Articles
about Dr. Lee’s Treatment Method:
Alternative Medicine is becoming
more accepted by the mainstream medical community. Many health plans include
coverage for acupuncture in their "alternative treatement coverage."
Please note that the last two articles
showing positive treatment results are several years old, when acupuncture
was just starting to be an accepted Western medical practice. Oriental
Medicine has been even more widely accepted by the traditional Western
Medical community since the 1996 NIH acupuncture consensus.
Those last two articles also mention that
"no one can explain it." In addition to the information provided by Dr.
Lee in the article "Chi and Me" (below), a number leading
physicians have been written papers and thesis in recent years with explanations
as to why acupuncture is such an effective treatment in so many cases where
traditional medicial has failed. Dr. Lee has also written several technical
articles on the subject (click here).
Chi and Me Transpacific
Magazine
To the Point Dwight
Chapin
Acupuncture: The Debate
Goes On Norman Melnick
Two Patients . .
. Freed From Pain
Chi and Me
Dr. Tsun-Nin Lee has the first scientific
explanation
for traditional medicine's efficacy.
One of the difficulties facing anyone who
deals with traditional Chinese medicine is that it just doesn't make sense.
Sure, it works. You can clinically observe acupuncture taking the place
of surgical anesthetic, or do a test study on the effects of herbs. But
Western medicine cannot begin to explain why it works.
Looking at the ancient traditional explanations
doesn't help much. Theories involving invisible meridians, the five elements,
yin and yang are no doubt poetic and very spiritual, but to a rational
scientific mind that just doesn't cut the mustard. Regardless of how well
acupuncture and herbal remedies work, when it comes to explanations you
find two widely diverging models: one based on the concept that Eastern
medicine shouldn't work so it can't, the other based on a scientific world
view that's about 5,000 years out of date.
Dr Tsun-Nin Lee intends to change that.
Lee's new study in the journal Medical
Hypothesis gives a theoretical basis for traditional Chinese medicine using
a Western medical model. It's a breakthrough that uses new brain research
to show how ancient techniques work.
"Yin and yang and the five
elements are really nothing more than neurochemical reactions," Lee claims
in a telephone interview from his San Francisco home.
"You cannot find an anatomical meridian anywhere in the body. The phenomena
of meridians are observable, but it's an illusion. The actual physiological
event takes place in the brain." Lee calls this phenomenon "Thalamic Neuronal
Theory," which is the Western medical model for the thing that acupuncturists
call chi. |
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"Yin and
yang are really nothing more than neurochemical reactions."
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"The body can learn to be sick," says Lee.
"This is a fairly new concept. And once
your body learns to be sick, it doesn't often spontaneously learn to be
unsick."
Lee sees the body as made up of numerous
physiological systems, all under the control of the Central Nervous System.
"It's like a series of thermostats," he says. One "thermostat" controls
body temperature, another controls breathing, yet another controls appetite.
"The problem comes when your 'thermostat'
is pushed off normal range," says Lee. "If the neurocircuitry that controls
your appetite gets pushed too high too of, ten, the 'switch' gets stuck."
And once it is stuck, once your body has learned to accept this as normal,
your body will maintain this system, even when it's clearly not healthy.
And this is where Asian medicine comes
in.
Meridians:
they re all in your head.
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Lee's theory states that the Central Nervous
System has remote controls in various parts of the body. These control
centers are linked directly to the brain and the circuits of the CNR through
nerve endings. And these remote controls can be manipulated to, for example,
"turn down the thermostat" on your appetite neurocircuitry. Or turn off
the thermostat on your pain neurocircuitry during surgery. |
Yes, you guessed it. Those Nervous System
remote control centers are what Asian medicine calls acupuncture points.
According to Lee, acupuncture specifically
stimulates the right circuitry within the brain so that the neurocircuits
can be retrained to behave normally.
"Traditional doctors and herbalisis can't
explain how it works. They just know it works," says Lee. "You can observe
the phenomenon, but you're observing an illusion. It's like the lights
on a Las Vegas sign. Those lights aren't really moving. It just looks like
it."
