KALI­FA SARAH CLYNE

In Chi­na, acupunc­ture is prac­tised as much as con­ven­tion­al med­i­cine. "In hos­pi­tals, they ask you to make the choice be­tween drugs and acupunc­ture and most peo­ple choose acupunc­ture," said Dr Xi­ao Ping Liu. Liu was born in Chi­na and stud­ied west­ern (con­ven­tion­al) med­i­cine and tra­di­tion­al med­i­cine there. In 1990 she moved to T&T and now prac­tices acupunc­ture here. Liu is a mem­ber of the British Acupunc­tur­ist So­ci­ety and the Chi­nese Acupunc­tur­ist So­ci­ety. "I had very lit­tle in­ter­est in tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese med­i­cine when I was study­ing." She said the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment said if you stud­ied west­ern med­i­cine you al­so had to study acupunc­ture, so it was a part of the cur­ricu­lum. "Long ago acupunc­ture was learned through ex­pe­ri­ence. You could on­ly learn acupunc­ture from acupunc­ture mas­ters and it was like a fam­i­ly busi­ness, so a grand­fa­ther would teach his son who would then teach his son," Liu ex­plained.

She said the heal­ing tech­nique was used on­ly for mem­bers of roy­al fam­i­lies and the very wealthy in Chi­na. "Be­cause of that it was kept se­cret, but it is thou­sands of years old." "In the be­gin­ning, I didn't like acupunc­ture. I thought the idea of us­ing nee­dles was not good." How­ev­er, there were times when she found her­self un­able to help pa­tients and had to re­fer them to an acupunc­tur­ist. Even­tu­al­ly Liu de­cid­ed to learn the tech­nique. She first learnt acupunc­ture us­ing herbs and acu­pres­sure points on the ear on­ly. Lat­er she learnt how to use nee­dles on the en­tire body. Even now Liu goes to Chi­na of­ten to learn about new acupunc­ture re­search. She said acupunc­ture was used most and best to treat pains. "We use acupunc­ture to treat arthri­tis, back pain, nerve prob­lems. Any type of pain, acupunc­ture can treat." She ex­plained that acupunc­ture points on the body con­nect­ed on merid­i­ans to nerves and blood ves­sels. Liu said a lot of her pa­tients took pain-killers but af­ter a while the pain-killers might stop work­ing, so they looked for al­ter­na­tives and would dis­cov­er acupunc­ture.

"Some peo­ple don't want to take pain killers or oth­er med­ica­tion, but their is a choice," she said. "This morn­ing I had a client, she was in pain for about three months, in­tense stom­ach pains and the drugs the doc­tor pre­scribed were not work­ing. Some­body rec­om­mend­ed me to her. When she came I put two nee­dles in her hand and ten min­utes lat­er the pain was gone. "It was a mus­cle spasm and pain killers can­not re­lax mus­cle but putting the nee­dle at the pres­sure point on her hand that con­nects to her stom­ach, that works." She said if a pa­tient had a headache, it wouldn't mat­ter why or what caused the headache, putting the acu­pres­sure nee­dle in the pre­cise point on the hand would re­lieve it. Liu warned that acupunc­ture was not al­ways im­me­di­ate and could some­times take a lot of ses­sions be­fore work­ing. She said, how­ev­er, that a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of her pa­tients were ath­letes and treat­ment for them was usu­al­ly quick de­pend­ing on the na­ture of their in­juries. She said in Chi­na, acupunc­ture is used in open heart surg­eries, Cae­sar­i­an sec­tions and oth­er ma­jor med­ical pro­ce­dures. "Peo­ple there trust and be­lieve in acupunc­ture, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause it is a treat­ment that has no side ef­fects at all."

De­spite the fact that I had no pain com­plaints, Liu vol­un­teered to give me a short acupunc­ture ses­sion. She placed a nee­dle be­tween my thumb and in­dex fin­ger, the pain was mild, like an in­sect bite but I did feel a build­ing pres­sure on the spot. The pres­sure was not un­pleas­ant. She then placed an­oth­er nee­dle on a point on my fore­arm. This one did not hurt at all. "Be­cause hands and feet are sen­si­tive, you will feel it there but if I had placed nee­dles on your back or stom­ach, you wouldn't feel a thing." Liu ex­plained. She said peo­ple al­so used acupunc­ture as a weight-loss tool, us­ing the acupunc­ture points to help bal­ance the sys­tem and in­crease me­tab­o­lism. "Some peo­ple use it for beau­ty, to re­move age lines from their face." She al­so demon­strat­ed a Chi­nese cup­ping mas­sage, which put me to sleep in a mat­ter of min­utes .Liu said acupunc­ture, which start­ed as a treat­ment for a se­lect few in Chi­na, is now world­wide. She hopes one day in Trinidad, just like in Chi­na, doc­tors would learn both con­ven­tion­al med­i­cine and tra­di­tion­al med­i­cine to pro­vide pa­tients with a choice.