Electroacupuncture: The Human Guinea Pig Tries Again

Always being ready and willing to be a human "guinea pig" for the purpose of science, I have begun another Clinical Trial orchestrated by me! Some of you might recall that in January I began taking large doses of Vitamin B3 (after exhaustive research to uncover an answer to my chronic neutropenia) and I have been able to reverse over a year of neutropenia (low infection fighting cells). Daily, expensive Neupogen injections have been replaced with five 500 mg B3 capsules daily. A week of Neupogen would have cost $2800-$3500. A week's worth of Vitamin B3 - around $5.00.

I uncovered a study about a man with the exact leukemia that I have who used electroacupuncture to stimulate his bone marrow and to reverse his anemia (low red cells and/or hemoglobin) and thrombocytopenia (low platelets). Myelosuppression occurs from the treatment of leukemia and/or from the leukemia itself infiltrating the bone marrow where the blood cell lines are produced. Since my leukemia infiltrated bone marrow struggles to produce these blood cells, I decided that this alternative treatment is worth consideration. I asked my trusted family physician (also my acupuncturist) to review this literature and we agreed that it is a worthwhile endeavor.

Today we drew blood so that we can have a baseline reading on all of my counts prior to the electroacupuncture and then I received the first weekly electroacupuncture treatment. Please pray that God might use this very "off-label" treatment to produce miraculous results for me that will confound the best of physicians!

For those of you interested in acupuncture, these points are used in this protocol:

Table 1. Points Used in Electroacupuncture

Point
Name
Function
Peripheral Nerve
Segment

BL11
Dashu
Point of the Sea of Blood
Primary ramus
T1

BL 17
Geshu
Hui-Meeting point of Blood
Primary ramus
T7

LR 3
Tai Chong
Nourishment of Liver Blood
Deep peroneal nerve
L5, S1

SP 6
San Yin Jiao
Three Yin Intersection
Tibial nerve
S1, S23

You might ask what is electroacupuncture? After the acupuncture needles are carefully inserted at the precise points, the needles are manually turned by the physician. Then electric wires are clipped to the needles and wired to other needles. A microcurrent generator releases a continuous cycle of electricity that stimulates the needles.

This particular group of points combined with the electrical current might have been a bit more painful than my normal acupuncture, however, I am willing to try anything that might benefit me.

This study is entitled: Reversal Of Chemotherapy-Induced Myelosuppression With Electroacupuncture by Gerald W. Grass, MD. It was published in the Medical Acupuncture Journal.