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I want to, again, thank the American Acupuncture Council for inviting me to continue hosting my show on their series to the point my name’s Dr. Lorne Brown and I’m the founder of healthy seminars. And I have run my practice in Vancouver, BC, and I’m the author of. Missing The Point why acupuncturists fail and what they need to know to succeed.
Our topic today is being laser focused on patient results. And I’m very excited. I’m going to give a thorough introduction to our guest today, which is Dr. Steve Liu. And we’re going to talk about being laser focused on patient results. And you’ve probably heard me talk about this before, where I say to her.
Thriving fulfilling practice where you’re helping people and you have abundance in your life as well. Yin and yang have to be in right relationship. And that yin and yang is your clinical results or clinical skills. And then there’s the practice management, your business skills, and many, I’m a charter account and I’m a CPA and I’m a doctor of Chinese medicine.
And it’s important to have those in balance if they separate or they’re out of balance and you have no practice management skills, even though. Skilled practitioner in the world, you may have no patients, so you’re not really helping that many people. So my goal is for you to develop that practice skill.
So with integrity, you’re helping your patients. So you experience abundance and you help heal your community. When we talk about being laser focused for patient results, it’s a pun, but we’re actually going to talk about low level laser therapy and how this can not only. Help with your clinical results.
And that’s why I’ve asked Dr. Steve Liu to come on with us. But also I’m going to share a little bit about this, the practice management of, by adding that special added value in your clinic practice, that you’ll become more attractive to your patients. So let’s introduce Dr. Steve Liu. He’s become, he’s not only a colleague, but he’s.
A friend of mine over the short period of time that I’ve gotten to know him. He is a licensed acupuncturist from from Arizona. He used to be an electrical and laser engineer in the Silicon valley. So he’s been fantastic for me to talk to when I want to ask about the different lasers out there and how they work, because he’s got that background and he’s combined low-level laser therapy, which the scientific community calls photobiomodulation and what we call laser acupuncture.
In his acupuncture practice. So he’s integrating the two and it’s been doing that since 2000. So he’s had quite a few years since the year, 2000 of combining those. So he’s the perfect guest to have on our show. You should know that he is a member of the north American association for photobiomodulation therapy since 2001.
And he was it’s presidents from the years, 2008 to 2010. So that’s quite a feed as well for an acupuncture. To be ahead of that north American laser association. He also served as the president of the Arizona society of Oriental medicine and acupuncture as well. And he’s also served as a board member of the international society for medical laser application.
So you’re starting to see. Steve is very involved in the communities and sits on boards because of his skillset and his knowledge. And he founded in 2006, the American society for laser acupuncture as lat and in his practice. He treats many conditions. He’s going to talk about some of the neuropathy chronic.
Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease as well. So let’s bring Steve on and I’ve got some questions for Steve. I want to let our audience know right away. Steve, these are the questions I’m going to ask you. So for all those of you, why do you want to pay attention? I’m going to ask Steve why laser acupuncture and regular acupuncture, why he sees it as a perfect.
I’m going to ask him what he’s using it for in his practice. Why are people attracted to his practice and what is giving him better clinical results since he’s doing the combination. And then we’ll talk a little bit about as lad as well. So Steve, welcome to the point. I’m so glad to see you again.
My good friend let’s dive into this why laser acupuncture and photobiomodulation also knows a lot of laser therapy. Why do you think this is a perfect marriage for us acupuncture?
Thank you Lauren. Thank you. Thank you again for the wonderful introduction. And my name is Steve Liu. I’m a laser acupuncturist.
That’s what I call myself now. I think there’s a three folds Y acupuncture and TCM will form a Perfect marriage. And number one we see a lot of older patients. And I always tell my older patients that we are not 20 years old anymore, including myself. So our healing ways slow. So we, as as an acupuncturist, we always try to convince patients that how to help heal faster, but then they are older and laser can leave.
Help speed up that healing along with acupuncture treatment and number two, or, some patients may be afraid of needles. So they are needle phobic and kids, especially, and younger people or even older people. So you can use a laser acupuncture in place of of the needles.
And number three, I think is the most important part is the. When you see chronic pain, which is what we see all the time, it’s very challenging as and because these are patients that came from, I call them medical rejects because they’re being rejected by the medical professionals, whether it’s medical doctors or chiropractors.
