Acupuncture gains acceptance in Missouri

Acupuncture is coming into its own as an alternative or a complement to conventional health care.

Changing attitudes

Local patients' attitudes toward acupuncture have undergone a turnaround in the last 10 years, according to Blaize Malone, a traditional five element acupuncturist practicing in Springfield.

"Ten years ago, people would come to me and say, I've been to X number of doctors and gotten X diagnoses that are all different. I don't know what to do, and I thought I'd try this.' Today, frequently, acupuncture treatment is their first choice, and if it doesn't work, then they'll go to their doctor. That's a big change," said Malone, who holds a licentiate in acupuncture from the College of Traditional Acupuncture at Royal Laemington Spa, United Kingdom, and is licensed to practice in California.

The attitude of area medical practitioners has undergone a similar revolution. "Today, when my clients here ask their doctors if they should try acupuncture, most often they're told by their doctors, Yeah, try it, it can't hurt and it might help,'" Malone said.

The acceptance of acupuncture as a legitimate health care practice began with research by state and federal government entities.

"I think (the attitude) began changing when some of the states, including Missouri for a time, set up drug courts, because acupuncture worked better with drug addicts than anything they'd tried until that time," Malone said. "The rate of recidivism is so much better if the people have acupuncture."

A 1993 phone survey on alternative medicine by the National Institute of Health also played a key role in the acceptance of acupuncture and other alternative modalities. The phone survey revealed that Americans spend more out of pocket on alternative medicine than on traditional medicine.

"More and more people are turning to alternatives because they work, they're noninvasive, and typically they're far less expensive than conventional medicine," Malone said.

The traditional approach

Traditional five-element acupuncture, as practiced by Malone, follows the methods detailed in the world's oldest surviving medical book, "The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine" from China.

In acupuncture, the human body is divided into meridians, pathways along which the body's energy, known as "chi," travels. The cause of illness and physical distress, from asthma to back pain to migraine headaches, is traceable to imbalances in the patient's meridians.

These imbalances are corrected by the insertion of needles into key points indicated by the acupuncturist's diagnosis, which is based on the patient's symptoms, but also on his or her ambience.

"Diagnosis consists of assessing what's happening with the person's energy system, which meridians have too little energy or too much energy, and how to get the system back in balance," Malone said.

Two people may share the same symptoms but receive completely different treatment according to their individual characteristics.

"You're really diagnosing the entire person to figure out why the symptoms happen, because all symptoms are not caused by the same problem," Malone said.

Most people who practice acupuncture do not use the five-element approach but learn patterns of needle placement: Symptom A requires that a needle be inserted at Point B. But treating symptoms alone is a practice Malone considers dangerous.

"It's as if a red light goes on on the dashboard of your car indicating something's wrong with your electrical system. It could be the battery; it could be any one of a number of other things. To find out what's wrong, you have to pick up the hood and start looking around," Malone said.

By just treating symptoms, "you're doing the equivalent of taping over that annoying red light so that it doesn't bother you anymore, and you drive on down the road," she said. "We don't do that with our cars; why do we do it with our bodies?"

Conventional medicine

While Western medicine and acupuncture generally remain separate, Malone said she believes they can complement each other.

"I would like to see much more communication between us," she said. "For example, doctors might change where they cut you during surgery. When you're injured across the meridian, a lot of times the meridian stops working well because energy and molecules have trouble passing through the scar tissue."

And modern medicine's emphasis on prevention and wellness is shared by acupuncture.

"Acupuncture began as preventive medicine," Malone said. "In ancient China, people paid their acupuncturist as long as they were well. As soon as they became sick they stopped paying. If you were a head of household and got too sick to work and couldn't support your family, and it wasn't because of an accident but was something the acupuncturist should have been able to catch, the acupuncturist supported you and your family until you got better."

While Malone asserts that Western medicine is often too dependent on drugs and on unnecessarily invasive procedures, she added, "Western medicine is wonderful. Don't get me wrong. In the emergency room, it shines. When you're bleeding to death, when your electrolytes are off and enabling you to survive just after a heart attack, Western medicine is just incredibly good."

However, she added, "with chronic systemic illness, often Western medicine is unable help people much, and they are more and more turning to alternatives because of it."

Insurance coverage

According to Malone, some insurance policies will cover acupuncture if it is licensed in the state.

"Blue Cross/Blue Shield paid for a lot of my clients' treatments when I was practicing in California, but that's not happening here," Malone said.

While Missouri officially accepted the practice of acupuncture two years ago, licensing requirements, fee determination and other issues have yet to be decided by the state acupuncture board.

The battle to have acupuncture recognized by the legislature was won, in part, by the effectiveness of practitioners' lobbying efforts.

"Acupuncturists throughout the state got together and a group would go up (to Jefferson City) the first Wednesday of each month during the legislative session. We would treat any legislators or staff who wanted treatment, free," Malone said. "We became very popular."

Generally the price of acupuncture treatment "varies a little bit by practitioner but not much, and in Missouri it's less expensive than it is other places," Malone said. "It's $50 or $60 per treatment. Some people do a first treatment that's a double treatment and takes two regular treatments' worth of time, so that then is close to double what the other treatments are."

The frequency of treatment depends on the practitioner and the patient.

"Typically, I see people fairly close together three or four times, and then we start spacing it out because they're feeling better for longer periods of time. But that varies from practitioner to practitioner," Malone said.

And there are several practitioners to choose from. According to Malone, there are five five-element acupuncturists between the Springfield area and Kansas City.

"There are three practicing in Springfield right now, and there's one in Bolivar, and then there's a man who practices in Kansas City," Malone said, "When I was in Los Angeles, there were perhaps five five-element acupuncturists in all of Los Angeles, and we have four" in the Springfield area.