Fw: Growing number of researchers see good points of ancient Chinese healing

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From: " Ilena Rose " <ilena@...>

Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2001 11:40 AM

Subject: Growing number of researchers see good points of ancient Chinese

healing

> http://www.jsonline.com:80/alive/well/aug01/china13081201.asp

>

>

>

> Growing number of researchers see good points of ancient Chinese healing

>

> By ANNE BARNARD

> Boston Globe

>

> Last Updated: Aug. 12, 2001

> Health

>

> Alternative medicine

>

> Boston - Kwong never expected to dabble in ancient Chinese

medicine.

>

> A physicist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Kwong developed a

> revolutionary technology that gave scientists live views of the brain in

> action, opening new horizons in the study of memories, language and even

> the lure of cocaine.

>

> Lately, however, Kwong also uses the machine, called functional MRI, to

> study acupuncture, a 2,500-year-old Chinese medical practice that tends to

> get little respect in places like Mass General's plush research center in

> town, Mass. Traditional acupuncturists believe they are regulating

> the flow of a life-energy called Qi through mysterious channels in the

> body called " meridians, " but Kwong wanted a more scientific explanation.

>

> " I personally thought it was kind of a long shot, but you never know, "

> Kwong said. He ended up discovering that acupuncture slows metabolism in

> an area of the brain that is active at times of anger or fear.

>

> After years of watching patients turn in growing numbers to so-called

> " alternative medicine, " a growing number of researchers are giving herbs,

> acupuncture and other ancient healing arts a much closer look. Researchers

> from Boston to Beijing are using the tools and vocabulary of Harvard

> Medical School to test herbal remedies and an array of other treatments

> long viewed by scientific medicine as mystical and unproven - and hoping

> that honest exchange will bridge some formidable communication gaps

> between traditions that take completely different views of illness, the

> body and the role of medicine.

>

> A major investment

> The National Institutes of Health has a $92 million budget this year, up

> from $2 million in 1992, to study alternative remedies: gingko biloba to

> prevent Alzheimer's disease, yoga for insomnia, massage for lower back

> pain. State universities from land to California have set up research

> centers on the topic, and Harvard this year followed suit with a $10

> million institute for what it prefers to call " complementary and

> integrative medical therapies. "

>

>

>

> In one local study, at Mass General's main campus in Boston, researchers

> are trying to cure high blood pressure with acupuncture. With 180

> patients, $1.4 million in federal funding and all the strictures of

> scientific research methodology, the study asks whether the treatment

> works - and whether it works better when it includes traditional Chinese

> diagnoses such as " liver fire rising. "

>

> Collectively, the researchers hope to sort out which work, which are

> harmful and which could lead to new insights into microbiology, physiology

> and drug development. They are playing catch-up with the American public,

> which spent roughly $27 billion on alternative dietary products and

> medical treatments last year, most of it out of pocket, and mostly without

> consulting their physicians, according to Eisenberg, who heads

> Harvard's new center and was one of the first United States medical

> students to study in China in the 1970s.

>

> Meanwhile, some practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine - perhaps

> the most developed form of alternative medicine - are welcoming the

> scrutiny as a chance to prove how much they have to offer. They note that

> their techniques are based on thousands of years of recorded case

> histories and are practiced alongside conventional medicine in Chinese

> hospitals. At a recent conference on the U.S. and Chinese medical systems,

> Eisenberg was mobbed by Chinese scientists offering business cards and

> eager to team up with him.

>

> " We want to join the modern scientific world, and to convince the modern

> medical arena to accept this service, " said Keji Chen, a leading authority

> on integrating Eastern and Western medicine and a professor at the Chinese

> Academy of Traditional Medicine in Beijing.

>

> Uneasy encounters

> The encounter is still a sometimes uneasy one - something that was on

> display in June when 600 Chinese health care professionals descended on

> Cambridge to exchange ideas with local researchers at the conference, run

> by Harvard Medical International and held at the Massachusetts Institute

> of Technology.

>

>

>

> Some traditional practitioners were wary of the new attention from

> academic medicine, fearing that conventional doctors simply want to debunk

> the competition, or cash in on it. Scientists from both countries fretted

> that, by definition, Chinese medicine is hard to test. Scientific trials

> depend on standardized doses of medication. In traditional Chinese

> medicine, a different herbal mixture is made for every patient. Western

> medicine looks at discrete ailments and tries to fix them. Traditional

> Chinese medicine tries to restore a sense of balance in one's

> relationships to one's body, to society and to nature. And how do

> researchers study the placebo effect in a trial of acupuncture, when the

> patient knows whether they've been stuck with a needle or not?

