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Acupuncture Treatment Brings Patients Into Northwest Arkansas

Tony Russell at 4029 News • Aug 03, 2017

ROGERS, Ark. — One business right in our back yard is drawing worldwide attention, a chance for people suffering from an eye disease to see again. Right now nothing can cure macular degeneration, an eye disease that causes vision loss in the elderly. One therapy in Northwest Arkansas is trying to offer an macular degeneration alternative treatment that some patients say can bring back their vision.

“Well how would you feel if your doctor says you’re going blind, but you won’t go completely blind … it’s a real devastating thing to have happen to you,” Leota Boyce, who travels from Lake of the Ozarks, said.

Doctors diagnosed Boyce with macular degeneration after she started having problems seeing. “When I first started coming, my straight lines weren’t straight, they were waving at me,” Boyce said. She is a part of a group of patients diagnosed with the disease who travel the distance to get acupuncture from Lizbeth Ryan, a licensed acupuncturist, who moved to Rogers to treat her patients. “It really couldn’t be a nicer place, it’s really central to my patients, I have a lot of patients in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi,” Ryan, owner of Arkansas Acupuncture Center, said. People have traveled from as far as Europe to receive treatments for eye diseases like macular degeneration. “It’s amazing, I’ve met people from all over the country here, someone from Mexico, someone from Spain, Canada, but just all over the country,” Donna Davis, who travels from Chicago, said. Davis travels from Chicago and said she’d go anywhere to get help with her vision loss. “Kind of strange, you go where the help is, where you can get what you need and frankly if it was in Cupcake, Iowa, I would go, wouldn’t make any difference. Especially coming from Chicago, I’m not coming here for the nightlife,” Davis said. Acupuncture is when small needles are inserted all over your body. In this case, they are placed on the hands and feet of Ryan’s patients. Ryan specializes in treating patients with degenerative eye diseases. “This acupuncture for macular degeneration in many cases helps to restore vision, it varies from patient to patient,” Ryan said.

Traditional ophthalmologists like Dr. Chad Betts urge caution when patients seek alternative remedies for their eye diseases. Sometimes patients hit a wall when it comes to finding a cure.

“It worries me and it worries our patients, it’s frustrating, and I know the patients get frustrated with it because they do. You know they’ve tried the traditional therapies, and we’ve done everything we can to recommend the evidence based approaches. At some point there’s no other proven therapies out there,” Betts said.

And more patients with signs of the disease are coming into his office. “It’s something that we see quite a bit of and as the population ages. And the baby boomers come of age so to speak, we’re going to see a whole lot more of it,” Betts said.

Betts said he’s skeptical but supportive of his patients looking for a way to ease the pain not being able to see. “I’m not personally supportive, just because I don’t have experience with it, and I really haven’t seen any evidence that it is proven. It’s not something that I’m recommending for a patient, like I say I wouldn’t hinder them from doing it,” Betts said. “I have a few patients that have doctors who say, get acupuncture, its helping you for your eyes, many of my patients will say well my doctor doesn’t know how it works and he [the doctor] says if it seems to help then keep doing it,” Ryan said.

Her patients said this was their last resort….

“My kids thought I was crazy to start with, but you grasp at straws when there’s no hope of being able to see better. Because there was no treatment, so you grasp at straws,” Boyce said. Betts said new treatments like gene therapy and the insertion of micro-telescopes are in development by the medical community for the treatment of macular degeneration. Doctors said if you’re seeing vision loss but don’t know if it’s macular degeneration, stop in for a routine eye exam. They said a regular visit could catch the disease early.

