By Mike Armstrong
Writer, Carbon County Comet
“If you don’t take the time to be healthy, disease will make time for you,” Dr. Catherine Coudray OMD (oriental medical doctor). “Prevention and maintenance is better than suffering from major health concerns. It is like owning a car. It is easier to do maintenance than major repairs.”
Coudray understands this well after practicing her form of medicine for 30 years.
She was born in Sweden in a town between Stockholm and Gothenburg. Coudray was raised on a farm where she learned to love horses and it is why she bought a ranch outside Laramie a little over a year ago. Before that, she had a practice in Florida where she treated patients with acupuncture and herbal medicine.
When she moved to Wyoming, Coudray opened an office in Laramie.
“There are only 21 registered people who practice acupuncture in Wyoming,” Coudray said. “Many of my patients come from towns and cities nearby. Carbon County residents come from different towns there and account for a solid percentage of my business. It is flattering that they come the distance to get treated by me.”
For those who don’t know much about this treatment, the history of acupuncture is one of the oldest forms of medicine known to mankind, although it is relatively new to the United States.
“Acupuncture came to the United States because of Richard Nixon in 1972,” Coudray pointed out.
Acupuncture was, for the most part, unknown to Americans until former President Nixon’s trip to China in 1972, where acupuncture was considered a useful medical practice and was noticed by people visiting from the United States. Upon his return, Major General Walter R. Tkach, of the U.S. Air Force and physician to Nixon, wrote an article in the July 1972 issue of Readers Digest entitled, “I Watched Acupuncture Work,” which helped to popularize acupuncture in the United States. Right before Nixon’s trip to China, James Reston, vice president of The New York Times, had an appendectomy performed in Beijing, China, under acupuncture anesthesia. He was awake during the entire surgical operation.
This was not the first time acupuncture had been studied by doctors in the United States.
In the early 1800s, articles about acupuncture were published in several American medical journals. Dr. Franklin Bache, a physician, experimented on prisoners, published in the North American Medical and Surgical Journal in 1826 and concluded that acupuncture was, at the time, the most effective pain-management technique. Bache was the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, who founded the University of Pennsylvania, which established the first medical school in the United States. He translated a French medical book on acupuncture in 1825. In 1829, a surgical book, Elements of Operative Surgery, contained a section describing acupuncture techniques, and in 1836, Dr. William Markley Lee wrote an article in the Southern Medical Journal recommending acupuncture for pain relief. In the same year, he also published, in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, an article entitled “Acupuncture as a Remedy for Rheumatism.”
Coudray said there are different theories about where acupuncture truly started and it is possible Nepal was the first place and traveled down to China.
According to authors Gwei-Djen Lu and Joseph Needham in their book Celestial Lancets: A History and Rationale of Acupuncture and Moxa, if acupuncture was practiced during the Shang Dynasty (1766 to 1122 BC), organic materials like thorns, sharpened bones, or bamboo may have been used. Once methods for producing steel were discovered, it would replace all other materials since it could be used to create very fine but sturdy needles.
Coudray said the courts of the different dynasties in China revered acupuncturists but blamed them if the Emperor got ill. They were not doing their job, so they were often executed.
“Due to this, many Chinese doctors opted out of serving and the royals went to Vietnam and other countries to find doctors to serve,” Coudray said.”They were more or less prisoners, but they brought their refinements to the medicine as did other practitioners from other countries, especially Japan.”
China and Korea sent medical missionaries that spread traditional Chinese medicine to Japan, starting around 219 AD. In 553, several Korean and Chinese citizens were appointed to re-organize medical education in Japan and they incorporated acupuncture as part of that system. Japan later sent students back to China and established acupuncture as one of five divisions of the Chinese State Medical Administration System.
Coudray said her acupuncture treatments are based on the Japanese style. She said it is more flexible in treating what ails a person.
“I work to get the body to rebalance itself,” Coudray said. “Once the body is balanced, it can repair itself.”
Coudray compares the body to a computer. She said the body is born with a set of instructions and structures that work together to build, maintain and repair itself.
“Injuries and weaknesses can complicate the healing process,” Coudray explained. “Pressures and stress can create complications when the body is trying to heal itself.”
The body being out of balance may sound mystical to some, but acupuncture has been around for thousands of years and has benefited countless who tried it.
According to a Fox News study in 2013, less than one percent of the US population reported having used acupuncture in the early 1990s. By the early 2010s, more than 14 million Americans reported having used acupuncture as part of their health care.
The US Congress created the Office of Alternative Medicine in 1992 and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) declared support for acupuncture for some conditions in November 1997. In 1999, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine was created within the NIH. Acupuncture became the most popular alternative medicine in the United States.
The World Health Organization recommends that before being licensed or certified, an acupuncturist receives 200 hours of specialized training if they are a physician and 2,500 hours for non-physicians; many governments have adopted similar standards.
Coudray, who has put in the time with an education along with her practice, understands how the body functions and how important it is for it to get balance, whether fighting the lower back or facing a disease like cancer.
“When we get out of balance or have a loss of homeostasis, acupuncture and herbal medicine work naturally to correct the imbalances in our systems and what we can improve,” Coudray said. “On-going treatments for maintenance reinforce this balance and remind the body how to maintain homeostasis.”
Coudray said her patients vary in age and needs. She reflected that her younger patients came in for relief of stress and insomnia, while older patients are using acupuncture for pain and disease.
“I am just very happy to be in a profession that can make a real impact on a person’s quality of life,” Coudray said. “Helping a person heal is very rewarding.”
