Dr. Reid, what do you consider to be the respective advantages of Eastern and Western medicine?

Specifically in your area of practicing medicine, how do you differentiate East and West based on your own observations and experiences?

To go right into it, generally speaking, West deals very well with acute diseases and emergencies, and East deals very well with chronic and degenerative diseases.

The US health care is among the worlds most expensive and it prides itself in using sophisticated technology. This approach deals well with acute medical problems, but falls short with chronic illnesses.

The use of western medicine is most relevant in crisis, emergencies, severe diseases, trauma, fast moving illnesses, disease involving vital organs, complicated diseases which amount to 20% of cases.

What western medicine can and cannot do for you:

CAN

Manage trauma better than any other system of medicine
Diagnose and treat many medical and surgical emergencies
Treat acute bacterial infections with antibiotics
Treat some parasitic and fungal infections
Prevent many infectious diseases by immunization
Diagnose complex medical problems
Replace damaged hips and knees
Get good results with cosmetic and reconstructive surgeries
Diagnose and correct hormonal deficiencies

CANNOT

Treat viral infections
Cure most chronic degenerative conditions
Effectively manage most kinds of mental illness
Cure most forms of allergy or autoimmune disease
Effectively manage psychosomatic illnesses
Cure most forms of cancer

(From Integrative Medicine, by Andrew Weil. M.D.)

In the early 1900’s the average life expectancy was 47 years and people died mostly of infectious diseases. In 1990 the life expectancy had risen to 75 years with the leading causes of death being heart disease, autoimmune conditions and cancer; these are chronic diseases.

It has been estimated that up to two-thirds of medical visits to internists is for persistent functional gastro-intestinal complaints, like IBS. Another major cause of absentee from work is back pain (80 % of Americans will suffer an episode of back pain in their lifetimes—Low Back Pain Fact Sheet, NIH) and migraines, all conditions were TCM is very successful in treating.

Patients are also demanding less aggressive forms of therapy and they are more and more concerned about the toxicity of pharmaceutical drugs. Far greater emphasis on wellness and prevention is needed, so today’s challenge in healthcare is to identify complementary and integrative approaches that work in the treatment of chronic diseases.
-Chinese medicine’s strongest area is actually one of conventional medicine’s weakest: the area of chronic diseases.
-TCM’s ability to prevent problems before they affect the physical body offers significant advantages for today’s chronic health-care problems.

Specifically as a medical doctor who later became a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, how do you differentiate East and West based on your own observations and experiences?

During my training as a doctor, I was taught that it is the outside intervention what causes the cure. But this outside intervention is just a facilitator that enables the healing mechanism to do its work. As an example, if a patient has a severe pneumonia and we give him antibiotics; we believe that it was the antibiotics what cured him, but what the antibiotics do is reduce the numbers of pathogenic organisms, such as bacteria, to levels where the otherwise overwhelmed immune system can take care of the remnant invaders. Ultimately, it was our own healing mechanism, our immune system, the one responsible for the cure.

             The three levels mind/body/spirit

Western looks at the physical, Eastern looks at the level of physical symptoms the level of the emotions of the organs and above all the filter of the spirit and focuses on emotions and spirit to cure the physical.

Eastern looks at the state of the relationships within the body, between the different parts, western looks at disease entities. TCM has a strong emphasis in the relationships with nature and the environment.

Western has emphasis on an outside source of healing (surgery, drugs, physical interventions) Eastern seeks to boost the internal healing mechanisms for it to in turn, cause the healing. The word healing means “making whole”—that is, restoring integrity and balance.

So from a viewpoint of a healing that comes from within, we can look at either enhancing the healing capacity, such as tonifying or fortifying the immune system (something in which systems such as TCM--Traditional Chinese Medicine--have extensive experience with) or we can look at “what is in the way,” obstructing the healing response, and find ways to clear it, so that the body can do what it is driving to do.

