Beyond Qigong: Stronger Remedies

SAY YOU GET SICK ALL the time, or you're chronically tired, or the tennis elbow's gotten merciless. The Chinese diagnosis: your qi (life force) is off kilter - and Qigong alone may not be enough to set it right. The most aggressive techniques for manipulating qi are herbs and acupuncture. They work best where Western medicine has failed - namely, with musculoskeletal pain and chronic illness. Now, after centuries of bad PR, these 3,000-year-old traditions are finally getting serious attention in the West.

Acupuncture has become more than just the last thing you try to kick an addiction; it's a common remedy for many conditions once treated exclusively by surgery or drugs. There are nearly 9,000 licensed acupuncturists in the U.S., up from 5,500 in 1992 - and some 200 insurance companies cover their services. No one knows exactly how acupuncture works, but studies suggest that like vigorous exercise - or morphine - it releases neuropeptides that fight pain. Neal Miller, a high-profile L.A. acupuncturist, says he's managed to help 90 percent of the people he's treated for carpal tunnel syndrome. ""Surgery costs $10,000,'' he says, ""and it's not always successful.'' His treatments, which take around four weeks, cost less than $600.

Scientists are finding that herbs, too, can help manage everything from depression to AIDS. In a study published in the Journal of AIDS last August, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, treated 15 symptomatic HIV patients with a blend of 31 herbs (compressed into tablets); 15 others were given a placebo. The control group experienced no change, but the herb-treated subjects reported more energy and fewer digestive and neurological disturbances.

There is, of course, still a wide conceptual gulf between the Chinese and Western traditions. ""We talk of qi, while Western medicine calls it the nervous system,'' says Miller. ""We speak of the balance in the body of fire and water; they call it homeostasis.'' Semantics. Whatever it's called, it seems to be working.

© 1997