At the age of 100, Xing Yi Master Wang Ji Wu Describes His Principles of Living a Healthy Life

This gem was brought to my attention by licensed acupuncturist and tai chi teacher Robert Martinez of New York City. Thanks Robert! It has wonderful words of wisdom for anyone interested in health, and for doctors and martial artists in particular.

I believe it may have been taken from this book, Xing Yi Nei Gong.

The Heart is Calm, Quiet as Still Water
My own history is from the end of the Qing Dynasty, through the period of the republic to the People's Republic, already a hundred years. My life has seen its share of ups and downs, times of poverty and hardship, honor and dishonor, the changes of the seasons, all of which have left a deep impression on me. After the founding of the People's Republic, my life became stable, but with the Cultural Revolution, disaster once again overran the country and I was forced out of business. All of these events served as a means of cultivating my spirit, and afforded me the opportunity to practice the "gong fu" of living in the world.

One must always maintain a calm heart even when influenced by the Seven Emotions; joy, anger, happiness, worry, sadness, fear, and surprise. The heart must remain as calm as still water, never allowing any personal desires to stir up a ripple of disturbance. My thoughts are pure; in spirit I seek to forget myself and transcend the common affairs of the world, keeping my life simple and my desires few. With a clear heart, I do not contend with others or make demands upon the world, but rather seek to contribute what I can for the benefit of all, aiding those in need and protecting those in danger.

Without desire one is strong, without desire one is quiet, without desire one may return to that which is natural, without desire one returns to the Original State. With a heart like still water, from the extreme stillness will spring action, from the Void comes that which is alive, yin and yang are in harmony and the qi flows unimpeded. With a heart like still water, the qi is sufficient and the spirit full. When the qi is sufficient and the spirit full, the Organs function normally, the blood is nourished, the meridians, nerves, digestion, and circulation are all healthy and the metabolism stimulated. When the factors that prevent aging are all strong, one may prevent illness and live a long and healthy life.

Humans are holistic beings which are possessed of a certain vitality. The spirit and flesh are inseparable and form a complicated entity. The human vitality supports, influences, and is responsive to the person as a whole, while the spirit is the leader and controller, the "commander-in-chief" of the being as a whole. Under certain circumstances, it can be said that the spirit, "pulls one hair and the whole body follows," or, at the slightest stirring of the spirit the whole being responds, and each movement of the spirit has a real effect on the individual. Therefore, I put special emphasis on the spirit as leader, ever strengthening my resolve to cultivate the spirit, maintain calmness of heart, and become as pure as light without a speck of dust. This is akin to the Song Dynasty poet who wrote "to understand the highest virtue" applied to the present time. Better yet, this cultivation of the spirit and heart will improve the physical constitution of the people, protect their health, and contribute to a long and healthy life.

Live an Enthusiastic Life, Serve the Public Good
I have traveled the long road of life, experiencing hardship, difficulty, and I know the sentiment of man is often as thin as paper. I have seen corruption and those whose only concern is realizing their own desires. Because of this, I have striven even harder to live a practical life, willing to sacrifice even more for the good of the people. After the founding of the Republic, I spent my time working in the streets as a doctor, treating anyone who came to me for help with wholehearted enthusiasm. When one finds happiness in serving others, one will be full of the spirit of life, seeing things as they are with a calm heart. Thus, one may reach the state where the spirit is preserved within, the body is healthy and the spirit full, the intellect wise, decisions made adroitly and reactions made spontaneously. Consequently, the life energy will be strengthened and increased while promoting the health and longevity of the body.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

L.A. Times Article - Does it matter what the doctor weighs?

Dr. Regina Benjamin with President Barack Obama

Here's an interesting article from the L.A. Times on the personal health of doctors. Does it matter? Do medical health professionals need to be healthy to be effective?

"A doctor doesn't need to be perfect, but it'd be hard for me to take financial advice from a CPA who had just filed for bankruptcy," said Dr. Timothy Harlan, medical director of the Tulane University School of Medicine, who says he believes physicians should make a genuine effort to be healthy.

Personally, I believe it's my responsibility to be as healthy as possible. I'm kind of a health nut. This morning Nini and I had vegetable juice for breakfast, as we usually do: carrots, beets, cucumber, ginger, and an apple (on the weekends, when we have time, we like to follow that up with bacon and eggs with tomatoes, onions and cheese). Most mornings I'm out at Mar Vista park doing taijiquan or qigong. I drink a lot of green tea.

