| In 1999 I was invited by the Navy to be a guest of the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, as the first full-time acupuncturist in the Armed Forces. I accepted the offer and the Air Force accepted and approved that assignment. In 2002, I was then returned back to the Air Force and, at that time, the Air Force requested that I come to Washington, DC, to expand acupuncture throughout the Air Force. My assignment was Andrews Air Force Base, through the Malcolm Grove Medical Center.
As to a typical day for me, there’s a lot of variety. Mondays, for example, for the entire morning and probably into the afternoon, I take care of war-wounded patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here in Washington, DC. In the afternoon, I am involved in a research protocol with the ophthalmology department involving dry eye, investigating the usefulness of acupuncture for the treatment of xerophthalmia.
What have you seen thus far in terms of acupuncture’s helpfulness for that condition?
We presented two papers, one of which was a poster presentation. It appears from the data that acupuncture is very useful, especially in mobilizing the lubricating factors in the eye. Patients who receive the treatment (most, not all, of them) report relief of the itching and the dry eye condition that they have chronically experienced.
I’m recalling that you also have worked with dry mouth in cancer patients, which seems to expand on the theme of dryness. What did you find there?
As you probably know, I’m a radiation oncologist. That’s my medical specialty. I developed an acupuncture treatment for dry mouth right around 1999-2000, when I was at the Naval Medical Center. That has been very well accepted around the United States and in Europe, and it was demonstrated in Shanghai and Beijing, China. It’s extremely popular in restoring saliva for patients who have lost their saliva as a result of head and neck malignancies that have been treated with radiation, chemotherapy and surgery. The success rate is extremely high. It’s been published in major journals and I receive a lot of questions from patients and physicians wanting more information on the technique, which is available on my website (www.n5ev.com).
Is the protocol that you developed one that uses the same point pattern for each patient, and is it therefore based on the Western medical diagnosis? Or is it a different kind of approach?
The technique for both dry mouth and dry eye is a protocol that is the same for every patient. This differs from treatments in Traditional Chinese Medicine, where they are adapted to the individual patient’s condition and energy state. The treatment for dry eye and dry mouth is a very straightforward protocol that works on all patients, without any modification based on the patient’s energy requirements.
It seems that a major advantage would be that it is applicable by acupuncture practitioners, whether or not they primarily practice through a traditional Chinese diagnosis. What is the standard medical treatment for dry eye and dry mouth, and in what ways is acupuncture preferable?
For dry eyes, treatment consists of different kinds of eye drops for the most part. For dry mouth, it consists of medications taken by mouth which are systemic in nature, or treatment locally in the mouth. The advantage of the acupuncture treatment is, number one, that there are no side effects related to it. Number two, for dry mouth it appears that two treatments will help the patient for a period from six months to several years.
Two visits total?
Yes. It’s very, very economical. For the dry eyes, I don’t have enough data saying how long the effect lasts. But I would say it appears that it will last, in many cases, over six months to a year. With dry mouth, for which I have treated literally hundreds of patients, it’s very normal for patients to write me and tell me that it’s lasted well over six months, or over several years. This seems to be the norm for me.
Were you the first to develop this protocol? |
