One of my care givers as I go through a regime of therapies is Dr. Diane Zhao. She combines a variety of Western and acupuncture techniques for pain management.
Acupuncture, of course, is the traditional Chinese (and other Oriental) technique of inserting needles in various body ”meridians” to modulate energy (“qi’) flow. My previous experience with acupuncture was with traditional “static” needles. With Dr. Zhao, I have seen her use low-voltage electric stimulation (photo) at the acu-points. She points an infra-red heat lamp at the needled area. Her acupuncture is often followed by an ultra-sound treatment. Other practitioners are testing laser acupuncture and expert systems to suggest acu-points depending on the ailment.
Of course, I am full of questions around all this modern technology, and Dr. Zhao patiently tells me about clinical tests that Sloan Kettering and others have run around acupuncture. Of course, plenty more clinical research is going on in China and Japan. But then she comes back to the fact that very little of two millennium of acupuncture practice has been codified. Pain management, her specialty and medicine in general, is still more art than science.
Nonetheless, it is good to see modern technology supplement all that “art”
Comments