Acupuncturist Adam Chen: bridging eastern and western medicine in Canada
Credit to Author: Vivien Fellegi| Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2025 15:56:46 +0000
The 18-year-old patient at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital lies curled up in a trembling ball. Completely silent. He’s suffering from a rare autoimmune disease, Raynaud’s, which has inflamed his arteries and constricted the blood flow to his limbs. Two of his toes have already died and turned black from gangrene and his anxious physicians are planning to amputate his lower limbs to prevent further decay.
For this active young man who loves to ski, this plan is unendurable. “It’s like a death sentence,” says traditional Chinese medicine practitioner Adam Chen, who has been asked to consult on the case. Chen approaches the motionless patient and gently stimulates his legs with hair-thin acupuncture needles. The young man’s muscles tense in response. “This means they’re still alive,” says Chen.
Over the next three weeks, as Chen treats him with more acupuncture and Chinese massage, the youngster’s legs warm up, he starts to walk with a cane, and eventually leaves the hospital and begins to ski again. This experience inspired the young man to pursue a career helping others, and today he works as a nurse. Chen shares his former patient’s passion for healing. “There is nothing better,” he says.
Resilient roots
Chen’s dedication to medicine was forged during China’s Cultural Revolution. At that time, all city-dwelling youngsters were asked to leave their homes and schools and relocate to the countryside, where they would be instructed in the virtues of peasant life. At 18, he left his parents in Shanghai and went to a farm where he endured back-breaking labour. While most of his peers were “unhappy” with their new situation, Chen looked at it as an opportunity for self-improvement. “This farm work was a way to toughen myself,” he says. Before long, he became one of the strongest on his team, able to hoist 200 pounds of soybeans.
Chen’s eagerness to train impressed his superiors and he was selected to become a paramedic — an occupation that could come in handy in the event of war, as the region was near the border with Russia. He was taught traditional Chinese medicine, which offered affordable methods like acupuncture to treat the pain of potential wounded patients. Chen was immediately entranced by his new vocation. He bombarded his instructors with questions and studied all the medical texts lying around the hospital.
His eagerness to learn earned him the privilege of attending Heilongjiang University in 1975, where he earned a degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). One day, a patient arrived complaining of vertigo (dizziness). Two acupuncture needles behind his ear cured the problem that no one else had been able to resolve. “I just wanted to cry,” says Chen. “This kind of a thrill … nothing can replace it.”
At that time, practitioners of TCM believed that the body of knowledge needed to be modernized with Western concepts. In 1979, Chen was sent to Harbin Medical University to study medical genetics. Then, in 1983, Chen profited from a student exchange program to come to Canada and embark on a master’s degree in genetics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, followed by a PhD in the same subject. After the massacre in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989, during which Chinese military fired on unarmed protesters, Canada opened its doors to Chinese students and Chen decided to stay permanently.
Although Chen’s subsequent research in genetics opened new ways of thinking about medicine, it was never as fulfilling as his original career. During this time, he maintained a small private practice, and one day a patient encouraged him to apply to teach at the new acupuncture program at Toronto’s Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences. Chen won the position, established an acupuncture clinic for his students to practice, and was quickly promoted to manager of the program. He was ecstatic that his students would carry on his vision. “Everyone was so excited,” he says, “almost like being injected with morphine.”
An integrated approach
But Chen didn’t want to restrict his students’ perspective to the Eastern approach. “One patient is suitable for acupuncture, the other for medicine, the other for surgery,” he says. “You must look at things from different angles.” Hoping to expose his students to such an integrated perspective, he approached the doctors at Mount Sinai’s Wasser Pain Management Centre in Toronto, offering to open an acupuncture clinic there. But Canadian hospitals are the most conservative in the world, says Chen, and they rejected the idea. Chen persisted. “You must have a problem that cannot be resolved,” he said. “Why don’t you give us a try?” Finally, they relented. After just six months, most of the 20 patients treated with acupuncture were able to lower their dose of painkillers or stop them entirely.
In 2000, Mount Sinai became the first teaching hospital in Canada to host an acupuncture clinic, combining Eastern and Western treatments for chronic pain. In 2002, Chen founded another acupuncture clinic at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.
How does acupuncture work? Chen explains that everyone has a vital life energy, or qi, that flows along channels of the body known as meridians. When the smooth movement of qi is blocked, illness or pain results. Acupuncture needles inserted into specific points along the meridians can stimulate the flow of energy and restore health. But despite Chen’s impressive results using acupuncture, many Western-trained doctors dismissed his patients’ positive responses as the placebo effect — the positive result of simply believing in a treatment.
Chen’s clinical research, which demonstrates measurable outcomes of acupuncture, refutes this notion. One groundbreaking study, published in 2004, focused on melatonin production. In healthy humans, the production of this hormone peaks at night, helping the body relax and preparing it for sleep. In patients with insomnia, however, this nocturnal melatonin secretion is deficient.
During this study, five weeks of acupuncture stimulated melatonin production, which improved patients’ sleep and even reduced their anxiety. Such observable outcomes have helped to boost the credibility of acupuncture. These are physical effects, says Chen. “It’s not about believing or not.” Chen’s lifelong research into the benefits of traditional Chinese medicine has earned him professional recognition as an expert in the field. In 2000, the federal government consulted with him to establish a database of Chinese herbs.
Today, the 73-year-old Chen is semi-retired but still works part-time in Ac99, a private clinic he founded in Markham, Ontario, specializing in pain, infertility and mental health conditions. While his main focus is acupuncture, he also prescribes Chinese herbs. The name of the clinic reflects Chen’s philosophy: “Ac” stands for the initials of his name and “99” is the highest number in Chinese numerology, signifying his long years of commitment to his craft. “It’s not just like I do it once,” he says. “It’s a lifetime practice.”
Chen has passed down his passion for service to his four children, teaching them to value altruism over wealth. All of them have engaged in volunteer work. “Helping people,” says Chen, “you see results nothing can buy.” That’s why Chen has no regrets about his past. “If there were a next life,” says Chen, “I’ll come back and do the same thing.”
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