AURICULOTHERAPY
ACUPUNTURE
Acupuncture dates back thousands of years. Specifically, acupuncture is 6000 years old and ear acupuncture is 2,500 years old. In essence, traditional Chinese healers seek to restore a dynamic balance between two complementary forces that pervade the human body and travel through meridians as CHI (life energy). Acupuncture corrects the excess or the deficiency of CHI along meridians. Acupuncture involves stimulation of certain points on the skin, mostly with ultra fine needles that are manipulated manually or electrically.
Today, acupuncture is international; its practitioners include professional acupuncturists and a variety of other health care providers including medical doctors. Upward of 2,000 acupuncture points are now recognized by licensed acupuncturists. By 1982 there was a sufficient number of acupuncture schools to warrant the development of the National Council of Acupuncture Schools and Colleges, which evolved into the Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine or ACAOM. Today 32 programs are within ACOM's purview.
Most states permit licensed physicians to perform acupuncture as part of their medical practice, but this may vary from state to state. Most states provide for the practice of acupuncture by chiropractors on the basis of additional 100200 hours of training. Many states have adopted legislation to permit the practice of acupuncture by individuals who are not medical doctors chiropractors such as doctors of naturopathy, podiatrists, physical therapists, physician's assistants, nurses and counselors, but training requirements vary.
EAR ACUPUNCTURE IN THE TREATMENT OF SUBSTANCE USE DISORDERS
As stated earlier, acupuncture has been around for thousands of years. In more recent times Hsiang Lai Wen of Hong Kong successfully applied electrical stimulation to one point in the ear to relieve opiate withdrawal symptoms. Inspired by this work, Michael Smith, an American physician, first used the Wen protocol as part of a methadone program at Lincoln hospital in Bronx, New York. Over several years, Smith and coworkers refined the detox protocol into five ear points that are needled without electrical stimulation. To promote his protocol, Smith founded the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA), and for the past 25 years he has championed the use of acupuncture detox in a wide variety of clinical settings including county jails, maximumsecurity prisons, outpatient drug treatment programs, homeless shelters, and mental health facilities.
At about the same time, HaightAshbury Free Clinic (HAFC) in San Francisco began to utilize acupuncture for the treatment of addiction. In fact, one of us (KB) published a paper with others at the HAFC on the favorable outcome of utilizing ear acupuncture in alcoholic withdrawal.
AURICULOTHERAPY
The original work of Paul Nogier, M.D. of Lyon, France in 1956 provided the world with what is now called auriculotherapy. A common misconception is that auriculotherapy is ear acupuncture. While ear acupuncture depends on the use of needles inserted among a fixed set of alleged acupuncture points, auriculotherapy does not involve fixed points and does not use needles. Auriculotherapy points are created by enervation of four cranial nerves and three cervical ganglia. These are not acupuncture points. The professional uses a handheld STIM PLUS PRO (an FDA class 11 medical device) shaped like a pen to (1) locate the auriculotherapy point, (2) diagnose the located auriculotherapy point, and (3) treat the auriculotherapy point if measured to be abnormal.
Auriculotherapy is defined as the location and treatment of neurological points in the ear by micro-current stimulation. Each point is treated by the handheld pen-shaped device (described above) for 30 seconds. The procedure is painless. Both ears are treated five days a week for 1530 days for 10 minutes. In ear acupuncture, needles must be left in place for 45 minutes to 1 1/2 hours.