The new view of medicine emerging in U.S. is that health results from working with the body rather than conquering the body. (anti-inflammatory, anti-diuretic, anti…) For example, the development of antibiotics to fight bacteria…now the bacteria are increasingly developing resistance to them and this is becoming a major issue in hospital care. In the east, especially in China, medicine has explored ways of increasing internal resistance to disease through the use of tonic herbs, so that, no matter what harmful influences you are exposed to, you can remain healthy. Resistance is not developing against tonics because they are not acting against germs but rather are acting with the body’s defenses.

You were already an M.D. when you took up the study of Chinese acupuncture and herbology. What motivated you to make this change?

My own experience in medic al school was very similar to what I once heard from Dr Andrew Weil, M.D. director of the Fellowship program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. I missed any emphasis in the personal contact with the patient, in the effect of diet on their health, and in prevention. And from my perspective of today, I would add the powerful impact of our inner dialogue.

Another important issue for me was that I never felt comfortable with the inconsistency between what we were representing, as doctors, and the way we lived. What I mean is after a while, I began to feel that something was missing, the discrepancy between what we were saying to patients and the way we ourselves lived. The gap was too big.

In TCM I found, perhaps the most radical departure from conventional medicine as traditionally taught in medical schools: it asked me, as the practitioner, to model healing and commit to my own self-exploration.

That is perhaps one of the most essential elements of the approach in TCM: practitioner and patient are partners in the healing process, rather than the doctor being on a pedestal imparting his wisdom to the patient. The doctor-patient relationship implies responsibility on the part of the patient for his or her own healing, and an exchange of information that will enhance the healing process. This model parallels the model of the emerging field of Integrative Medicine, which many believe will be the future model of healthcare in the US.

What is Traditional Chinese Medicine? How does it work? How does Western science explain it?

Today in most western cultures the ancient medical art of acupuncture is considered a "new alternative" medicine. In reality Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine are practiced medical treatments that are over 5,000 years old. Very basically, Acupuncture is the insertion of very fine needles on the body's surface, in order to influence physiological functioning of the body.

How does it work?

From a scientific point of view, the main mechanisms of action seem to be the stimulation of neurotransmitters and neuro-hormones in the nervous system that affect the immune system and regulate the healing responses, and the release of pain-killing biochemicals such as endorphins. From its own perspective as a medical system TCM describes its effect as the result of restoring the balance of forces (yin-yang) in the body, which in turn result in beneficial physiological changes.

The basis of Acupuncture is the theory that the body has an energy force running throughout it, a force known as Qi. Qi is comprised of two parts, Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang are opposite forces, that when balanced, work together.

The Qi consists of all essential life activities, which include the spiritual, emotional, mental and the physical aspects of life. A person's health is influenced by the flow of Qi in the body. Qi travels throughout the body along "Meridians" or special pathways. The acupuncture points are specific locations where the Meridians come to the surface of the skin, and are easily accessible by "needling.” Energy constantly flows up and down these pathways. When pathways become obstructed, deficient, excessive, or just unbalanced, Yin and Yang are thrown out of balance. This causes illness.
Acupuncture is said to restore the balance.

The modalities of TCM are not confined to the practice of acupuncture, they encompass also acupressure (Tui-na), herbal therapy, Gigong, Chinese psychology—understanding the relationship between the emotions and the physical body, and the prescriptions of food for healing.

Are acupuncture and TCM gaining acceptance in the West? Where is it practiced most? What in your view can be done to enhance its acceptance and accessibility?

As an anecdote, perhaps the most single influential moment for the development of acupuncture in the U.S. was when then-President Richard Nixon visited China in 1972. James Reston, senior correspondent for the New York Times, who developed acute appendicitis during the trip and underwent surgery while still in Beijing, accompanied Nixon. Upon his return, he reported in the newspaper that acupuncture had been effective in alleviating his post-operative pain, which caused many Americans to seek acupuncture treatments. (The New York Times. July 26, 1971:1,6).

In November 1997, the NIH held a conference to come up with a consensus statement about acupuncture. This conference was motivated by the need to establish parameters and promote further research in this area. The NIH announced acupuncture as a legitimate treatment, which means that a practitioner of this medicine could file a claim to an HMO or insurance company and qualify for reimbursement.

