Flight surgeon uses Eastern medicine to treat patients

Photo By Staff Sgt. Tiffany Trojca | An Air Force patient receives acupuncture from Lt. Col. Tim Duffy, 4th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron flight doctor, April 15. It is theorized that the human body has 365 acupuncture points that connect with 12 main and eight secondary pathways called meridians.  

BALAD, IRAQ

04.29.2009

Story by Staff Sgt. Dilia Ayala 

332d Air Expeditionary Wing

JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq — Acupuncture is a skill that has been used in Eastern medicine for thousands of years. In the last 20 years, a handful of Air Force doctors have begun using this skill in addition to familiar Western medical practices.

Lt. Col. (Dr.) Tim Duffy, 4th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron flight doctor here, is one of those doctors who is currently practicing acupuncture.

"Medical acupuncture is something relatively new in the Air Force; I was trained in it approximately three years ago through a course in California," said the doctor, who is deployed here from Hill Air Force Base, Utah. "There are probably only a handful of people in the Air Force who are doing this.

"I am a board-certified family physician; most people call family physicians 'generalists,' which basically means we know a little bit about everything," continued the Boise, Idaho, native. "I have expertise in sports medicine, osteopathic [medicine], so I do spinal manipulation. Acupuncture is just a good fit; another good tool I can use to treat people with muscular-skeletal problems."

Osteopathic medicine emphasizes helping patients achieve a high level of wellness by focusing on health promotion and disease prevention.

Recently, Duffy said, Headquarters Air Force approved 32 centrally funded spots for other Air Force doctors to attend the one-year acupuncture course he attended in California.

"The leadership in the Air Force has basically seen how this tool can be effective, so they decided to go ahead and fund this additional training for physicians who are interested in developing this particular skill," he added.

Overall Duffy uses acupuncture to optimize pilots' health and keep them in the cockpit. Specifically, acupuncture helps him keep pilots flying without any adverse effects.

"I use any tool at my discretion to keep [pilots] in the cockpit without giving them medications that will take them out of the cockpit," he said. "[Acupuncture] has been very effective with acute, onset pain.

"Pilots, as you may know, cannot take certain medications or they get grounded and can't fly," he continued. "I can do acupuncture and take care of a lot of those problems without giving them grounding medications, so I can keep them in the fight."

In traditional Western medicine, various medications can not only keep pilots from flying, but also cause them to have various side effects. The colonel said patients he has treated with acupuncture have not had to deal with either difficulty.

"I can't think of anyone who has had adverse results from medical acupuncture," Duffy said. "Everyone I've talked to who's had it, it has helped to a degree -- some dramatically, some less dramatically."

Duffy said many patients who have received conventional medical treatment without relief of pain have opted to try acupuncture for themselves. One such patient is Maj. Dave Berkland, 332nd Expeditionary Operations Support Squadron, wing weapons officer and F-16 pilot, who was treated for two separate injuries.

"I could hardly stand up and couldn't sleep through the night," said Berkland, who is deployed here from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. "I came in to see Colonel Duffy and basically, besides resting it, Motrin, some ice maybe, there wasn't really much else he could do. So we talked about doing some acupuncture and went ahead and did it.

"The next day, I actually went and flew a mission, which [Colonel Duffy] couldn't believe I recovered that quickly," said the San Antonio native. "I flew about a five-hour mission with my back, and I was good to go.

"The next issue was my knee; same issue, I was limping around, and I could hardly walk," continued the pilot. "We did acupuncture and brought down the swelling. In both cases, I flew the next day. I don't know for certain, but I suspect without the acupuncture, I may not have been able to fly and would not have been able to contribute to the mission as a pilot. It definitely allowed us to accomplish the mission in those two cases."

By and large, the doctor said he uses a number of different types of acupuncture to help treat patients' injuries; most commonly, he uses auricular acupuncture, a special type of therapy where different body parts are treated with the help of acupuncture points on the ear. Needles are inserted into specific points on the ear to stimulate the nerves.

"There are different types of medical acupuncture," said Duffy. "Your body is kind of like an energy source, and there are 365 acupuncture points and 12 major channels. Energy flows through these channels. In traditional medicine, these channels are like the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system. In Eastern language, these channels or meridians contain chi, an energy source that flows through the body.

"Trauma, disease, stress or psychological emotions block this energy or chi, and medical acupuncture is a technique to try to open blocked channels," he continued.

The colonel said there are various tools he uses to help in opening these blocked channels. Using auricular studs is one of these tools. Auricular studs are small metal studs inserted into the ear at various acupuncture points to treat acute pain.

"With ear studs, you basically treat nerve-ends that are found in the ear, which is like the body's circuit breaker," he said. "So if there are specific pain areas, you can find the increase in energy [in the ear] through a conventional ohm meter. You can find an area that lights up and that's where you would put a little auricular stud which helps to alleviate that blockage, thus decreasing the pain to that particular body region."

Acupuncture is often under the scrutiny of Western medical professionals mainly because it is not understood.

"In traditional medicine, medical providers make decisions based on evidence-based scientific studies," said the doctor. "There is no financial incentive to provide these double-blind placebo studies, so it's hard to compare acupuncture against the Western medical standard.

"Acupuncture has an association: the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture, which is starting to gather scientific data to validate a lot of the anecdotal studies that have been presented for centuries," he added.

Overall, Dr. Duffy is happy to provide medical care for all his patients with both Western and Eastern medicine. His ultimate goal is to keep them healthy and in the fight, regardless of the tools he uses.

"Our goal is to treat people, so when you treat people effectively and cure their problem and decrease their pain, it's very satisfying," he said.

"Maslow once said, 'if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,'" Duffy added. "In Western medicine when people have back problems, the only hammer we have usually would be anti-inflammatories, pain pills, or muscle relaxers.

"Medical acupuncture is a different tool that can relieve pain without the side effects of pharmaceuticals," the doctor concluded. "It optimizes the functionality of the combat warriors we have here in the theater to enable them to fulfill their combat mission."

• Date Taken: 04.29.2009
• Date Posted: 04.29.2009 11:13
• Story ID: 33005
• Location: BALAD, IQ