By Stuart Sudak

The tranquil music soothes. So, too, does the heated treatment table.

Still, trepidation builds. Needles have a way of doing this.

Staring at the ceiling, I nervously brace myself for Eden Prairie acupuncturist Kristianne Seelye to insert the tools of her trade into my hands, legs and feet. Seelye offered this treatment as a way to ease my left knee aching from miles on the treadmill.

I scrunch my eyes as she pops the first needle into my hand. There is a tiny bit of a pinch … but not much else.

“How are you doing?” Seelye asked.

“That was it?” I said with a sigh of relief. “Not bad at all.”

Fighting pain

This is the sort of reaction Seelye and other acupuncturists savor.
The needles, touted as offering an array of physical and psychological benefits, can often be their own worst enemy in the court of public opinion among acupuncture novices.

“Many people don’t understand what it is,” Seelye said. “All they hear is needle.”

“Acupuncture seems odd to some people,” admitted Prior Lake acupuncturist Marcia Kirk. “It doesn’t make sense why a needle in your arm would help your foot. It’s a different kind of thinking.”

So, let’s start with the question many wonder: Does it hurt?
The hair-thin, flexible needles aim to take away pain, not give it. Kirk said people compare the sensation of it being inserted to a mosquito bite.

“It differs from person to person, and some needle locations have more sensations,” she said. “Sometimes you can put a needle in and the person won’t even feel it.”

Seelye said the needles should not hurt when they pierce the skin, but patients might feel something when the needles are brought to the correct depth.

“Some of the sensations are dull, achy, itchy … sometimes you might have an electric sensation like a zing and that should go away,” said Seelye, whose practice is called Seelye Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine. “Nothing should stay in an uncomfortable place. If it does, I will adjust it or remove it.”

Kirk admits she has had people “deathly afraid” of needles who have come to her as a last resort to help a particularly stubborn ailment. Soon after, they become believers.

“One woman was the most afraid I’ve ever had,” recalled Kirk, who practices from her home business, Wellness Acupuncture. “During the second treatment she fell asleep so hard I had to wake her up. I told her she went from one extreme to another.”

As to how it works, there is more to acupuncture than meets the skin.
Each needle has a purpose to not only ease or control pain, but to treat a host of endocrine, circulatory and systemic conditions by activating different reactions. Needles are inserted in points to stimulate energy flow or the release of endorphins, a natural pain reliever in the body.

Acupuncture is said to help people with such maladies as fibromyalgia, insomnia, headaches, labor pain, depression, arthritis, skin problems, constipation, menstrual cramps, infertility, sports injuries, and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting.

Kirk describes acupuncture as a “stimulation therapy.”
“The needles don’t force your body to do anything,” she explained. “It stimulates your body to do what it already knows how to do. It just gives it some extra help.”

In a Western medical sense, Seelye said the needles are signaling the parasympathetic nervous system to work in order to relax the body, “moving, unblocking, warming, cooling and balancing.”

Treatments can last anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, depending on what needs to be done and the practitioner. Inserting the needles doesn’t take long; people spend most of the session relaxing while the needles do the work.

“We (people) do have our own innate way of healing,” Seelye said. “I tell my patients that I do 20 percent of the work and you do 80 percent.”

Seelye recalls her most unique treatment: providing acupuncture to a woman while her dentist replaced a crown on her tooth. The woman opted for acupuncture needles over Novocaine, gas or any other pain-relieving medications.

The result? A pain-free crown treatment.

“You heard of things like this happening in China, people getting acupuncture for surgery,” she said. “It was amazing to see it live.”
Blending treatments

Kirk and Seelye say Western medicine offers much value, too. The challenge, Kirk added, is knowing how to blend the traditional with the alternative medicines like acupuncture.

Kirk said Western medicine is great for diagnosing problems. Acupuncturists aren’t allowed to do that legally. Unlike doctors, they cannot see inside the body through X-rays or body scans to see why it hurts.

“If somebody is having severe heart pain, you want to go to a medical doctor,” she said. “Now once you’ve ruled everything out, and I know they’re under good medical care, I can help them keep their body strong.”

Seelye, who had worked as a surgical technologist before getting her master’s degree in acupuncture and Oriental medicine from Northwestern Health Sciences University in Bloomington, agreed.

“The majority of people (seeing her) already have gone to their Western medicine doctors and those doctors will send them to me or they will say ‘I don’t know what else to do,’” she said.
Treatments can be very focused on specific problems. For instance, Kirk has been helping a man who has been told he needs hip replacement surgery. But, according to her, he’s not ready for that yet.

Kirk said she was able to help his hip and leg problems in the first treatment. After three visits, she has moved on to treat his other problems.

“It’s not completely gone,” she added of the pain. “But he said he couldn’t stand more than about three minutes before his ankle would start to burn. Now he doesn’t have that at all.”
Some people can feel noticeable improvements during the first treatment. For others, it takes longer.

“The longer you’ve had something the longer it’s going to take to unravel,” said Kirk. “If you were hiking and really twisted your knee, I could possibly handle it in one treatment. But if you didn’t get anything done and it got worse, and you came to see me three years from now, it would take longer.”

Their stories

Kirk, who has been practicing for about four years, would eventually love to treat just cancer patients.

Diagnosed with cancer shortly after beginning her master’s degree in acupuncture and Oriental medicine at Northwestern, she credits acupuncture with helping her cope with the effects of chemotherapy and radiation on her body and the anxiety of cancer on her mind.

“I just felt better after the acupuncture,” said Kirk, whose general practice already handles a number of cancer patients. “It’s like, ‘OK, I can do this.’ And I just want to give that away to others going through the same thing.”

Long before she became an acupuncturist, Seelye was helped by one to get her young life back on track.

At 11 years old, she was experiencing severe pain in her left leg. The diagnosis was Reflex Diagnosis Dystrophy Syndrome. It was recommended that her sciatic nerve be severed. She refused after doctors told her she would have no feeling on the left side of her body.

Instead, her parents took her first to a physical therapist and then to an acupuncturist.

“It helped, and that was the seed first planted that led to this,” said Seelye, who started practicing shortly after graduating in December 2008.

As for the future, this avid sports fan would love to use her acupuncture skills to help injured professional athletes get back on the field quicker.

“Obviously, those are multi-million dollar bodies but it doesn’t intimidate me in that sense,” she said. “If we can help them, why not?”

My legs aren’t worth millions of dollars, but they’re mighty valuable to me. When my session with Seelye ends, I stand up tall and stretch. No pain in my left knee.

“Another seed planted,” she smiled.

Stuart Sudak is a freelance writer living in Chaska, and former editor of the Eden Prairie News.

Acupuncture 101

What is it? Originating in China thousands of years ago, acupuncture is the treatment of pain or disease by inserting fine needles in specific points on the body. Acupuncture points are located in all areas, sometimes far removed from the pain area. How does it work? Traditional Chinese theory explains acupuncture as a technique for balancing the flow of energy or life force – known as Qi or Chi (chee) – believed to flow through pathways (meridians) in your body. By inserting needles into specific points along these meridians, acupuncture practitioners believe that your energy flow will re-balance.

Acupuncture has been used to treat existing, recurring and new illnesses and injuries, and improve overall health. People have turned to it for relief from conditions such as fibromyalgia, headaches, migraines, labor pain, low back pain, depression, arthritis, skin problems, constipation, menstrual cramps, constipation, hypertension, infertility, sports injuries, and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting.
For more information, resources are available online, including acupuncture.com, mayoclinic.com and the Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Association of Minnesota (www.aomam.org).
Source: Mayo Clinic