I don't usually advertise these activities, because people sometimes don't react well to hearing about them. Instead of "hey, good for you" it's some hardcore eye-rolling and "well of course YOU do that. You're healthy! I could NEVER be as healthy as you are."

The fact is, there's no hard line between a "healthy person" and an "unhealthy person." I haven't always had these habits. I only started juicing about a year ago (note: I'm talking about this kind of juicing, NOT this kind). I only started exercising every morning during the past month, when I finally had the freedom to organize my own schedule. I drink green tea because I like how it tastes and how it makes me feel - I'm not choking it down because it's good for me. In the future I may not have the time to exercise every morning, or make juice and then clean the juicer (which takes awhile and is kind of a hassle but still worth it - if you've never had ultra-fresh juice straight from the juicer it's like a punch in the taste buds - much better than anything you could buy in a bottle. Besides that there are all kinds of health benefits which have to do with how fast the nutritional content of juice degrades when you let it sit around - for best results drink within two to three minutes of juicing).

My general philosophy is that you should enjoy life. If life isn't enjoyable, what's the point? I've tried drinking, and cigarettes, and various recreational drugs. I've tried all different kinds of exercise. I've tried not exercising. As a patient, I've tried acupuncture, massage and herbs. I've tried meditation and talk therapy and EFT. For myself, I have found what works, and continue to discover new things all the time. Through learning and teaching martial arts and four years of formal TCM education, I have tools that can help me to understand what works for others. I encourage you to experiment, and find what works for you. If you want to change something about your health, or your life, your body, your mindset, try something different. Don't be afraid to ask questions or seek guidance in unexpected places.

Find a doctor that you connect with. Everyone needs help with health challenges, so don't be afraid to accept professional help. But the best doctor is within yourself. Go look for him or her. They're in there.

After Treatment, Then What?

From Dana Jennings prostate cancer blog:

When I had radiation for about two months last winter, it began to feel as familiar as a job. I knew the names of the hospital parking attendants and the receptionists. The nurses, doctors and therapists all smiled and said hello, and I did the same.

Each day I arrived at radiation oncology, checked in, got my hospital bracelet, changed into a drafty gown, then waited with my fellow patients — my colleagues in cancer — to be treated. Once a week, my weight, blood pressure and temperature were taken and I met with my radiation oncologist. I had become a regular at the radiation spa, had even learned to artfully jiggle the key in the stubborn locker doors.

You can read the rest here...

Is it just me or does this seem kind of perverse? How could you love treatment so much that you would be disappointed when it ends? As a patient you should be looking to get better, not enjoy your treatment. If medical treatment is so enjoyable, why not be sick all the time?

"I Don't Believe In Acupuncture"

Beach Community Acupuncture has a good piece today on people who think you have to "believe in acupuncture" for it to work. In my opinion, you do have to believe in acupuncture for it to work, just as you have to believe in any other medical treatment for it to work. In the dominant scientific-technological paradigm of the 21st century, most of us are brought up with a specific set of unquestionable beliefs. In fact, to question some of these beliefs is considered completely unexplainable and therefore "crazy."

For instance, everyone "knows" that when taking antibiotics, you have to take the full course, or utter mayhem will ensue.

Everyone "knows" that slipped disks, pinched nerves, muscle strains and other physical abnormalities are the cause of back pain, not an associated symptom (except this guy, I guess).

Everyone "knows" that HIV causes AIDS, and everyone "knows" that AIDS came to the U.S. accidentally from a guy who was bitten by a monkey in Africa.

For treatment to be successful, patients must accept acupuncturists into their established belief system. That's why all TCM schools in the U.S. require their student interns to wear white coats and take blood pressure readings - we wear a costume to create the association in a patient's mind to the established image of a doctor with the power and authority to heal their sickness. That image is incredibly powerful.

Your self has a natural tendency towards health. The body, mind and spirit are incredible organic systems that work in harmony with the inner and outer world. Medical systems are designed to remind you of that, to nudge you back towards health when you forget your own power. What have you forgotten?

Acupuncture: More and More Popular!

Mounting evidence that acupuncture is slowly but surely becoming part of the medical mainstream can be found in this article from the Washington Post.

The overwhelming majority of people are not dogmatic when it comes to medicine. They want something that works, and they don't care how it works. Most people aren't interested in yin and yang, the five phases, the Zang Fu, the history of Chinese medicine. All the things that fascinate and intrigue TCM students mean very little to the general public, except one thing: getting better.

