4546 El Camino Real, B6
Los Altos, CA 94022
ph: 650 868 6632
XL
Acupuncture practice: difference between China and USA-1.
There are two things that happened in my acupuncture practice lingering in my mind recently. The first thing that happened 20 years ago at the first day that I followed my acupuncture mentor to the clinic. Before that I had worked 2 years as a resident doctor after graduation from the TCM College and treated more than 100 patients with needles. I was a bit confident about my acupuncture skills. So when my mentor asked me to show him how I do acupuncture at a stroke patient. I did not hesitate. But just as I finished my acupuncture show, my mentor told me to take out all the needles and said, “What you did was totally wrong”. He did not explain anything. But in stead, he himself inserted needles to the patient one after another. Although being embarrassed in front of a group of interns and the patient, I had to admit that he was doing in a totally different way from me, which he later explained to me was “a difference of a “real acupuncture” (his way) verse a “placebo acupuncture”(my way)”. It took me almost two years to switch from my way to his way.
Another thing happened recently when I invited one of my friends, an assistant professor at Harvard University to give a talk to acupuncture practitioners in north California. My friend’s research is mainly to investigate the mechanism of acupuncture using functional MRI technique. I believe that he is one of the best researchers in this field in the world. However his talk did not get good response from the audience because his conclusion give the audience a big shock by saying that acupuncture effect was mainly a placebo effect. This remark made some elderly practitioner very upset they questioned him that if his experiment design was correct. I was embarrassed too because they apparently were not happy with me for my invitation of him.
There is no doubt that placebo has some real treatment effects. But is acupuncture really a placebo? It is a big question and people may have their own answers. To most of the practitioners, the answer is “no” because they do not think their years of training and hard work were done on a placebo theory and their successful treatment cases made them believe that their work is meaningful. But to me, my answer is “yes or no”; it depends on the person doing the acupuncture and the conditions being treated.
Why it is “no”?
My past experience told me that acupuncture has its real effect. I remembered I had treated a patient of article fibrillation when I was an acupuncture doctor 18 years ago in China. I put four needles very deeply at his back Jia-ji points and get rid of the arrhythmia in just 15 minutes. I also had seen that my mentor used several needles to remove the kidney stones from several patients, which I do not think placebo acupuncture can do it.
I have recently seen a patient with Mega syndrome, who had been treated by his neurologist and some other acupuncturists without any effect. An acupuncturist referred him to me and I treated him for about 10 sessions. He told me recently that he felt that he’d been 2/3 cured and was now traveling abroad.
A patient of sciatica pain came to see me because she saw my clinic was near her home and she stopped by on her way home to consult if I had any good solution for her pain. She told me that she had tried acupuncture but did not work for her. I asked her to allow me to treat her 6 sessions. She agreed and was completely recovered in 4 sessions of acupuncture.
Why it is “yes”?
I had once talked with an acupuncturist practicing in the Bay area for more than 20 years. She told me that she uses only half -cun (1.5 cm) needles in treating the patients. Apparently it works well because she can see around 20 patients in her clinic and runs a very good business. A Japan style of Acupuncture is a typical placebo acupuncture too and it is quite popular. I therefore think that acupuncture has been developed into so many styles ever since it was introduced to the world and maybe most/ a lot/ some practitioners here are just doing placebo acupuncture. This reminds me that in some clinical studies of pain, experimenters did not find any difference between real acupuncture and sham/placebo acupuncture. Maybe the study practitioners just did placebo acupuncture themselves without knowing that they were doing so/or did not know how to conduct a real acupuncture.
Copyright 2011 XL Acupuncture Clinic, 杏林针灸诊所. All rights reserved.
4546 El Camino Real, B6
Los Altos, CA 94022
ph: 650 868 6632
XL