Zachary B. Corbett, L.Ac. Japanese Acupuncture in Eugene, OR

Information for other medical providers

Please let me know if you are accepting new referrals to your practice, and what insurance you take if you practice outside the concierge model.  I refer often.  I have many patients looking for new providers.

• Acupuncture has proved to be extremely safe for all age groups.  The American Academy of Pediatrics announced in 2011 that acupuncture is generally safe for children when provided by qualified providers.
• I regard my work as being a component of the patient's health care team.  I have more experience than most other LAc in the area working alongside allopathic providers when caring for very medically complex, traumatized patients.   
• I am happy to receive referrals for patients who are medically complex, fragile, or who have significant burden from  behavioral health issues.
• My most common referrals from other providers are for patients needing symptomatic relief for conditions
  • that are refractory.
  • presenting with significant breakthrough symptoms despite adhering to medication regimen.
  • having poorly characterized etiologies or frank somatization of various types.
  • where patient is not tolerating standard care, e.g. drug side effects.
  • where patients need to learn better self care strategies like mindfulness or compassionate guidance when returning to exercise and nutritional choices.
• I look out for red flag symptoms patients may present with.  When identified, I urge patients to RTC their PCP, specialist or ERD/UC.  I follow up with patients to make sure they are following up on my recommendations.  In extreme circumstances I may even  hold off on further care care until they have had a biomedical evaluation.
• I schedule patients for 1-5 appointments at a time, and carefully assess whether the response to care warrants further care or not.  I do not set patients up for endless "maintenance" treatments.  
• I am happy to send you any progress notes and chart notes relating to your referral.
• For security reasons I do not put my HIPAAA secure contact info on this website.
  • Please let me know you are considering referring a patient to me using this contact page or calling my phone number (541) 686-9424.  I will then send you the PHI secure contact info for the patient's details.  Again, this contact page is not HIPAA secure.
• For a brief review of the on the physiological effects and clinical research on acupuncture, please see this review in the
  • Oregon Medical Board Fall 2023 Report.
• If I can answer any questions about my practice please feel free to reach out anytime. 
• I am looking forward to working with you.

Some common concerns about acupuncture

• Weak performance in some placebo controlled studies
  • We are still learning to study a physical medicine procedure performed on fully conscious patients.  This presents many challenges.  To mention just some examples: 1./  Acupuncture naive patients know what a verum treatment should look like.  2./ The "sham" acupuncture protocols are often not physiologically inert, and 3./ when the  "verum" interventions are designed to look similar the sham,  they sometimes are significantly degraded from real practice. 
• There are no double-blind placebo controlled studies on acupuncture
  • Similar to the situation with cognitive behavioral therapy, physical therapy and many surgical techniques,  blinding the provider is simply not possible.
• Claims that the techniques work using mysterious energy
  • Please see OMB report above.  Physiological assays of the acupuncture effect are robust, but have required quite advanced, expensive assay techniques like fMRI and cellular signaling assays.
  • When my patients ask for an explanation of how acupuncture works, I do not tell them that the effects they are seeing are the result any kind of magical thinking.
  • I explain that the technique is a discovered technology that takes advantage of inherent physiology in various organ systems.  For example, the twitch response when manipulating a needle in the fibers of a trigger point.  Or when they experience profound, psychologically meaningful body sensations or other somatoemotional catharsis - when they ask for an explanation I do my best to explain the neuroscience behind such experiences.
  • The culturally challenging, difficult to translate, poetic language used to teach to acupuncture procedures is best understood not as a psuedo-science but as an engineering rule of thumb, designed to guide developing a treatment plan to the individual situation of the patient.  For example, the historical acupuncture terminology serves to warn the provider that an elderly patient recovering from a severe disease should not be treated as aggressively as a young professional athlete's sports injury.

 

Some historical context with other discovered technologies

• I do not believe the mere fact acupuncture is centuries old is relevant to whether the treatment is worthwhile today.
• However I also feel the the long history of the profession is not disqualifying in and of itself.
• Over the centuries, effective application of other discovered technologies have often relied on such rule of thumb, engineering-style language  before scientific characterization was achieved.
• There are many important historical examples.
• Archeological evidence dates the first use of fermentation and brewing to several thousand years ago, yet it was really only in the 20th century that a robust characterization was achieved, and research continues today.  Neolithic cultures must have had pre-scientific language to teach each new generation how to effectively create the actual fermentation products.
• Likewise ancient Roman engineering created concrete buildings like the Pantheon that has stood for 1,900 years, yet it was only in 2023 that the chemistry behind Roman concrete's self repairing mechanism was finally understood.  Modern concrete only lasts about 50 years.  That culture, too, had the ability to prepare and arrange materials using a terminology without reference to the language of physics and chemistry we would use today.