Of course, as medical professionals, it's our job to educate patients so that they can take better care of themselves. If we don't try to educate people on preventive care and health maintenance, our patients will never really be cured.

Imagine you're a mechanic. People bring their cars in all the time with worn out brakes. When you tell them "You know, the correct way to drive is by pressing the gas pedal to go, and the brake pedal when you want to stop" - people scoff at you. "But I usually just hit the gas and brake at the same time!" they tell you. That's (sometimes) what it's like being an acupuncturist.

When people get better, that's our opportunity. When people get miraculous results, it makes them stop for a second and ask "Why did that work?" That's our chance to turn it around and say "Let's look at why you got sick in the first place." Because that's the real cure - understanding how you got sick, and how to avoid it in the future.

Medicine In The News

While reading the New York Times yesterday, I couldn't help but notice the increasing number of articles about health care. Could it be that all this talk of health care reform is forcing people to look at what needs to be reformed? The ideas of conflict-of-interest and professional integrity have always come up in regards to medical care versus the medical industry. I feel that the growing discontent with the current mainstream medical system has finally reached a point of some kind of public vigilante justice, bent on shaming the perpetrators into following the rules of medical ethics and propriety.

Two articles in particular had stood out: Prosecutors Plan Crackdown on Doctors Who Accept Kickbacks, and Harvard Medical School in Ethics Quandary. Interestingly enough, both of these articles did not make their appearance in the Health section of the Times, but rather in the Money & Policy section and Business section respectively.

The first article describes how federal prosecutors are going to start enforcing laws that make it illegal for medical doctors to accept gifts from industry. They have already been going after the pharmaceutical companies that engage in such practices, but have found that even increasing fines is not enough of a deterrent, as some of them already set aside money for fines that they know they'll need to pay for breaking these laws. Now, they're going after the medical doctors.

[...] federal health officials are forcing a growing number of drug and device makers to post publicly all payments made to doctors who serve as consultants or speakers.

That means that information about the companies that illegally market their goods as well as the doctors who they bribe will be made completely public and searchable.

The second article discusses industry influence on education. The problem that a lot of medical schools face is that a good proportion of their funding comes from private companies, and a lot of star faculty act as consultants for companies to increase the marketability of their products. But what kind of education would future doctors be getting if their instructors were all on the payroll of big pharmaceutical companies? Some would argue that it wouldn't affect their jobs as teachers, but I suspect there must be a huge bias with the dissemination of information.

Harvard medical students, as part of the American Medical Student Association, have worked to make it a requirement that all professors and lecturers disclose their industry ties in class. They are the first and only medical school to do that, which is appropriate in this age of reform because they are ranked one of the lowest in terms of transparency and control of industry money.

Here is where I would normally tie this blog post to Chinese medicine somehow... for today, I think it would be sufficient to simply say that I hope all this reform of the health care system in its final incarnation will include low-cost, low-risk, highly effective therapies - such as Chinese medicine - into the grand plan of taking care of each other.

Community Style Acupuncture

Community acupuncture is springing up all over the place. This practice model uses a sliding scale, usually $15-$45 a treatment, which allows patients to come more often. Acupuncture works best when more treatments are done in less time - 12 treatments over two weeks are usually much more effective than 12 treatments over 12 weeks.

Here's a link to a story from upstate New York.

There is no standard practice model for acupuncture and Chinese medicine. It's a young field and prices are all over the map. Some insurance covers acupuncture, some doesn't. Some acupuncturists accept insurance, some don't. Chinese medicine is not fully integrated into the mainstream health care system, and might never be. But as someone about to graduate from a 4-year TCM school, I've noticed that most acupuncturists in private practice charge between $65 and $150 per treatment.

Community style acupuncture uses a group treatment room and mostly chair acupuncture to reduce overhead. With a group treatment room, more people can be treated at one time. Having to maintain a private room for each patient reduces the number of patients one can see in any given time period.

The people who popularized community-style acupuncture, Working Class Acupuncture in Portland, bring a very stridently socialist outlook to their practice. For more, take a look at this blog entry by Lisa Rohleder, entitled "A Guide to Understanding CAN's Anger, for Any Member of the Acu-Establishment."

There are some valid points in the article, for instance:

• No one is going to hire you to be an acupuncturist. There are very few salaried jobs available to people fresh out of acupuncture school. It's an entrepreneurial profession, and will likely remain so for quite a while. (President Obama might bring substantial change to American health care - if so, I hope Chinese medicine is integrated on a wide scale so that more people can benefit.) But I knew that when I started school, as did nearly all of my classmates. I can't imagine that anyone was seduced into Chinese medicine school and then was shocked (shocked!) to discover upon graduation that they had to start their own practice.
  