Lee first began to search for a scientific
explanation for acupuncture in the mid 1970s. Over the years he has not
only refined his theory, he has treated hundreds of patients with his combination
of Western rationalism and Eastern pragmatism. Using minute injections
of the anesthetic lidocaine at acupuncture points, Lee has treated not
just chronic pain, but illnesses like Graves' Disease and Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome. Lee also makes use of traditional herbs, though he prefers to
call them "neurochemical modulators." The first results of Lee's work often
show up in patients within hours, but treatment is usually a long-term
affair. As Lee explains it: "It takes a while for the switch to get unstuck."
Though the results may be the same, Lee's
explanation for traditional cures may help create a synergy between the
two world-views of Eastern and Western medicine. As for Lee, the real satisfaction
is in seeing results. "After treatment," he says proudly, 'my patients
stay well."
To the Point
Dwight Chapin, S. F. Examiner
Acupuncture in the Western World has frequently
been looked upon as a court of last resort, a place to turn when modern
medicine has failed.
How many times have you heard somebody
say, “Well, I’ve tried everything else–I may as well try acupuncture!”
Dr. Tsun-Nin Lee of San Francisco knows
the pattern.
“It’s like a man spilling a cup of tea
on his jacket, he said. “If he gets to the spot right away, the jacket
will be fine. If he waits two years, the stain probably will come out,
but there will be some residual effects.”
Dr. Lee’s point–pun only partly intended–is
that acupuncture should be the first alternative, not the final one because
if it is, he thinks the healing process will be sped up.
Dr. Lee is anything but a medical mystery
man, although he is one of the most unusual physicians in the country.
He was educated at Columbia and New York
University medical schools in the 1960s. But while he was there, he became
disillusioned with the ability of modern, standard medicine to cure disease.
“The approach a lot of times was empirical,
and not logical,” he said.
So he traveled to Hong Kong to study acupuncture–which
dates back to China’s Spring-Autumn Warring States period–5000 years ago.
“They were using a stone needle as a stimulating
tool 500 years before the birth of Christ.” Dr. Lee said, “And the practitioners
were able to know why they were doing something because they invented it.”
“Given the social environment of today,
the same things probably would have been discovered. The doctors and patients
lived close together then, in the same communities. Today, you see a doctor,
in his office, for maybe half an hour.”
“The early Chinese acupuncturists dealt
with both physical and emotional illness, and they understood that emotional
problems actually cause physical ones.
Lee combined the lessons he learned in
Hong Kong with the ones he learned in New York. He is now one of the few
doctors in the United Stated operating with the best medical expertise
of two worlds–old and new.
“He uses machines and modern techniques
to examine and diagnose what’s wrong with his patients. But he also uses
the principles of acupuncture . . . to diagnose and treat.
“I believe we should stress that, unlike
much modern medicine, acupuncture is more curative than palliative,” Dr.
Lee said.
“The American medical community, which
has always been very conservative, has accepted the use of acupuncture
in treating pain, but not other things. I believe it can be used with great
success in many areas–insomnia, hay fever, sinus problems, stomach disorders,
even mental depression–not merely the treatment of pain.”
Dr. Lee uses the ear as a diagnostic organ.
“It’s like an inverted embryo.” he said.
“And certain points on it thus represent certain parts of the body. You
find the sensitive spots on the ear, and check for flaking or lumps. They
tell you what organ of the body is having trouble. It’s not foolproof,
but it definitely helps.”
In Lee’s opinion, “billions of dollars
could be saved by early, correct diagnosis and treatment, because people
could get back to work much faster than they do now.”
About the only preventative medicine most
people are aware of now is the annual physical checkup. Oh, they might
stop smoking or drinking and exercise more, but they’ll still fight with
their wife and yell at people in their office or walk out in the rain without
proper clothing.
“If they seek help, but it doesn’t work,
most people won’t look for an alternative approach. They lack the knowledge
of where to continue.”
Lee knows he can treat only a limited amount
of people. But he is hoping that his unique kind of specialization will
appeal to other doctors–and patients.
“As the momentum builds,” he said, “maybe
medical schools will begin teaching acupuncture, too, rather than shutting
doors to it.”