And because the techniques they tried and they don’t work for these patients, then they come to us as a last resort. And how are we going to heal these chronic. And laser is the one acupunctured get the healing started. We know that we can do that. And then once we got healing going, we need the laser to help speed up.
And I think that’s the best part of that in this matter.
Yeah, I think I’ve heard you call it. It’s the great normalizer. And so you’re finding that using the laser with your acupuncture, you’re helping these older chronic patients bodies behave more like they’re younger or an acute stage. So you’re getting those results.
Yes. I love that term normalize it. That’s why I use that too, because when you have a older patients and how do you get this healing going? Just like a young people and whether they are 60, 70, 80, 90 years. So I have a, my oldest patient now is 95 year old with chronic back pain. And she’s walking around with pain, without pain.
How I can do it because I normalize that. And with acupuncture using laser. So I love that word, Laurence, the normalizer the laser to normalize,
What are the conditions that you predominantly see in your practice? And I know there’s many out, like I predominately see gynecology, fertility, PCs, endometriosis, and I’m using my acupuncture laser.
You’re doing a lot of other conditions outside of the fertility. Can you share where your clinical experiences. The laser acupuncture along with acupuncture.
Yes. I love to talk about that because later I always tell patients that. Photobiomodulation works on cellular levels and what are not cells in our body is everything right?
So we, this laser work on muscles and tendons and soft tissue. That’s what I really like to work on because as I see a lot of these cases in my clinic, but they also work on the nerve tissues and which is very challenging for us like a neuropathy. And I wrote an article for the acupuncture today a few months ago that.
To me, it’s a, one of the best technique we can have is combined, combining acupuncture, like often and toes around the toes. But at the same time, use the light right around the toes and balls of feet, because that’s where the nerve has become dysfunctional. So this is why the nerves also offer quite very well.
Laser works on the Mito con. So for instance, Parkinson disease, sometime the scientists called the mitochondrial dysfunction in the brain, even though it could be the substantial Niagara without the they’re not producing enough dopamine, but what if you shine the light in the brain? And there’s a tons of study for that.
So why don’t you combine the. That body acupuncture, scalp acupuncture with light over the scope. And it’s wonderful combination that you can have. So this is why there’s an unlimited, sky’s the limit. Really? The sky’s the limit. When you combine in photobiomodulation laser therapy. With acupuncture.
So this is why anything you can think about you can use laser. So I don’t have any pain case that without laser, it’s always as a part of the electricity on the needles. And I always have laser around the needles and I always have a heat over the needles. So I called it the whole enchilada.
So this is why it’s a wonderful results. And that’s why we can get referrals from your clients. And from the top.
Sorry, I just want to summarize that you’ve been using it in your practice to help slow down the progression of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. And you were sharing a little bit about the mechanism.
It, it’s outside the scope of our interview today to go into detail, but there’s photobiomodulation that you’re using in your practice. So you’re using it as laser therapy. Then you’re doing laser acupuncture, laser on the points, and then you’re doing needle acupuncture. So that’s what you’re doing.
And the mechanism of photobiomodulation the laser therapy. You talked to the mitochondria, the battery, the cells. And so if those batteries of the cells are repairing, they can divide better. So there’s that healing response and what we see with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s regulates inflammation. Chronic systemic inflammation is becoming the cause of so many diseases.
So if it can help with that, Reduction in pain and then all these other disease processes, scar tissue, and adhesions. So if we think of all of those injuries with scars, and then you talked about the nerves, even nerve regeneration, and then blood flow increases blood flow to the area. So that’s why, we’ve talked, you said is the perfect marriage, right?
And then the needle-phobic patients, this just opens up your practice to everybody now because there’s probably. Close to 50% of the people that would want to see you as an acupuncture, see, to get relief, but they can’t come through your doors because their fear of needles is so bad. And so by doing non needle acupuncture, you now open your door to other people.
I often hear from our colleagues, that are doing the needle, that all, how can laser acupuncture work or is there a research that it works? You and I both have access to the needle and the laser, and we love using both. And we. The laser. So that’s why I like hearing from you because you’re not biased because you have both, you’re trained in both and you can use both and you are choosing use both, but can you share, is there research, what’s your, what are you aware of about the research on laser acupuncture, having an effect on the body similar, or if there’s any difference from needle accurate?
