Acupuncture is making its way into the everyday lives of the great state of North Carolina!
The room is dim, peaceful. Soothing music plays in the background, but otherwise all is silent. You lie, sheathed in a sheet, on a padded table, with thin metal needles studding multiple parts of your body a proverbial pincushion. And youve never been more relaxed in your life.
If this sounds familiar, chances are youve experienced the ancient art of acupuncture, which originated in Asia thousands of years ago and has been used in the United States for about two centuries. In the state of North Carolina, acupunctures history is briefer at least officially. Just ask Page Paterson, who was there at the very beginning.
License 001
“When I first went to school, there was no law in North Carolina about it,” says Paterson, a licensed acupuncturist who holds a masters in acupuncture and currently operates out of the Wilmington Acupuncture and Counseling Center. “The acupuncturists across the state went to the attorney general, who told us to get a license in another state. When theres enough of you, he said, you can lobby.”
So it came to be that in 1989, Paterson opened up a practice jointly in Wilmington and in Chapel Hill. “There was no other acupuncturist here; in Chapel Hill, I joined an existing practice. I worked two days a week in Chapel Hill,” Paterson says. She built her Wilmington clientele by giving talks at the Sun and Moon bookstore, no longer in operation, and by word of mouth. “In five years, I was busy enough that I sold my practice in Chapel Hill.”
Paterson wasnt alone. Across the state, an ever-growing group of physicians wanted to use homeopathy in their practice, and an increasing number of acupuncturists were calling North Carolina home. The time had come to lobby for licensure, and, as luck would have it, the process took just one year. In 1994, Page Paterson became the very first acupuncturist licensed in the state of North Carolina, a distinction to which the framed certificate on her office wall, with its distinctive “001,” attests. “We wrote a good law,” she says, smiling.
That year, Paterson joined an elite group of six other individuals who received their acupuncture licenses. Today, according to the Community Acupuncture Network (CAN), around 400 licensed acupuncturists reside in the Tarheel State. Seventeen of them call Wilmington home (source: North Carolina Acupuncture Licensing Board). While our states acupuncturists constitute a mere fraction of the 27,965 U.S. licensees (as of July 2009), its a far cry from the seven pioneers who successfully lobbied for licensure sixteen years ago.
The last two decades have seen a dramatic increase in the United States acceptance of acupuncture as a complementary treatment method for all types of ailments, including fibromyalgia, migraines, infertility, cancer pain, asthma, drug addiction, osteoarthritis, and more. In 1996, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) removed acupuncture needles from their “experimental medical device” list. The U.S. Department of Education now recognizes the Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, which has links to approximately 50 acupuncture schools. Multiple sources, including the National Institute of Health, have conducted studies and summits on the techniques efficacy and effectiveness.
Despite these developments, theres still a long way to go. “If youre thinking of doing acupuncture, be sure you go to a licensed acupuncturist. In North Carolina, chiropractors and doctors can do acupuncture without training for it specifically, and its covered by insurance,” Paterson warns. Insurance coverage or the lack of it can be a significant impediment to receiving acupuncture treatment. “Progress Energy covers acupuncture, and so do a few other companies. But Blue Cross Blue Shield NC isnt required to cover it,” she explains. Instead of traditional insurance coverage, they offer acupuncturists a compromise: lower your rates for our customers, and well include you on our list of providers. Its a compromise that Paterson and others like her, including local acupuncturist Daerr Reid of East Coast Acupuncture cant afford to make.
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