  
• Chinese medicine school is expensive. Typical costs are about $65,000 over four years, not including living expenses.
  
  
• Acupuncture works best when people get more frequent treatments. True! Bob Flaws wrote a great article on this called Acupuncture and the 50-Minute Hour.
  
  
• Acupuncture should be available to people of all income levels. This is, obviously, impossible to disagree with without looking like some sort of monster. No one will say that only rich people deserve acupuncture.

I dislike the whiny tone of this article and the setting up of acupuncture schools, the NCCAOM, ACAOM and others as "the acu-establishment" that needs to be struggled against (e.g. "The heads of the larger schools and of the NCCAOM make six-figure salaries." Horrors! No one should make that much!). I grew up in Berkeley and have seen these tactics used by people with left-leaning political views nearly all of my life. Perhaps they don't realize that by indulging in this kind of "otherization," they are fostering further division and creating more problems than they solve.

I give the Community Acupuncture Network kudos for all the work they have done. Most people just whine and let it be. The people of Working Class Acupuncture have done a wonderful job of setting up a practice model that new acupuncturists can use to make a reliable income and at the same time, help so many people with their health problems. A friend graduated from acupuncture school last year and started out with the standard model, renting a room once a week from another acupuncturist, seeing three or four patients a week, trying hard to get the word out. Our online chats filled me with dread: "I'm so bored," she would say. "I'm so lonely." Is this what would happen to me when I graduated?

Then she joined a community-style acupuncture group. All of a sudden she was seeing twenty patients a day and making almost enough money to quit her "day job" that she'd had all throughout school. In addition to financial benefits, seeing so many patients gives you an incredible amount of experience. In the clinical portion of our school education, we see one patient an hour (the exception being externships, where students often work at low-cost or free clinics and see many more patients). Seeing four patients an hour forces you to make good, fast diagnoses, and the low cost means you get to see the patient the next day and the next day and adjust their treatment as the condition progresses. This is priceless.

I do take issue with one particular point: Acupuncture is easy and we should have less training. Wha-a-a?? In Lisa Rohleder's own words:

the disconnection between how simple acupuncture actually is, and how much we paid to learn it. Acupuncture and herbs are not the same thing. You can get excellent clinical results with acupuncture with a minimum of training in Chinese medical theory. After a little time working with real patients in the real world, most of us come to the conclusion that we could have learned what we needed to know about acupuncture, in order to help most people, in eighteen months of schooling, tops. Most of what we spent armloads of money to learn has no direct (or even indirect) usefulness to our patients. That curricula are designed and accredited in this way suggest to us that what patients need does not interest you.

Now, I haven't treated any "real patients in the real world" yet so maybe I'll be changing my tune after the licensing exam later this year, but really... eighteen months? Yes, sticking a needle in someone and getting the qi is a skill that can be learnt relatively quickly. But that's not all there is to acupuncture. Like tai ji, acupuncture is easy to learn but difficult to master. Any argument for less training seem counter-intuitive.

Acupuncture is also not all there is to Chinese medicine. The process of Chinese medicine starts with diagnosis. If you get the diagnosis wrong, your treatment will be wrong. I don't think you can make the case that TCM diagnosis can be learned in eighteen months with a straight face.

Rohleder does bring up an important point: the disconnect between acupuncture and herbal education. In China, acupuncture and moxibustion are a separate department of medicine. Many TCM doctors who were trained in China, including many of our professors and clinic supervisors, think that acupuncture is inferior to herbal therapy. Our education in TCM school reflects these ideas. I don't necessarily think one type of therapy is better than the other (in fact, I think exercise and a healthy emotional life is the best medicine of all), but this is how it is. Your effectiveness as an acupuncturist certainly isn't stunted by learning about herbal medicine.

There is already a short training course available which certifies one to do acupuncture after only 300 hours of training. You just have to be an M.D. first.

AAAOM First Professional Doctorate Survey

Hello all TCM students and practitioners! Please take a moment to share your thoughts with the AAAOM about a first-professional doctorate.

• AAAOM First Professional Doctorate Survey

I think it's high time that we have a first-professional doctorate. We have so much training, so much to share with our communities, so much to contribute to the health of all Americans and people around the world, our title should match our expertise. It's frankly a little ridiculous that we go through so much school and end up with a master's degree. Here's a little comparison:

MBA	2 years	Summers off
JD (law degree)	3 years	Summers off
MD	4 years	Summers off
MSTOM (Chinese medicine degree)	4 years	STRAIGHT THROUGH FOR 4 YEARS!!!

