Indications

Haiyang Li, Ph.D., OMD, L.Ac.

Baltimore has such a strong medical community with the best medical school and most prestigious hospitals. There are so many big doctors in town, who prescribe medications powerful enough to knock you out, perform big procedures to give you new organs or new joints, and use the latest technologies such as laser beam and radiation to remove the sick tissues. You and/or your insurance may pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for the expensive drugs and operations.

Here I am, a small guy immigrated from Shanghai, China, who uses little acupuncture needles, leaves and roots in this tiny house. Many conditions that I treat everyday are often too small for the big doctors and hospitals to look into, such as:

In this little facility, each day I do good work that frees patients from their miseries, while my fee is so small, may be a fraction of many medications and other medical procedures, even less than what you pay to take your cat or dog to the vet for a check up or a minor thing. What do you have to lose with acupuncture? Just the pain.

Today, there is a new name for this form of ancient medicine, "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM). My service produced in this small office does often complement conventional medicine performed by the big doctors and hospitals. As a little guy, I often treat patients before operations to mentally and physically prepare them for anesthesia and surgery, so that they will have less or no anxiety, normal blood pressure, relaxed muscles, less bleeding, and no pain with lower dose of apathetic medicine when going in operating room. I also offer post surgical treatments to help ease pain and to promote early and full recovery. I help cancer patients to be able to go through chemo and radiation by minimizing the side effects, and to stimulate their immune function, which is the key to winning the battle against the disease.

Sometimes, my treatments turn out as alternatives to certain medications and surgeries. For example, many patients come before going on antidepressant or sleeping pills and then find themselves need no medication or less medication. Others use acupuncture to reduce and/or quit certain medications or narcotics, to which they have got addicted. Some patients get so much relief from my little needles or roots that they postpone or even cancel their scheduled surgery or joint replacement. Many pregnant women with breech positioned fetus use acupuncture to turn their babies around naturally instead of having "C" section. This procedure is so small that it only uses two 0.25-inch acupuncture needles on the little toes for 20 minutes. In this small office, I have seen the most stubborn and rare illnesses, which do not respond to conventional medicine, such as:

As a little guy, my secret of success is to spend enough time and energy on each patient, while being a good listener to get through history and understanding of the condition. Then, I do my research to develop an individualized treatment plan using my training, experience and collection of literature. It has been such an adventurous career to solve mysterious conditions for the last 24 years. I have always had a desire to write a book on the most memorable cases. Well, let me start working my book now, to share my career experience with patients and health care practitioners.

Case 2. Dr. H, an orthopedist, who came with sciatica for a month. He went to a beach where he sprained his back when he attempted to pick up a camcorder in a hurry as ocean water was washing up the shore. As a result, he developed herniated disk at L5 and S1 with severe pain going down from one side of his back through the leg to the toes. His colleagues planned to operate on him. However, he came to my office saying he was a kind of person who never took medications for any reasons although he had severe insomnia for years. He could hardly walk due to the pain at the time but he didn’t consider having pain pills or anti-inflammatory. He said he would try anything to avoid surgery. Fortunately, he became totally pain free after only one acupuncture treatment and resumed his work in operating room after that weekend.