Reprinted
from the S.F.Examiner, January 27, 1978
Chapin came
to San Francisco in 1977 to write a five-day-a-week City news column for
the Hearst San Francisco Examiner, then returned to the sports in 1987,
where he has worked since as a senior writer for the Examiner and now the
Chronicle.
Acupuncture: The debate goes on, does
it really work–and if so, why?
By Norman Melnick, Science Writer S.
F. Examiner and Chronicle
Brandy Corbin, a topless dancer at a local
dance club, claims she has enlarged her breasts five eye-popping inches
with acupuncture.
State assemblyman Lawrence Kapiloff got
rid of a nasty sinus headache. “It’s out of sight,” he said after the acupuncture
demonstration in the State Capitol.
Dunbar, a horse, was successfully treated
for lameness in his stable at Golden Gate Park. “The treatment for animals
is the same as for humans,” the Korean acupuncturist from Mill Valley said
in all seriousness.
Bill Walton, the giant basketball player,
has been acupunctured. So have baseball stars Willie McCovey and Bobby
Bonds, actor Rod Steiger, Alabama Governor George Wallace, singer Robert
Goulet, and scores of other recognizable names.
That’s only the tip of the iceberg.
The fact is that the hysteria is over,
a serious search for the truth is under way, and the riddle of acupuncture–the
oldest medical system known–is at last becoming unmasked.
When he was consulted in August 1971, a
highly respected San Francisco surgeon said, “Acupuncture is witchcraft,
pure and simple.” He suggested that it was medical fraud.
Asked for an update the other day, the
same surgeon said: “Acupuncture is hocus pocus, but it may be very effective
hocus-pocus. There is no way it can be measured; no way it can be assessed.
Yet colleagues have attested to the fact that it works and are willing
to go along with it.
“The medical profession is not against
acupuncture. We’re prepared to use ay modality, from snake oil on up, if
it will work.”
Asked is this represented a change of heart,
he said “Yes and no.” He did not want his name used.
Mrs. Carola Adams is a lovely Marin lady
who has suffered from migraine for over 20 years.
“I have been through everything that you
can go through. Nothing worked. I used to get sick to my stomach. I used
to throw up. I ended up in bed and was real sick for days,” she said.
Mrs. Adams describes herself as a “very
conventional, very conservative person.” Not long ago, she conceded, she
would have rejected outright the suggestion of acupuncture treatment.
But when she was finally out of her skull
with agony, she went to Dr. Tsun-Nin Lee, an acupuncturist and general
practitioner with an M. D. degree from New York University.
It was late 1973.
The doctor gave her a complete physical
examination.
“Then I had about 17 to 19 acupuncture
treatments, mostly in the ear, and now I haven’t had any treatments for
six or seven months,” Mrs. Adams related.
Now, very occasionally, I have a headache.
I had one yesterday–I woke up with it. I took a couple of Anacin and all
day I was on the go–didn’t miss a thing. It was so minimal compared to
what I used to have.
“Believe me, I am a very happy person.
What can I say after all those years of migraine? I believe in acupuncture
very much.”
No one can explain it [in the conventional
medical community]. The conventional medical view is that six or seven
months of freedom from migraine is too short of a time to judge the effectiveness
of the treatment.
Two More Patients Who Say They Were
Freed From Pain
“After I had my child, the arthritis developed.
She was only six weeks old, I went to a (prepaid health plan) and they
diagnosed it as rheumatoid arthritis. They said there was nothing the could
do.”
Mrs. Mary Jane Grotting, 32, of Concord,
continued.
“They put me on 12 aspirin a day to begin
with. Their attitude was ‘we have to wait and see, we never know how it
is going to go. Sometimes it goes away, and sometimes it gets worse.’”
Mrs. Grotting said she had excruciating
pain in her joints, particularly in her hands and knees. “I couldn’t pick
my baby up. It was very painful.”
When she was working as a legal secretary,
she had met an acupuncturist, Dr. Tsun-Nin Lee, M.D.
“So when this developed, I went to him.
With one treatment, I was able to move my hands and was of the aspirin
and I’ve never had to take aspirin since.
“He treated me for four months, and after
every treatment there was improvement, and then in May of this year I had
my last treatment. I’ve not been bothered by a vestige of symptoms–absolutely
nothing.”
