Federal Way clinic uses sugar water for pain management

A Federal Way clinic has embraced an effective pain treatment with a simple ingredient: sugar water.

Dr. Tam Bui and Dr. Grace Bui are a husband-and-wife duo who own Simply Health DP3, a direct care medical practice at 32114 First Ave. S., Suite 202 in Federal Way.

Tam Bui said he enjoys family medicine and plans to practice it more. But for now, on nights and weekends when he’s not on military duty at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Tam Bui focuses on pain management treatment through perineural injection therapy, a non-surgical pain treatment that he’s been perfecting over the last 10 years.

Tam Bui said he learned about perineural injection therapy when he was in the Marines. Many of the Marines worked through their injuries because they wanted to keep fighting, but when they returned from service, they had a lot of pain, so he would try and treat them.

“The war drew down, and they were like, ‘Doc, I hurt here, here, everywhere.’ The traditional way of approaching treatment for pain and mental health led to a lot of side effects from the drugs,” Tam Bui said. “A lot of guys would tell me that they felt like walking zombies because of how the drugs made them feel. Opioids, some of the psych meds, and when you combine it, it has its own interaction.”

He started treating his Marines with acupuncture, and it helped many with their pain, but the acupuncture wasn’t solving all of the problems. So he signed up for a prolotherapy course.

Tam Bui said that prolotherapy is similar to perineural injection therapy, but perineural injection therapy involves a low-concentration shallow injection of dextrose — a sugar — into the damaged nerves and heals them. It does not leave the patient in pain following treatment, he said. In contrast, Tam Bui said prolotherapy involves a deep injection of high-concentration dextrose, which often leaves people with immense pain following the therapy, and it is not as effective.

Tam Bui said he learned about perineural injection therapy because when he was taking the course on prolotherapy, a doctor told him if he was really serious about pain management, he had to learn about perineural injection therapy. Tam Bui said there happened to be a course on perineural injection therapy in Kirkland, so he attended.

Tam Bui said he had ankle pain from playing basketball, so when the doctors asked for volunteers to be injected, he raised his hand. Tam Bui said he was skeptical, but after a shallow dextrose injection, he quickly felt better and could walk normally again.

“The gentleman who sat next to me was also a volunteer because he had lower leg injuries, and he’s like, ‘I feel good too.’ I said, ‘Both of us are having a placebo effect? It can’t be.’ Because I felt so good, I had to believe it,” Tam Bui said. “What really proved it to me was that the next morning when I woke up, I walked down my parents’ stairs and walked straight like a normal person rather than sideways, and that was it.”

At that moment, the fact that he could walk like usual again made him decide perineural injection therapy is what he’s going to do for the rest of his life. Tam Bui said he decided to get a second medical residency in physical medicine rehab, focusing on how nerves and muscles function. He said he wanted to map out the nerves to improve his craft and learn how to better treat his perineural injection therapy patients.

Tam Bui said this work makes him happy because people become pain-free. He said there have been various instances when people told him they were close to ending it all because of their pain, and he was their last ditch effort, but the dextrose injections fixed their pain, giving them back life.

Tam Bui said there are countless stories of skeptical people who didn’t think a sugar water injection would work, but it did. He said he would tell people who think it might be quack science that it’s good to be skeptical, but surgery isn’t the only option.

Tam Bui said that some people say they’ve received perineural injection therapy before, and they say it didn’t work. His rebuttal was that it’s about how the solution is injected, where it’s injected, and the technique; he said: “We can all learn to shoot, but not everyone’s a sniper.”

Irene Graham, 105, from wheelchair to walking

Irene Graham, 105, was born on April 10, 1919, in Germany. Graham said she met her husband Gordon Graham, an American soldier, in her hometown after the war and lived with him in Germany until 1973, when they moved to Federal Way.

Graham said she’s been a painter her whole life, and she still works on art whenever she can. Recently, though, there was a time when she couldn’t paint, and she couldn’t even get out of bed without a caregiver helping her into a wheelchair.

Graham said she was in bad shape before she met Tam Bui. She had a fractured hip bone and a torn ligament, and she was in great pain, leaving her unable to walk.

“I felt better quite a bit. I could feel muscles I didn’t know I had in my body. I would say the first treatment with Dr. Bui, I could get out of bed in the morning. People would usually come and get me, but I could get my feet out of my bed myself, and I was almost standing up. I couldn’t believe it,” Graham said. “They still put me in a wheelchair, but I would say inch by inch, every morning, I could lift my leg out of bed by myself, and I got better and better. The first treatment with Dr. Bui, it got better.”

Graham said when she started getting better and she could walk again, she was exhilarated and happy, but also surprised. She would take painkillers, but it wasn’t getting better, and they were going to send her to a nursing home, which she said was going to be a place to peter out and die. Now after her treatments with Tam Bui, she said she has no pain, and she’s going to continue living life one day at a time, taking it easy, praying every day, loving friends and animals, eating sensibly — but still having beer and pizza sometimes.

Family medicine

Although the money might not be as lucrative as working at a hospital, Tam Bui said he gets to really know each patient because direct primary care brings medicine back to a relationship between patient and doctor.

In direct primary care, Tam Bui said there are also fewer insurance restrictions, which, among other factors, often result in cheaper care for patients. Tam Bui said he can also focus on providing the best care and not being rushed as he would if he worked in a hospital.

Tam and Grace Bui grew up in Kent, met in college, and both joined the military where they became doctors. Grace Bui is now a veteran, but after being stationed at various bases, Tam Bui is finishing up the last year of his military career at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Tam Bui said that because he’s still in the military, he can’t be as involved in the day-to-day operations, so Grace Bui instead runs the day-to-day family medicine care their patients need.

Grace Bui does the family medicine side of things at their direct primary care clinic. She said initial visits range from 60 to 90 minutes, and she can assess most issues from acid reflux, colds and rashes to skin grafts.

Grace Bui said many people don’t realize that seeing a doctor through insurance is not the only way. Even businesses can offer direct primary care medical benefits to their employees alongside insurance. She said direct primary care can come in handy when a sudden injury occurs because they can see patients much quicker than a traditional doctor’s office.

Grace Bui said they do one-time visits, but if someone wants to become a patient and see her whenever they need, they have a monthly $120 individual membership or a monthly three-person or more family membership of $300.

“Instead of going to urgent care, racking up a bill, and waiting a long time, a lot of things we can take care of in our office same day or next day,” she said.

Tam and Grace Bui at their practice.

Tam Bui with Irene Graham. Photo by Joshua Solorzano/Sound Publishing