A Prickly Situation
Photography: Timothy Thimmes
My personal introduction to acupuncture came about in a most unusual way. I was doing some work over at KPCW in the Marsac building one spring afternoon while Dr. Marshall Ding was being interviewed about acupuncture on the radio. Before I knew it, I was snagged by the show’s host and became a human pin cushion, on air. Thus began my long relationship with acupuncture and with Dr. Ding, a Chinese MD and Board Certified Diplomat for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine.
Like many who spend a lot of time in front of a computer, I’d suffered on and off from bursitis and carpal tunnel pain in my right shoulder, arm, and hand. Thanks to my unplanned but fortuitous encounter with Dr. Ding at KPCW, a few treatments later my pain had vanished and hasn’t returned since. That was three years ago. Perhaps the reason the 4,700-year-old Chinese art of acupuncture has stuck around so long is that it works.
Scott Zuckerman MD does something rare these days for a physician: He makes house calls. In fact, he only makes house calls. He doesn’t even have an office. The Brooklyn-born and raised pediatrician calls his practice Medical Acupuncture of New York. While serving as Director of Pediatric ER at a New Jersey hospital, Dr. Zuckerman came to a crossroad, of sorts. “I’d been practicing pediatrics for about 10 years when I realized I wanted something different … something more to offer my patients. I found that there were a lot of medical problems that Western medicine just didn’t have an answer for.” Today, Zuckerman is a rare bird: A pediatrician MD who is also certified in Medical Acupuncture; an MD who can take care of kids as a physician and who will also use acupuncture to treat them when it is called for. “My youngest patient is 5 and my oldest is 96,” says the youthful Zuckerman, who now calls Park City home.
For Zuckerman, acupuncture is “complementary” to Western medicine. “I haven’t abandoned Western medicine,” he says. “My wife’s an MD who does bone marrow transplants at LDS Hospital. Where it’s appropriate, we combine forces to treat her patients. I definitely don’t see acupuncture and Western medicine as an “either/or” situation. The two together is where it’s at.”
Anyone with even a slight notion of what acupuncture is knows it’s about needles. That alone is enough to scare off many. For practical purposes, there are some 350 acupuncture points in the human body. When a fine acupuncture needle (about the thickness of a cat’s whisker) is inserted into one of the body’s acupuncture points — most treatments involve 10 to 15 needles or more — a number of things happen. Among them, endorphin secretions are stimulated, which can feel like a euphoric “rush.” Studies have shown that acupuncture can also raise levels of certain hormones, white blood counts, triglycerides, gamma globulins, and other anti-bodies. Neurotransmitter levels (like serotonin) are also affected by acupuncture.
For Dr. Zuckerman, it’s awe-inspiring that Chinese health practitioners, with very little knowledge of the human body at the time, should have invented acupuncture. Some 4,700 years ago a Chinese textbook called the “Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine” documented theories about the heart, pulse, and circulation that would take European medicine another 4,000 years to acknowledge. The father of Chinese Medicine, Shen Nung, theorized that the body had an energy force call Qi (pronounced “chee”) running through it, along specific meridians or pathways. Acupuncture points are nothing more than where the meridians come to the surface of the skin, thereby making them easily accessible to “needling.”
“Trust me, it doesn’t hurt. Really!”
I said to my wife. She’d been suffering from migraines for many years. And while strong prescription migraine medicines helped mask the symptoms, her migraines would always return. “Time to see Dr. Ding,” I suggested. He explained to my wife that unlike hollow-core, bevel-cut hypodermic needles used in common medical offices and hospitals, acupuncture needles are small and very thin — not much wider than a thick hair. They can penetrate the skin without tearing the tissue. I’d never personally had an acupuncture needle cause me any pain; and I told my wife so. Inserting them usually feels like a tiny pinch or mosquito bite. Referring to my promise that the needles wouldn’t hurt, Dr. Ding said to my wife with a coy smile after her first treatment, “That’s the first time your husband didn’t lie to you!”
Certainly, if you’re bleeding profusely or have a broken leg, you’ll want to head to the emergency room, not an acupuncture clinic. But the World Health Organization has determined that acupuncture can treat a range of neurologic, gynecological, urinary, gastro-intestinal, musculo-skeletal, and respiratory problems, as well as some psychiatric and emotional conditions such as insomnia, anxiety, and depression.
There is, however, one important side effect anyone considering acupuncture treatment should con-sider. “It will make you younger!”
Dr. Ding says with a mischievous grin. “I’m 24! I’ve been 24 for many, many years!”
Ted Scheffler is a freelance writer who has said to Dr. Ding on more than one occasion, “Stop needling me!”
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