>

> Eisenberg suggested ways to disguise the treatment - for example, there

> are spring-mounted needles that prick but don't go as deep as in

> acupuncture. But others worried more broadly: When the lens of one

> tradition is aimed at another, can the one being examined come out

> untarnished? Will Chinese medicine try to adapt and lose its soul?

>

> Eisenberg reassured the crowd by saying, in Mandarin, " Real gold does not

> fear even the hottest fire. " The key, he said, is a new generation of

> researchers who know both cultures, both languages, and both styles of

> medicine. From one side, there is Qunhao Zhang, trained in China as a

> traditional doctor, now a postdoctoral fellow at Mass General. From the

> other, there is Simin Liu, an internist at Brigham & Women's Hospital who

> said he came to listen because his mother told him her traditional

> remedies work better than his advice.

>

> Some researchers bend over backward to insist they are sober scientists,

> not enthusiasts looking for data to support their beliefs.

>

> " The purpose is not to prove that all Chinese medicine is right, " said

> Kathleen Hui, a University of Michigan-trained microbiologist who

> convinced Kwong, the physicist, to look at acupuncture.

>

> " I want to show what is good, what can be improved, what should be

> discarded, " she said, jabbing the air with her hand to indicate good

> riddance for any method that might turn out to be, in her view, " trash. "

> This way, she added, " we can improve Chinese medicine. "

>

> Hui, 76, is so cautious she can barely be persuaded to describe her

> findings, published last year in Human Brain Mapping. " Don't write,

> 'Secrets of Acupuncture Revealed,' " she pleads.

>

> With no grant funding, her team worked for free on Sundays. Kwong, who was

> raised in Hong Kong but went only to conventional doctors, ran the

> functional magnetic resonance imaging machine. It photographs slices of

> the brain, detecting which areas are active by tracking oxygen metabolism.

> As a subject lay inside the cylinder, acupuncturist Jing Liu - whom Hui

> chose by going undercover as an acupuncture student and finding the best

> teacher - inserted needles into a commonly used spot, near the thumb

> joint.

>

> A change deep in brain

> Research on 13 people showed that the parts of the brain affected by

> conscious sensation are less affected by acupuncture than by a normal

> pinprick. But what really excited them was that deeper areas of the brain,

> such as the amygdala, which regulates emotions, decreased their activity

> during acupuncture. Heightened activity in the amygdala is associated with

> emotions such as anger and fear.

>

>

>

> Hui will say only that the research suggests interesting avenues for

> research on how acupuncture works. Liu, who describes himself as " more of

> a partisan, " has a different take: He thinks it will eventually prove the

> existence of Qi.

>

> Liu wants insurance companies to start covering acupuncture. " It works, "

> he said. " There is no doubt. "

>

> Mass General is working to test that claim. It already uses acupuncture

> for pain relief. But now, cardiologist Randall Zusman, Qunhao Zhang and

> others are investigating its effect on blood pressure, in a study funded

> by the National Institutes of Health.

>

> Zusman was skeptical when he was first approached by A. Kalish, a

> specialist in clinical trial design at the New England Research Institute

> who wanted to set a standard for how to study alternative medicine. " I'm a

> pill-pusher, " he said.

>

> But he is impressed with the drop in some patients' blood pressure -

> though he won't know until after the study is over whether they are

> getting acupuncture or placebo. Patients are randomly assigned to three

> groups: one gets standardized acupuncture, one gets a placebo version with

> random needlepricks.

>

> The third gets individualized acupuncture based on a traditional Chinese

> diagnosis. Practitioners look at patients' tongues to see if they are

> " hot " or " cold " and identify problems with organ systems and their

> relationship to the senses, the weather, and other factors. A common

> diagnosis in patients with high blood pressure is " liver fire rising, "

> which often correlates to excess anger and stress.

>

> Acupuncture, Chinese diagnosis and blood pressure evaluation are done by

> different people, to prevent bias.

>

> Zusman pointed out that lowering cholesterol was only recently proven

> clinically to improve health - though doctors have been urging it for

> years. Western and Eastern medicine are more similar than some doctors

> like to admit, said Kiang, the Harvard neurobiologist and grandson

> of a Chinese healer who organized the June conference. " You try this and

> that, and what seems to work, you do. "

>

> Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Aug. 13, 2001.

>

>