Acupuncture Helps Children Handle Pain
June 29, 2003 06:03:22 AM PST, HealthDay

http://health.yahoo.com/search/healthnews?lb=s&p=id%3A44039

By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay is the new name for HealthScoutNews.)

SUNDAY, June 29 (HealthDayNews) -- The boy was just 8, but he
suffered from Crohn's disease, a painful intestinal inflammation. He
was on medication, but struggled with frequent headaches, one of the
potential side effects of the treatments.

So Dr. Lixing Lao, a licensed acupuncturist and director of the
traditional Chinese medicine research program at the University of
Maryland's Center for Integrative Medicine, suggested acupuncture to
the boy and his parents.

They agreed to try it and after a series of weekly treatments, the
child noted a dramatic drop in pain. "In the beginning, it was done
once a week for several months," Lao remembers. "When the condition
was controlled, it was less frequent." Eventually, the boy didn't
need acupuncture to control the pain.

Lao is one of a growing number of acupuncturists and other health-
care providers who offer the ancient Chinese therapy to children.
Increasingly, pediatricians are embracing the idea -- acupuncture is
now an option at about one third of the 43 pediatric pain clinics
nationwide, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

"It's becoming more accepted in the U.S.," says Lao, who learned the
therapy as part of his medical training in China.

The American Academy of Pediatrics thus far has no official policy
on acupuncture use on children.

But in 1997, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a
general consensus statement that acupuncture can help relieve
certain conditions, such as nausea and vomiting that accompany
chemotherapy and post-operative dental pain. The NIH statement also
said acupuncture may be effective as an adjunct therapy or
alternative therapy for other conditions, such as asthma, headache,
low back pain, menstrual cramps and other problems.

Lao says acupuncture shows promise for a number of childhood health
problems, including asthma, diarrhea, loss of appetite, eating
disorders -- even attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Acupuncture -- inserting fine needles into the skin -- relies on the
premise that the body has up to 2,000 "points" that are connected by
meridians (lines) of energy known as Qi ("chi"). When Qi flows well,
the body stays healthy. Acupuncture restores the balance of the
energy flow, or Qi.

While Lao says it's best to use acupuncture on a child no younger
than 5 or 6, other experts start earlier.

Dr. Lonnie Zeltzer, director of the pediatric pain program at the
David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los
Angeles, says she has used acupuncture on infants.

Combining acupuncture with other complementary medicine techniques
works well, too, Zeltzer says. In a recent study, she and her
colleagues evaluated the use of acupuncture and hypnosis together to
treat chronic pain.

They evaluated 31 children, aged 6 to 18, who had a variety of
health problems, such as gastric pain so severe they were doubled
over or migraine headaches that a pediatric neurologist could not
treat successfully.

After the needles were in place, a psychology intern performed
hypnosis during the 20-minute acupuncture sessions. Then another
researcher helped the child imagine a "favorite place," Zeltzer says.

"The overall improvement was pretty impressive," Zeltzer says. Both
parents and the children reported significant improvements in pain
after the sessions, according to the study, which appeared in the
October 2002 issue of the Journal of Pain Symptom Management.

"I actually think any pain condition is amenable to acupuncture,"
Zeltzer says, "especially those that aren't easily fixed [by other
treatments]."

The experts' advice to parents: "If their children have a common
disorder and they are concerned about side effects of medication,
they should consider acupuncture," Lao says. "They can also combine
acupuncture with conventional medicine."

Requirements for practicing acupuncture vary state by state. To be
sure an acupuncture practitioner -- whether he or she is an
acupuncturist or a physician -- is qualified, experts suggest
getting a referral from your child's pediatrician or inquiring at a
pediatric pain clinic.