Needle-free acupuncture

Plenty of healers have emerged over the past years in Romania. Each of them claims that their magic power comes from another world. They recommend a lot of concoctions, creams, teas, complicated devices or only their own palms to cure any disease on earth. At least that is what they claim.

Doctor Ioan Ometa from Timisoara does not see himself as a miracle-worker, but, thanks to his invention, the patients undergoing acupuncture may benefit from its results without being punctured by dozens of needles.

While he was a student, he heard about acupuncture, but he considered it was a cure that did not deserve too much attention. Six years after graduation, he attended an acupuncture class and soon realised it was an old but still actual technique of healing patients without stuffing them with drugs.

He had the opportunity to go to Lebanon under a Romanian-Lebanese partnership in 1974. He and other colleagues provided healthcare to the Lebanese and his interest in acupuncture originates there.

“I had access to reference literature from Western Europe, works written mainly in French and English, which I could not possibly find in our country. I realised that acupuncture was more complex an issue than I used to think.” He also had the opportunity to travel to France, in Marseille, where he attended an acupuncture class held by one of the most important specialists in this field, Vietnamese Nguyen Van Nghi.

He came back in 1978 and opened a private but unofficial acupuncture cabinet. Although acupuncture was at the edge of legality, doctor Ometa’s cabinet became the first authorised acupuncture centre in Romania, in 1980.

He attended the first Acupuncture Congress held in China, in 1987, and in 1990 he thought about an alternative method, which was less painful. “I felt pity for the children coming here and being afraid of needles. I wanted to make something to be as efficient as acupuncture, but painless, and I eventually succeeded.”

He first tried to stick some silver plates on the patient’s skin instead of the needles, but the effect was not the same. He also failed with aluminium. He finally tried with copper and the results were amazing.

The therapy with copper plates, which is called “metal-therapy” by Ioan Ometa, was patented by OSIM in 1999. It is not a panacea, but it proves more successful than acupuncture in diseases of peripheral nerves or internal organs.

The copper plates are stuck on the skin, where the needles are supposed to be introduced. As they are better electricity conveyers, they can treat more diseases in a more successful manner.