That should be no surprise to anybody who has visited Deepest Health for any length of time. That being said, I have immense respect for acupuncture and find myself fascinated by it daily. My great hope is to someday have enough time to begin to devote myself to a deeper study of this modality that I use almost every day.

This is why, when it was released, I picked up the new iPad version of the iconic Manual of Acupuncture by Peter Deadman (and team). At $35.99, it’s cheaper than the both paper text and the interactive DVD, while preserving some of the best features of each. However, for an iPad app, it may be a little rich for some people’s blood.

For the record, I think it’s a steal of an app – particularly since I know it is under active development. I’ll provide a more robust review in a future blog post, though, because I’d like to focus on something else here.

While working with the iPad app, I ran across a bug, and pressed the in-app support button to shoot an email to the tech team. I had no idea the bug report would end up in front of Peter Deadman himself! I’ve never met him, nor heard him speak, so it was a treat to be introduced in such a roundabout and unexpected manner.

Ever looking for opportunities to come up with information my readers might find interesting, I asked whether he would be willing to answer a few questions. To my surprise, despite his busy life, he agreed. So, thanks to his kindness, I offer below his thoughts on an array of topics. He focuses particularly on the development of the Manual of Acupuncture in all its forms as well as the pros and cons of community acupuncture. I’m sure you will find the information as enlightening as I did.

Thanks, again, to Peter for offering his time to reach out to Deepest Health readers.

1. Could you please introduce yourself to the readers? Your name, where you’re from, where/how you were educated in Chinese medicine and your current/past work (teaching, books, clinic, whatever you think is relevant)

I was born and brought up in England, the second child of a Russian Jewish mother and an English/Scottish father. Both were committed socialists and atheists. After travelling and living the hippy life to the full, my first career was the co-founding of a natural foods restaurant, followed by a shop (Infinity Foods), bakery, warehouse distribution unit, and charitable natural health education centre.
I went to acupuncture college between 1975 and 1978 and followed that with acupuncture studies in Nanjing, China in the winter of 1981-82, and herbal studies in Nanjing in 1993. In 1979 I set up The Journal of Chinese Medicine which I still run. I have had a 30+-year career practising, lecturing on and writing about Chinese medicine. I also practise and occasionally teach qigong and have had parallel careers as violinist in a klezmer band and a creative writer.

In 1998 I completed the co-writing of A Manual of Acupuncture.

2. You are the man behind possibly the most iconic English language book in the realm of Chinese medicine and acupuncture that is currently published. What pushed you to release the book – and were there any surprises in its creation/publishing?

I was originally asked by a publisher to produce a points book but declined as I felt there were too many out there already. Then I realised that the fact there were so many meant that there was a hunger for a good points book and I felt confident that with the right partners I could produce something better. I have/had a great passion to communicate and in this case I felt that the Chinese medicine profession needed a book that reliably laid down as much of the tradition as possible before it spiralled off into ever more distant realms of imagination and wishful thinking.

Dedication to detail characterised every different aspect of the book, from text to illustrations, to design … and that’s why – instead of taking eighteen months as planned – it took eight and a half years. However it has paid off with the respect and even affection that the book has generated, some of which is down to probably unnoticed details that make the book user friendly (e.g. the lengthy work we did in the layout stage to try and get the point illustration on the same page as the location text).
Apart from the length of time it took, the main surprise was that its success meant I could cut down on work after many years of hard slog and a few years after publication I stopped practising – at roughly the same time I joined a working band (hard to come back at 3am from gigs and be in a clinical frame of mind.

3. You recently released a new version of the text – are there plans for future revisions? What might we expect?

The new version was just a tweak and there are no plans for any further changes.

4. What other books on Chinese medicine and acupuncture are interesting to you – what would we find on your bookshelves?

I am fascinated by the yangsheng [ed: "nourishing life"] tradition – not so much the esoteric aspects but the down to earth wisdom about behaviour and lifestyle. This is something I lecture on a lot and I am always amazed how bang on the ancient teachings are in the light of modern research.
To give one example from hundreds, it is only now (astonishingly enough) being acknowledged in scientific medicine how much the quality of life of the mother during pregnancy affects the future health of the child.This has been known in the Chinese tradition for a good two thousand years (how pregnancy conditions may affect the pre-heaven jing) – specifically under the heading of foetal education. So although I have handed on a lot of my clinical practice books, my shelves groan with qigong and health preservation texts.

5. You recently released an iPad application that is, essentially, an enhanced version of the textbook. What got you interested in creating this?

