Comments on the BBC Alternative Medicine
series by Tony Sugden, one of our two Chinese
Medical Herbalist and Acupuncture Practitioners.
Apart from practicing at Physic, Tony works at the
Northern College of Acupuncture, where he teaches acupuncture on the
BSc course and herbs on the MSc course. He is also a guest lecturer
on The Middlesex University degree course in Chinese
medicine and a founding member of the Cambridge
Shenzou Open university course of acupuncture
based at Physic.
We’ve had some really interesting TV programs
in the ‘alternative medicine’ series on BBC2. As an
Acupuncturist I was particularly interested to see what
they’d come up with in the first program, which dealt
with Acupuncture.
The trial showing ‘sham’ Acupuncture versus
‘real’ Acupuncture in the treatment of arthritic knees
showed a very definite result in favour of the real
Acupuncture. Lots of issues still to explore here
though - is it relief of pain perceived at the knee or a
revitalising of the tissues of the knee joint itself.
There’s already been a well-validated trial by
Sheffield University on the benefits of Acupuncture in
chronic back pain.
Particularly interesting was the MRI scan at the
end of the program, showing areas of the brain
affected by Acupuncture. For literally thousands of
years Acupuncture has been used to stimulate points
on the surface to affect abnormalities in internal
function – conditions ranging from Asthma to IBS
(irritable bowel syndrome) and so on. To survive as a
valid method this long it has to be doing something,
the placebo effect is not sufficient to give consistent
success. We saw on the MRI that one of the brain
areas affected was the ‘limbic’ system. This has direct
connections to the body’s major control systems (via
the hypothalamus etc). To me this was a tremendously
exciting uncovering of the mechanisms by which we
can activate the body’s innate ability to restore it’s
own balance/health (Dr Still, the founder ofosteopathy, referred as
far back as the early 1900’s to
the ‘activating of the inner healer’). |
The second program, under the
context of
healing, explored the power of the ‘placebo’ effect. In
the past used as a derogatory term but over the last 10 years again very
exciting to see the example of the
Parkinsons’ sufferer actually producing more
Dopamine (the lack of which causes most of the
symptoms) with placebo medicine. If we turn this
around, it has implications about the ability of mind,
lifestyle, etc to create disease in the first place,
certainly cancer care workers often utilise the power
of the mind to enhance the possibility of cure.
Much of what we do here at Physic falls outside
of either area though. For example I treat a lot of
muscular generated pain caused by small areas of
tightened muscle (called ‘myofascial trigger points’).
Here the technique is to needle into the tight point, the
result being the release of the point and normalisation
of muscle structure. If I don’t get the right point, you
don’t get relief from the pain, whatever your
expectations! And vice versa. So Acupuncture is
rarely about ‘over-riding’ pain. More commonly we
are trying to fix the problem that’s causing the frozen
shoulder or back pain or whatever.
The remaining program in the series touched on
some aspects of herbal medicine, which is a great love
of mine, and a large part of my practice using plant
based medicine on internal or skin conditions. The
main point here was that the effect created by herbs is
usually the combined effect of several molecules
rather than the ‘single hit’ of purified chemicals we
tend to see in ‘conventional’ pharmacology
Just to pre-empt any publicity created by the
high street chains selling Chinese herbs, or dubious
slimming clinics, etc – Chinese Herbal Medicine as
practiced by registered practitioners does not use any
animal products, protected species of animals,
steroids, etc. No Chinese herbs should be taken
unless prescribed by a properly qualified practitioner
after a full initial consultation to discuss medical
history and medication. |
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