There are currently dozens of bills related to the practice of acupuncture are being debated by state legislatures across the nation that will result in broader rights and scope of practice by acupuncturists. One of the most significant legislations being considered at the federal level is the Federal Acupuncture Coverage Act, which would add coverage for acupuncture services to Medicare, which would add coverage for more than 40 million Americans under the Medicare umbrella.

Some statistics:

In the past two decades, acupuncture has grown in popularity in the United States. The report from a Consensus Development Conference on Acupuncture held at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1997 stated that acupuncture “is being widely practiced--by thousands of physicians, dentists, acupuncturists, and other practitioners--for relief or prevention of pain and for various other health conditions.” According to the 2002 National Health Interview Survey--the largest and most comprehensive survey of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use by American adults to date--an estimated 8.2 million U.S. adults had ever used acupuncture, and an estimated 2.1 million U.S. adults had used acupuncture in the previous year, spending as much as $500 million on acupuncture treatments.

In 1995, an estimated 10,000 nationally certified acupuncturists were practicing in the United States. Currently, there are over 15,000 licensed acupuncturists in practice throughout the country, with the greatest concentration of them in the state of California (almost 6,000) followed by Florida (1,200). Each of these practitioners goes through a rigorous three to four-year graduate training (depending on the state). Besides these fully trained TCM professionals, there is an equal or greater number of MD’s who also apply it in their practices (Medical Acupuncture) even though these are not trained in the other modalities of TCM. There are over 30 accredited schools in the US, currently with almost 5,000 students enrolled.

A 1997 panel on acupuncture by the NIH approved acupuncture for the treatment of post-operative and chemotherapy nausea and pain, as well as an adjunctive in headaches, menstrual disorders, osteoarthritis, lower back pain, asthma and stroke. Since then, the NIH to further test the efficacy of acupuncture has sponsored numerous studies. Outside the United States, the World Health Organization list more than 40 conditions for which acupuncture may be applicable. An example of this is a well-known study by Zang-Hee Cho of the University of California, Irvine, where he demonstrated, using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) that inserting a needle in the acupuncture point GB35 (a point on the outside of the calf) and stimulating the point, caused a marked activation of the visual cortex.

Dr. Reid, and Ms. Alexander, you are also practitioners and instructors of a discipline called Tensegrity. What is Tensegrity, and how does it relate to or inform your understanding of integrative health care?

Tensegrity is the modern name given to the magical passes—movements and positions of body and breath that were discovered by men and women shamans who lived in Mexico prior to the conquest, and practiced for their profound effect on one’s mental and physical well-being and awareness. (The discipline of Tensegrity: the modern version of the magical passes, and a way of being that promotes the best use of one’s energy). The movements elicit a “reorganization” of one’s own natural energy in a way that promotes wellbeing and youth.

The word Tensegrity was coined by Buckminster Fuller, architect and scientist, well known here in Aspen and in all US, who described it as a combination of tensional integrity, referring to the forces at work in a structure that is formed by a finite network of compression, or rigid elements interconnected through tensile, or elastic elements, giving the structure an overall integrity. For example, in the human body, the compressive forces are the bones, and the tendons, muscles and ligaments that attach to them compose the tensile network. Due to this elastic property of interconnection, when one element of a tensegrity structure is shifted, this impact is spread throughout the whole structure, (like in a ripple effect) and all the other elements shift as well, or adapt for a new configuration, yielding to these shifts without breaking.

Carlos Castaneda found this process, tensegrity, to be a perfect energetic description of the modern practice of the magical passes and of the way of being that don Juan Matus (his teacher) taught him. In the case of the magical passes, Tensegrity refers to the interplay of tensing and relaxing the tendons and muscles, and their energetic counterparts, in a way that contributes to the overall integrity of the body as a physical and an energetic unit.

