The point OF HOPE
Neuroacupuncture is helping patients with a range of injuries, conditions
After waking up from surgery in a French hospital, Deavon Tabish-Moran was told he had a 1 percent chance of walking again.
The Albuquerque native was snowboarding in the French Alps in March 2017 when one of the jumps sent him flipping out of control. He landed on his back on an ice patch, crushing his 11th thoracic vertebra. The bleak prognosis came after a three-level spinal fusion at a hospital in Grenoble.
“And I think that 1 percent was them trying not to be jerks, you know?” says Tabish-Moran, now 29. “In their mind, they were convinced there wasn’t even a 1 percent chance.” He also recalled the neurosurgeon saying he’d probably never have feeling in his legs.
He regained feeling shortly after the accident. Upon his return home, he began attending physical therapy two to three times a week. After a few months, he saw bits of motion with his right leg, but not much strength.
When he tried walking, it was with large braces, sometimes with a harness or a walker,
and with several helpers holding on.
Several months ago, a family friend gave Tabish-Moran her appointment time with Dr. Linda Hao, a New Mexico-based acupuncturist who, along with her husband, Dr. Jason Hao, has spent years developing techniques to treat neurosystem issues.
And, yes, that means putting needles into your scalp.
For Tabish-Moran, a change in leg strength was immediate. After his first treatment, he and his dad stopped at a sandwich shop for lunch. Getting out of the car, he decided to try something he hadn’t been able to do since the injury.
“I just lifted up (my left leg) and brought it right out of the car,” he said. “Until that point, it was like a dead piece of meat.”
During a recent visit to the Haos’ Albuquerque clinic, he used a walker to get from a treatment room at the end of the hallway to the front lobby and back.
Though he was making steady improvements with traditional physical therapy, Tabish-Moran said the acupuncture caused a “parabolic curve up.” His doctors reported unexpected improvements in his strength tests, and a friend who came along to a treatment was moved to tears.
Now, he says he’s back to working full-time at a charter school and attending classes at Central New Mexico Community College.
Linda Hao has given him “the peace of mind and the freedom to allow myself to invest in the hope for the future that I want as a reality,” said Tabish-Moran. “Walking again is something that can happen, not something I hope can happen.
“I’m a stubborn person, and I like proving people wrong. I’m counting down the days to walk into that hospital in France and show them what 1 percent means.”
Working together
The Haos specialize in what they’ve named neuroacupuncture, an evolution of scalp acupuncture that focuses on neurological disorders by placing acupuncture needles into the patient’s head, ear and body.
They describe it as a combination of traditional acupuncture techniques and Western medical knowledge.
Though acupuncture has been used in China for 3,000 years, scalp acupuncture has been around for only about 50 years.
The Haos, who have lived in New Mexico for close to three decades, studied scalp acupuncture while attending college in their native China. In those early years, they said, it was being used to treat such conditions as strokes. Over the past few decades, Linda said, she and her husband have further developed it to tackle “different, more difficult situations.”
“Traditional Chinese medicine, we treat patients based on theory of ying-yang, qi (life force), energy, blood,” Jason Hao explained. “In neuroacupuncture, we base it (on) neurology, neuro-anatomy, neuroscience.”
Today, patients’ conditions include multiple sclerosis, autism, cerebral palsy, traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries, posttraumatic stress disorder and Parkinson’s Disease.
The Haos opened their first acupuncture clinic together in Santa Fe about 25 years ago. Jason still shares a clinic in Santa Fe with another acupuncturist.
Linda now works out of their Albuquerque clinic that they’ve operated for 15 years. Jason Hao originally came to Santa Fe to teach at the Southwest Acupuncture College in the early 1990s. Linda followed a few years later with their son. They have been married 36 years.
“People ask how you can work together,” Linda said about their being a couple and business partners. “I think we have same dream: Work together to help people.”
Their work has garnered significant attention over the years. News reports have highlighted Linda’s treatment of country musician and stroke victim Randy Travis, and a short film was made about their work by Tony Awardwinner Mark Medoff of “Children of a Lesser God” fame.
The Haos say people of all ages from across the world come for treatments, noting that one patient recently visited from Australia. But, even so, Linda Hao said their treatment options may not be as well-known within the local community.
First set of grads
Jason Hao said that, when inserted into specific areas on the scalp, the needles can help stimulate parts of the brain. Placement of needles corresponds with the functions the practitioner is trying to improve and the areas of the brain that handle those functions, he said.
When Linda Hao started inserting needles in Tabish-Moran’s scalp during a recent treatment, he said he felt a rush of warmth through his body and his left leg started having little spasms. In the beginning, he wasn’t sure if that warm sensation was just nerves or his mind playing tricks, but, after three or four treatments, it became clear to him that the feeling came from the acupuncture.
“I am a bit of skeptic” he said. “But that got crushed … after I whipped my leg out of the car without lifting it up. I was like, ‘I’m all in.’”
He said he brought along his medical case manager to an appointment and her skepticism was gone by the end. He said she told the Haos she was going to start referring patients
With a monthslong waiting lists for patients, the Haos said they are passionate about teaching other practitioners their techniques. The two travel internationally, and they also founded their Santa Fe-based Neuroacupuncture Institute three years ago.
Questions evolving
As Tabish-Moran walked into the lobby after a treatment, Debbie Rhoads congratulated him.
Rhoads and her son, 31-yearold Cody Erwin, made their first trip to New Mexico last year for an appointment with Jason Hao. About two years ago, an anoxic brain injury left Erwin paralyzed from the neck down and non-verbal.
Today, he can move his arms up and down. And with his stepdad holding on and mom pushing his wheelchair close behind, he walked down the clinic hallway.
“At the beginning, they give him zero hope,” Rhoads said, crying while talking about her son’s progress. “I mean, nothing. At all.”
After two appointments, seeing the spasticity in his limbs start to release, Rhoads said she and her husband, John, knew they would continue working with Hao. They bought a second home in Albuquerque several months ago to have somewhere to stay.
Jason Hao said it can be difficult for the general public and the medical community to believe the needles’ impact.
But over the past 20 years, Linda said, the perception of neuroacupuncture within the medical field has been improving. Some MDs will even refer patients, she said, and some insurance companies in New Mexico, like Presbyterian, Blue Cross Blue Shield and United Healthcare cover varying levels of treatment costs.
‘I love you’
When Monica Chavez booked her son’s first appointment with Linda Hao, she didn’t know how acupuncture and speech improvement could go hand in hand. Her 8-year-old son, Zade, had always been nonverbal and was diagnosed with autism.
The longest phrase Zade had said came about a month into the needle treatments, Chavez recalled, when he told her “I love you.”
She credits his progress to neuroacupuncture.
“He’s become a completely different child as far as his social abilities,” she said. “Before, he was very kind of reserved and was just self-sufficient, if you will, with playing by himself and whatnot … but as time’s progressed, I asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday and he said he wanted to go swimming. So we went swimming; there were other kids in the pool, and for the first time I saw him wanting to interact and play with those kids. It’s so refreshing.”