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Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicines, (TCM or traditional Chinese medicine is a combination of using traditional Chinese herbs, acupuncture, body work, diet and exercise) when coupled with healthy eating choices, can be a tremendously helpful tool for meeting your body weight goals. Healthy weight loss takes time, no matter what method you use. And nothing will make you lose weight. But TCM and dietary changes can help you lose weight. Changes in thinking, diet, and lifestyle are also necessary. DIETARY CHANGES: You will never lose weight if you don’t consider necessary dietary changes. Cutting down on the amount you eat comes first. Makes sense, right? But often patients tell me they eat very little, but still hold those unwanted pounds. This indicates internal imbalances that need to be corrected so the metabolism can function properly. When our system is weak we produce Phlegm and fat from our foods instead of good nutrition, qi* and blood. Adipose tissue, fatty tumors, plaque, bone spurs, kidney stones, are examples of what is included in the Chinese concept of Damp and Phlegm**. Making healthy food choices such as limiting carbs, eating clean unadulterated foods, avoiding additives especially hormones, steroids, and antibiotics, and preservatives, avoiding icy cold drinks and cold, raw foods, eliminating all aspartame or other artificial sweeteners, together can be an effective treatment for weight loss. When we ingest unwanted chemical additives, preservatives, antibiotics, hormones and such, our body will build fat to protect itself against these unwanted invaders. Energy is required to process and rid the body of the toxins. If you want to lose weight you will have to read labels. If you don’t recognize ingredients and can’t pronounce them, don’t buy it. Commercial meats, dairy and eggs contain steroids, antibiotics and growth hormones. All of these will make you fat! And never eat anything that claims to be low fat or sugar free. Fat is good, sugar is bad. Only eat fats that are healthy – coconut oil, butter, extra virgin olive oil. Try to avoid all sugar. Stevia is a great alternative, but don’t use too much. It is 100 times sweeter than sugar so be careful. How does acupuncture help with weight loss? It helps to restore balance, and supplies the energy to transform food to good stuff, instead of bad stuff (fat). It is especially helpful for those who try to lose weight but nothing seems to help. When you are young and healthy it’s easy to lose those 10 extra pounds. As we age, and the imbalances build and multiply, we end up not being able to budge the scale. I advise avoiding extreme diets, for several reasons. As humans, we can survive in a variety of climates and difficult environmental situations. Until recently we didn’t have trucking, large scale farming, greenhouse gardens. We ate what was available and were strong and healthy in spite of being seriously limited in our food choices. During difficult times, humans depended on animal protein and fat. Vegetables, fruits, seeds, roots and such were available in limited supply. Grains were not eaten. Think Paleo diet. Low carb diets can be a great way to lose weight, but should only be used until you reach your weight goals and then start to introduce healthy carbs a little at a time. The keto diet which is a high fat, high protein diet is the only diet that has possible side effects. This certainly makes me wonder. It can be hard on the kidneys. Finally, snacking between meals will make it almost impossible to lose weight. This is another example of a habit. When you find yourself going for that snack cabinet, have a glass of room temperature water and give it a few minutes. You’ll probably forget you wanted a snack. LIFESTYLE CHANGES: We are all victims of our habits. The biggest challenge for helping people lose weight is to convince them that they are acting habitually. Anything that is bad for the body will become addictive. The way we think about our food is a good example. If you think that eating will make you fat, it will. When you eat think of it as nourishing, no matter what it is. Ice water is another good example of a common addition that contributes to weight gain. Using ice to cool water is a fairly recent practice. So is obesity. Most people are under the misconception that ice water is good for you. Your body is about 100 degrees, water is zero degrees. When you ingest icy cold water, it causes your body to generate heat, and depletes your energy in the process. The unnatural, unwanted heat causes stagnation so that we feel cold, but we are, in fact, hot. So instead of metabolizing your food, all your energy goes to adjusting, readjusting and then readjusting again. Taking medications often contributes to weight gain. One should take as little pharmaceuticals as possible since no one knows how more than any two medications will interact. I see many patients who are on many medications, sometimes as many as twenty different prescriptions. And the astounding thing is that they don’t have any diagnosable disease or condition. All their symptoms are due to side effects. You gotta let go of our need to medicate. Over medicating makes us sick, tired, depressed and fat! Exercise is vital to losing weight. You don’t have to be extreme, just start by taking walks, ten minutes at a time, simple stretches, and learning how to take an occasional deep breath. Meditation is also helpful since it helps reduce stress and makes you feel happier. Stress, depression and anxiety cause an increase in the stress hormone cortisol. This causes an increase in insulin levels causing blood sugar to drop so you will crave sugar and carbs. Drinking water is important. People drink water to hydrate, and often to flush out toxins. Keep in mind that over drinking water can flush out the good nutrients we are trying to absorb through our digestive tract. When you feel thirst drink a big glass of water. This will hydrate you whereas if you sip water you will get over the feeling of thirst but you may not be hydrating. When you feel tired, a glass of water can help you feel better as well. Helping people lose weight takes effort and patience. Acupuncture and Chinese medicine carry thousands of years of experience in keeping people fit. I start by asking lots of questions to determine what Pattern this particular patient exhibits. Patterns are the presenting signs and symptoms the person has experienced over the last several months. There are over 200 patterns in TCM practice. Once we determine the pattern, we know what acupuncture treatment and herbs to use. Finally, I use an auricular acupuncture treatment that helps with weight loss. Nutritional and lifestyle counseling are part of the treatment course. *Qi is the term used for the energy that warms us, propels us, transform food into nutrients. It is the spark of lifeforce that gives us life. ** Capital letters are used to designate when words such as Damp, Phlegm and Heat are used within the context of Chinese medicine theory and practice.
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