When I thank you again, Lauren, you’re such a good summarize a thank you. And my, when I first heard about laser acupuncture with my from my mentor, Dr. Margaret Naser in Boston, and that she published first study on the. With the laser acupuncture, you can look it up. And and she was so excited when that first heard about her and got to know her, and then she got so excited.
And then call me up since this is the first time in may journal American medical association journal that actually published a study that contained word. Acupuncture and laser acupuncture. So that was the first thing. That first time I was just blown away with what laser and laser acupuncture can do for something like a carpal tunnel, as you can see, involve a median nerve.
So what happens in front of this? I began researching more and more. There’s a study that I run into a study. They use a regular laser acupuncture, shine, the laser lights on the acupuncture point in the year to help quit smoking. And I love to see more studies and I would love to do someday in the future that I can do on the quit smoking.
I do acupuncture, quit smoking myself. But when I come to like a pain, like a lower back pain and a soft tissue injury pain, and I really have to combine acupuncture in the. And the laser member lasers there to help lower the inflammation. We don’t stop inflammation. Inflammation is a part of a healing.
That’s how acupuncture help. Okay. So when we put needles into the tissues, guess what we produce some low level inflammation, and that’s why we need. But lasers is there to help speed up that, that mechanism Becca kickstarted by the acupuncture. But when patients really have a problem with needles, for instance, you can use laser acupuncture in place of the knee points.
So you can use a red lasers on the distal points like. All these points on the fingers and the palms and the risks. And then you can use an infrared lasers on the body, like a stomach 36 and spleen six. And so on screen 10. And deeper because you want to target the third nerves underneath that acupuncture point.
So this is why we can combine laser and acupuncture or laser acupuncture by itself. So this all can come to. In the therapy
and not all lasers are created equal. And so the wavelength matters. So the color of the light’s going to matter about how it’s going to affect the cell, the tissue, and how deep it’s going to go.
The power of the laser is going to affect. The dosage of photons at the target tissue. So that’s important because how much time you need to keep the laser on the body. And so some of the lasers are, can be a large investment for acupuncturists. And this is why I love talking to you because I know Steve that you’ve built lasers because you remember everybody Steve’s a doctor or Chinese medicine, and he’s also a electrical and laser engineers.
He can look at a system. He actually helps some of the manufacturers improve on their systems. Cause he’s got that skillset. I wanted to ask you a little bit that first of all, not all lasers are created equal. So some lasers, although there are a couple hundred dollars, they’re no different than using a PowerPoint light.
You’re not going to get any therapeutic value really on it. So still. You have to invest. It seems to get a good laser. Personally, I want to share this story and then just talk about how you have found that, how this is helped your practice grow by having the lasers. And th the story I want to share with you is my first laser I invested in.
Was about $6,500. And I used it for onsite for IVF clinics, laser acupuncture because the clinic had shown that it increased implantation rates by 15%. So that was a big investment and that’s what I use it for, but I wanted to get the results, help my patients. And it made our patients more attractive to our clinic as well, because we were offering this and then I wanted to help with egg quality, and that required a different laser system and help with endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome and and engaging the relaxation.
There’s lots of things we can do with the. And so that system costs me $20,000. Now I got to share something with you that I was not expecting, but I understand why it ha it helped. Because when you create value, the marketplace, your patients will seek you out. They will. They will see you over other people.
They’ll actually people get on planes, pre COVID to are to go to our clinic, to be treated with our laser for fertility and PCRs. They’ll drive an hour in my city to come to our clinic, even though there’s many acupuncturists in their area, because they want somebody, a clinic that has the experience, the knowledge and the good quality lasers to get them results.
So here’s the quick story. And then I’m curious to hear what your experience has been I have when I introduce the laser for fertility in our clinic, several of the patients that I was treating, and let’s just say they were being charged $95 back then for acupuncture only. And I would recommend twice a week and many of them would say they couldn’t afford twice a week.
So they’d come once a week. Or some of them said I can’t afford. And they did not have. When I introduced the laser, we increased the price of having acupuncture with the laser. And so we increased the price to say one for $140. So actually it was 130 back then. So 95 for acupuncture only, or 1 35 for both.
