In the Spring of 2010 we will hold a week long intensive for those of you who live too far away to attend a weekly course.  This class takes the eight week long Healing Pathways training and runs it all in six days.

http://www.compmed.umm.edu/pathways/

He was also invited to present a lecture entitled:  “Evidence-Based Medicine in Traditional Chinese Medicine. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), Education Series on Complementary and Integrative Medicine,” at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD on January 5, 2009.

Dr. Lao's recent publications include:
Zhang RX., Fan AY., Zhou AN., Moudgil KD., Ma ZZ., Lee DY., Fong HH., Berman BM., Lao L.  Extract of the Chinese herbal formula Huo Luo Xiao LingDan inhibited adjuvant arthritis in rats.  J Ethnopharmacol. 2009 Jan 30;121(3):366-71. Epub 2008 Nov 28.
Read this article by using the link at the right of this page.

Also, visit the U.S. Senate HELP Committee website to watch the hearing and read the testimonies.  http://help.senate.gov/Hearings/2009_02_23/2009_02_23.html

Merging Non-Western Therapy With Trauma Care
Dr. Michael Greenberg speaks with Dr. David Tarantino and Dr. Brian Berman of the University of Maryland Shock Trauma and Integrative Medicine Centers about how non-traditional therapies are being successfully used to help patients treated for shock trauma. 

http://www.reachmd.com/xmsegment.aspx?sid=1858

Is This the Decade for Integrative Medicine?
In this segment, our guest Dr. Brian Berman, Professor of Family Medicine and the founder and director of the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine, talks with host, Dr. Bill Rutenberg about how can we develop evidence based complimentary medicine and integrate it into mainstream medicine. He also provides the 5 key ingredients he believes should be included in a complimentary medicine program and he discusses the outcomes of the most recent Society for Acupuncture Research meeting.

http://www.reachmd.com/xmsegment.aspx?sid=2932

Acupuncture and Treatment of Osteoarthritis
What benefit does acupuncture offer in the treatment of osteoarthritis? Our guest Dr. Brian Berman, Professor of Family Medicine and the founder and director of the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine shares his research supporting the hypothesis that patients with osteoarthritis benefit significantly from acupuncture treatments. In this segment, Dr. Berman talks with host Dr. Bill Rutenberg about the initial experiments which led to NIH funded trial. Learn of the outcomes of this trial including how many treatments are required to have an impact on the patient and what researchers have learned from following the patients after the trial.

http://www.reachmd.com/xmsegment.aspx?sid=2930

Dr. Chesney served for five years as deputy director of NCCAM, the primary federal agency supporting scientific research in complementary medicine. She will assume the newly created position at the Center for Integrative Medicine on Feb. 14, 2008. She will also join the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, with joint appointments in the departments of Medicine and Family and Community Medicine.

"Dr. Chesney brings to the center an exceptional record of scientific achievement and leadership in complementary and integrative medicine," says Brian Berman, M.D., director of the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine.

"She is recognized internationally for her scientific research on the role that lifestyle factors can play in influencing a person’s risk of developing disease or their potential to fight off illness. She will be instrumental in helping the center forge research partnerships with other programs within the University of Maryland School of Medicine," adds Dr. Berman, who is also a professor of family and community medicine at the School of Medicine.

Prior to joining NCCAM in 2003, Dr. Chesney was a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine, where she was director of the behavioral medicine and epidemiology section of the UCSF Center for AIDS Research.
 
Throughout her career, Dr. Chesney has designed and conducted original research on the relationship between behavior and chronic illness, and on behavioral factors in clinical trials, addressing such issues as recruitment, adherence and retention. She also worked on the development and evaluation of psychosocial and behavioral interventions for health promotion, illness prevention and treatment. These are all experiences deemed critical to the success of the Center for Integrative Medicine’s research program, with its emphasis on clinical trials.

"I am honored to join the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine," Dr. Chesney says. "The center is recognized throughout the integrative medicine community here in the United States and abroad for the quality of the science it consistently brings to the study of complementary and integrative medicine."