What if I'm already licensed? Won't I look bad compared to the new TCM doctors fresh out of school? People who already have licenses shouldn't worry - we already have so many school hours, it will only take two or three more classes to get our L.Acs grandfathered in as doctors. I myself am about to graduate, so I won't benefit from this right away. It's for the benefit of the field as a whole.

I just spent two years and a whole lot of money getting my DAOM - why should I support this? The DAOM program is incredibly valuable. People who get the DAOM have gone above and beyond the requirements to advance the field. My vision is that the DAOM program will live on as a post-doctorate training program for people who want to be at the forefront of TCM research and integration with modern health care.

I'm an administrator at a TCM school - I just spent three years and countless meetings and hair-pulling getting our DAOM program up and running and accredited. Now you want me to throw that all away? As stated above, the DAOM program should become a post-doctorate research and integration degree. This is extremely valuable work for the field and essential to advancing the field. Not everyone wants to be in the public eye - some people just want to have a private practice and care for people. The DAOM should become the degree of choice for people who want to work in hospitals alongside M.D.s, in public policy alongside people with an MPH degree, in research for the NIH and yes, even private companies.

Even if you don't agree with me, take a moment to make your views known to the AAAOM. And leave a comment!

What Does Acupuncture Treat?

In 2003, the World Health Organization published "Acupuncture: Review and Analysis of Reports on Controlled Clinical Trials". This report (here is a summary and the full report in PDF form), often cited on acupuncturist's websites, lists the following:

Diseases, symptoms or conditions for which acupuncture has been proved-through controlled trials-to be an effective treatment:

• Adverse reactions to radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy
• Allergic rhinitis (including hay fever)
• Biliary colic
• Depression (including depressive neurosis and depression following stroke)
• Dysentery, acute bacillary
• Dysmenorrhoea, primary
• Epigastralgia, acute (in peptic ulcer, acute and chronic gastritis, and gastrospasm)
• Facial pain (including craniomandibular disorders)
• Headache
• Hypertension, essential
• Hypotension, primary
• Induction of labour
• Knee pain
• Leukopenia
• Low back pain
• Malposition of fetus, correction of
• Morning sickness
• Nausea and vomiting
• Neck pain
• Pain in dentistry (including dental pain and temporomandibular dysfunction)
• Periarthritis of shoulder
• Postoperative pain
• Renal colic
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Sciatica
• Sprain
• Stroke
• Tennis elbow

Your acupuncturist can tell you that this list is far from complete. Traditional Chinese Medicine is a complete medical system in and of itself, which can effectively treat nearly any condition. As research progresses, traditional medicine and bacteriological medicine are becoming partners in delivering the best health to people the world over.

As a patient, you should look for health care practitioners who have a broad-minded approach to medicine. Ideally you'll want not only an M.D. who is open to Chinese medicine, but a Chinese medicine practitioner who knows about your condition from both Western and Eastern perspectives. Tell your doctor about your acupuncturist! Tell them how much it helps you. If you have a serious condition like cancer, your doctor and your acupuncturist must coordinate your care for the best results.

Guan Yu

He is worshiped as a guardian god to some, god of brotherhood and loyalty to others, and sometimes as one who protects the money of the upright from the crooked. He was also a real person: a general during the late Eastern Han Dynasty.

During one of his battles, Guan Yu was struck by a poison arrow in his arm, and although the arrow was immediately removed, the poison had seeped into his bone. His subjects sent away for a physician, and none other than Hua Tuo came to the rescue.

When Hua Tuo arrived on the scene, Guan Yu was busy playing Go with one of his men. Hua Tuo examined his wound, and said that surgery would have to be performed immediately to save his arm. He suggested that Guan Yu put is arm through a ring that was fixed to a post - to keep him from flailing around while Hua Tuo scraped at his bone (without anesthesia) - and to put on a blindfold.

Guan Yu was like, "No way dude! Do what you need to, I'm going to keep playing this game of Go." Supposedly, he didn't want to affect the morale of his men, and talked and drank without flinching while Hua Tou scraped at the bone in his arm.

Minutes later, Hua Tou put medicine (presumably herbs) into the wound and sewed it up. Guan Yu no longer felt any pain in his arm, and Hua Tou left without accepting rewards for his work.

