Military Pokes Holes In Acupuncture Skeptics’ Theory

‘Let’s Give It A Shot’

Army doctors have been told by the top brass to rethink their “pill for every ill” approach to treating pain. For the 47,000 troops who’ve been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of the new options include less tried and true methods, like massage and chiropractic treatments. The military hopes to win over skeptics, many of them in uniform.

Wasserman is the top doctor for the Warrior Transition Battalion at Fort Campbell, Ky. To her own surprise, she’s also now the unit’s physician trained to do acupuncture.

“I actually had a demonstration of acupuncture on me, and I’m not a spring chicken,” she says, “and it didn’t make me 16 again, but it certainly did make me feel better than I had, so I figured, hey … let’s give it a shot with our soldiers here.”

In recent years, military doctors have turned to acupuncture in special pain clinics and for troops in battle zones. Last year, the Army surgeon general began making the alternative treatments more widely available.

Steering Away From Painkillers

Remalia says his headaches have disappeared, and he’s relying less on his cabinet full of pain medication. To Col. Kevin Galloway, that’s mission accomplished. He’s in charge of carrying out recommendations from the Army’s Pain Management Task Force, which focused heavily on unconventional therapies.

“You can throw fairly cheap pharmaceuticals at the problem now and push the problem to someone else later if you’re not really working on what the genesis of the pain is,” he says.

Galloway says if soldiers get hooked on high-powered painkillers, the Department of Veterans Affairs may be dealing with the side effects for decades to come. Already, at least 40 percent of veterans entering the VA system are coping with pain.  Read More

Dr. Jay’s Note:  If you were to accidentally step on a dog’s tail - Where would the noise come out? The yelping sounds from the dog’s mouth are symptoms of something greater going on & simply treating these symptoms by trying to eliminate the dog’s ability to vocalize a health issue with drugs or surgery is equivalent to the medical approach to health. True holistic health practitioners look beyond obvious signs & symptoms to the actual origins of dis-ease & work to re-establish your natural state of ease. In other words, we take our foot off of the dog’s tail.