The result surprised other physician-acupuncturist,
who said who said rheumatoid arthritis did not respond well to the treatment.
It was pointed out, however, that sometimes this disease went into a symptom-free
period that could not be medically explained.
Dr. Ephraim Engerman, chair of arthritis
and rheumatism at the University of California Medical Center here, has
experimented with acupuncture.
“The results are not impressive,” he said.
“I have no reason to change my opinion on that.”
Told about Mrs. Grotting, he said “Well,
good luck.”
Perhaps even more bizarre, is the case
of Edward Tin of Bernal Heights in San Francisco.
A 46-year-old draftsman, he woke up one
morning earlier this year with severe joint pain. “It got real bad toward
April. When I went to doctors they told me to take aspirin. At the time
there was no diagnosis. Actually I didn’t know what I had.
“Then I looked in the Yellow Pages for
an acupuncturist. I wanted to have an M.D. rather than a Chinatown acupuncturist.
I went to one that was recommended to me, and he started poking me after
a short discussion.
“I gave him up. I had a personal feeling
this man didn’t know what he was doing.”
Tin consulted a second physician-acupuncturist,
Dr. Lee, who diagnosed his trouble as lupus, a potentially fatal disease
of the collagen, or the body’s connective tissues. It is a mysterious disease
whose cause is unknown. But the suffering can be acute, although there
can be long periods without any signs of disease.
Tim said Dr. Lee acupunctured him three
times a week for the next three months.
“At first, improvement was not much and
I was getting discouraged. Then the doctor went to another technique and
I was greatly relieved.
“July 24 I had my last acupuncture treatment.
The next day, I went to the UC clinic and got tested out, all sorts of
X-rays and blood work. There was no more signs of lupus.”
Tin was acupunctured in the ear, the rim,
the tenderest part. A needle going into the area is not fun. Sometimes
you need an electric shock. It hurts, I really felt shy about it.”
Dr. Lee, the doctor-acupuncturist said
it was the first time he had treated lupus, and did not know how it would
work out.
Remission–a symptom-free state–occurs in
most chronic diseases, and rarely is there an explanation for it. Spontaneous
remissions are also common in cancer.
There is the whole question of pain.
Tolerance levels vary from individual to
individual. Sometimes the suggestion of relief–the so-called placebo effect–is
not enough to eradicate pain.
Numerous studies have shown that post-operative
patients are given medication for their surgical pain. The pain disappears.
The other patients, meanwhile, are given
innocent sugar pills (placebos). They do not know this. Amazingly, pain
is controlled in 30 percent of the cases.
It is the cultural phenomenon. Americans
have grown up with pills. Pills ease pain. We expect them to work–even
if they are innocuous.
In the early 1970’s, the great promise
of acupuncture appeared to be in anesthesia. American doctors came back
with wondrous reports of acupuncture anesthesia in China, even in delicate
open-heart surgery.
The conventional anesthetic is a chemical.
The exact dosage must be given and monitored continuously. There is a risk,
in many operations, and the anesthesia is critical.
“To use needles instead of chemicals to
put people to sleep, that would be ‘duck soup,’” said Dr. Henry B. Farley,
acting chairman of anesthesia at the University of California medical campus
here.
But tried in this country, acupuncture
anesthesia failed miserably.
Then the technique was vastly improved.
Trained M.D.’s work along side trained acupuncturists. Patients were “groomed”
weeks in advance for their adventure.
Only highly motivated patients were selected.
One of the most unusual of these experiments
took place at UC here under Dr. Sol M. Shnider, an anesthesiologist and
a world figure of obstetrics and anesthesia.
Twenty-one women, described as generally
unconventional and eager to try the Oriental method, agreed to deliver
these babies with acupuncture.
In 10 women, the slender needles were worked
manually. In 11 women, the needles were stimulated electrically.
“It didn’t work,” Schnider reported.
When labor pains became unbearable, 16
of the 21 women request a conventional anesthetic. Out of these women later
wrote an article extolling the virtues of acupuncture, though she had asked
to stop the treatment.
“It was one of the most amazing aspects,”
Schnider said.
Reports out of China indicate acupuncture
anesthesia is used less and less. And when it is, it is almost always done
now in combination with analgesics (pain-killers).
