SAN CLEMENTE : Clinic Cure Requires Steel Nerves
While actually confronting Dr. Yuan Zhi Fu’s acupuncture needles has sent some would-be patients rushing to the coffee shop next door, many others are overcoming their apprehensions to find relief in ancient Chinese medicine.
In the five years since Fu and her husband, Richard Lee, founded Family Acupuncture Center on Avenida del Mar in downtown San Clemente, the practice has grown steadily.
“In the beginning people were skeptical,” Fu said. “But after a while, people began to know what I could do for them.”
The Chinese medical techniques used by Fu are based on the fundamental principle of Qi (pronounced chee), which is the vital life energy that flows through the body.
According to ancient Taoist texts, Qi is formed through the union of Yin and Yang, which in simple terms can be broken down to water and fire. How these forces combine and flow in the body determines a person’s health, Fu said.
“You need the balance,” she said. “If Qi is not proper in the body, the Chinese doctor can immediately go to work.”
By inserting fine, disposable metal needles into the body and channeling a low electrical current through them, Fu said, she is able to get blocked-up Qi moving again, relieving such ailments as hypertension, fatigue, backaches and even impotence.
“When a room is stale, you open a window and get (the air) moving again,” she said. “Using the needles is almost like opening a window and letting more fresh air into the body.”
During an average acupuncture session, which costs about $40, a patient feels a slight tingling and pulsation from the needles and electrical current.
Fu also uses magnets and medicinal herbs, usually brewed up in teas, to treat Yin or Yang deficiencies. In a back room at the clinic is a storehouse of exotic herbs imported from China, as well as barks, roots and insect shells, which in China are brewed into a remedy for preventing children from wetting their beds.
Fu, 36, said she has known since the third grade that she wanted to become a doctor. She was educated at Guangxi Medical College in southern China, where she studied Chinese and Western medicine.
About nine years ago, Fu came to the United States on a cancer research exchange program between Guangxi Medical College and the USC Cancer Institute. She spent 18 months at the institute before joining Baraka Health Center in Santa Monica. She decided to stay in California after meeting her husband, an American engineer.
In the past year, Fu has also been able to bring other family members to San Clemente. Her father, a trained pharmacist, mixes the herbal medicines at the clinic, while her mother grows herbs and cooks herbal soups and poultices.
Fu’s younger brother Chin, a licensed doctor in China, practices acupressure and massages at the clinic.
In the future, Fu said she hopes that the combining of Chinese and Western medicine, already common in China, would become accepted practice in the United States.
Mixing the two creates “a very good system,” she said. “A patient has a much better health care.”
