Acupuncturist pinpoints treatment's successes at national conference
By Steve Macone/ Correspondent
Friday, June 24, 2005

For 50 years, people around the world have benefited from the polio vaccine. 
 
     However, there are still millions of survivors around the world today suffering from post-polio symptoms, and sadly, a recent outbreak. 
 
     One local polio survivor has found refuge from the debilitating disease through acupuncture. Canton resident Sue Harris now treats other polio survivors at her business, Whole Person Health, located on Pleasant Street in Stoughton. 
 
     Earlier this month, she spoke to hundreds of health professionals from across the United States, Denmark, France, and Sweden at the International Post-Polio Conference in St. Louis. 
 
     She detailed the successes of treating post-polio symptoms such as muscle pain, spasms and fatigue with acupuncture at the June 2-4 conference. 
 
     Harris' practice, like acupuncture itself, focuses on one area while addressing the whole. It is a general practice, but she specializes in using acupuncture to treat post-polio symptoms. 
 
     The number of post-polio patients she sees is relatively small. 
 
     "It's probably only a couple percent of my patients," she said. 
 
     Due to a massive eradication initiative, polio rates have dropped dramatically in the last 50 years, with the majority of cases geographically cornered in only a handful of areas. According to the World Health Organization, there are 12-20 million polio survivors worldwide. 
 
     An estimated one million polio survivors live in the United States, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. 
 
     "And almost half of these survivors are experiencing the late effects of polio," Harris said. 
 
     The conference highlighted new medical research and alternative medicine strategies, such as acupuncture, yoga, and Reiki, for treating polio survivors at a time when the potential for compensation by insurance companies and steady growth in usage among Americans continue to pull acupuncture in from the periphery of medical treatments. 
 
     Earlier this month, the state legislature's Financial Services Committee held a hearing on a bill that would require health insurance companies to cover acupuncture treatments. 
 
     "California has done very good work with HMOs and insurance companies. There are some policies on acupuncture in Massachusetts, but it's not where it should be yet," Director of Research at New England School of Acupuncture Dr. Peter Wayne said. 
 
     "About one out of 10 Americans has used acupuncture, and usage is continuing to grow." 
 
     Harris said that the conference hosted many presenters on complimentary medicine rather than the usual one or two of years past. 
 
     "And they were looked at by more and more post-polio survivors," Harris said. 
 
     Harris has been practicing acupuncture since 1987. In 1991, she founded Whole Person Health for Eastern and Holistic Medicine. 
 
     Her job is the combined result of her experiences: she has witnessed the devastating effects of polio and the benefits of acupuncture. She had a mild case of polio at the age of 3. Her sister, Jean, was severely affected and became paralyzed in the left arm and partially paralyzed in the right at age 5. 
 
     "I had an injury that nothing seemed to be able to work for. Acupuncture worked in one visit. I was fascinated," Harris said. 
 
     Because post-polio patients are uncommon, they often have to educate the doctors, she said. 
 
     "When someone with polio has trouble breathing, the doctor wants to give them oxygen. Really, they're trying get rid of carbon dioxide and the worse thing you can do is give them oxygen," she said. 
 
     Though polio vaccinations led to a sharp decline in those afflicted with the contagious viral disease, people are still coming down with it. 
 
     Even during the conference, an outbreak in Indonesia led to 51 new cases reported by the World Health Organization. 
 
     "They had hoped by this conference that it would be eradicated," Harris said. 
 
     "The concern now is that a lot of people are not vaccinating their children because they're afraid of the vaccination causing autism. I know at least 10 families that aren't vaccinated. That's pretty scary," Harris said. "With people traveling and coming in and out of the country the disease is still out there." 
 
     There is no cure for polio, which mainly affects children under five. But it can be prevented through the polio vaccine, which, given multiple times, can protect a child for life. 
 
     Harris treats sore throat, infertility and hay fever with acupuncture. She also uses it to help people quit smoking. 
 
     Wayne said the nature of acupuncture requires years of experience for those who administer it and that each patient's situation must be interpreted. 
 
     "No one understands the mechanisms fully," said Wayne. "One possibility is that it works by changing blood flow to the brain and particular tissues." 
 
     "Acupuncture is based on a very different map and model of the body. It's more than local treatment for the impaired limb or limbs," said Wayne. "You also want to understand what's happening at the constitutional level, on the whole." 
 
     Harris treats each patient by analyzing a number of factors such as posture, lifestyle and body composition. Pain, she says, is stagnant Chi, the Chinese word for life force. Acupuncture unblocks a patient's Chi. 
 
     "It's been going on for thousands and thousands of years," she said.