Conversations with Dr. Duckworth: Acupuncture & Kids (pt. 2)

Q: Do you think that kids share, with one another, their opinions of acupuncture?

A: School kids, definitely. The feedback from children that I've talked to about it is that they talk about it at school. There's an appliance I use that the kids call "dragon eggs." They're small and are ionized and place at the acupuncture points. And they're kept on for several days . They are definitely used at school for show-and-tell. Kids, once they get to seven or eight, talk about it and are curious about the experiences.

Q: Are there anecdotes that you can point to lately, in which there was a really positive outcome for the patient?

A: The most recent one was a child I've been seeing for a little over a year. He's 11-years-old, now. He came to me with a very severe case of Tourette's Syndrome. He was having problems at school, with his studies. His tics and gestures were quite noticeable. Over the months, he's progressed. To the point where last May, the school nurse indicated how much he'd improved. And now, he's doing quite well in school. He has still a little bit of a tic. I'm seeing him every three weeks now. It was twice-a-week, then once a week. Now about twice a month. Yesterday, I saw him and the mother was telling me that his family in Illinois over Christmas - aunts and uncles and grandparents - all said to her how much he'd improved since their last visit.

Most of the feedback we get is from parents. The kids coming in with allergies, or the like, just know that they're coughing or not coughing. But the parents do note the successes.

Q: To dovetail back to one of your original points, obviously you're suggesting that kids who are in otherwise good shape, still benefit from acupuncture.

A: Yes, the child who is developing an immune system almost needs that cold, almost needs the germs, to build up that system. But to lessen the impact, to allow the body to adapt better to treatments, meridian therapy is very beneficial. True for adults, too. People come in for a cause, or symptoms, the same as they would with western medical doctors. But once we get them over that hump, we instruct them to come in seasonally for a tune-up, to stay healthy. It's a lot easier to stay healthy, than it is to get healthy, or to regain what we've lost.

We'd certainly encourage children and their parents to come periodically to get checked-up, seasonally. In Oriental medicine, we recognize five seasons of the year. There's spring, summer, fall and winter, the four that we all talk about. But there's a fifth season that exists between the seasons. That time in March when you have days that are very spring-like, but the night-time will still be cold and wintry. It's not full spring, yet. The same in May, a season when the day is so hot that you want to go swimming, but by night-fall, you want to put a sweater on. That's the fifth season. That's the ideal time to be seen. It's been said that the cold you get today is not from what you did yesterday, but from the choices you made six-, eight- or 10-weeks ago. If you have a head-cold today, it's not because of not wearing a hat yesterday, that's nonsense; it's about what you did in December.

If a person comes in as the seasons are shifting, we can correct them energetically, adjust what the body's been going through since the last season. That's done environmentally, dietarily. The body will simply have different needs. We guide the parent and the child to get healthy, so that they don't need us. Ultimately, we want to go out of business, though that's unlikely to happen right away.