Acupuncture Moves Toward the Mainstream

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Alfred Szymanski turned to acupuncture to lower his blood pressure after exercise and drugs failed.

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Dr. Barbara Royal performing acupuncture on a camel with arthritis.

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

Published: September 28, 2004

hree years ago, Alfred Szymanski could not seem to get his blood pressure under control. He ran 10 miles a week, stuck to a healthy diet and was on a hypertension medication, all to no avail. His doctor suggested switching medications, but Mr. Szymanski, wary of side effects, decided to try something he had always wondered about: acupuncture.

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After three 20-minute sessions, each covered by his medical plan, his blood pressure plunged 20 points.

“Every time I left I was so relaxed; it was like euphoria,” said Mr. Szymanski, 61, who lives in New York. “My blood pressure stayed down for quite a while.”

Acupuncture, long shunned by mainstream medicine but for centuries considered the crown jewel of alternative therapy, is slowly gaining ground in doctors’ offices around the country. While some experts still question its effectiveness, studies in recent years – including one at Duke last week – have thrown scientific weight behind its benefits, supporting its usefulness in alleviating conditions from morning sickness to carpal tunnel syndrome.

In the past few years, the number of hospitals offering acupuncture and other alternative therapies has doubled. At the same time, postgraduate training programs in alternative medicine have sprung up at universities around the country, most recently at Harvard and the University of San Francisco.

“There’s a greater demand for these programs now because so many physicians are interested in learning acupuncture,” said Dr. Nader E. Soliman, an anesthesiologist in Rockville, Md., and president of the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture. “A lot of physicians who used to be extremely reluctant to refer patients for the treatment are now doing it regularly.”

Patients curious about alternative medicine and increasingly skeptical of the drug industry are also seeking out the procedure, experts say.

A visit to an acupuncturist can cost $50 to $100. For people working at the right companies, however, it runs a lot less. More and more employers looking for low-cost additions to medical plans are embracing the treatment. Nearly 50 percent of workers with benefits received coverage for it in 2004, compared with just over 30 percent two years ago, according to a survey this month by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research and Educational Trust.

The trend, it seems, is not limited to humans. In a society of people attached to their pets, it may be no surprise that veterinarians around the country say they are also seeing a greater demand for the service. Dr. Barbara Royal, a vet in private practice in Chicago, says she has been fully booked virtually since the day she received her acupuncture license eight years ago. “People were desperate for it,” she said.

Dr. Royal uses the technique mostly on cats and dogs hobbled by arthritis, but recently she has been summoned to treat more exotic animals. At Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, she regularly uses acupuncture to alleviate arthritis in a 1,600-pound Bactrian camel, now able to run again for the first time in years.

“I think the trend in animals is correlating with what’s happening in humans,” she said. “There’s a holistic movement out there, and if people have found something that works for them, they want it for their pets, too.”

But as acupuncture slowly blends into the mainstream, some experts are calling for tighter regulation. Dr. Joseph J. Fins, a member of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy two years ago, said that while acupuncture was relatively safe and effective, there was no system for tracking harmful side effects. Without closer monitoring, he said, a careless acupuncturist who reuses needles that become infected with hepatitis, for example, might easily go unnoticed.

“Because of how many people are using it, it’s important that we have some kind of surveillance system in place,” said Dr. Fins, who is chief of the division of medical ethics at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City. “There’s no real mechanism to collect information about the safety and efficacy of these treatments. It’s the same problem with over-the-counter supplements.”

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Acupuncture Moves Toward the Mainstream

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