11/17/2004 East moves west: A career in alternative medicine isn't so alternative anymore
Kelly Westhoff
Hongji Lee was losing weight and no one knew why. Her energy level was down. Her stomach felt persistently uneasy. Already slender, she dropped 12 pounds in one month. Lee visited three different doctors but found no answers. "They couldn't help me," she explained. "The doctors just said it was stress."
Finally, Lee's mom brought her a package of herbs from a practitioner of oriental medicine in Chicago. She stewed the herbs into daily doses of tea. "After three months I was all better," Lee said. "My symptoms went away after one month and then I stayed on the herbs for two more months. It was so interesting to me that there was something that could help me, especially when no doctors could tell me what was wrong with me."
The Chinese herbs didn't just cure Lee, they changed her life. A St. Paul native, Lee graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in food science. She had worked in a laboratory as a food microbiologist. At the time of her mysterious illness she was 25 and working for a company that manufactured medical devices.
Today Lee is getting ready to graduate from the American Academy of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (AAAOM) in Roseville with a Master of Science degree in acupuncture and oriental medicine. Her degree required four years of rigorous, full-time study, plus clinical observation and an internship. She is also preparing to take a national board exam. Total cost: $33,000.
A decade ago, a Master's degree in acupuncture would have seemed truly alternative, but increasingly, alternative medicine is becoming a more mainstream course of study. Lee will graduate with eight other students in December; about 90 students attend classes at AAAOM. At Northwestern Health Sciences University in Bloomington, 170 students are enrolled in the acupuncture and oriental medicine master's degree program, said Bill Kuehl, director of admissions. This fall's incoming class of 55 was slightly larger than previous years.
Is a career as an acupuncturist for you? If you aren't afraid of needles, the answer could very well be yes. Career opportunities in the healing arts, or what many consider alternative medicine, seem to be growing. Many health plans today include chiropractic care. With referrals, some plans cover visits to a massage therapist or an acupuncturist. Even many hospitals are opening their doors to practitioners of alternative medicines.
So what does it take to have a career in the healing arts? Neither the AAAOM, nor Northwestern University, require a college degree in order to apply for the acupuncture and oriental science degree. Both do, however, require some post high school coursework—usually about two years of college classes.
Students of acupuncture and oriental medicine attend school full-time for roughly four years. Courses are not fluff; there are plenty of thick books and homework. Students study herbs, Chinese massage, pressure points and dietary therapy. They also memorize muscular systems, the names of bones and the functions of all the body's organs. In addition, they complete hundreds of hours of supervised clinical internships.
Along those same lines, chiropractic schools do not require applicants to have a college degree. A starting student does, however, need plenty of science classes under her belt including biology, organic chemistry, physics and general psychology. Northwestern University's chiropractic program, the only chiropractic program in Minnesota and one of only 16 accredited chiropractic degree programs in the country, works with incoming students to ensure they get the science classes they need, said Kuehl.
Chiropractic school also requires a hefty time commitment. At Northwestern University, students attend classes and clinical experiences fulltime for nearly four years. The total cost is around $80,000. Plenty of students are willing to pay the price; close to 200 students enrolled in the chiropractic program at Northwestern this year, said Kuehl. They will graduate with a doctorate degree in chiropractic.
Mastering massage
If that sounds like time and money that you don't have, attending school to become a massage therapist may be more practical. Northwestern University offers a program, but so do many other smaller schools. Peggy Hinz just completed her course work to become a certified Shiatsu therapist at CenterPoint, a massage therapy school in Dinkytown.
Hinz became interested in learning massage last year after taking an early retirement from Qwest where she had worked for 28 years. She admitted she stumbled upon the idea of returning to school at the age of 52. "Everything fell into place," Hinz said. "I had always admired a friend that was a massage therapist. She suggested I look at CenterPoint's website. So I did and there was an information session the next day. So I went to it. That was in June and I started school in September."
"I really wanted to learn a skill I could take with me," Hinz explained. "I can do this from my home, or, I jokingly say, in the nursing home to earn a little extra cash. We keep hearing that we are going to have to work longer, until we are older, and I needed a skill to do that."
Now, just 15 months after she started classes, Hinz has become a small business owner; she opened a small massage business with another woman she met through her courses. And, her tuition was a more manageable sum: $7,154, she said. She estimated she spent another $1,000 on books, a massage table, linens and other supplies.
