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Excerpt from an article that appeared in Acupuncture Today, March 2000...
Immune Enhancement for Oncology Patients through Auricular Acupuncture
Skya Gardner-Abbate, DOM
Executive Director, Southwest Acupuncture College
With close to 5,000 years of history, Chinese medicine has become adept at recognizing the signs and symptoms of the healthy human organism. It has developed and refined treatment modalities which redirect, cultivate and maintain proper physiological functioning. The essential Chinese treatment plan for patients diagnosed with cancer is to support normal cellular, tissue and organ physiology in the wake of the ravaging (and yet life-saving) techniques that characterize the most common allopathic approaches to cancer: surgery, drug therapies and radiation. Utilizing these standard treatments, augmentation with Chinese medical treatment not only relieves many side effects caused by these therapies but has also been shown clinically to strengthen the patient from the cellular level to the spiritual.
The Chinese treatment modalities most effective in the treatment of the whole person - and likewise the cancer - include internal and external herbal therapy; auricular acupuncture; body acupuncture; moxibustion (a combined heat/herbal therapy); and guided imagery. Patients respond well to these treatments, many of which are simple to learn, easy to administer, and are both cost and clinically effective because they are based on the Chinese world view, which recognizes the patterns of the proper flow of energy (or proper physiology and functioning).
Documented increases in white blood cell production; heightened energy; regrowth of hair; increased libido; decrease in nausea, vomiting, low appetite, abdominal distention, loose stools or constipation; alleviation of depression, anxiety, fear, irritability or other emotional aberrations; quicker wound healing capacity and response to infection; decrease in skin irritation, dry skin and muscular weakness; regulation of weight loss, thirst and pain; improvement in respiration - in short, an overall improvement in the quality of life, both in terms of physical problems and what they affect - these are the primary signs and symptoms with which Chinese medicine produces results. A broad range of systemic clinical manifestations is addressed, but ultimately, through this style of medicine, immunity is enhanced.
Chinese medicine is time-tested, person-oriented, and clinically applicable to the devastating illnesses of our time such as cancer. Although ancient, it parallels innovative techniques being developed to address this difficult disease, emphasizing the intimate relationship between the person and the planet, cultural stresses, nutrition and genetic inheritance..............
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About the Author: Skya Gardner-Abbate began her career as a medical sociologist serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Brazil before teaching at the University of Rhode Island's department of sociology. She graduated summa cum laude from Salve Regina College in 1973 as class valedictorian, earning a bachelor's degree in sociology, then earned a master's degree in sociology at the University of Rhode Island in 1981.