And what we know, and it was three times a week because we were following a group that had done, had seen an improvement pregnancy rates when they did the laser fertility approach three times. In the follicular phase. And so we replicated that and that’s what we educated our patients, these patients that said they could not afford $95 once a.
Or even twice a week, it started coming in three times a week. So what I learned from that is it wasn’t that they couldn’t afford it was that they didn’t see the value in what I was doing in acupuncture, how I educated them to spend $95 a week or $95 twice a week. They just didn’t see the value there.
But when I shared how laser fertility has the potential to improve egg, quality and pregnancy rates, whether you’re trying to concede that. Or an IVF and share some of the research. They then were willing to pay 1 33 times. To get the results. So it was never always about the affordability. It was. Is there enough value to pay that much money?
So I wasn’t expecting that, but that’s what the laser has done in my practice. It has made me, it has separated me from other clinics that are just doing acupuncture because many of the patients are learning about this, get an educated, and they actually want the photo by modeling. With their acupuncture.
What was your experience? Have you found that by what you’re doing and you have a fast program, which you can introduce as well because you’re getting the results in using laser. Has that also a major practice, even that much more busier before you compare to before you added the laser?
Yes. I always say results resolved.
And as an acupuncturist and. Pretty much all the time is the last resort, a practitioner that patients see and see you, you want to produce results. And to me, laser is the is probably the only way that when it’s combined with acupuncture really get the result. And because you heal, you.
And I know sometimes it’s hard to say the word cure, but then it’s how it works. And so yes, this is a value added because you can do, you can charge you $150 for acupuncture, but if you does not if you do not produce the results, it’s still worthless. But if you add it in this so in my practice, I combined a laser and acupuncture was when fee I don’t have an additional fee for laser.
I consider as a value added so that when I produce results, They are, they’re going to see effect within a few treatments and guess what? And then when they were completely here, And they are going to refer all their friends and relatives and neighbors. And then the thought is, begin to hear about you name and they began to refer their clients to you.
So guess what? You can love busier practice. That’s how I see it. And that’s why it’s a laser is a result driven. And and I absolutely agree with you that Lauren is. I don’t think it’s really the money. It’s a, it’s the result when the patients see the result and they say they will pay for it.
Yeah. Definitely want to get, they want to get the results and adding the laser helps give you that result. And they also is the education like, so when the understand for whatever reason I just, it’s an observation. They understand photobiomodulation, it’s more modern, it’s more sciency. And when you can see the mechanisms, they understand that and they’re willing to give it a go or give it a try where acupuncture is old and they’re questioning it.
I’m not saying it doesn’t work. I use both. So it does work. And I have found that it’s. It’s something that has been attracted to patients. And I always say in my book, and when we talk at the beginning, we want to help them with integrity. So when you charge, because again, when you’re making investments in $20,000 lasers and you only have so many there’s value there.
So if you choose to charge more. You’re doing it with integrity because Ava invested in more equipment, but your patients don’t care about that. They don’t care about your debt or how much it costs you. They care about what kind of value they’re going to get when they pay you. And so I’ve made that investment and then patients are willing to endure.
In me because I have the tools to help them get the results. I know in your practice, you have a program called fast for chronic pain, and you go off and we’ll help people under 10 treatments get incredible relief, chronic pain, and so that makes you busy, but that fat program requires laser and it does.
Correct?
Absolutely. It’s the key F a S T I came up with this idea is how to heal and again, a lot of the time you can cure these a chronic soft tissue problem, like tennis elbow, conference elbows, and people come in and say, I bought these for three months. I have these for three years.
Why? Because all the cortisones, no, the anti-inflammatories and all this, they literally stopped the healing. But the needle is there to help kickstart a healing. But how do you get this healing going in the better rate, quicker rate that could useful rate? When Joel, like when you were in 20 years old laser lasers there to help speed it up.
And so laser is really the key and to help. And so I can literally tell my patients that with intent treatments, you will be. Done. And then the pain’s all gone, all completed relief. So this is why, and I’m I’m very proud of this this program FST and you can look it up and I intend to bring it up in my conference with Aslan, which is American society for.
