By SHANNA GHAZNAVI
A consensus reached by the National Institutes of Health in November 1997 means acupuncture will soon become classified as a mainstream form of medicine in the United States, according to some doctors and health care insurance providers.
Though acupuncture has been considered as an alternative form of medicine in the United States for many years, “there is clear evidence that needle acupuncture treatment is effective for postoperative and chemotherapy nausea and vomiting, nausea of pregnancy, and postoperative dental pain,” according to an NIH panel (www.nih.gov/news/pr/nov97/od-05.htm).
The government convened the 12-member NIH panel to help decide if acupuncture should be considered a part of mainstream medicine in the United States.
The panel members also said there are other pain-related conditions which acupuncture may be effective in treating, but there is no convincing scientific data to support these claims; these conditions include addiction, headache, carpal tunnel syndrome and asthma.
Gary Teal, an Orem acupuncturist, said acupuncture “is going to become mainstream because of the direction the NIH has taken.” He said when insurance companies begin to include acupuncture coverage in their policies, that is a sure sign acupuncture is becoming mainstream.
Acupuncture Plus, Inc., is the first health insurance company to offer coverage of all treatments associated with acupuncture. Clifford Derfounder, CEO of Acupuncture Plus, Inc., said “our program is groundbreaking … our plan is the first plan of its kind.”
Derfounder said his company started covering acupuncture costs because of tremendous market pressure to do so. He said he is predicting acupuncture will become mainstream “as soon as more plans like ours come out.”
Derfounder also said insurance companies in California are setting an example for the rest of the nation’s health insurance providers by covering acupuncture in insurance policies. Though some other insurance companies claim to cover acupuncture, he said, none of them offer comprehensive coverage of all acupuncture treatments.
Alternative Health Insurance Services also covers some acupuncture treatments. Steve Gorman, president of AHIS, said his company covers acupuncture because it is “a cost effective way of dealing with a lot of problems.”
Gorman said his company and other insurance companies which cover acupuncture are in the process of creating a network of approved acupuncture treatment providers for their customers.
Deseret Mutual Benefit Administrators, the insurance company which covers BYU’s students and faculty, includes acupuncture treatments in some policies. Ralph Simpson, a DMBA representative, said all of DMBA’s policies cover acupuncture with the exception of students’ policies.
Though some attribute the healing effects of acupuncture to the placebo effect, “in the end, it is the marketplace that will generate the growth of acupuncture, not the skeptics,” according to (www.acupuncture.com/News/Insurance.htm).
The statement of the NIH consensus panel also asked insurance companies , federal and state health care insurance programs and other third-party payers to expand their coverage to include acupuncture treatments (consensus.nih.gov).
Teal said he feels many patients turn to acupuncture because, “acupuncture for pain is very high on the list for being effective.” He said conventional healing methods usually involve pharmaceuticals while acupuncture uses the body’s natural chemicals to heal.
Acupuncture is most successful as a method of treating asthma, gastrointestinal disorders, gynecological problems, nausea, chronic fatigue syndrome and any kind of muscular-skeletal problems, Teal said.
There are approximately 10,000 acupuncture specialists in the United States, according to the World Health Organization; and, according to the Food and Drug Administration, 10 to 13 million acupuncture treatments are given in the United States every year.
Acupuncture involves “inserting needles and applying heat or electrical stimulation at very precise acupuncture points,” according to www.rhemamed.com/acu.htm, an acupuncture website.
This Chinese form of healing dates back to 2696 B.C. and was first discovered by Huang Di, the third emperor of China. The theory of acupuncture is based on a classical Chinese belief that channels of energy, or Qi (pronounced “chee”), run through the body; acupuncture needles, according to this Chinese belief, influence the flow of Qi in order to heal (www.rhemamed.com.acuhis.htm).
Another explanation of acupuncture states that the acupuncture needles stimulate the nervous system to release chemicals which produce healing effects according to www.rhemamed.com/acu.htm.
Leslie Conway, a junior from Arlington, Texas, majoring in family science, said acupuncture cured her lockjaw. “It was weird,” she said.
She said the acupuncturist put a needle in one of her toes and moved it around for ten minutes. After one treatment she said she could move her jaw again.
Conway said she felt no pain and suffered no adverse side effects because of the treatment.
The NIH panel, in its statement, said there needs to be more uniform acupuncture licensing and accreditation procedures for all acupuncturists in the nation.
According to the statement, there is also a need for “improved understanding of perspectives between acupuncture practitioners and today’s conventional health care community.”
The panel also emphasized the importance of obtaining convincing experimental evidence of acupuncture’s effectiveness in treating specific conditions.
A 1996 survey done by the Institute of Community Medicine, at the University of Tromso in Norway, surveyed 1,135 randomly selected doctors and 197 acupuncturists to report any adverse effects they had observed to be caused by acupuncture.
According to the study, 12 percent of the doctors and 31 percent of the acupuncturists surveyed reported harm caused by acupuncture (www.nchaf.org).
