Lasting fascination for acupuncture

Press, 9 January 1984, Page 26

Lasting fascination for acupuncture

NZPA-AP Peking No-one knows exactly how acupuncture works, but the ancient Chinese medical practice of inserting needles into sensitive points on the skin is proving to have lasting fascination for the outside world. The Chinese Government has announced that 400 practitioners and researchers would be invited to an August 7 to 10 national acupuncture symposium in Peking. They will join 600 Chinese colleagues in studying advances since the last conference in 1979. Experts from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and the Soviet Union — taught by the Chinese in the 1950 s — are among those expected. In the last five years, the World Health Organisation has recognised acupuncture as effective in treating 43 ailments, including tennis elbow, toothache, colitis, facial paralysis, and the early stages of polio. The acupuncture kit, with its stainless steel, silver and gold needles, has gained acceptance around the world. In China, laser and electro-acupuncture are used to treat the mentally ill, while Westerners have obserbed dozens of open-

heart, brain, and Caesarean section operations using acupuncture as anesthesia. Since 1975, more than 700 foreign doctors from 102 countries have graduated from acupuncture training courses in China. One recent graduate, Dr Michael Ruttenberg, aged 44, a family doctor from Encinitas, California, was sceptical when he arrived, but left a believer — at least in acupuncture as a painkiller. “All told, in three months, I stuck needles in over 800 patients. Some got better, and some did not. The answer seems to be that it is most valid for complaints such as the common cold, low back pain, and headaches, for which we in the West have no treatment,” he said.

Dr Ruttenberg summed up the question that most baffles Westerners about the 2000-year-old Chinese medical practice: “Why are you sticking needles in my leg when the problem is in my lung?” The answer, he found, lies in a view of illness dating back to China’s oldest medical treatise, the third-cen-tury B.C. Huang Ti Nei Ching. It also involves the

concept of Qin or vital essences flowing through the body, and the Yin-Yang balance in Nature. The acupuncturist sees 12 main channels linking the body's organs. Along these are 365 sensitive points which, when stimulated by needles, can restore harmony and subdue pain. For instance, a needle applied to the hand can numb a toothache. Dr Ruttenberg said that one patient he treated had been hiccuping for two years. He got a needle in the navel and stopped immediately. The Californian could not explain acupuncture’s therapeutic effects on main organs, but said scientists were closer to understanding its anesthetic properties. “We manufacture mor-Ehine-like painkillers in our odies and acupuncture can stimulate their production. You are somehow stimulating the nervous system, releasing hormones and creating activity in the endocrine and immunological systems.” Interest in acupuncture was revived after the Communist revolution in 1949 and during the 1966 to 1976

cultural revolution, when Mao Tse-Tung’s wife, Jiang Qing, and other radicals sought to expunge Western medical influence. They compelled Chinese doctors to use acupuncture even when inappropriate. Dr Lu Zhijun, head of the Chinese Acupuncture Society, told a news conference that acupuncture was now effective in the treatment of 100 diseases. He said a college of acupuncture would open soon in Peking. Dr Lu said that acupuncture was popular because it produced quick results, was inexpensive (the Chinese pay about 14c a treatment) and there were no side effects. As a result, there was a steady stream of Third World students to China for the three-month course, which costs about $2760 plus expenses. Fatima Abrahim, a doctor’s wife from Addis Ababa, learned acupuncture from Chinese doctors working in Ethiopia. When they left, people turned to her. “I treat 40 patients a day,” she said. “Children in the early stages of polio have been carried in by their parents, and are able to stand after treatment.”