Kyle van Nostrand receives an acupuncture treatment for chronic pain in his ankle.
Kyle van Nostrand was a student at Woodinville High School when he severely sprained his ankle playing lacrosse nearly three years ago. Six months later, he injured his other ankle. "It was taking a really long time to heal," his mother, Shirley van Nostrand, recalls. "He eventually had four surgeries to correct the problems, but was still in constant pain."
Kyle, who needed to be pain-free before undergoing more operations, came to Seattle Children's Pediatric Pain Clinic. "First, they put me on drugs," he says, "but they didn't work. Then I saw Dr. Anjana Kundu, who said she could try acupuncture."
Because Kyle had been in pain for so long, Dr. Kundu, director of Seattle Children's Complementary and Integrative Medicine Program, told him it would probably take a while for the acupuncture to work. "She puts the needles in my feet and my legs, and a few in my upper body. I exhale as they go in, and I don't feel anything," he explains. "I see her once a week, and I get relief for several days."
Kyle's experience is one example of Seattle Children's increasing exploration of alternative therapies for treating an ever-widening group of maladies.
Dr. Kundu applies acupuncture to a variety of problems. "I've used it to treat various pain syndromes, including abdominal pain, headaches, backaches and nerve injury. I also use it to help with nausea related to chemotherapy, and postsurgical nausea," she says.
She also employs acupuncture to manage medical illnesses such as asthma, allergies, bed-wetting, mood disorders and gastrointestinal disorders.
Modern Support of Age-Old Practice
Acupuncture is based on the concept of stimulating specific points on the body, which are distributed along "meridians," or channels in the body through which energy flows. The meridians correspond to various organs in the body. An uninterrupted flow of energy is needed to maintain a healthy state. For centuries, practitioners have claimed that stimulating the proper meridian can result in pain reduction and other beneficial outcomes. Although the precise mechanisms are not clear, modern clinical research shows that acupuncture enhances the body's production of internal pain-reducing compounds. In response to these studies, the National Institutes of Health cleared acupuncture as a therapy for many types of pain and nausea.