Blacksburg Acupuncturist Treating Children for Free

By Angela Manese-Lee angela.manese-lee@roanoke.com 381-8621

BLACKSBURG — For children accustomed to the stark white walls of most medical offices, a visit to Robert Smith’s clinic offers something distinctly different.

Instead of stacks of Highlights magazines, there’s a rock and sand Zen garden in the waiting room. The smell of antiseptic is replaced by that of burning incense. And the treat that signals the end of a visit is not a colorful Band-Aid, but the opportunity to strike a Tibetan singing bowl.

And for parents accustomed to footing hundreds of dollars in medical bills, a visit to Smith’s Oriental Medicine & Acupuncture Clinic ends with something satisfyingly different. No bill.

In the three years Smith has operated his office in Blacksburg, the licensed acupuncturist has had a policy of treating children, most under the age of 13, for free.

“It’s just something I wanted to do to give back a little bit,” he said of waiving his typical $65 visit fee. “I believe in, and encourage M.D.s generally, to give 20 percent of their time to the community.”

Treatments often last stop

Smith is seeing six or seven youngsters regularly. They suffer from conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and chronic digestive issues.

“Usually with kids and Chinese medicine, you’re the last stop — parents don’t want to put them on drugs, or they have been on drugs and they haven’t had any resolution with anything,” he said.

So the California transplant offers something different.

Treatments for youngsters include Japanese Shonishin acupuncture, massage, herbal medicine and meditation therapy. And because he takes a broad, holistic approach to health care, Smith also advises on diet and lifestyle.

The first time Zack Stone stepped into Smith’s office, he was wary and, according to his mother, worn out.

The 11-year-old had seen physicians for trouble focusing, high energy and sometimes compulsive behavior. But the medicine they’d prescribed didn’t seem to help, and Zack was losing weight.

Looking for something better, Zack’s mom found one of Smith’s cards at a natural food store. Despite concerns about the cost of possible treatment, T.J. Stone gave Smith a call.

“At first, I was kind of wondering what it was,” Zack said.

And, at first, T.J. Stone wondered how she would pay for regular treatments of acupuncture, acupressure and massage.

Soon both their fears disappeared.

“It’s a huge relief,” T.J. Stone said of Smith’s policy.

“Parents are juggling a lot of costs, and it’s very difficult when costs are sort of dictating what kind of treatments you think you can afford for your child.”

Now, the kindergarten teacher hoped, visits could be scheduled based only on what was best for Zack.

And Zack found that his weekly visits to Smith were making a difference: he wasn’t daydreaming as much, he gained weight and he could now concentrate on the multiple-step math problems that once befuddled him.

“My teacher said I was a really spacing-out kid, and when we were in the computer lab I was always looking out the window watching the cars go by,” Zack explained. “But now I focus on the computer.”

Children respond well

Two years on, Smith and Zack continue to meet monthly, and on Wednesday afternoon, the visit began with a hug.

Once on the examining table, Zack talked about an upcoming science fair and Smith began taking his pulse.

After touching both his wrists, Smith took out an acupuncture needle and held it over acupuncture areas on Zack’s hands and feet.

Although there were about two inches between the needlepoint and Zack’s skin, the fifth-grader told Smith: “I could feel it on my skin. It feels like it’s vibrating a little bit.”

The acupuncturist nodded.

“The thing with children is they respond so well to touch and the energetics of the medicine,” Smith had said earlier.

“They don’t have the layers of stagnation and deficiencies that adults have, and they’re not as resistant to different energetics or different types of medicine.”

As a result, Smith said, the effects of acupuncture and Oriental medicine are often more noticeable in children than adults.

While the concept of alternative medicine is not quite as popular in Southwest Virginia as it is in the California community where he previously practiced, Smith said he’s found a market for the acupuncture and herbology he offers.

He now sees 45 to 60 patients each week, several of them coming to him through referrals from area doctors.

Sarah Bradford, a family doctor with Carilion Health System in Christiansburg, said that over the past six months she’s probably referred 10 to 20 patients, including two children, to Smith.

“Where I come from — Toronto, Canada — there’s a huge Chinese population, so Chinese medicine is part of our everyday culture out there,” Bradford said.

Bradford said the patients she’s sent to Smith have suffered from migraines, asthma, allergies and issues with menopause.

Ginny Weisz, an assistant nursing professor at Radford University, teaches a course on alternative therapies and served as director of an alternative therapy institute at Radford.

She said she’s seen a lot of local interest in Oriental medicine and acupuncture.

“The use of those two things is definitely on the rise. There’s quite a bit of interest in it,” Weisz said. “I will get a lot of inquiries here at the university from people who want to find out more and are willing to try it.”

Yin and Yang

n Traditional Chinese medicine is the name for an ancient system of health care from China. It is based on a concept of balanced qi, or vital energy, that is believed to flow throughout the body.

n Qi is proposed to regulate a person’s spiritual, emotional, mental and physical balance and to be influenced by the opposing forces of yin (negative energy) and yang (positive energy).

n Disease is proposed to result from the flow of qi being disrupted and yin and yang becoming imbalanced.

n Among the components of traditional Chinese medicine are herbal and nutritional therapy, restorative physical exercises, meditation, acupuncture and remedial massage.

SOURCE: National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, National Institutes of Health