Technology seems to create its own demands. Once it becomes possible to do new things the imagination is easily caught. In the case of our digital publications, a lot of the credit goes to Tom Kennedy – a young practitioner with IT skills – and his wife Kate who has a BBC film production background. Tom pushed us into producing the initial DVD, and the point location videos we made for that found their way onto the iphone/ipad app.
We also wanted to replace the point card study set which we originally published alongside the textbook. That was because when I studied points and later herbs I found the best way to memorise was to write out cards and go for long walks. In a digital age, the smart phone can serve the same function.

6. What should people expect in future iterations of the iPad app?

We are working on a totally new version of the DVD (kickstarted by Apple whose new Lion operating system meant the DVD unexpectedly no longer worked – to our and our customers’ dismay). This will have several new features but additionally it will be ipad compatible so users can either opt for the cheaper, cut-down app version or the full text/full functionality multimedia/DVD version.

7. How do you see technology like the iPad and similar mobile devices changing the way that Chinese medicine is practiced and learned? How do you feel about it?

Traditionally Chinese medicine was learned by memorisation, which is why Chinese medicine books produced in China still have lousy indexes. I feel memorisation is still fundamental to good practice. Digital publications offer the best of both worlds … imaginative tools to help memorisation, but maximum searchablity for reference also.

8. If there is one thing you wish would be brought to mobile technology in the realm of Chinese medicine, what would it be? (eg – Bensky’s materia medica, a complete version of the Ling Shu in English, etc…)

The Bensky materia medica and formulas and strategies would be a good start.

9. Any advice you would like to offer to new students in Chinese medicine? What do you wish you would have known when you began?

The hardest thing is to get a rewarding (emotionally and financially) practice. So many new practitioners never get a practice off the ground – at least one that can give them a decent living. In my mind there are two answers. The first is the work being done in the field of community acupuncture … matching patients who simply can’t afford high fees with practitioners happy to work in multibed clinics. The other is the development of the highest level of skill and knowledge allied with a degree of specialisation.I think these two strands can find a way to co-exist.
There is a buzz about multibeds right now, and lots of patients benefit from the affordability, the communal atmosphere and the ability to have more frequent treatments. They are a pragmatic solution to a particular problem. However, I don’t think they represent best practice and I feel very strongly that best practice (which is almost inevitably more time consuming) risks being diminished by the need to offer quick treatment.

In fact I think that lots of practitioners need to raise their game – continuously studying to build on their initial education. How many practitioners for example know the diagnostic tests, natural progression and prognosis of the hundreds of different musculoskeletal disorders the human body can suffer from? This despite the fact that musculoskeletal problems probably form the majority of the cases we treat.

I also feel that acupuncture – having its roots in the Chinese medical tradition – has a lot to offer patients in terms of understanding cause of disease and what are helpful and unhelpful behaviours. The way I was taught, this was part of the job and Chinese medicine has extraordinary wisdom in this respect.

When community acupuncture offers three-minute consultations and tacitly or overtly expects ‘the needles to do all the work’ I think this is a betrayal of acupuncture as medicine. After all, much dismay accompanied the transition from the old-style GP who lived in a community, knew their patients and their lives, relationships, strengths and weaknesses, to the modern rushed GP whose main preoccupation is to find a way to stop their patient talking so as not to exceed the few minutes allotted to each consuation

Yet even they spend considerably longer than three minutes.

–

Thanks again to Peter for his time, not just for this brief interview, but over his long career. We’ve all benefitted from his dedication. If you’re interested in accessing his work, please visit the following links:

• Journal of Chinese Medicine
• A Manual of Acupuncture, print version
• A Manual of Acupuncture Multimedia DVD-ROM (V1.2)
• iPad app for the Manual of Acupuncture

Most of all, I want to sell them – US – on the amazing potential of technology in general, and the Internet in particular. This is ironic, of course, because most of them won’t read this.

Why? Oh god, why? I don’t know. It seems that among natural medicine practitioners, those most likely to embrace the Internet sell mostly herbal Viagra-type products or are chiefly interested in weight loss. It’s a crying shame, my friends. A crying shame.

I will put my call out there, though, in hopes that it will reach the ears of some of my colleagues. To make it easy on the eyes I will keep it short and digestible. Without further ado – I present my Top 5 Reasons Natural Medicine practitioners (and students, and consumers!) need to embrace the Internet.

