Can Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine Help You?
Consult The Most Experienced Practitioner of Oriental Medicine in Ohio
For more than 2500 years, generations of patients and physicians have depended on Oriental medicine for preventative care, basic medical treatment, and advanced management of complex disorders. These rarely mastered arts are now available in Cleveland.
Very few physicians have been willing to spend the years of study necessary to understand the complex anatomy of the meridians or the subtle blending of plant materials to produce the Oriental medicine of the East. After more than 35 years of study and application, I have integrated these time-honored techniques with the best of modern medical knowledge.
If you have ever wanted to know more about Oriental medicine and whether you might benefit from this centuries-old knowledge, I invite you read the information about the programs available through my office.
For an overview of Traditional Oriental medicines, please follow this link:
How Traditional Systems Differ
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L.B. Grotte, M.D.
There is Only One Medicine
Occasionally, I will be asked how it is possible to study and use diagnostic and treatment techniques from different cultures, some many hundreds of years old, with modern patients and problems.
I answer by pointing out that the concerns of patients and physicians in every culture have always been exactly the same: how to relieve suffering with the best chance of minimizing risk and side effects.
Medicine is the science, art, and craft of understanding suffering, its causes, and its remedies. Its skillful practice is not limited to any one profession, geographic locale, historical period, or ethnic group.
It does not require its practitioners to be of any particular religious or spiritual practice, though traditionally physicians were chosen on the basis of their good character and self discipline, as well as by their motivation and intellectual capacity.
Likewise, the tools of medicine have ranged from the extremely simple to the most technologically advanced, the only limitation of their healing capacities dependant on the wisdom and skill of their application.
In contrast to the present domination of surgery and pharmaceuticals in our own system of training and practice, the power of simpler, more subtle treatments cannot be denied.
In Tibet and Bali, doctors are taught that even a breath may have medical potential, as may the rhythm and melody of movement and music.
Many of these traditionally utilized medicines are just as applicable to modern disorders: I have seen excellent results in patients who I have taught simple traditional vocalizations (mantra) to adjust subtle problems.
Increasing evidence supports the judicious use of traditional techniques such as acupuncture, herbal and dietary treatments, meditation and specific breathing and muscular exercises, in the treatment of acute as well as chronic and complex disorders.
Medicine by Edict is Doomed to Failure
Over the past thirty years, I have watched a fragmented and inadequate medical system become even more dysfunctional.
The mechanistic philosophies of the nineteenth century, where each organ system (and its accompanying specialist) is believed to function in isolation from the rest of the body, have failed to provide solutions for ever-increasing levels of suffering and disease.
Poor coordination between specialists and the distractions created by competitive forces and ignorance have wasted vast monetary and human resources, creating an impersonal and unresponsive medical system that has itself become a major source of death and suffering.
Centralized regulation of medical thought and action has proven to be inadequate to address even the most common problems.
Decades of indoctrination into this obsolete perspective has created a generation of contemporary physicians who are increasingly helpless in the face of complex and chronic disease and emerging infections.
They have never learned to individualize treatments and medicines to the patient, but are now expected to provide prepackaged and standardized "disease management".
Unfortunately, the motivation for this unproven experimentation on patients is to increase the influence and profits of a plutocracy of political and insurance industry fat cats.
Oriental Medicine is Patient-Centered Medicine
Traditional Oriental medical systems, in contrast, acknowledge the unique aspects of every person's response to disease-causing imbalances. They are the original and best studied examples of successful patient-centered medicine.
As a result, the goal of high level acupuncture and herbal medical practice is to create individualized programs of therapy.
Only comprehensive management can best address chronic and complicated problems, with the goal of treating the many manifestations of disease at a deeper level than merely reducing symptoms.
Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan medical systems developed along different cultural perspectives than our own, so most Oriental systems address psychological and spiritual issues in a much more practical and evidenced based manner than in the United States.
There is also a greater emphasis on preventative medicine and issues of life style.
How Many Treatments?
Very rapid results are seen with acupuncture and moxabustion for recent injury and trauma, and a few other disorders.
Satisfactory response is often seen in the early stages of problems and in prevention.
However, when conditions are chronic, or have been unresponsive to a variety of Western treatments, the condition is likely to be complicated and will require the highest levels of diagnostic skill and therapy.
In these cases, much more effort needs to be made by both physician and patient to achieve meaningful results.
Other forms of Oriental medicine, such as herbal medicines, exercise, and meditational practice are often necessary in addition to acupuncture and moxabustion.
Integrated Western medicine is also frequently appropriate. Obviously, capability in all of these areas is required.
In addition, an ongoing relationship and treatment is necessary in these complex situations, just as with Western specialists who treat chronic disease.
We were the first practice in Ohio to offer the full spectrum of Oriental medicine and and suggest that this inclusive style offers the best chance of success for acute problems, issues with limited focus, and multisystem disorders.