Hinz doesn't expect to become rich off her massage business. She needs to build a clientele and that will take time. In the meantime, she is piecing together a living from three different jobs: she accepted a job as director of the clinic at CenterPoint, she also teaches classes and then there's her massage business.
But the lack of a stable, bring-home-the-bacon job isn't weighing on Hinz's mind. She has fallen in love with the flexibility of being a massage therapist. "I've had it with that kind of life, the corporate world," she said. "There's no way I ever, ever want a job where I have to be someplace at 8 a.m. again. Never. I am done with that life."
Health, healing and knowledge
The flexibility that can come with a career in the healing arts is a big attraction for many students, but there are other reasons as well. A career in alternative medicine can be the key to a midlife career change. It can be a mode of helping others. It can satisfy an intellectual pursuit.
Hongji Lee, the acupuncture student, is hoping her future will include a successful career change, an intellectual challenge and an opportunity to heal the sick. But first, she wants to pass a national board exam to become a certified practitioner of acupuncture and oriental medicine. The test isn't required for practitioners in Minnesota, but she wants to add the credential to her name.
A big part of the exam will test Lee's knowledge of the uses of various herbs. "Twigs, branches, leaves, earthworms. There's just a whole range of whatever you find on earth," explained Lee, during a tour of her school's pharmacy. Honey-colored wooden drawers stacked floor to ceiling hold secret cures, and Lee pulled open drawers at random to sift through the contents. Rhubarb root for constipation. Centipedes for arthritis. Dried chicken gizzards to dispel stones. Bits of luffa to encourage milk secretion.
"You have to learn which ones can be used alone and which can be combined," she said, pulling open more drawers to show tangerine skins, dandelion stems, dried scorpions and peony roots. "Some have two, three, five, six different functions," she said. "Some are bitter, some are pungent, sour, cold or neutral."
"And there are just so many things that the herbs can help," Lee continued, "insomnia, menopause, heart palpitations, the common cold and sinus problems, emotional disorders." Yet so often, she added, "people want instant results but they have chronic symptoms. Acupuncture and Chinese medicine are not one-time, cure-all magic. You have to recondition your body to work differently. We're really helping to rebalance the body and we are trying to treat the body as a whole."
Lee is also paying attention to the business side of her dream. "I want to establish a clinic and hopefully be profitable," she said. She has identified several locations where she'd like to set up shop and has already researched business plans and loan options; typically, patient fees range from $35-$100, depending on whether a patient sees her for acupuncture, tui na massage or herbal remedies. Lee knows that a big portion of her start up costs will be the drawer units that house the hundreds and hundreds of dried herbs she will need. Ideally, she confessed, her future clinic will have a back room where she can grind up herbs and dried insects so that her patients won't have to see any creepy crawlers.
But becoming a small business owner is just a small part of Lee's larger goal: healing people. "I'm in the process of helping people like myself who can't get help from Western medicine," she explained. "For people that feel hopeless that nothing is working, I want them to know there is something else out there."
Local schools offer programs in the healing arts
American Academy of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, 1925 W. County Rd. B2, Roseville. Trains students in acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine and Chinese, or tui na, massage. 651-631-0204, www.aaaom.org.
CenterPoint, 1313 Fifth St. S.E., Mpls. Offers four training programs for massage therapy. 612-617-9090, www.centerpointmn.com.
Northwestern Health Sciences University, 2501 W. 84th St., Bloomington. Offers a variety of healing arts programs including chiropractic, acupuncture and oriental medicine, massage therapy, plus an integrative health and wellness certificate. 952-888-4777, www.nwhealth.edu.
Northwestern Academy of Homeopathy, 5201 Eden Ave., Edina. Offers an 18-month training program in classical homeopathy; courses are held one weekend a month. Homeopathy uses herbs, minerals and sometimes fluids from animals to help the body heal itself. Emphasis is placed on the body as a whole. 612-794-6445, www.homeopathicschool.org.
Sister Rosalind School of Massage has campuses in West St. Paul, Rochester, Mankato, Sauk Rapids and Fargo. It offers licensure programs in massage therapy and reflexology. 651-554-3010, www.sisterrosalind.org.
Natural Healers' homepage provides basic information and web links to schools across the United States and Canada that specialize in preparing students for careers in the healing arts. Defines terms, explains certifications and discusses career opportunities. www.naturalhealers.com.
