NADA's 2006 Annual Conference in Tucson later this month will feature an explanation, Western medicine-style, of the bio-physiological mechanisms that help explain the positive effect of the NADA ear needling protocol on patients with addictions and mental disorders.

The presenter is one of American's leading Western medical pioneers in the use of the NADA protocol for dual diagnosis patients. She is Libby Stuyt, MD, a psychiatrist who is medical director of the Circle Program at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo.

The title of her talk is "The Science of Reward Circuitry and the Impact of Auricular Acupuncture." She will be appearing Saturday, April 29, at the Tucson Marriott University Park Hotel in Tucson, Arizona.

Dt. Stuyt will be publishing reports on her work with the NADA protocol in the mainstreamWestern Journal of Dual Diagnosis later this year. She has previously published an important report in the mainstream Journal of the Addictions on the ways the persistent use of tobacco impairs recovery in persons suffering from alcohol and drug dependencies.

Dr. Stuyt's patients at the Colorado institution regularly receive NADA - style ear needling. "I got into this because of coincidences," she explains. Those coincidences included hearing an endorsement from the US government's National Institute on Drug Abuse, reading one of the Yale University acupuncture for cocaine studies, a physician colleague asking her why she was not doing acu detox in her treatment program, and then NADA founder Michael O. Smith, MD, Dac, coming to Denver and convincing hospital administrators at the demonstration.

Dr. Stuyt arranged to have five of the institution's physicians trained and added acu detox as a modality with the Circle program, a 90-day inpatient state supported program, for men and women 18 - 65 with co - occurring mental illness and addiction. The results, she reports, have been phenomenal in terms of patient reports of symptoms, including craving, depression, anger, concentration, and sleep as well as significant differences in medication changes and program retention rates..

"My whole body is relaxed; I've become one with the table," Jane Handy, 52, of Imlay City tells Hubbs, after a recent acupuncture facelift. "When you think of the trauma of a facelift, this is heaven by comparison."

A new Michigan law to take effect July 1 gives consumers a way to find the best-trained acupuncturists. All but sevens states have such laws. To be registered, acupuncturists need several thousand hours of training, usually through a four-year program, and they must pass a national exam.

What it does, doesn't do

Acupuncture, a type of ancient Asian medicine, places tiny needles into key points in the body called meridians, to help the body mobilize energy to balance itself against pain and disease.

Acupuncture is no longer just for celebrities. An estimated 2.1 million adults in the United States had the treatment in 2001, according to the National Health Interview Survey, the largest survey of alternative medicine ever conducted in the nation.

Count among acupuncture's devotees a slew of athletes, from tennis champ Martina Hingis to golf's Fred Couples. Recently, tiny bandages on the ears of model Kate Moss evoked speculation in the British press that's she's turned to acupuncture for recovery from cocaine abuse. Actors taking up acupuncture are far too many to list. Michael Devitt, managing editor of Acupuncture Today, drops the names of Madonna, Sandra Bullock, Gwyneth Paltrow, Britney Spears, Cher and Demi Moore.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a part of the National Institutes of Health, says acupuncture is most accepted for pain relief, chemotherapy- related nausea and vomiting, addiction, headache, menstrual cramps, arthritic knee pain, tennis elbow, stroke rehabilitation and pulmonary problems such as asthma.(nccam.nih.gov/health/acupuncture). cq-anstetl? But a Medline search of the National Library of Medicine's reputable database finds proof lacking that acupuncture is at least as good as many conventional treatments. Sometimes, too, patients rated it no better than sham acupuncture -- a look-alike therapy that doesn't use acupuncture principles. Hundreds of studies of acupuncture are listed in the database.

But for many who don't find success from conventional medicine, acupuncture provides another option, or at least a complement to what doctors typically recommend.

Hubbs says she can help eight of 10 people who come to her.

"I'm very honest with people," she says. "After 4-6 weeks of treatment, if they're not feeling better,I send them to someone else." Some conditions, such as weight loss, are better treated with diet counseling and behavioral approaches, she says.

To those who want to lose weight, she says, "If you want to spend your money wisely, go someplace where you will be participating in it, and not have something done to you."

Acceptance grows

Acupuncture should be performed only with a new set of disposable needles taken from a sealed package, according to a fact sheet from NIH alternatives medicine center.

Done properly, it shouldn't hurt. Patients say it may tingle, or at most feel like a mosquito bite.

"You see the needles and think it will hurt, but it doesn't," says Jean Boyer, a Detroit Public Schools teacher who recently sought acupuncture from Dr. Harsha Jayatilake for stress relief. She started too many days harried from a long commute from Rockester Hills.

"I think it's working," she says. "I'm a lot calmer. I'm not freaking out."

Jayatilake, a board-certified family medicine physician from Sri Lanka, uses acupuncture more for chronic pain conditions at his Oakland Center for Holistic Medicine on Oak Park. "When it comes to life-threatening situations, I do Western medicine," he says.

Jayatilake draws patients from the entire metro area. One is Kay Jewett, 61, a Wayne State University researcher.

"I'm not much of a medicine person, but I know there's a place for medicine, a place for surgery and a place for this,' says Jewett, a trombone player in a community band. Her back was sore from lifting her grandchild the previous weekend. It aggravated an old injury acquired from shoveling snow. Last week, she was back to normal and had started participating in an exercise class, outperforming some of the younger people in the class.

Insurance coverage for acupuncture varies. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan, for example, pays for acupuncture when doctors stipulate it's for pain relief, according to several patients at Jayatilake's office.

Because patients often pay for it themselves, $60 to several hundred dollars for a package of appointments, "they demand more from alternative medicine approaches," says Beth Kohn, an acupuncturist and herbal medicine specialist with Henry Ford Health System.

In recent years, she has seen more doctors willing to refer patients to her. One is Dr. Eleanor Walker, a radiation oncologist involved with Kohn in as study of acupuncture for the relief of hot flashes triggered by radiation for breast cancer treatment.

Evidence that acupuncture is effective for the problem and others is mounting, Kohn says.

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	Debra Pardee Gaffney C.C.P.A., A.P. Volusia Center for Complementary Medicine 339 E. New York Ave., DeLand, FL 32724 (386) 734-4126 or (800) 734-4580