Lola laser acupuncture therapy asset work. And we’ve intend to have a conference in this later this year and that bring this fancy program certification program out. And I’m working on that pretty much every day, try to figure out how to get this program together and in module of structure and Lauren and I are trying to figure out how to put this one together.
Yeah, looking forward to that. And so that’s, website’s important. So if you’re looking for more information about laser acupuncture and photobiomodulation, that’s the term that’s replacing low-level laser therapy is photobiomodulation and laser acupuncture, check out the athlet website. Cause you’ll see more information available there.
And this is something. Again, I’m going to put the practice management twist on it is when something is a value and people want it. Then other people start to offer it just like acupuncture. It’s not just train acupuncturist that offer the acupuncture nurses. Do it, doctors do it, physios, do it.
Chiropractors do it. I know in our profession. Acupuncture’s don’t like it, then other people are doing acupuncture, but when something is effective, other people get it into their scope with photobiomodulation laser acupuncture, massage therapy are doing it. Chiropractors are doing our physios. They’re doing it.
So it’s out there. It’s really big in Europe, but more so in Australia, less so in north America and in Canada, in the us. But it’s great. It’s gaining a momentum so quickly right now. And so this is. Learn about this because. It’s going to be something that if your colleague has it or the physio has it, and if the physio can do acupuncture and laser, and you only do acupuncture as a public member, you’re going to go to somebody that can do both.
Steve said, one fee for both. Somebody’s going to go see him versus somebody on the same street that can only do acupuncture. So this is my invitation that. If you don’t give this some attention, there’s a possibility that you’re going to miss out and other modalities, other professions are going to have incorporated this.
So I think it’s important that acupuncturists incorporate, especially the laser acupuncture part. And as Steve said, at the beginning, it is a credible marriage. Practitioners that I talked to that are using photobiomodulation with their acupuncture. Never turned back. They love it. And again, I, my whole focus is on gynecology, fertility using the laser acupuncture with my needles.
Steve, I want to thank you again for joining me today. Can you tell us a little bit about asthma? That’s what we’ll finish off here. But just tell us a little bit. The asthma organization that you’ve created and just what’s available for acupuncturist on that website. Yes.
Thank you. Lauren athlet against Stanford American society for laser acupuncture therapy.
I came up with this idea back in 2006 and I reserved the domain name as lab. Beautiful. And it’s nice and short, and I need to have this name reserved obviously long time ago, but I haven’t had a really chance to really get him going until last year. And then this is really the year 2022.
We’re going to learn. I help bring this to the community. This is a, you can look it up and there’s a mission statement. I really want to use this as a community for Acupac. We are the acupuncture. We cannot own laser acupuncture, not any other like chiropractors was physio in massage therapists.
We are going to have it. And in order to, for us to integrate this tool into our practice, you guys need to, of course be educated. And I love to be the educator and also teach you how to sell. Lasers devices and what is technology and what is led and what’s the different between laser and the LEDs and what are all these companies they’re making all these devices, then what’s the protocol for all of these providers and so on.
So this is a community I like to have, and that’s always all for us, the acupuncturist. And then, so we can. Successfully integrate that into our practice and make like a Lauren. I know Lori is a very passionate to make us a good businessman as well. And it’s important. It’s Ian in not only need to have a good skills, but we gotta be a good businessman.
You notice this. Thank you gotta
have. You gotta have those business skills. So it’s not so many people give it a negative connotation. And we’re talking about, you just got to know how to run a practice. You got to know how to charge for things so you can keep your doors open so you can keep treating your community.
It’s just really simple. It’s matte and you can do it with integrity. And so that’s where we talk about the laser therapy today and laser acupuncture. So as lab we’ll have a conference or as a conference, it was information. Unhealthy seminars.com. We have continuing education courses available for laser therapy.
On our community library, we have many interviews with experts and researchers on laser acupuncture, Dr. Steve Liu being one and is going to be offered many more. So do check out healthy seminars.com for the photobiomodulation laser acupuncture courses. All right. You’ve been listening to. To the point with AAC and tune in next week when Sam Collins comes in and joins us on the AAC to report to the point show.
I want to thank you, Dr. Steve Leo, and I want to thank you guys for tuning in today.