ABSTRACT
History of Mongolian medicine could be traced back to 2000 years ago. Mongolian traditional medicine has been built over many years. We traveled Mongolia to visit a hospital and a private clinic where traditional Mongolian medicine is in practice, and visited National University of Medical Sciences. In this paper, we report the current status of traditional medicine in Mongolia. We visited Mongolian National University of Medical Sciences and conversed with the president, vicepresident, and director of the traditional medical department. We visited a clinic where Mongolian traditional medicine is performed and a hospital where mainly traditional therapies and practical development are carried out. In the hospital, they mainly provide acupuncture and moxibustion treatment, cupping therapy, herbal therapy, and thermotherapy. It cannot be denied that moxibustion treatment came from Mongolia, because it is also said that ‘the north' in “Huangdi Neijing Suwen” chapter 12 means Mongolia. However, as there is a background once traditional medicine has been kept away from the national health care system, it is difficult to find a specific medical practice for Mongolian medicine as far as we have viewed the present status of medical practice in Mongolia. Considering that the cultural exchange with Japan is being carried out in many other fields, we expect that a number of new facts will come to light in the near future.
ABSTRACT
The WFAS Houston 2016 annual conference was held in the Royal Sonesta Hotel, Houston, Texas, USA from 31 October to 2 November 2014. The theme of the conference was "East Meets West -Shaping the Future of Healthcare", and more than 900 acupuncture practitioners and scientists participated. The number of papers presented was 216, including 6 keynote lectures. Papers from Japan numbered 11.<BR>At the Executive Committee (EC) meeting, 39 of the 76 EC members were present (10 EC members sent a letter of attorney in advance), including 3from Japan. Although Tokyo was approved as a host city of WFAS 2016 last year, we proposed changing the venue to the Tsukuba International Congress Center, which was approved.
ABSTRACT
Objective: The diagnostic criteria for the metabolic syndrome (MetS) were published in Japan in April 2005. However, there have been no large-scale studies in rural areas to confirm these criteria. We examined the prevalence of MetS in subjects who had undergone a routine medical health checkup at our hospital, located in a rural area. This data was used to investigate the appropriateness of the diagnostic criteria for MetS.Subjects and Methods: The MetS status was examined retrospectively in 2340 subjects (1408 men, 932 women ; mean age 49.6 ± 9.7 years) who underwent a routine medical health checkup at our hospital between April 2004 and March 2005.Results: Of the 1408 men and 932 women, 209 men (14.8%) and 23 women (2.5%) were diagnosed with MetS. Forty-four men (3.1%) and 4 women (0.4%) met all three diagnostic criteria for metabolic disorders. In the female group, only 8.7% of the 932 women met the waist circumference criterion of ≥90 cm. Because this waist circumference criterion was used during the first screening but was not met by most of the women, they were eliminated from our study. Using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, the cutoff values for waist circumference were 85.0 cm (sensitivity 0.750, specificity 0.564) in men and 79.5 cm (sensitivity 0.787, specificity 0.709) in women. If the women's waist circumference criterion had been set at the value of ≥79.5 cm, this would have resulted in 48 (5.2%) women meeting the criterion.Conclusion: From the viewpoint of preventive medicine, the Japanese male MetS diagnostic criteria are fairly appropriate. However, for the women, the waist circumference criterion of ≥90 cm has been set too high and was not met by most of the female subjects. Therefore, the Japanese MetS criteria for women, particularly the cutoff value for waist circumference, requires further verification.