As far as this patient is concerned, acupuncture gets right to the point
Complementary treatments finding favor with patients

By Jeffery Kurz
Record-Journal staff
WALLINGFORD — Marie Genovese has spent most of her adult life in pain, and much of it battling addiction to pain medication. The list of the 61-year-old Deep River resident’s ailments over the years is long, and includes a ruptured disc and diverticulitis. A couple of years ago she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Genovese, whose problems with pain medication lasted 30 years, found her efforts at rehabilitation confounded every time she had to have surgery. “I’d have to go back on drugs,” she said.
Her major pain problem these days is from rheumatoid arthritis. Though she has been free of her addiction for a dozen years, Genovese said she still needs help with the pain.
Eventually, a doctor recommended acupuncture. Though initially reluctant, Genovese decided to give it a try, and six months ago started receiving treatments at the Mid State Medical Group walk-in center in Yalesville.
The treatments focused on her hands and feet, where rheumatoid arthritis was giving her the most pain. The first treatment did nothing, she said. Neither did the second. The third time around was the charm.
“The third treatment was just amazing,” Genovese said. “My feet had absolutely no pain.”
Now she comes for treatments once a week, making the long trip from Deep River, she said, because it’s worth it. “I’ll tell you, it’s just unbelievable,” she said.
Once regarded with skepticism — if not disdain — by traditional medicine, alternative and complementary approaches such as acupuncture are increasingly making their way into the mainstream.
“Medical schools five or six years ago didn’t think of dropping acupuncture into the tool box,” said Dr. Jordan Goetz, an internal medicine physician who has made a practice of integrating complementary and alternative approaches with conventional medicine. Nationally certified in medical acupuncture, Goetz teaches acupuncture at Briarwood College in Southington and at New York Medical College.
Goetz is also an associate professor at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. Third-year medical students there now receive three hours of instruction on complementary medicine, which along with acupuncture includes other energy therapies, such as Reiki.

Acupuncture grows in popularity
“That mind-body thing — I just see it so much, and can’t ignore it,” Goetz said.
Acupuncture is among the oldest of medical treatments, dating to 3,000 years in China. The method involves placing a number of small needles at strategic points on the skin to control the flow of qi (pronounced “chee”), or energy, through the body. Ancient applications of acupuncture used not needles but small stone shards.
A significant step toward acceptance in the West came in the early 1970s, around the time of President Nixon’s historic visit to China and New York Times reporter James Reston’s acupuncture treatment there after an appendectomy.
“That’s when the awareness came about,” Goetz said.
Gradually, states across the nation have adopted licensing requirements for the practice.
While its inclusion in teaching at UConn is significant, three hours provides not much more than a glimpse, said Louis Graff, a third-year medical student.
“I’ve always been interested in complementary medicine,” said Graff, a graduate of the Institute of Healing Arts & Sciences in Bloomfield. In his study of internal medicine, Graff has been paired with Goetz, “and I also get to see acupuncture,” he said. “That allows you to see how you can mould the two together.”
There are three approaches that govern the placement of needles on the body — local, regional and distal — to manipulate the channels through which the qi flows.
Goetz inserted needles in the finger webs, an example of a local application, for the arthritis pain in Genovese’s hands. Others were placed on ankles and arms. The number of needles used is not as important “as what’s appropriate,” he said.
Genovese reclined for about a half-hour with the needles in place. During part of that time Graff administered a Reiki-like energy therapy.
Typically, Goetz said, it takes three to six treatments to determine whether the pain management is working. Acupuncture, he said, “is not a cure for an anatomical problem.”
Medical acupuncture for chronic conditions, such as those that affect Genovese, typically require several treatments, and it’s not unusual that initial treatments “don’t do a lot,” Goetz said.
“It’s based on energy flow, of taking out blockages and rerouting things,” he said. “That takes awhile. It’s not immediate.”
With acupuncture, he said, there’s no placebo effect, meaning it works whether or not you think it will.
“I was one who was dead set against it,” Genovese said. But now, she said, the method takes care of addiction cravings as well as pain.

To see photos go to myrecordjournal.com