Complementary Alternative Medicine (or CAM), is gaining in popularity as more and more people are unable to find relief from their ailments thru traditional medicine. Patients at the end of their rope often turn to alternative treatments out of desperation, and Kelly Huntsinger was no exception. After years of suffering debilitating migraines that kept her from work, family events and a normal life, her massage therapist referred her to acupuncturist Kim Clements-Duffy. Two treatments later, Huntsinger was migraine free for the first time in almost seventeen years. “I talk to everybody about acupuncture now,” she said, smiling.
Clements-Duffy is a licensed acupuncturist at the Roots To Branches Center for Acupuncture in Hammonton, NJ. Over the years she has treated thousands of patients with difficult, stubborn, and incurable conditions. While not everyone has had the kind of success that Huntsinger experienced, most patients confirmed that their quality of life had improved in a meaningful way. “The purpose of acupuncture is to balance the systems of the body. When something is out of balance, the body will tell you,” Clements-Duffy explained. “If you treat the root causes, the branch symptoms normally dissipate.”
From a young age, Clements-Duffy knew she wanted to be in the healing arts. Her interest in the fields of natural healing spanned many different disciplines and cultures, including Ayurvedic medicine. As a yoga instructor, she incorporated Ayurveda as part of her daily yoga practice, but found that it didn’t “call” to her the way Traditional Chinese Medicine did. After completing her undergrad work in health and exercise science, she enrolled in the acupuncture curriculum at Tai Sophia, receiving her acupuncture license inside of four years. Since that time, Clements-Duffy has devoted herself to the full-time care and treatment of her patients.
Cass Buch has been a patient for several years. “I was very healthy for being 70 years old, but I wanted to stay healthy, so I tried her for immune support,” Buch said. “I have such a feeling of overall well-being when I’ve done a session…you can’t explain it. You just feel more alive. I just love her. She can translate all that Chinese medicine-speak into terms I can understand, too.”
Buch and Huntsinger are a small sampling of the myriad of medical conditions that have been treated under the needles. Because her clinic internship was in the worst part of Baltimore, Clements-Duffy was exposed to everything from drug addiction and malnutrition, to terminal cancer, and the diseases and health conditions that plague the poorest of the poor. It was baptism by fire and taught her how to assess and treat patients effectively in a short period of time. That training serves her exceedingly well in her current practice. “I learned to approach conditions from several different angles; the details a patient gives me is what fine-tunes the treatment,” she said.
Kelly Huntsinger really could care less about exactly how Clements-Duffy divined the right treatment for her migraines. Pain-free with bright, smiling eyes, she now looks forward to living her life in a way that was impossible only a few short months ago. “There were times that, at that very moment, if somebody had a gun…death is a better option than that amount of pain, in that moment,” she said. “If it wasn’t for Kim, I don’t know where I would be right now…she literally saved my life.”
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