Professional Attire

Last month, our colleague Jason wrote a post on the White Coat Syndrome, discussing the drawbacks of dress on patient care. With the potential of stress that it may cause, seems like it would be advantageous to do away with the white coat. However, since first impressions and appearance plays such a huge role in interpersonal relationships, it's hard to discard such a recognizable article of distinction. One of the arguments for wearing a white coat is that it gives patients a sense of comfort and professionalism: a practitioner who takes the time to polish her/his appearance must be someone well-equipped to help them with their concerns.

Beyond the white coat, what does the "professional look" actually entail?

The general formula for a male doctor would be dress shoes, dress pants, long-sleeved button-up shirt, tie, and white lab coat. For a female doctor the rules are generally the same, though the tie is not necessary, and it's sometimes acceptable to get away with capri pants or a skirt on occasion.

As an acupuncture intern, I've found that the long sleeves of a white lab coat are sort of dangerous. Getting caught on a needle, for instance, is a threat that I'd rather not take the chance on; it can either cause my patient undue pain, or a needle-stick to myself. Brushing on patients' clothing and bodies when reaching over them is also a possibility, which is not good if a patient has anything that I can carry on myself and on to the next patient. Washing my hands all day long after touching patients puts me at a higher likelihood of getting my sleeves wet as well. It is a known fact that damp and moist environments are playgrounds for germs, fungus, and bacteria. My solution to this has been to roll up the sleeves of both my button-up shirt and my lab coat, which deals with the sleeve issue, but at times restricts my movement making it difficult to maneuver into certain positions for needling.

I leave the bottom buttons of my coat unbuttoned for the same reasons, otherwise it's almost impossible to squat or bend at the waist. Although it would be more comfortable for me, leaving my coat completely unbuttoned makes it more likely for me to drag or snag on the chairs and table, as well as brush up on patients. I imagine that if I had to wear a necktie, I would feel even more restricted. I don't wear ties in the clinic because I don't have to, but I don't understand why anyone would considering they are known vectors for bacteria.

I won't even start with dress shoes and how impractical they are for long periods of standing and treating patients.

I actually enjoy looking professional and put-together, but I wonder why that can't be done without the restrictive clothing and the long sleeves. What if we created a new-era uniform for medical professionals? Not as surgical as scrubs, but not as impractical as a business suit.

Apparently, the National Health Institute in England is thinking about the same thing. In the interest of public health and safety, they've instituted a new dress code banning ties and urging doctors to wear short sleeves. That sounds great to me, but I guess it makes a lot of people uncomfortable. There are studies that show patients do care greatly about what their doctors are wearing. But what if we just change the expectations? It seems impractical and negligent to continue a practice as superficial as focusing on attire when it jeopardizes the health and safety of both practitioner and patient.

White Coat Syndrome

Today's entry comes to us from Jason Moskovitz, a fellow intern at Yosan University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. He's also a medical qigong intern, herbologist, and certified qigong instructor. Jason lives in Los Angeles with his wife Breanna and son Bohdan. You can email jason at jason.moskovitz (at) gmail.com.

In the short time I've worn a white coat as a clinician I've encountered many patients who've been intimidated or even frightened by the message it sends. Most people, myself included, grew up with doctors in white coats, doling out scary news or dogmatic orders regarding our life and health. No wonder the people I'm seeing so automatically put themselves in an inferior, docile position.

"I know I should be getting some exercise."

"But I just love my nightly glass of wine."

"I realize smoking is wrong."

These are the things I hear from people who are so clearly uncomfortable saying them. You might be surprised to know, as are my patients, that I and many of my TCM colleagues don't hold our patients to our suggestions. We communicate information and if it's not well received because a lifestyle, behavior pattern, or addiction is too well engrained; then we take a step back and ensure the patient that we, in these white coats, are not here to keep people from doing what they want. If people want to smoke themselves to death, they have that choice. But for those that are clear they want change, they'll find themselves in a supportive union with the TCM physician. Either way, the white coat eventually gets stripped of its power and the patient sees they'll find support no matter how they decide to live. Engendering that deep level of trust sets the foundation from which progressive life-altering steps can be taken.

It's too bad not many people know the history of the white coat. It's current pristine symbol of superiority couldn't be further from its roots. Yes, its use was primarily to communicate an antiseptic practice, despite many physicians noting their tendency to spread infection due to the lack of regular laundering. But one reason they were white was to display the blood they'd been working with. More blood meant more experience. Ironically, today you might only find that image in the local butcher shop.