Acupuncture/Herbal Medicine
Although acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine have only recently begun to be recognized by the mainstream medical community as viable treatments for a variety of ailments, they have actually been practiced with great success for more than 5,000 years.
At the Center for Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine, we utilize the knowledge that countless practitioners have refined and passed down through the centuries to help alleviate your symptoms, eliminate their cause, and restore your body's natural balance. Based on our experience, acupuncture and herbal medicine can help you stop smoking, increase fertility, relieve pain, anxiety, and depression, and restore the natural balance of your body to help you maintain physical and emotional health.
Yin, yang and qi: Balance as the key to health
Acupuncture and herbal medicine form the foundation of Chinese medicine, which is based on the notion of balance. To the practitioner, health is defined as the balance of yin and yang and the smooth flow of Qi (life force) and blood throughout the body. When yin and yang are out of balance, the organ systems begin to malfunction and sickness results.
Imbalance can result from many factors, including mental and emotional stress, improper diet, environmental factors, physical trauma, genetic predispositions, etc. Our number one priority is helping your body regain its balance. The first step is to conduct a thorough evaluation and determine the root of the imbalance.
Evaluation and diagnosis: The tongue and the pulse
Each patient is evaluated using four primary tools: observation, listening and smelling, questioning, and palpation. The information gathered with these tools is used to formulate an overall health picture.
Examination of the tongue and monitoring of the pulse play a crucial role in diagnosis. The tongue is the mirror of the body, offering clues about the general state of harmony or disharmony in the body based on its color, moisture, size, coating and any abnormalities present.
Practitioners at the Center for Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine have advanced training in Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis and Contemporary Oriental Medicine and can distinguish dozens of different pulse qualities and combinations, each of which helps to identify the root causes of various ailments. Once that root cause has been uncovered and a pattern established, a personalized treatment plan is designed using acupuncture and/or herbal therapies.
Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis
The Center for Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine is the only medical clinic in New Jersey practicing Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis (CCPD), and Ross Rosen is one of a very small group of practitioners world-wide to be certified to practice as well as teach this pulse system directly by Dr. Leon Hammer.
CCPD is an exquisite and sophisticated means of understanding the whole person and provides insight into patients according to:
- the patients' constitution
- previous illness
- early insults to normal physiology
- environmental stressors
- traumas
- effects of lifestyle
- emotional conditions
- behavioral patterns
CCPD relies on the subtleties of the sensations, qualities and structure of the radial artery at both wrists. Heavily steeped in ancient wisdom and classical pulse diagnosis dating back thousands of years, CCPD breaks out of the dogma of pulse systems that in many respects are not relevant to the present day and age. CCPD provides insight into the modern diseases and constitutional imbalances that affect modern man in an industrial world.
The intricacies of CCPD are complex and require significant amounts of hands on training with a certified teacher to fully learn. Essentially, however, information is synthesized from the combinations of various qualities felt at the 6 principle pulse positions and the 22 complementary positions, as well as the qualities perceived uniformly over the entire pulse and at each of the requisite depths (8 of them). Integrating the information from these seemingly disparate parts, one is able to arrive at a complex diagnosis, which prioritizes levels of imbalances of not just the symptomatic representations, but more importantly the root causes of disease.
Incorporating concepts and clinical realities that have not been diagnosed by any other diagnostic method in Chinese medicine, CCPD is truly a treasure which can change the lives of patients. By incorporating a precise measure of a healthy balanced pulse, even the subtlest deviations from this norm can be detected, thus establishing its importance not only in treating disease, but also as a preventative medicine. Learn more about Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis
Contemporary Oriental Medicine®
Contemporary Oriental Medicine® (COM), is a dynamic, integrated model of diagnosis and treatment based on the experience of master physicians John Shen OMD and Leon Hammer MD; it includes aspects of TCM and classical Chinese writings. COM revives forgotten patterns of Chinese Medicine, yet is an evolving medicine adapting to modern health issues.
This methodology, developed by Dr Hammer, includes an in-depth diagnosis focused on Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis, and a distinctive approach to the patient's history and experience of life. COM makes possible an individualized course of treatment by enabling the practitioner to delineate an individual from their disease.
Finally, COM is a unique method of evaluating the patient's condition, diagnosis, and intervention based on critical thinking. It leads to an organized hierarchy which identifies root causes, immediate interventions, referrals, life style counseling and treatment methods.
Acupuncture to relieve pain and restore health
Acupuncture uses the insertion of fine needles into specific acupuncture points on the body's surface in order to regulate the flow of qi. By stimulating these points, energy can be directed to or away from a deficient or excessive organ, stagnant energy can be released, and yin and yang can be rebalanced.
By reestablishing the proper balance of yin and yang and the smooth flow of qi and blood, pain and other symptoms and disorders will disappear as the body regains the ability to heal itself.
Western medicine now recognizes that numerous conditions can be improved or eliminated through acupuncture. Both the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health have endorsed the use of acupuncture for musculo-skeletal, digestive, nervous system, cardiovascular, respiratory, gynecological, urological, endocrine and metabolic disorders.
Clinically, acupuncture increases oxygen and blood flow; stimulates the endocrine and nervous systems; aids cellular repair; and alleviates pain by blocking pain receptors and stimulating the secretion of the body's natural pain killers - endorphins and enkephalins.
Chinese herbal medicine: A natural, targeted solution
Chinese herbal medicine can be used in conjunction with acupuncture or on its own. These natural herbs are remarkable in their ability to promote healing. Unlike western medications - which tend to mask symptoms rather than heal - Chinese herbs address both acute symptoms and the patient's underlying state of health. Because each formula is tailored to individual needs, they are free from unwanted side effects.