Comprehensive Holistic Asian Medical Treatment
Comprehensive, individualized advanced holistic care for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress (PTS), traumatic brain injury (TBI), addiction and drug/alcohol dependency issues, anxiety, depression, anger, hyper-vigilance, insomnia, chronic pain, functional impairment, and many other issues. We use the following modalities of Asian medicine, as indicated, in conjunction with the training discussed below:
- Eight-Principle, Five-Elemental Constitutional, and Kosho Shorei styles of acupuncture
- Chinese herbal medicine
- Kosho Shorei wellness counseling
- Shiatsu bodywork therapy
- Auricular acupuncture (LoPriore PTS Resiliency & Vitality Protocol)
- Moxibustion heat therapy
- Kosho Shorei Ki-waza (energy-balancing wellness exercises)
- Kosho Shorei Yoga
David LoPriore Sensei, L.Ac. has been practicing Asian medicine since 1990, and Asian wellness and warriorship arts since 1984. LoPriore Sensei is the 23rd-generation Headmaster of Kosho Shorei Ryu, an 800-year-old art from Japan that specializes in the treatment and training of warriors, by warriors. He is has over 25 years’ experience treating US military veterans for PTS and all of the other types of issues that come from military service. As a specialist in this area, treating many hundreds of veterans, active-duty military service members, and other warriors, he gets uniquely positive treatment results. Hundreds of veterans have remarked that not only have the treatments alleviated their long-standing, seemingly intractable symptoms, but they have changed their lives as well.
Treatments work at a deep constitutional level, which means they help to rebalance and calm the root level of consciousness and offer great potential for self-regulating behavior. This discontinues the perpetuation of further actions that had caused symptoms to continue for long periods of time. Patients gain great insight into themselves, and learn ancient tried-and-true methods for both understanding and conquering their previously subconscious constitutional habitual tendencies. Simultaneously, acupuncture, bodywork, and herbal therapies are administered, and physical and mental exercises are taught, which directly alleviate presenting symptoms and optimize holistic health, resiliency, and mission or job performance.
This entire process is uniquely facilitated by the common ground of living warriorship by patient and practitioner. The resonance and rapport built between LoPriore Sensei and the warriors he treats is essential to this process, and cannot be taught in acupuncture college programs.
Veterans can often (not always) get limited free treatment through a referral by their Veterans Administration (VA) primary care physician via either the VA’s fee-based outsourcing program to community practitioners, or the Veteran’s Choice Program. LoPriore Sensei has been one of the largest referral recipients in Connecticut by the VA because of his unique experience, and the dozens of individual veterans specifically requesting his one-of-a-kind services. If qualified individual veterans cannot secure VA program funding for some reason, Warriors for Warriors will make every effort to completely or at least partially subsidize their treatments. Special Operations active-duty or veterans with at least one combat deployment, and other combat veterans, are given priority, because Warriors for Warriors funding is offered based on service-connected illness and injury.
The Gap
Although VA programs are just beginning to make comprehensive acupuncture treatment available to veterans, the coverage for this care is very limited. In addition, the process most veterans must go through to obtain acupuncture services can often be quite frustrating, because even veterans in dire need, facing life-threatening circumstances, are sometimes not given immediate treatment, and many veterans are not given enough treatment. As of this writing (October, 2015), the VA has authorized only six acupuncture treatments for most veterans referred to LoPriore Sensei for care. The VA does not cover herbal medicine, shiatsu bodywork therapy, self-care therapy education (which is essential in this process and used by most of the veterans we treat), Asian medical/holistic wellness counseling, or patient education on wellness, mindfulness, or warriorship. Preventing the use of these essential modalities compromises full treatment efficacy and lengthens the time veterans are experiencing debility, pain and suffering.
In nearly all cases, the only covered diagnosis and justification for VA treatment referral is chronic pain. Acupuncture, meditation, and energy cultivation exercises have been clearly shown in many medical studies to treat mental-emotional disorders, insomnia, and PTS symptoms very effectively. These ancient arts have existed for thousands of years, and have proven highly effective at alleviating the symptoms and conditions suffered by hundreds of thousands of veterans. But these symptoms and conditions are not yet covered by the VA for acupuncture treatment.
In cases where funding has been available, or the many instances when LoPriore Sensei has simply treated veterans for free because it was not, at least 12-36 treatments have been necessary for satisfactory or optimal treatment outcomes. This is due to the frequent co-occurrence of symptoms such as severe, multi-site chronic pain and/or injury, PTS, anxiety, hyper-vigilance, depression, insomnia, chronic fatigue, poor self-image, and drug dependency or self-medication with alcohol. There is a huge gap between what veterans and active duty military members need— –and how urgently they need it, often to prevent suicide—and what the VA currently offers in this area. Additionally, there are very, very few practitioners in the U.S. are fully qualified to do this work.
The acupuncture treatment currently offered within the VA in Connecticut (as of October, 2015) requires a “3-5 month wait,” according to VA sources. It is offered at only two sites, (West Haven and New Britain), making it very difficult for many ill or chronic pain patients in Southeastern CT to obtain, but there is hope. More and more veterans have been referred to qualified Licensed Acupuncturists in Connecticut through the Veterans’s Choice program. See your VA Primary Care Physician for a referral if you would like to see if you qualify.