Cari Levy, MD, PhD, loves to run and stay fit, so she circled a summer date for a half-marathon in the mountains. But something stood in the way. The sharp pain that greeted her every morning, a “twisting up” of muscles deep in her right hip, threatened to dash her hopes of getting a runner’s high in Steamboat Springs.
Levy, a professor in the Division of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said that for several years, she felt pain “with every turn at night and as I ascended the stairs every morning.”
She tried heat, water and physical therapy, as well as stretching and strengthening exercises. All attempts to quell, or just manage, the pain failed. She began to second-guess herself: Am I running wrong? Wearing the wrong shoes? Standing or sitting wrong? “You just continue to question yourself and wonder what you’re doing wrong.”
Levy resigned herself to the fact that pain was part of her life – and likely to force her to curtail, or quit, her favorite fitness activities.
“I was amazed by it – I expected needing multiple treatments. In one place in particular, Dee identified a spot on my ear where, when she pressed it, I felt relief in my hip.” – Cari Levy, MD
Earlier this year, she noticed that the CU Anschutz Health and Wellness Center (AHWC) began offering acupuncture, an ancient Chinese medical practice that involves the shallow insertion of very thin needles into the skin at strategic points. Having previously experienced some relief for chronic migraines from acupuncture, Levy thought, “Well, gosh, nothing to lose.”
Immediate relief
Her first treatment with Dee Watts, MS, LAc, licensed acupuncturist, exceeded all expectations.
Watts placed needles in multiple spots on Levy’s body, and the doctor immediately noticed diminished pain. Surprisingly, Watts hadn’t even yet touched the part that hurt – her hip.
“I was amazed by it – I expected needing multiple treatments,” Levy said. “In one place in particular, Dee identified a spot on my ear where, when she pressed it, I felt relief in my hip.”
Watts had pressed a tiny metal bead – a “seed” – against a tender area of Levy’s left ear.
“It was incredibly effective,” Levy said. “It was shocking.”
Mapping the ‘stuck pain’
Asked how she treats patients, Watts reaches for a miniature, alabaster model of the human body. It is streaked from head to foot with red lines that represent the body’s 12 major meridians, or energy lines, through which spiritual energy, or “chi,” flows, according to the ancient art.
“We identify which meridian is causing the problem. In Cari’s case, it was the gallbladder meridian, and you can see right here is gallbladder 30 (a point at the hip and buttock), Watts said, indicating the spot on the model. “And that’s generally where her pain was.”
The meridians flow in relative linear fashion through the body, mostly anterior, or posterior, while the gallbladder meridian “bounces back and forth between the front and back of the body,” Watts said. Each meridian is connected to a major organ. The energy lines flow into each other, and each one has a number of corresponding meridians that offer pathways for the free flow of energy.
In cases where patients suffer from inflammation (such as Levy’s, whose pain emanated from a sciatic nerve) their “stuck energy” lacks an avenue of release.
Watts, who prefers using the Dr. Tan Distal Balance Method of acupuncture, established a baseline of Levy’s pain by asking Levy to recreate the pain in the hip by doing a squat. Then Watts palpated the wrist to find tender spots in her gallbladder energy line’s corresponding meridian, which is the heart meridian. Tender spots along that meridian included her wrist and ear. After inserting needles into these sensitive points, Watts asked Levy to do the squat again to see if the pain shifted or moved in any way.
Cari Levy, MD, receives an acupuncture needle in her ear, part of her gallbladder meridian, which gave her relief from pain in her hip. |
“If you have a tender spot on a corresponding meridian and needle there, typically we see a shift (in pain) right away,” Watts said. “Sometimes the pain will move, and sometimes it will diminish.”
Watts said that whatever pain level a patient arrives with, on a scale from one to 10, she strives to reduce it to “as close to one as possible” during their first appointment.
“With pain and inflammation, there is some stuck energy,” she added. “These really potent acupuncture points will help to get the energy movement back to homeostasis (a state of balance).”
Watts finished Levy’s initial needle treatment in her typical fashion – close to the end of the meridian that is having the problem. “In Cari’s case and the gallbladder meridian, there’s a spot on the top of the foot which is close to the last point on the meridian. So, I put a needle there to remind the body to flush that energy through the system.”
‘Incredibly deep calmness’
Levy fondly recalled the latter-half of her visit with Watts, which entailed 30 minutes of laying still “because you’ve got needles everywhere.” The experience felt very peaceful – “just this incredibly deep calmness,” Levy said.
She said she felt 80% better after the initial treatment.
Sent home with the seed for her ear and an adhesive strip embedded with tiny needles for her wrist, Levy was able to, by applying pressure in both areas, manage at home any returning pain. Whenever pain started to flare, Levy pressed the seed to her ear and immediately felt the knot in her hip melt away.
Licensed acupuncturist Dee Watts, left, applies a seed, a tiny metal bead, to the left ear of Cari Levy, MD, demonstrating part of the treatment regimen that relieved Levy of her longtime hip pain. Levy took a seed home and applied it to her ear whenever she felt pain start to flare. |
She returned to the AHWC for two more treatments, and now, several months later, her pain level remains zero. “There's good data – I continued to see data supporting acupuncture,” said Levy, adding that the needle insertions (typically one or two millimeters) don’t hurt. “That was why I had sought it out for migraine.”
Watts said many studies show acupuncture’s efficacy, including for migraines, back pain, insomnia, allergies, chemotherapy symptoms and even infertility. After a couple years of struggling to start a family and finding nothing medically wrong with either herself or her husband, Watts found an acupuncturist and within two months was pregnant.
That experience prompted Watts, who previously worked in marketing, to change careers. She spent 2-1/2 years earning a master’s degree to become a licensed acupuncturist. As part of the training, she memorized the 400-plus acupuncture points in the body, each requiring specific levels of needle insertion.
Whole-person medicine
Asked what happens physically when the needles are inserted, Watts said, “It creates a micro injury, so the body notices what’s going on. And it’s not just locally (at the needle insertion). It affects the energy flowing throughout the body. So, with the 12 meridians, each one is active for about two hours a day, and they flow into one another.
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Acupuncture at the AHWC The CU Anschutz Health and Wellness Center has been offering acupuncture for about a year. You can visit the website or call 303-724-9355 to schedule an appointment. |
“Western medicine is recognizing … that we have to look at medicine for the whole person, not just parts,” Watts said. “Everything does affect everything else.”
Levy, who cares for elderly patients, said she “absolutely” recommends acupuncture to patients she thinks would benefit from the treatment. For her, the treatments were transformative – both physically and mentally.
“It was just such a relief to stop the madness of second-guessing,” Levy said. “We were going to train for the half-marathon, and I remember thinking, ‘How in the heck am I going to do this? I run a mile on a treadmill, and my hip gets twisted up into a knot.’
Levy finished the Steamboat half-marathon last summer, and now her fitness horizon extends as far as she can see.
“I’m just totally cured, and I can run.”
