Some days Sharlene M. Shellito couldn't get out of bed. On days she did struggle out from under the covers, she'd be so exhausted by the time she finished her shower, she'd flop back into the sack.

That was a few months ago. After a recent visit to Tonghua Yang's Chinese Acupuncture Center in Mt. Lebanon, Shellito was giggling in anticipation of going shopping with her sister.

	Tony Tye/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
	Acupuncturist Tonghua Yang inserts needles into a patient being treated for a rotator cuff injury. Cables attached to the needles deliver a mild electric current as part of the therapy

Since June, Shellito, 47, of Saegertown, Crawford County, has traveled more than 100 miles each week to Yang's office for acupuncture treatments to control her fibromyalgia. This disorder causes fatigue, depression, aches and pains, tingling and numbness in the extremities, as well as a metallic taste in the mouth.

"It's like somebody sticking a penny in your mouth and you feel like someone is beating the living tar out of you all the time," she said.

She tried a host of drugs and other therapies, but says acupuncture has been the most effective so far. "I can honestly say I'm seeing noticeable results. I have the energy to go to work now for at least three to four hours and feel like I can get something accomplished."

One by one, with converts like Shellito, the ancient Chinese therapy that uses hair-thin needles at specific points in the skin to promote healing, is steadily growing in Western Pennsylvania. Although it's not catching on here as fast as on the East and West coasts, local practitioners say they're encouraged by the acceptance by patients and the medical community over the past decade."

It's a real paradox," said Dr. Ronald Glick, director of the seven-year-old Center for Complementary Medicine at UPMC Shadyside. "Being a fairly conservative city, you would expect Pittsburgh to be slow to accept acupuncture. But even when I started out eight years ago, there was very wide acceptance by the doctors that I worked with at the university and the patients."

Indeed, it's the doctors who are leading the way. More M.D.s, about 15, practice acupuncture in the region than non-doctors, about 10.

Patients now can find acupuncture at the biggest local hospitals -- UPMC Health System, West Penn Allegheny Health System and Mercy -- as well as at private doctors' and acupuncturists' offices, clinics and fertility centers.

Of the 15,000 acupuncturists practicing in the United States, about 450 practice in Pennsylvania, mostly in and around Philadelphia. There are 1,200 each in New York and Maryland and 6,000 in California, said Dave Molony, vice president and executive director of professional affairs for the American Association of Oriental Medicine.

He estimates Americans spend $50 million to $100 million annually on the therapy.

Experiencing is believing for most acupuncture converts, which was the case for Dr. Freddie Fu, chairman of the orthopedic surgery department at UPMC and head of sports medicine.

Fu said acupuncture helped improve the range of motion in his left leg, which was broken when a motorist in August 2001 hit him on his bicycle as he was riding through Homewood. Fu was so impressed with the therapy he made it available at the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine on the South Side. He invited Yang to practice there.

Bridget Clarke, 35, of Regent Square, sees Yang there for a nagging hamstring injury after she tore a ligament. She says it helps alleviate the pain and tightness she experiences when she runs.

"I don't know the science behind it but I know these are good needles," she said. A row of needles protruded from the back of her leg, all hooked to a machine providing electrical stimulation.

"We see tons of patients for therapy and nonoperative things that Western techniques may not be able to treat," said Fu, who was born in Hong Kong. "I think definitely there's a place for acupuncture. Surgery is not for everyone and a lot of people don't like taking pills for pain or allergies. With acupuncture, patients induce their bodies' systems and defenses to heal themselves."

Ancient roots

The Chinese have practiced acupuncture for 3,000 years. The theory behind the practice posits that energy, called qi or chi, flows through the body along meridians near the surface of the skin.

For good health, according to Chinese medicine, chi must be balanced throughout the body. People become ill when this energy flow is blocked or disrupted.

Acupuncturists place needles at specific points (called acupoints) along these so-called meridians to redirect the flow of chi and return the body to balance.

A team of researchers in Korea in the 1960s claimed they uncovered an independent series of fine ductlike tubes corresponding to traditional acupuncture meridians. In 1985, researcher Pierre deVernejoul at the University of Paris injected radioactive isotopes into the acupoints of people and tracked their movement with special gamma imaging camera. He believed they traveled along acupuncture meridians because they moved in a different manner than those injected into blood vessels, suggesting a system of separate pathways in the body.

But many doctors are not convinced. Dr. Stephen Barrett, who along with 100 other doctors, hosts the Web site, Quackwatch.com, argue that acupuncture is good for nothing.

Barrett says acupuncture is unproven and the American Medical Association says that alternative medicine, including acupuncture, has never been shown to be efficacious.

However, the World Health Organization and the NIH have cited a litany of physical and emotional conditions that acupuncture can treat. And the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1997 reclassified the acupuncture needle from "experimental" to "medical device" status.

"In the late 1970s there was a lot of ignorance surrounding acupuncture and Oriental medicine," said Dr. Donald Yoon a doctor and acupuncturist in Monroeville. "At the beginning some people said acupuncture is nothing but the power of suggestion and voodoo medicine, however, after two decades of practice and grassroots growth people are becoming more receptive and find it works."

Today, Yoon at his family practice in Monroeville treats as many as 30 patients per day with acupuncture for headaches, allergies, asthma, arthritis and back and other chronic pain.

Since opening his center in Mt. Lebanon in March 2002, Yang says he has treated almost 600 patients. Yang earned his medical degree in China and in 1987 worked on Dr. Thomas Starzl's liver transplant team as a visiting scholar. Yang, however, longed to return to his roots and promote the "science" of acupuncture and Oriental medicine.

Glick, of UPMC Shadyside, says the best way to promote the use of acupuncture is to prove its efficacy through rigorous research.

He practices a form of acupuncture called percutaneous electrical nerve stimulation that is a Western form of acupuncture. It does not follow the use of traditional Chinese acupuncture points. PENS is a form of pain management that treats at the level of the nerves at the site of the pain, he said.

Glick, along with the UPMC Pain Evaluation and Treatment Institute and Dr. Debra Weiner, the principle investigator, published a study in the May issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society that found PENS acupuncture reduced pain and improved strength and range of motion for older adults with arthritis in their spine.

The institute soon will begin a larger study on this subject, funded by the National Institutes of Health.

"Our hope is that if we show this approach is helpful ... other people would recognize that and conceivably Medicare and other insurance companies would say they would cover this form of acupuncture. You have to convince people what you are doing is really helping."

Pennsylvania law requires insurance carriers to cover acupuncture only for automobile or work-related injuries. The typical acupuncture treatment costs $50 to $90 and most ailments require from one to six office visits or more depending on the ailment.

Thomas Ost, who practices at UPMC Shadyside's center, says acupuncturists need to emphasize the science behind the technique and de-emphasize the more mystical elements like the balance of yin and yang and controlling one's chi, jargon that most people don't recognize.

"A lot of people think acupuncture is an ancient art, an esoteric practice, that it's poetic," Ost said. "Well it is all those things but we have to get away from these notions and explain it in Western terms..." There has to be more of a Western understanding of acupuncture."

For Yang's patient, Shellito, no scientific data is needed to convince her.

"When I get out of bed in the morning, I feel I can cope. Now the good hours are lasting a little longer."