Loving leeches’ medicinal merits
Posted: Monday, June 29, 2009 2:28 PM
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Moscow, Russia
By Yonatan Pomrenze, NBC News Producer
MOSCOW – When I first heard about the International Medical Leech Center from a colleague, my reaction was probably a typical one for an American: Yuck. Gross.
A breeding center for 150,000 leeches in a small village just outside Moscow did not sound like my ideal location for a story. But when I heard the center’s claims that they raise and sell 10 times the number of leeches than the rest of the world combined, curiosity overcame my initial disgust.
Natasha Lepyoshkina is one of the 29 leech breeders at the center, all of whom are women. According to her, the gender choice is no accident. "You need to have patience with the leeches. You have to be industrious and patient. A man couldn’t do that," she said.
Most of the breeders live in the local village and take shifts on weekends to check on the leeches, lending the center a family-like atmosphere. "They won’t ever bite us – they know us too well," said one breeder as I prepared to dunk my hand in a jar full of hungry leeches. (Maybe it was leech breeders who coined the phrase about biting the hand that feeds you?)
The breeders often referred to the leeches as their children. "Just like a child – we raise them and love them, and once they grow up they leave us," said Lepyoshkina, as she prepared a batch of 1,000 live leeches to be shipped from the center.
A holistic medical treatment
While 10 percent of the leeches are shipped abroad, the vast majority are used within Russian, where hirudotherapy (medicinal treatment involving leeches) never fell out of style the way it has in many Western countries. Leeches were widely used to remove blood from medical patients in medieval Europe, but the practice became less prevalent in the West during the 19 century.
Still, for its proponents in Russia, hirudotherapy is seen as the ultimate holistic treatment.
"Hirudotherapy has a multiple effect," said Dr. Irina Pankova, a hirudotherapist in Moscow’s leading clinic. "It battles specific illnesses while also strengthening the immune system … it improves your mood and normalizes your psycho-emotional state."
The leeches are placed on the specific areas of the body during the therapy that patients say is a quick, clean and relatively painless process.
Viktoriya Kazantseva, a patient who allowed us to film her during a recent treatment, visits Pankova’s Moscow clinic for lower-back pain therapy twice a year. Each treatment of 10 hirudotherapy sessions (two a week for five weeks) costs about $650.
It is much more than just relief for her aching back, though. "What I get from the leeches, nothing else can give me," she explained as she lay on her stomach and several leeches worked on her back. "It’s not just about the illness. It works on your whole organism."
More and more Russians are thinking like Kazantseva, which explains the center’s success. Last year alone, the center bred and sold 3.2 million leeches for a profit of about $2 million. And despite the Russian economy suffering due to the worldwide financial crisis, Pankova said that this year her clinic has actually seen a rise in people seeking hirudotherapy.
Leeches have also regained a bit of popularity in Western medicine, mostly being used in reconstructive surgery. Leeches secrete an anticoagulant before they begin to suck, which doctors use to stimulate circulation and relieve blood congestion.
But that specific use is still a far cry from being able to buy leeches in a pharmacy, which I couldn’t resist doing in Moscow after having my eyes opened to the world of hirudotherapy.
Now the three newest members of our NBC Moscow team – Bloody, Mary and Vampire’s Angel – swim in a jar on my desk, wondering which one of our crew will be next to offer ourselves up as their lunch.
