Boulder County: The acupuncture epicenter

BOULDER — Boulder County is overflowing with acupuncturists – 321 licensed practitioners to be exact – which is a huge number, even when compared to the much larger Denver market, which has only 261, according to data compiled by Colorado Health Institute.

So why are there so many licensed acupuncturists in Boulder County?

For starters, there are three acupuncture schools in the area, says Joanne Neville, clinic director at Southwest Acupuncture College in Boulder.

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“People come to Boulder to go to acupuncture school and who would want to leave?” she asks. “Chief Niwot’s curse gets you.”

She tells students at her college that they should consider taking jobs in other parts of the country that aren’t so saturated with licensed acupuncturists, but “it is beautiful here and people want to live here. That’s the short story,” Neville says.

“I think that Boulder County especially and Colorado in general, it attracts people who are very health conscious,” she says. It isn’t just acupuncturists. The area is also teeming with massage therapists and social workers. People who want to help people.

“People who take care of their own bodies are more likely to want to take care of other people as well. That is the mindset that Boulder attracts and holds onto,” Neville says.

Joe Hanel, manager of public policy outreach at Colorado Health Institute, which crunches the health care employment numbers, says his agency has not done an analysis of the data on acupuncturists.

“I could speculate that culture and economics plays a role in Boulder’s popularity with acupuncturists. Boulder is a fairly wealthy county where more people could pay for this service that’s often not covered by insurance,” he says. “And, Boulder seems to be a place that’s friendly to alternative medicine, although I don’t have data to back up that statement.”

Suzanne Williamson, Office of the Registrar at the Institute of Taoist Education & Acupuncture Inc. in Louisville, says that the Boulder County community has “always embraced alternative forms of medicine and are open to treatments like acupuncture. Having lived in Marin County, California, as well as the Santa Cruz, California, area, Boulder feels very similar in their outlook on health care.”

She agrees with Neville in that having two acupuncture schools in Boulder County does impact the number of licensed practitioners in the area.

“Many students settle near their alma maters, creating a glut of practitioners nearby. I noticed the same situation around my chiropractic college in California,” Williamson says.

People who live in Boulder County are very active. They do yoga, pilates, get massages and go hiking and skiing.

“All of those things will lead to injuries. Acupuncture is one of those things that treats injuries really well, among other things. They go hand-in-hand, an active lifestyle and the people who can put you back together,” Neville says.

When Neville first started school, the Boulder area had 100 licensed practitioners, so the area was already fairly saturated, she says.

“As Boulder grows, people carve out their own niches. There’s an upswing in people doing community acupuncture, which is where you actually treat several people in the same room and can do it more on a sliding scale because they are treating multiple people at a time in easy chairs. That’s something that makes acupuncture more affordable for the common person,” Neville adds.

Other acupuncturists hook up with orthopedic surgeons and massage therapists.

“There’s no lack of work for people putting people back together and fixing pain,” she says.

Southwest Acupuncture College was founded in 1999. Neville graduated from the school in 2002.

Currently the school has around 70 students but enrollment has been as high as 155 students in the past.

“It ebbs and flows depending on the economy. When there is a recession, everyone goes back to school. When the economy is good, people are working,” she says.

Acupuncture costs anywhere from $60 to $120 per session, depending on the practitioner and the city in which they operate.

Southwest Acupuncture College treats patients for $28 per session; those older than 55 pay only $18 per session. Patients are treated by students who are supervised by a licensed acupuncturist.

In a community clinic setting, costs are determined through a sliding scale, depending on what each person can afford, but typically between $25 and $50 per session.

There are numerous specialties in the acupuncture field, including ob/gyn, pediatric and sports clinics. Everyone knows about the thin, gentle needles that are used in acupuncture, but most acupuncturists also supplement with other techniques like electrical stimulation, Needletop Moxibustion, cupping and guasha.

Needletop Moxibustion is where burning mugwort is placed on the tips of the acupuncture needles to warm the channels and move qi and blood. Direct Moxibustion is where the burning substance, mugwort, is burned directly on the skin, which is used for nourishing deficiency, dispelling damp and warming the channels.

Guasha is a scraping technique using various tools to clear heat from the body and move qi and blood; and cupping is where glass cups are suctioned on the body by use of flame placed quickly in and out of the cup, creating a vacuum. This technique is used to warm the channels and regulate qi and blood in the channels, according to Neville.