In regard to its influence in understanding health, Tensegrity is about learning how `to regard the body as a community. One could describe the body as composed of a number of single nations, the nation of the lung, the nation of the heart, the nation of the stomach, and so on. In the same way that Integrative Medicine aims to integrate different modalities of treatment in healthcare, Tensegrity teaches you how to be aware of the interrelationships between the different parts of our body, and their effect on the mind and the spirit, the whole being. For example, certain subtle movements that bring flexibility to the feet and ankles can also release the diaphragm and open the breathing rhythm, which in term affects one’s thoughts and emotions and the way one relates to others.

Our western culture emphasizes “outside”; Tensegrity, (as Eastern culture does) for instance, emphasizes “inside.” Our eyes put our focus on the outside, but then no one knows what we feel inside. We do all these things to live up to what we see others do and we think we need to match.

Tensegrity is a way of life where you really listen to your body and this has a very practical application in the health clinic, because it is in line with the premise of empowering the patient to be an active participant of his/her own healing.

Research notes

                  The Second Brain: Body-mind as interactive integrated unit

Michael Gershorn, from the University of Columbia in New York, rediscovered the second brain after it was forgotten by science. Gershon is considered one of the founders of a new field of medicine called neuro-gastro-enterology Many gastrointestinal disorders such as colitis, and irritable bowel syndrome originate from problems within the gut's brain, he said.

This second brain is where our "gut instinct" comes from. It's an emotional, feeling brain - an old brain like the one under our relatively new brain (the corpus callosum) which does the logical thinking.

The brain in the stomach is called the enteric nervous system - there are about 100 million of neurons – more than held in the spinal cord - in the stomach and intestines, yet the vagus nerve only sends a couple of thousand nerve fibers to the gut. Command neurons control the pattern of activity in the gut, Gershon said. The vagus nerve only turns the volume by changing its rates of firing. Scientists estimate that 90% of the serotonin in our bodies is in this second brain, where it triggers digestion. Nerve cells in the gut also use serotonin to signal back to the brain. "Just as the brain can upset the gut, the gut can upset the brain.” Major neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, glutamate, norepinephrine
and nitric oxide are there. Two dozen small brain proteins, called neuropeptides, are in the gut, as are major cells of the immune system. Enkephalins, one class of body's natural opiates, are in the gut.

First proposed in the 19th century by the German neurologist, Leopold Auerbach, who discovered that the stomach and the intestines continue to function, even when all connections to the brain in our head are cut.

The brain in the gut plays a major role in human happiness and sadness. In evolutionary terms, it makes sense that the body has two brains, said Dr. David Wingate, a professor of gastrointestinal science at the University of London and a consultant at Royal London Hospital. Nature seems to have preserved the enteric nervous system as an independent circuit inside higher animals. It is only loosely connected to the central nervous system and can mostly function alone, without instructions from topside.

This is indeed the picture seen by developmental biologists. A clump of tissue called the neural crest forms early in embryogenesis, Gershon said. One section turns into the central nervous system. Another piece migrates to become the enteric nervous system. Only later are the two nervous systems connected via a cable called the vagus nerve.

Molecules of Emotion – Dr. Candace Pert

A series of random, interesting notes:

The stimuli associated with states of mind are called neuropeptides. These same receptors and the neuropeptides that bind to them are duplicated throughout the cells of the body. This means that all of our cells are intelligent entities.

Mind can now be understood as a constantly changing flow of molecular information, in motion throughout the body. Virtually all of this activity takes place outside the realm of conscious awareness. This subconscious mind is nothing other than the body itself, facial expressions for anger, fear, sadness, enjoyment, and disgust are identical whether an Eskimo or an Italian is being studied.

Less than 2% of neuronal communication actually occurs at the synapse.

After a visual signal hits the retina, the light-sensitive part of the eye, it must make it’s way across five more synapses as it moves from the back of the brain, to the frontal cortex. Smell, in contrast, is only one synapse away from the nose to the amygdale, with little potential for erroneous associations.

When a receptor is flooded with a ligand, it changes the cell membrane in such a way that the probability of an electrical impulse traveling across a membrane where the receptor resides is facilitated or inhibited, thereafter affecting the choice of the neuronal circuitry that will be used. These recent discoveries are important for appreciating how memories are stored in a psychosomatic network extending into the body.

