Abstract
Acupuncture for Insomnia is a text every acupuncturist should have in his or her possession. In my 25 years of practice, both as a clinician and a teacher in several acupuncture schools, I have found that most acupuncturists will report they have many patients seeking help for insomnia and that most patients who seek acupuncture treatment with a chronic illness will have some level of sleep disturbance.
According to recent statements by the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC), sleep disorders affect approximately 50 to 70 million US adults. Public health studies conclude that motor vehicle crashes and industrial disasters, as well as medical and other occupational errors can be directly attributed to sleepiness. In addition, people who experience sleep insufficiency are more likely to suffer from chronic diseases such as depression, diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. Increased mortality and reduced productivity with a poorer quality of life are also seen in persons who do not get adequate sleep.
Because of these findings, it is quite important that we have more educational resources available to the community of acupuncturists and practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine. The likelihood of encountering patients with either occasional or chronic sleep disturbances is quite high.
In this text, the reader will find that the author includes both the Western approach to understanding normal sleep physiology, as well as the traditional Chinese medicine energetic theories. In the first chapter, he discusses the 4 sleep stages, circadian rhythm, brain physiology that takes place during sleep, and a variety of Western dream theories. In the second chapter, he discusses sleep in the context of yin and yang, qi, xue, and shen, as well as the zang fu organ models, and the jing luo channel systems. These first two chapters lay a solid theoretical foundation for the practitioner to begin to diagnose and treat.
Chapters 3 and 4 are very well organized as the author discusses the etiology and treatment of insomnia. He has included multiple graphics and charts to enable the practitioner to use as an ongoing reference text during clinical practice. There are interesting insomnia case presentations with highlighted text according to major symptom and its traditional Chinese medicine correlate. In addition to insomnia, other sleep pathologies are included such as somnolence, somnambulism, sleep apnea, excessive dreaming, sexual dreams, nightmares, enuresis, and nocturia. He has done an incredible job of detailing specific clinical findings in both the subjective and objective realms according to each traditional Chinese medicine pattern discrimination. The text so well organized that it is quite easy for practitioners to make a quick reference to fine tune their diagnostic assessment and select appropriate acupuncture points on any given clinic day.
Chapter 5 discusses briefly both modern Western and ancient Eastern dream theories, but he emphasizes the significance of dreams in the Chinese tradition. He uses some tables and charts to highlight some common dream images and recurrent dreams with a comprehensive outline of specific dream themes according to zang/fu pathology.
There is a wonderful appendix in the back of the book that is an alphabetized index of sleep-related symptoms with acupuncture point suggestions associated with each one. There are some additional charts and outlines such as Worsley’s Seven Dragons treatment, and Acupuncture Points Containing the Characters Ling, Shen, and Gui.
This text is a work of excellence. Dr Hamid Montakab has clearly demonstrated his knowledge of the subject and his ability to bring forth a text that is well organized, contextually sound, and appropriate for our times.