Deborah Cotton, M.D., M.P.H., a member of the National Advisory Council for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, says, "I applaud the University of Maryland in selecting Dr. Chesney for this key leadership role. She has been an international leader in the field of integrative medicine and is highly respected among researchers and clinicians from all backgrounds. With her rigorous research expertise and bold vision, she can leverage emerging opportunities and attract the best and brightest young investigators to the university."

Dr. Chesney has served as president of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research,
the American Psychosomatic Society and the Division of Health Psychology of the American Psychological Association (APA). She received the annual award for Outstanding Contributions to the APA's Division of Health Psychology in 1982 and in 1986, the President's Award from the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research in 1987 and the Charles C. Shepard Science Award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1999. In 2000, she was a senior fellow at the Center for the Advancement of Health in Washington, D.C., and in 2001 was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science.

An author and co-author of more than 250 scholarly research papers and publications, Dr. Chesney is associate editor of Psychology, Health and Medicine and serves on a number of editorial boards.
Founded in 1991, the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine, which is located at Kernan Hospital, is an interdisciplinary institution, focusing on research, patient care, education and training in integrative medicine.  The center is a leader in applying rigorous science to the study of complementary medicine. Research includes investigations into many complementary and alternative therapies, including acupuncture, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Reiki, yoga and herbs for a broad range of conditions. It is a National Institutes of Health a Center of Excellence for research in complementary and alternative medicine.

An analysis by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine finds positive results for using acupuncture for women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF). When acupuncture was performed during embryo transfer, pregnancy rates improved. IVF is a process that involves fertilizing a woman’s egg with sperm outside the womb and then implanting the embryo in the woman’s uterus.

For their study published in the online version of the British Medical Journal on February 8, the reviewers compared data from seven studies involving more than 1,300 women. They looked at the impact of acupuncture when given within one day of embryo transfer. Their analysis found that acupuncture increased the odds of pregnancy by 65 percent compared to sham acupuncture or no additional treatment. It translates into one additional pregnancy among every ten women having acupuncture. In trials where the baseline pregnancy rates were already high, however, the benefits of acupuncture were smaller or not significant.

"IVF is a lengthy, expensive and stressful process for couples trying to get pregnant. We set out to determine whether giving acupuncture with embryo transfer during IVF could improve IVF success rates," says Eric Manheimer, research associate at the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

He adds, "While the increased likelihood of success with acupuncture was small, it may still be cost-effective considering that IVF costs more than $12,000 per cycle. If acupuncture increases the success rate of an individual IVF cycle, even by a modest amount, then the need for a subsequent IVF cycle would be reduced. Though promising, our results should be considered still preliminary, and they need to be confirmed in future trials."

Currently, researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine and the University of Maryland Center for Assisted Reproductive Technology are in the final year of a three-year pilot study comparing acupuncture to sham acupuncture, which involves placing acupuncture needles in a different places or not as deeply as standard acupuncture therapy prescribes. This study looks at the use of acupuncture at four different times during the IVF cycle: at the beginning of the cycle, just before egg retrieval, just before embryo transfer and then after the embryo is transferred. If the pilot study with 60 patients proves successful, the investigators hope to expand the research to include several hundred women.

Some 10 to 15 percent of couples have difficulty conceiving at some point in their reproductive lives and may turn to IVF. In the year 2000, approximately 200,000 babies worldwide were conceived through in vitro fertilization.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a component of the National Institutes of Health, provided funding for meta-analysis, which also included researchers from Georgetown University and the VU University, Amsterdam.

The University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, known for state-of-the-art medicine and high-tech advances in patient care, is now teaming with the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine to offer some ancient, low-tech options to help patients manage their pain. These include Reiki (pronounced "ray-kee"), a Japanese energy therapy, and Chinese acupuncture. In addition, the two centers are collaborating on a study looking into the potential benefits of acupuncture for trauma patients.

"Pain management in trauma patients can be challenging because many of the medications have side effects, such as nausea and vomiting, and the medicines do not always provide adequate pain relief," explains Rick Dutton, M.D., chief of trauma anesthesiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center and associate professor of anesthesiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

He adds, "For years we’ve known that emotions can affect how patients perceive pain. Trauma patients, in particular, often feel additional stress and loss of control because their injuries come unexpectedly. By offering these complementary therapies, we hope to give patients more options for relaxation and stress relief, which can help with pain control and healing."

