Recent news articles about Acupuncture & Alternative Medicine

B.C. recognizes Chinese cures: Ancient herbal remedies likely to be covered eventually, Premier says
A pioneer in naturopathic medicine: Bastyr University works to add credibility to a fringe discipline

B.C. recognizes Chinese cures:
Ancient herbal remedies likely to be covered eventually, Premier says

Robert Matas
The Globe & Mail
British Columbia Bureau
Tuesday, June 22, 1999

Vancouver - British Columbia has become the first province in the country to recognize traditional Chinese medicines as legitimate medical treatment.

Premier Glen Clark announced yesterday that the province is creating a new College of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture Practitioners of British Columbia to regulate the therapies and licence acupuncturists.

"Not too long from now, you will be able to go to a TCM [traditional Chinese medicine] practitioner for a prescription and take it to a herbal pharmacy to be filled," said Vancouver lawyer Mason Loh, who has been appointed to head the new college.

Herbal medicines and acupuncture will be available in the province only from qualified practitioners who are approved by the college, Mr. Loh said yesterday in an interview. "From a public safety point of view, this is very significant," he said.

B.C. currently has about 700 acupuncturists and about 500 also prescribe herbal remedies. An additional 200 people in B.C. prescribe herbal medicines without using acupuncture.

The new regulations do not involve any government funding and the services are not covered by the provincial medical services plan. But Mr. Clark said he expected the government to cover the Chinese therapies once the field is properly regulated.

He said the government has not yet discussed whether the therapies should be covered. "I think at the end of the day, the more emphasis we can put on wellness, and this kind of medicine, the more money we save in our acute-care sickness model," Mr. Clark said.

A spokesman for the B.C. Medical Association, Dr. Brian Dixon-Warren, said he was pleased that practitioners would be regulated but he was concerned that the regulatory body only includes "true-believers" and does not include people with traditional academic and research credentials.

A pioneer in naturopathic medicine:
Bastyr University works to add credibility to a fringe discipline

By John Schieszer
MSNBC

Like thousands of Americans living with HIV, powerful drug cocktails are keeping Brian DeLeon alive. But when he walks out of clinic at Bastyr University, just north of Seattle, DeLeon isn't carrying a traditional prescription. HIS BAG is filled with megavitamins, co-enzyme Q-10, milk thistle extract and other natural remedies geared toward keeping his immune system strong and his body healthy.

DeLeon is one of more than 17,000 patients each year who visit one of Bastyr University's two naturopathic health clinics, one of which was the first publicly funded natural medicine clinic in the United States. Bastyr is regarded as a pioneer in the alternative medicine community, an institution dedicated to legitimizing natural remedies. And patients - as well as many conventional health-care experts - are taking note.

DeLeon, while a strong believer in conventional medicine, says that naturopathic treatments recommended at Bastyr have played a pivotal role in turning his health around. "I didn't want to put all my eggs in one Western basket," said 34-year old Brian DeLeon, who began visiting Bastyr in 1995 when he started to become ill with AIDS.

The vitamins and other various supplements help maintain his strength, while the milk thistle extract helps his liver process his medications, he says. "The supplements are very important to me," says DeLeon. "They counteract some of the negativity of the Western medications. They help with muscle-building and general well-being." DeLeon also receives acupuncture several times a month to help combat AIDS-related peripheral neuropathy, a nerve condition that causes numbness and muscle weakness.

As with DeLeon, the naturopathic approach to treating the whole person and integrating ancient health practices, herbs and some forms of Western medicine appear to be appealing to more and more people who feel they are getting too little attention and inadequate treatment from allopathic doctors working in busy managed-care environments.

"You are treated as a whole person," says Jim Langston, a 55-year-old retired school teacher who also receives care at Bastyr for chronic leg pain and vision problems. "You have two students who are overseen by the doctor and they spend a whole hour with you. It is not like a Western doctor where you get five minutes."

A LIGHTHOUSE FOR NATURAL HEALING

Founded by practicing naturopathic physicians in 1978, Bastyr is the leading university for natural medicine in the United States. Occupying the site of a former Catholic monastery, it was named after John Bastyr, a prominent naturopathic physician. Currently, more than 1,000 students attend and their numbers are steadily increasing. "We are a lighthouse for natural healing," says Sally Ringdahl, dean of naturopathic medicine at Bastyr. "We are an emerging institution leading this movement." In a landmark first, Joseph Pizzorno, president of Bastyr University, was appointed in 1996 to the Seattle-King County Board of Health. This marked the first time in U.S. history that a naturopathic physician had been appointed to a board of health. And Bastyr continues to plow forward, bringing naturopathic medicine further from the fringes and closer to the mainstream through education, clinical services and research.

The university offers several degree programs, including a doctorate in naturopathic medicine, a master's degree in acupuncture and oriental medicine, and bachelor's degrees in natural health sciences and psychology. Naturopathic doctors receive instruction in areas including acupuncture, nutritional sciences, botanical medicine, homeopathy, Oriental medicine, physiotherapy, naturopathic manipulation, minor surgery and other medical procedures. Major surgery and the prescription of most drugs are excluded from naturopathic practice. On the research side, the institution is conducting several trials, including one that will investigate whether the popular herbal supplement echinacea truly works to enhance immune function. Used by millions of people around the world, echinacea reportedly can boost the immune system to help ward off colds as well as to reduce the frequency and severity of respiratory tract infections.

"If, through this double-blind placebo-controlled study, we can show that echinacea is effective in reducing the number and severity of respiratory infections, then we will have a non-harmful immune system stimulator which may provide a viable alternative to antibiotics," says naturopathic doctor Carlo Calabrese, co-director of Bastyr's research institute.

The university is also researching several different alternative therapy approaches to problems and complications associated with HIV/AIDS. For example, investigators have recruited nearly 1,700 AIDS patients for a study that will investigate how various alternative therapies, including botanicals, acupuncture and homeopathy, may affect the immune system. Over the past 10 years, researchers at the university have published more than a dozen studies supporting the benefits of natural remedies, including botanical formulations for menopause and garlic oil for lowering both blood cholesterol and blood pressure.

THE SKEPTICS

Calabrese says he sees increasing collaboration between allopathic physicians and naturopathic practitioners. Many physicians are fascinated by the possibilities of naturopathic medicine, he says, while others are simply being forced by their patients to take an interest in it.

But not everyone is a supporter. Dr. Wallace Sampson, a conventional practitioner in Palo Alto, Calif., who is a board member and former chairman of the National Council Against Health Fraud, says the federal government is making a major mistake by funding studies at Bastyr or any other facilities that investigate alternative therapies. "The money is going to people who are not the best ones to carry out the research," he says. "It is a political decision. It sends us back to the 18th century. There was more regard for good evidence among 18th century scientists that there is now with alternative medicine practitioners."

He contends that much of alternative philosophy rejects scientific evidence. "It is part of their paradigm," says Sampson. Though acupuncture has been around for more than 3,000 years, he says, there are no good scientific studies showing it works. "There is still not enough evidence [that these treatments work], but now there is a willingness to investigate the possibility. I think this is good," says Jim Whorton, who teaches a course on alternative medicine to medical students at the University of Washington. Whorton says there is now an unprecedented willingness by mainstream medicine to consider the possibility that some alternative practices may have value. And as any good researcher knows, an open mind is one of the most important qualities a scientist can have.

 
John Schieszer is a freelance medical writer based in Seattle.