, Bogdanich pointed out in his report, at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn a 32-year-old woman with breast cancer was subjected to a huge radiation overdose -- three times the prescribed amount. And it didn't stop there. This intense irradiation of her body went on for 27 days until it burned a hideous, open hole into her chest. The young mother of two young children suffered horrendous pain and then died a month after Jerome-Parks.
Unfortunately, anyone who is assured by the AAPM's public relations statement about the intrinsic safety of medical radiation is simply not well informed. One worrisome concern is the fact Americans are being exposed to cancer-causing radiation in huge numbers -- the average lifetime dose of diagnostic radiation Americans receive has gone up 600 percent in the last three decades (http://www.naturalnews.com/025767_cancer_NaturalNews_X-rays.html). In addition, when safety rules are overlooked or the incredibly complex and high powered 21st century radiation devices have a glitch, the consequences clearly can be disastrous.
And while the AAPM may want patients to think mistakes involving medical radiation are so rare as to be nothing to worry about, the fact is more and more of these tragedies have been reported over the past few years. For example, NaturalNews has previously reported on the death of a teenager who received a massive overdose of radiation (http://www.naturalnews.com/020824_cancer_cancer_treatments_oncology.html) and how patients receiving CT brain scans at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles unknowingly received large overdoses of radiation over a course of 18 months (http://www.naturalnews.com/027541_radiation_medical_imaging.html).
For more information:
http://www.naturalnews.com/radiation_treatment.html
http://www.aapm.org/publicgeneral/QualityRadiationTherapy.asp
» Lower Back Pain
Title: Lower Back Pain
Category: Diseases and Conditions
Created: 12/31/1997
Last Editorial Review: 12/2/2009
Food For Thought
A collection of quotes related to acupuncture.
It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has."
-Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.)
"Most over-the-counter and almost all prescribed drug treatments merely mask symptoms or control health problems or in some way alter the way organs or systems such as the circulatory system work. Drugs almost never deal with the reasons why these problems exist, while they frequently create new health problems as side effects of their activities."
-John R. Lee, M.D.
While acupuncture represents a legacy of concepts that predate Western civilization, as a contemporary health care system it also represents a synthesis of continuously evolving scientific and technological developments which provides us with new tools to meet current clinical challenges.
Dennis Tucker, Ph.D., L.Ac.
Nevada City, California
"When health is absent Wisdom cannot reveal itself, Art cannot become manifest, Strength cannot be exerted, Wealth is useless and Reason is powerless."
-Herophilies, 300 B.C.
"The next major advance in the health of the American people will be determined by what the individual is willing to do for himself."
-John Knowles, Former President of the Rockefeller Foundation
"Don't ask the doctor, ask the patient."
-Yiddish proverb
"I think that if we had more acupuncture and less AZT [an AIDS medication], we would see a qualitative improvement in these patients' health."
William Michael Cargile, B.S., D.C., F.I.A.C.A.
"Even in acute abdominal problems, acupuncture can be used before surgery to arrest the condition before it progresses further."
Maoshing Ni, D.O.M., Ph.D., L.Ac.
Vice-President of Yo San University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Santa Monica, California
"There is evidence that acupuncture influences the production of and distribution of a great many neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, and that this in turn alters the perception of pain."
David Eisenberg, M.D.
Clinical Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School