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join our group detox!

why is DETOXIFICATION essential to your health ?

DETOXIFICATION is a normal body process of eliminating or neutralizing stored substances (called toxins) that can be harmful to our healt such as:

enviromental toxins found in: foods, beverages, nutricional supplements air cosmetics dental amalgams

internal toxins such as: fats, especiall oxidized fats and cholesterol free radicals and other irritating molecules that may come from poor digestion, colon sluggishness and poor elemination (from skin and kidneys)

most toxic substances are eliminated by the body in a natural course, but as time passes by, not
everything goes out as efficiently and the body may need help to strengthn the systems that
eliminate toxins.

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acupuncture in the media

Washington Post: Article about CAM and Acupuncture

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speaking engagements

Please click in the links below for a full view of the content of the talks

	Making the Designs for Health In-Office Group Detoxification Program Invigorate Your Practice
	complementary therapies: integrating mind, body and spirit
	western medicine & TCM
	the arquitecture of well being

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other events

Dr. Miles Reid and Aerin Alexander in Argentina

Tenemos el gusto de anunciar una nueva visita del

Dr. Miles Reid
y la
Lic. y Kines. Aerin Alexander
en Buenos Aires, Argentina

Dr. Miles Reid L. Ac. , Dipl. Ac. , C.H.

Miles Reid es licenciado en Acupuntura (título universitario válido para el Estado de California en EEUU) y Diplomado Nacional en Acupuntura y Herbología China (título válido para para todo el territorio de EEUU). Médico argentino, graduado en la Universidad de Medicina de Buenos Aires, practicó medicina familiar antes de trasladarse a los Estados Unidos. Ha completado con altos honores su Doctorado en Medicina Tradicional China en la Universidad Yo San de Marina del Rey en California, donde es actualmente docente de la facultad.

Además de su entrenamiento médico formal, el Dr. Reid tiene un agudo interés en las tradiciones chamánicas del antiguo México, con más de 10 años de entrenamiento bajo la tutela del Dr. Carlos Castaneda.

Actualmente, el Dr. Reid practica medicina integrada en su clínica privada, Tilo Medical & Acupunture, en Beverly Hills, California.

CONSULTAS E INFORMES PARA OBTENER CITA MÉDICA

LIC. Y KINES. Aerin Alexander

Aerin Alexander, Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner (CFP), ha estado enseñando movimientos físicos y danza por más de 20 años. El principal centro de atención de su trabajo esta situado en guiar a las personas para restaurar su habilidad de moverse con facilidad, elegancia y placer, libre de dolor.

Aerin es Kinesióloga y ha completado su Licenciatura en Fisiologia del Ejercicio (Universidad de California). Cuenta con experiencia trabajando en desórdenes del sueño y está certificada como Sounder Sleep Therapist®. Es maestra certificada del método Bones for Life®, un sistema de movimientos que promueve la salud de los huesos. Aerin tambien enseña ejercicios GYROTONIC®, un programa que elonga y fortalece los músculos con un mínimo esfuerzo.

Tratamientos individuales basados en la ciencia de la Kinesiología y en el método Feldenkrais® de educación somática: lentos y suaves movimientos, guiados por la terapeuta con el intento de desarrollar una mayor conciencia, de restaurar el equilibrio, la flexibilidad y la coordinación, así como también de aliviar dolores.

Sleep Therapy®-Terapia del Sueño-es un sistema de respiraciones y movimientos que reestablecen el ciclo normal del dormir reduciendo problemas de insomnio o stress.

Bones for Life® es una rama del método Feldenkrais® que se enfoca en fortalecer la densidad de los huesos.

Además de su entrenamiento académico, ha trabajado por más de 10 años con el Dr. Carlos Castaneda y sus colegas en las Artes de los Videntes del México Antiguo. Actualmente, conforma el plantel de profesionales de la clinica Tilo Medical & Acupunture, en Beverly Hills, California.

(54 11) 4702-1147
tiloargentina@gmail.com

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