Mona Abdel-Rahman loves needlework, but of a very special kind: Abdel-Rahman is an acupuncturist, and with her husband, Tom Fiero, she has just opened a new office in the lower level of the Sawtooth Mountain Clinic. It’s called Crescent Moon Acupuncture, and it has been a long time coming.

Earlier this year, Abdel-Rahman completed studies for her masters degree at the American Academy of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine in Roseville. The program requires four years, but the great distance between Grand Marais and Roseville stretched that to more than six years for Abdel-Rahman. For most of that time, she spent every other week in Roseville.

Her dedication and persistence have now paid the promised dividends: She is a licensed acupuncturist and owner of a spanking new clinic.

In a sense, however, Abdel-Rahman has been moving in this direction her entire life. Although Abdel-Rahman has 22 years of service as a registered nurse, and is fully fluent in Western medicine, she first “had an inkling” about alternative medicine as a child.

“My grandparents were gardeners, and of eight kids, I was the only one who took to it,” she said. “I was just very interested in plants and what they could do. Later, I found I suffered from celiac disease, and I was able to treat it naturally through diet, herbs and exercise. I didn’t think I would live to be 50, and now I feel I will live another 50 years. Something about natural medicine just spoke to me.”

Celiac disease is a debilitating autoimmune disorder of the small intestine characterized by an inflammatory reaction to gluten protein present in wheat, barley and rye.

In China, Abdel-Rahman said, herbs play a much larger role in traditional medicine than in the United States, where the emphasis is more focused on acupuncture. In part, she said, that difference is because of the great amount of study required to understand how to use specific herbs in combination to achieve the desired result. It’s a very complicated body of knowledge. Also, she said, “Chinese culture embraces food as medicine so they naturally use herbs for healing purposes.”

“Much of the research in the United States has focused on the use of acupuncture for treating pain,” she said, “although studies suggest that it can be effective in treating a range of conditions, including respiratory and digestive disorders, depression, morning sickness and post-chemotherapy nausea.”

Whereas Western medicine stresses standardized treatment, acupuncture is tailored to the individual, Abdel-Rahman said. “Every patient is a little different; every acupuncturist is a little different,” she said. “And Western biomedicine does not understand Qi (pronounced “chi”).”

Qi is loosely defined as “life force” or “energy flow,” which some writers associate with electromagnetic currents and fields running through the body, Abdel-Rahman said. When you are healthy, Qi is balanced, she explained. So when she inserts the very thin acupuncture needles into patients, the needles work to balance what is unbalanced, she said. The positioning of the needles will vary according to the pattern presented by each person, she added.

In addition to acupuncture, Abdel-Rahman offers other forms of traditional Oriental healing, such as cupping and tui na massage. Tui na can be especially helpful in treating infants and young children, Abdel-Rahman said. Rarely are acupuncture needles used on the very young.

Cupping – which actually has an extensive history in Western medicine – involves swiping a burning swab through a glass cup, then placing the cup on the skin, where the partial vacuum inside the cup creates a suction. Moving the cup over sore muscles, Abdel-Rahman said, helps dissipate stagnant blood and allows fresh blood to flow into the area.

Increasingly, Abdel-Rahman said, doctors and other health practitioners are finding ways to integrate Western medicine and the more ancient Oriental methods. Doctors and nurses at the Sawtooth Mountain Clinic and North Shore Hospital and Care Center, where Abdel-Rahman still works as an RN on a casual basis, have been supportive.

“Conditions that require long-term management tend to respond well to integrative medicine,” Abdel-Rahman said. “Doctors appreciate that what I provide can fill a gap. They can refer patients to me who have difficult chronic conditions, and who would like to try an alternative to conventional treatments that may rely heavily on drug therapy.”

Integration of Western and Oriental medicine is moving ahead, she said, but slowly here in the Midwest. The Mayo Clinic now has an acupuncture clinic, she said, and “people in rural communities seem very open to what I offer. They are educating themselves, saying that they want this kind of treatment made available.”

Crescent Moon Acupuncture has been open since mid-July, and patients have begun to trickle in, Abdel-Rahman said. “We’ve just started marketing. It will come. I’m in it for the long run.”

The clinic has scheduled an open house at the Sawtooth Mountain Clinic lower level conference room, for Sunday Sept. 25, 1 – 3 PM. Call 370-9283 for more information.