Meet The Doctor

Doctor restores balance for needle-shy patients
By Natalie Fieleke
nfieleke@newstribune.com

When Dr. Ted Tang joined Health Quest Physicians Group in March, he brought equipment that speaks of his past and his future with an ancient treatment.

The Chinese started treating the body's energy patterns or “chi” with acupuncture more than 4,000 years ago.

Tang's father was a surgeon, and patients frequently asked him about acupuncture, so he bought a model and some manuals, but he never used it in his practice, Tang said.

When Tang graduated from the University of Missouri and attended Logan College of Chiropractic near St. Louis, he took the family interest one step further - earning his doctorate to become a chiropractor as well as becoming certified in Acupuncture.

“By treating the body with acupuncture, we restore balance to the meridians, or energy patterns, and thus restore health to the individual,” Tang said.

Tang joined the physician's group in March, moving from the St. Louis area with his wife, Natalie, a teacher.

For them, settling in Jefferson City seemed natural, since they had both always loved the area, Tang said.

While Tang is one of the few chiropractors in town also certified in acupuncture, a treatment unfamiliar to some Mid-Missourians, he said he's gotten an overwhelmingly positive reception.

On a cart in his office, Tang keeps a human model, which once belonged to his father, to illustrate the body's 12 meridians, and along those lines, points that can be stimulated with acupuncture.

It comes in handy for educating the typical patient about acupuncture, just the first step in Tang's line of treatment.

If the patient decides to go ahead with the treatment, Tang uses a device he calls an acugraph to touch the most active point on each meridian.

From the digital information relayed to his laptop from the acugraph, he then creates a chart to give a more comprehensive picture of energy levels in the body.

Once a patient is diagnosed, they may choose to go with traditional acupuncture, using hair-fine needles to stimulate the meridians, or they can go with a newer option - needle-less acupuncture.

For the many people who don't like needles, Tang uses electroacupuncture, a probe-like instrument with a dull metal tip, to stimulate the points along the meridian using tiny electrical pulses in place of needles.

Tang said this newer method of treatment comes as a relief for those who don't like needles, but whose condition, whether it's fatigue, back pain, arthritis, allergies or asthma, can be improved through acupuncture.

“Acupuncture has been around thousands of years, and most of the time, they used pulse diagnosis, looking at the skin and tongue, detecting smells ...” Tang said.

“It could take 40 years to master the old technique. This computer technology takes a lot of work out of what we used to have to do.”