At first glance, Dr. Chih-Wei Rei’s class looks like the set of a horror film. Students are walking around with needles sticking out of their foreheads, the tops of their skulls and various other body parts.
But these students are practicing the ancient healing art of acupuncture on one another at the National College of Chiropractic in Lombard.
“It doesn’t hurt. Learning to draw blood was worse,” said Jim Weathers, 26, of Carol Stream.
Rei circles the room, explaining meridians and numbered acupuncture points to the 15 students in the class, touching them here and there, reinserting a needle, or making an X on a leg with a ballpoint pen to mark a spot.
Acupuncture is an elective at the school, said James Winterstein, a chiropractor and president of the college. NCC was the first school in Illinois, back in 1972, to offer the course, he said, and the practice is still not legal in many states.
Student Jim Cox, 26, of Ft. Wayne, Ind., said he would not be able to offer acupuncture to his patients when he returns home, but hopes to be able to in the future, as Indiana is rewriting its laws.
Cox and Weathers extolled the virtues of acupuncture, saying that it is a natural technique which stimulates the body’s own energy sources for healing.
“Last week we had this patient who has sinus problems,” Weathers said, “and was frustrated from trying a lot of other cures that didn’t work. A week after the acupuncture treatment, she came back and her sinuses had drained.”
Rei had the distinction of being in the first class in China that certified acupuncturists as medical doctors, he said. He teaches at the school and has a practice in Lisle.
Among other things, acupuncture can treat many illnesses that can’t be cured with surgery, he said, such as arthritis and colitis.
“It’s a very useful alternative treatment,” Winterstein said, “and we are finally beginning to see more and more scientific support for it.”
