By RYAN LANCASTER
Staff Reporter
Most people take great care to avoid needles except for that occasional, doctor-prescribed jab in the arm.
But acupuncturist Saiah Schneider, who recently started accepting patients at the Natural Health Center in Medical Lake, is a different sort of doctor who uses a very different set of tools. For the past eight years he has practiced a “painless” style of acupuncture to treat a variety of ailments using needles measuring the size of a human hair.
“With acupuncture there's kind of that preconceived hurdle of the needle,” he said. “I think the idea of getting a shot is what patients have in mind, but it's not even in the same category. People come in and are usually nervous at first but within 15 minutes they're relaxed – either sleeping or on the verge of sleep.”
Schneider was born in Cheney and raised in Spokane, where he developed an interest in Oriental Medicine at an early age after a bad leg break left him with lingering pain that traditional, western medicine was unable to remedy. His parents began looking at complimentary medicine such as massage, nutrition and acupuncture, which Schneider says, “totally turned my life around.”
The healing experience stuck with him into early adulthood, when he decided to pursue a career in acupuncture and traditional Chinese herbal medicine, a field that has developed over a period of more than 2,000 years. He graduated with honors from Seattle's Bastyr University in 2002 and until recently was practicing and teaching at the Atlantic Institute of Oriental Medicine in South Florida.
He and his wife moved back to the Northwest in order to be closer to family and, after meeting Natural Health Center proprietor Dr. Christopher Wellwood, Schneider decided to set up shop at the Medical Lake practice, making him the only acupuncturist now practicing in the West Plains.
While modern western medicine tends to focus on a certain area of the body, traditional Chinese medicine looks at the whole person, Schneider said. “Nothing happens in isolation – that's a basic tenet of Chinese medicine. If you have a problem in your lower back it can affect your shoulder. The internal can affect the external.”
The goal of Chinese medicine is to achieve equilibrium, as a balanced state allows healing to occur naturally. “That's what we're really trying to do with our patients, give them a modality that doesn't really require medication, but gives the body the chance to heal itself,” he said. “We basically give the body information and then the body regulates and gets back to the place it was before the injury; that's the ideal.”
Schneider said acupuncture is most widely recognized for treating acute and chronic pain, but the treatment is also useful in relieving ailments associated with pain, such as sleeplessness, stress, depression and irritability. He said his main objective is to treat symptoms, but in order to do that he must “activate the body” to become healthier.
“In Chinese medicine they use the analogy, ‘the root and the branch.' The branch is the symptom, but the root is the underlying imbalance that's creating the symptom or not allowing the body to heal,” he said. “When there's pain, there's blockage. Something's not flowing. We're trying to open up circulation, and when the circulation is open the body has a better chance to heal itself.”
Schneider is available Monday through Saturday at the Natural Health Center of Medical Lake and can be reached by calling (509) 299-6900.
Ryan Lancaster can be reached at [email protected].
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