I immediately realized the profound implications of my discovery and anticipated the necessity to frame it in Western medical terms the medical community would find compelling enough to adopt this protocol.
I shared it with a Physical Therapist I knew who had worked with dozens of stroke patients for over 30 years. I hoped she could explain this in her terms but she asked to witness the next session to see what she couldn't imagine was possible.
The same phenomenon occured at the exact step in the protocol as before, and the PT looked startled as she paced around the table, looking under it from all angles. After the session, she looked bewildered and said she thought my client was hooked up to electrodes and we were pranking her! She brought a doctor colleague to the 3rd session to see if he could explain this. As before, my client's arm and leg repeatedly extended with 100% range of motion at the exact same point in the sequence as before. The doctor was visibly uncomfortable as he suggested possible mechanisms, but it was clear he was as much in the dark as the rest of us. After the 4th session, I contacted her Neurologist to share all this, and he too was astounded and had no explanation to offer. The reactions of these medical professionals vividly illustrated the need for researching this further. Perhaps most important was that the same phenomenon happened at the exact step in my process each time. This means that, if researchers duplicate my results following the same procedure, a Standardized Protocol can be integrated into conventional stroke rehabilitation.
The same phenomenon occured at the exact step in the protocol as before, and the PT looked startled as she paced around the table, looking under it from all angles. After the session, she looked bewildered and said she thought my client was hooked up to electrodes and we were pranking her! She brought a doctor colleague to the 3rd session to see if he could explain this. As before, my client's arm and leg repeatedly extended with 100% range of motion at the exact same point in the sequence as before. The doctor was visibly uncomfortable as he suggested possible mechanisms, but it was clear he was as much in the dark as the rest of us. After the 4th session, I contacted her Neurologist to share all this, and he too was astounded and had no explanation to offer. The reactions of these medical professionals vividly illustrated the need for researching this further. Perhaps most important was that the same phenomenon happened at the exact step in my process each time. This means that, if researchers duplicate my results following the same procedure, a Standardized Protocol can be integrated into conventional stroke rehabilitation.
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- Age at Stroke
- Stroke Type
- Symptom(s) Severity
- Time Since Stroke
- Other Medical Conditions
- Diet, Exercise, Lifestyle, Background, etc.
Given the profound implications* of my initial results I was shocked to find no interest from stroke rehab centers.
* See The Global Costs of Stroke: Why This Project is Urgently Needed.
Seeing no other options, I carried on with my practice and other interests until I got a 2nd wind, ironically, on February 20, 2022.
Despite today's ubiquity of acupuncture in Western healthcare and validation by numerous modern studies related to stroke rehab, I routinely face resistance in my outreach efforts by professionals and patients in the stroke community, likely, because doctors and rehab therapists aren't recommending acupuncture, much less Jin Shin, due to statements like this by the American Heart Association's Stroke journal:
Many doctors and rehab specialists aren't even aware of studies demonstrating the efficacy of acupuncture for improving stroke rehab. And those who keep up on the latest research may be bound by institutional policy not to recommend these methods until such institutions acquire sufficient quality studies.
The following statement by Jeff Gould, LAc, DiplOM, at Johns Hopkins Integrative Medicine and Digestive Center provides an example of how acupuncture is generally regarded by renown institutions:
The following statement by Jeff Gould, LAc, DiplOM, at Johns Hopkins Integrative Medicine and Digestive Center provides an example of how acupuncture is generally regarded by renown institutions:
This paper discusses scientific efforts to study Qi -the most fundamental tenet of Chinese Medicine- and the challenges related to bridging Eastern and Western medical concepts.
To date, I'm the only person I've encountered to have proposed that Qi is not an individual constituent we've yet to find a way to identify and measure, but actually the sum of all the constituents that determine our quality of health, such as blood, hormones, nutrients, nerve conductivity, ATP, etc. This seems most apropos given the basic translation of Qi is "Vital Life Force."
However, this 2011 study says:
Despite Gould's article explaining that studies have shown acupuncture is an effective treatment alone or in combination with conventional therapies for a variety of conditions, including stroke rehabilitation, his quote lends an impression of uncertainty that may deter doctors from recommending it and patients from trying it.
Another barrier to stroke patients accessing acupuncture is that it's not covered by some insurance plans. It's understandable that patients would be discouraged from seeking out acupuncture if they can't afford it and their insurance won't cover it.
And, due to the acute sense of vulnerability stroke leaves survivors with, most patients understandably don't want to risk trying strategies not encouraged by their doctors even when they happen to learn of encouraging studies or stories in the stroke community.
Further confounding TCM-based stroke research are the challenges in recruiting stroke survivors for studies early enough to effectively rehabilitate them as discussed in this June 8, 2021 article published in Frontiers in Neurology.