MORE AMERICANS EMBRACING TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE
When most Americans think of traditional Chinese medicine, their first thoughts might be of an elderly Asian man performing acupuncture behind a curtain, or someone’s grandmother dishing out a questionable concoction of pungent herbs.
But the contrast between the old images and current reality is as different as yin and yang, as mass-produced herbal remedies can be ordered at the click of an app by Western practitioners of Eastern medicine who may have never set foot in Asia.
Now America is beset by an opioid epidemic — a national health emergency fuelled by doctor prescriptions of extremely addictive painkilling narcotics and fed by money from the pharmaceutical industry. It is hardly a surprise that alternative pain treatments like acupuncture are gaining support.
Traditional Chinese medicine first found a niche in the US among those let down by or frustrated with Western medicine and the opaque financial dealings of Big Pharma.
“I entered college planning to go on to medical school but was becoming disenchanted with the medical model that relied so heavily on pharmaceuticals,” recalls Anna Panettiere, an independent practitioner of acupuncture and Chinese medicine in New York.
Western physicians will sometimes find “nothing wrong” with a patient after testing, despite persistent complaints, she noted. It was those patients who took a chance on acupuncture in the early days of the business.
At the time she was met with many raised eyebrows, Panettiere recalled of her decision to pursue Eastern medicine after a deeply relaxing first experience with acupuncture. The practice wasn’t even legal in New York then.
But nearly 20 years after opening her own business, “I now get referrals from many doctors all over the city, and there are several insurance companies that offer at least some coverage for acupuncture.”
Alternative treatments like acupuncture, which health boards like the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations have officially promoted as a potential means of reducing dependence on opioids for pain relief, have become relatively mainstream in the US.
Many of the country’s leading insurers, including Blue Cross Blue Shield and Aetna, now offer acupuncture coverage. Most US states now offer licences to practitioners who study for advanced degrees at the country’s numerous schools of Eastern medicine.
But herbal therapy, despite being more significant in traditional medicine than acupuncture in China, still lags behind.
According to a 2017 report by IBISWorld, the traditional Chinese medicine industry grew at an annual rate of 14.7% over the previous five years, with much of the growth within Asia. Chinese medicine pills are the most widely used and amount for 38% of that revenue.
In the US, however, herbal medicine is only beginning to get serious recognition. The Cleveland Clinic broke ground in 2014 when it became the first major US hospital to open a traditional Chinese medicine clinic. The herbal branch came to be after “a large demand from patients”, said Galina Roofener, a licensed acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist at the clinic.
“There is a lot of interest because Chinese herbs can be used not necessarily in lieu of medications — very commonly we can combine with medication very successfully and we can abate side effects of the medications,” Roofener said.
A patient who does require opioids, for example, can concurrently use acupuncture to reduce pain, along with herbal therapy to treat the common side effect of constipation, she noted.
Cleveland Clinic sources its herbs from Kaiser Pharmaceutical Company of Taiwan, she said, noting that all herbal products must pass the regulations of the US Food and Drug Administration, as well as Australian and European standards.
One obstacle to improving the reputation of herbal medicine is the weakly regulated US supplement industry, she said, which Chinese medicine is often lumped in with.
For example, one plant known as ephedra, or ma huang in Chinese medicine, can be used traditionally as a bronchodilator for asthma. But after misuse as a weight-loss supplement that led to a number of deaths, it was banned by the FDA.
Traditional Chinese herbal medicine should be prescribed by a licensed herbalist upon review of a patient’s medical history, Roofener said.
“In all reality, herbs should be regulated exactly like pharmaceuticals are,” she argued, suggesting that some milder herbs like chamomile could be purchased over the counter, and ephedra sold only by prescription.
Thomas Leung, CEO of Kamwo Meridian Herbs, is a fourth-generation Chinese herbalist. His father opened Kamwo in 1973, when police were still rounding people up for practising Chinese medicine unlicensed, before there were licences at all.
The value of legal recognition became a point of importance for the elder Leung, who founded the Association of Chinese Herbalists and encouraged his son to study Western medicine.
“I totally hated it,” Thomas Leung said of his time as a professional pharmacist. With his background as a Western pharmacist and fluent English, Leung has brought the best of both worlds to Kamwo.
He has shifted most of the business to online orders — even offering an app — and non-Chinese customers have come to outnumber Chinese, even as the shop sits in the centre of New York’s Chinatown.
“Medicine is medicine. We don’t make a distinction between Chinese medicine and Western medicine,” Leung said in his modern office behind Kamwo’s herblined storefront.
The two can and should be taken together, hand in hand, he argues.
Thanks to lobbying by the Eastern medicine community, New York State acupuncture licences were expanded last year to include herbology.