Acupuncture anesthesia is scarcely done
anywhere in this country, and then only in a research setting.
Acupuncture came out of China thousands
of years ago.
Its most familiar form is needle therapy.
The original charts show 365 points on the body, one for each day of the
year, distributed among what the Chinese term “meridians” or nerve pathways.
With the recent boom, the latest charts
now show 1,177 points.
Dr. Tsun-Nin Lee uses both manual and electrical
stimulation. Dr. Martin L. Boesman, a young San Francisco physician, uses
ultrasound. The Russians are experimenting with lasers. Still others are
using shiatsu (massage or finger pressure).
Whatever the style, it is all acupuncture.
And despite some elaborate theories, notably the gate theory, there are
no satisfactory rationale for why it works*–briefly or over the long term,
in some disorders and not others and most curiously, in the same disorder
for some, but not for others.
Dr. Patrick Wall of the University of London
suggests that when the needle penetrates the skin at a specific point and
depth, the action produces a signal that is transmitted in the brain, and
the brain responds to the ailment.
In effect, though much oversimplified,
the needle puncture opens the “gate” to relief.
In general, the acupuncturist looks for
clues on the body–what are called “tender spots”–which are said to be related
to a specific disease state. The needle puncture is made in that zone–usually
perpendicularly, sometimes tangentially to cover a broader area.
Dr. Tsun-Nin Lee specializes in ear acupuncture.
“Six meridians pass through the ear, that’s
a lot,” he said. “The ear is like the image of the whole body, like a miniature
body in itself. In fact, the ear resembles an inverted embryo; we don’t
think that is coincidental.
“If a part of the body is sick, the equivalent
part of the ear becomes tender.”
Because of their own encounters with acupuncture
and because many colleagues have now been to China and have seen with their
own eyes what is happening, most American medical scientists today no longer
believe that acupuncture is a form of hypnotism.
But they do believe there is a powerful
psychological component at work.
Rossman, interested his entire career in
psychosomatic medicine, agrees. But in his view that does not lessen the
impact of Chinese medicine.
He uses a quarter-sized ultrasonic crystal
that vibrates a million times a second to achieve what he terms “a much
more subtle effect than needles–it takes the pain out of it.”
In his private practice, across the street
from the Mt. Zion Hospital and medical center, he has give 3,000 acupuncture
treatments–for ulcers, back miseries, asthma, osteoarthritis, migraines,
hay fever, sex dysfunction, and any other conditions.
“If I gave 3,000 patients aspirin, 30 would
have serious complications,” he noted.
Even as he was interning at Highland Hospital,
Oakland, 1969, he was already despairing of Western medicine. “I got drained
by my experience,” he said. “Most people weren’t getting better.”
“There are advantages to Western medicine–I’m
not for chucking the whole thing,” he said/ “We can take the best of them
both and integrate them.”
Elsewhere, Dr. Frederick F. Kao, editor
of the American Journal of Chinese Medicine, has spoken of this integration
as the “Silk Road.”
The widest experience with acupuncture
in the United States can be claimed but the Acupuncture Research Project
at the University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA), directed by Dr. David
Bresler, an anesthesiologist and trained acupuncturists.
In the last two and a half years, he and
his group have given 18,000 acupuncture treatments. Five articles, reporting
on the findings in 410 cases, are soon to be published.
“There is tremendous application for acupuncture
therapy,” Bresler said in an interview, “particularly in the treatment
of chronic pain. It’s safe, inexpensive and effective, and we think it
will be widely used in this country.
“We’ve studied populations of patients
given everything Western medicine could offer. We asked ourselves, ‘Could
acupuncture offer anything more?’ Our data indicates that the answer is
‘Yes, it can.’“
More than half of the patients seen by
doctors in general practice have pain-related problems. This has been established
by many studies.
"Yet in the year 1975," Bresler said, “we
really have no satisfactory modality for pain that is long-lasting, easily
administered and readily available.”
“Look,” he said, “I myself was skeptical
at first. But the data suggests something is going on here–force us to
find out more about it. We’re not interested in sensational cases. We want
to help the average family physician to help his patient.”
Reprinted
from the S.F.Examiner, Sept. 7, 1975
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