Treating Allergies With Acupuncture on KMOT-TV North Dakota's NBC News Leader

Treating Allergies With Acupuncture | Video

Anne Kelly

1/16/2009

For allergy sufferers, medication is the only answer to relief.

And there are a lot of drugs on the market, from Claritin to Cingulair, Allegra to Zyrtec, and they all promise relief.

But some people are turning to alternative medicine to clear allergy symptoms, and it doesn`t involve pills at all.

For some, the answer to treating allergies is not in a bottle, but in the tiny prick of a needle.

The list of allergies sisters Lisa and Lori, who didn`t want to give their last name, share between the two of them was once endless. Grass, pollen, mosquito bites...

"Wheat, dairy, a lot of spices, grains, basically you name it I was probably allergic to it," says Lisa.

They tried over the counter and prescription medications. Some didn`t work, some were too potent...

"You eventually get to the point where you say take this pill, this pill, this pill and they have side effects for every single one and you get tired of it," Lisa says.

So as a last ditch effort the women opted to try something a little different, acupuncture.

"By using acupuncture I`m able to balance out all of the meridians or all of the lines of energy so they work properly with that sensitivity of with that pollen or food that`s really bothering that person," says Fay Johnson, a master of acupuncture.

Johnson says at least 70-percent of her patients visit her allergy relief. And regardless of what kind of allergy she`s treating, she says the procedure is the same.

"You place the needles in the same positions, they`re placed in eight different spots and those eight different spots correspond to eight different meridians you were born with when you came into this world, and that tells the body to get back to the way it used to be when you were just a little baby and everything was perfect," Johnson says.

From there, Johnson says, it`s up to the body to decide which allergy it will treat. And just one treatment can often clear away one allergy for a lifetime.

And the sisters says acupuncture is slowly but surely clearing away their allergies, one treatment at a time.

Johnson says while acupuncture may sound painful, it really isn`t.

She compares the prick of each needle to the feeling you`d experience when being bitten by a mosquito.

Johnson works at Dakota Natural Health Center in Bismarck. You can reach her at 258-9418.

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