1. Ease of delivery of information. This is the same reason it is advocated for any sector of society. If you have information you need to get out there (and who doesn’t?) the Internet is a cheap, effective and efficient way of getting it out there. With blogging software, wiki creation programs and the glut of web designers looking for work our options are WIDE OPEN. Internet usage is only going to increase – people are beginning to surf the web on their handhelds and cell phones, free Internet is becoming ubiquitous in many parts of the US… getting on board with this easy method of communication can only help our mission – to bring human-scale healthcare to the maximum number of people possible.
2. Natural medicine is often left out of traditional media like newspapers. This will sound familiar to anyone in a marginalized political or social movement. In many ways, the Internet has democratized media in a way I certainly couldn’t have predicted. Anyone can put their voice out there (mixed blessing, yes) and a group of dedicated, well-spoken folks with some tech expertise or help on that front can put their voice out there and get it both HEARD and RESPECTED. This can be a way into more traditional media as well, particularly if an online movement gains significant momentum.
3. Do we really want to leave it to the herbal viagrists? Now, my mother taught me to be positive and this is a negatively worded reason – but bear with me. At this point, Western medicine and people peddling “alternative” medicines of varying quality and efficacy dominate the health niche on the Internet. Thus, when a person types in “help with depression” they are likely to be pointed either in the direction of various and sundry pharmaceuticals or in the direction of whatever holistic-light-therapy-colloidial-moonstone remedy happens to be being promoted at the moment. Either of these options may be ok for some folks – but expanding the availability of excellent information on the Internet about natural healthcare expands the options accessed by average people. This should be our goal.
4. The creation of community. Unless you live in Portland or a similar town, you may be the only natural healthcare practitioner in your area – or at least one of very few. While the type of community created via the Internet can sometimes be less than healthy, the ability to make it positive is in the hands of individuals. By the creation of blogs, blog networks, websites, blogrolls, forums and other centers of communication we can network, share information and be supported by people who share our vision and values even when they’re 1,000 miles away.
5. Financial opportunities abound: Between blog monetization, creation of easily available affiliate programs, online sales of products and the ability to promote your brick-and-mortar business – the ability for natural health practitioners to make money using the Internet is significant. You don’t need to be a web design genius to use any of these features. Diversification of income streams is good for your long term stability and, thus, is good for your patients. No one is served by your going out of business.

So if you’re out there, friends, if you’re out there reading this and DYING to get off the computer – stop. Stop for a second and take a deep breath. Find a way to make friends with your computer and consider for a moment the infinite possibilities this whole new world represents. When you’re ready to get something going – drop me an email.

Eric

“In modernizing TCM, efforts will be made to improve standards, study new applications and standardize planting, production and processing of medicinal herbs, according to the report of the center, which is under the Ministry of Science and Technology.”

This doesn’t sound too bad, actually.

I can understand the wisdom in standardizing planting, production and processing of herbs. Unfortunately, standardization too often means bringing everything down to the standard of the least excellent instead of bringing everything up to the standard of the most excellent! If they are going to standardize the herb industry they need to take care to:

• Make sure the integrity of biological systems is maintained, or where already damaged, improved. The energetic quality of the herb is certainly impacted by its environment. In ancient times, these herbs grew wild – in harmony with their surroundings. The best quality of many herbs is still found in their wild counterparts! In standardized cultivation, one should do the best they can to replicate that environment – even if it harms yields.
• Follow traditional guidelines in harvest and processing of herbs.  Some, like Heiner Fruehauf, are devoted to making sure this takes place.  If in the Materia Medica an herbs is meant to be mix-fried until yellow, don’t char it. If it is meant to be processed in salt water, process it in salt water. Perhaps contemporary research methods don’t pick up the difference between one processing method and another – but don’t kid yourself into thinking that the sages that developed this medicine were stupid. Their guidelines were precise and developed over centuries of testing. Respect that.
• Use the implementation of standards to ensure the elimination of heavy metals, pesticides and non-edible products from the herbs.

Unfortunately, this isn’t likely to be all “modernization” has in store for Chinese medicine in China.

If history is any measure, it will almost certainly entail the purging of important information from the official canon and redoubled efforts to justify Chinese medicine from a Western scientific standpoint. Further, practitioners with diverse (yet vital and functional) theoretical standpoints, diagnostic methods and treatment principles may be forced to embrace the standard despite the fact that it is not clinically more effective. This, so the line goes, is the only way that Chinese medicine will be accepted into the mainstream.

If that’s what it takes to be accepted into the mainstream – I’ll take the tributaries.