Shock Trauma patients have been offered acupuncture as part of their pain management for more than a year. Trained acupuncturists from the Center for Integrative Medicine have been coming to Shock Trauma several times a week to provide acupuncture to patients who request it. With positive feedback from patients, researchers from Shock Trauma and the Center for Integrative Medicine decided to design a study to see if there was a way to measure acupuncture’s potential benefit for these patients. 

"Shock Trauma patients who have received acupuncture as part of their pain management have reported significant drops in their pain scores; now we want to see if we can quantify the percentage of that change. We will also investigate the impact of acupuncture on chemicals in the blood that are markers for pain," says Lixing Lao, M.D., Ph.D., a licensed acupuncturist and director of the Program in Traditional Chinese Medicine Research at the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine. Dr. Lao is also a professor of family and community medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

As part of the acupuncture research, 30 patients will be randomly selected to receive acupuncture, in addition to their regular care, on three consecutive days following surgery. The researchers will evaluate how much narcotic pain medicine these patients require in the first three days after surgery compared to 30 other patients with similar injuries, randomly selected to receive only conventional care after surgery.

The patients’ pain scores and blood samples will also be compared. The investigators plan to track biomarkers for pain and inflammation. These chemical measurements will include inflammatory cytokines, stress hormones such as cortisol and neurotransmitters such as beta-endorphins. 
 
Another complementary therapy offered at Shock Trauma is Reiki, which is part of a field known as energy medicine. According to the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, during the therapy, the Reiki practitioner "places his or her hands on or near the person receiving treatment with intent to transmit ‘ki,’ which is believed to be a life-force energy." In fact, the word Reiki means "universal life energy."

"Reiki is a Japanese technique of relaxation that works similarly to acupuncture, in that you are releasing and moving energy," explains Donna Audia, R.N., a nurse on Shock Trauma’s pain management team and a certified Reiki master. "By using Reiki with trauma patients, we are not only helping them to relax, we’re also making them active participants in their own healing, and that can be very empowering."

Reaction from trauma patients has been positive, with most requesting follow-up treatments. In fact, many family members ask to be a part of the Reiki session. A group of volunteers trained in Reiki now visits Shock Trauma regularly. The University of Maryland Medical Center is the only facility in the country offering Reiki to trauma patients, although it has also been used to treat people with cancer and other illnesses.

"We find that Reiki promotes a feeling of calmness and well-being," explains Audia. "Patients who have received Reiki therapy tell us that they feel more relaxed and that their pain sometimes decreases. In some patients, heart and breathing rates actually slow down."

Shock Trauma’s pain management team has also offered music therapy, where specially trained musicians play for patients. A practitioner from the Center for Integrative Medicine has also brought crystal bowls to play for patients as part of sound therapy.

"In the same way that we know trauma patients benefit from having pastoral care, social workers, counselors and psychiatrists, we see these complementary therapies as another option we can offer our patients to help them in their recovery," says Dr. Dutton. 

"Caring for critically ill patients goes beyond just managing their pain, we also want to help them get back to a normal life," says Thomas M. Scalea, M.D., physician-in-chief at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center. "Acupuncture and Reiki are examples of our commitment to treating the whole person, and we are interested to see how these therapies may benefit trauma patients." Dr. Scalea is also professor of surgery and director of the Program in Trauma at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Shock Trauma, located at the University of Maryland Medical Center in downtown Baltimore, cares for more than 7,500 injured patients each year. It serves as the Primary Adult Resource Center for Maryland's emergency medical services system, providing the state’s highest level of trauma care. The center’s full name, the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, honors Dr. R Adams Cowley who pioneered the concept of the "golden hour," the idea that patients who receive specialized treatment within the first hour after a traumatic injury are more likely to have better outcomes.

The University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine, located at Kernan Hospital, is a National Institutes of Health "Center of Excellence" for research in complementary and alternative medicine. It was the first program in a major U.S. academic health center to conduct research as well as offer patients care that integrates complementary therapies.