Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Hi everyone. This is Sam Collins, your coding and billing expert for Acupuncture and the American Acupuncture Council Network. Giving it another episode to try to always, as we do uplift you uplift the profession. This time, we’re going to go off topic for at least where I generally go, which is going to be coding and billing.
And let’s focus on what are we doing to promote our practice? What changes have we made? What changes will we make? What are we doing to really make sure that we’re getting people to understand what we do, how we do it and how we can help them always think of what is the barrier to care. Some of it is just lack of communication.
And I want you to think of it like this. Think of companies that have went belly up and I’ll think of one that comes to mind, which is the store Sears. Why did they do that? Well, someone at Sears didn’t have enough foresight when Amazon came in and started selling things online. Wasn’t that actually what Sears was, think about that.
What is Sears could adopt and adapt that say, Hey, we do the same thing. Wouldn’t they still be around. So I want to think the same thing about our profession, where we’re going to go, what we’re going to do to promote what we do, make sure people understand because of course acupuncture works well, but until we get more people to try it, it’s never going to be as big as we would like it to be because we obviously want to touch as many people as possible.
So let’s go to the.
Do. And there’s so many ways to think of it, but I want to kind of simplify it a bit. Let’s not make this too complicated. However, I use this to say, how are we perceived? You know, think of these pictures. What do your friends think you do? Your mom thinks you’re inserting a big needle. Western medicine has negative views.
What do people really do? Still take pills, but at the end of the day, look at that. Is that the concept are people that are not seeing a shit understand when they get acupuncture care. Think of how many people you’ve seen, who probably were skeptical before they tried your care. Wasn’t even sure it was going to work.
And then we’re like, oh my God, I can’t believe. Think of how often that miracle happens. When people walk into an acupuncture office, they’ve been to so many places. So how do we make sure to attract more people? I start with, what does the public know about what we do? And I’m saying this generically as our profession, but mostly about ourselves.
So I want you to think of ask your friends, ask your family, if you will, what do I. What do I treat? And I don’t want you to bias them. I want you to literally find out what do they really think about what we do. I want you to have an honest answer because we run in circles among other acupunctures. So we hear this all the time and we think this is out there.
And maybe it’s not asking your family, your parents, just friends. Okay. Acquaintances, people, you just meet casually. I fly. You know, for seminars. And one of the things I learned to strike up a conversation is, Hey, have you ever been to an acupuncturist? And the majority are no. And of course it’s an opportunity though, to discuss what we do, how we do it, and we’ve got to promote that part of it, but I want to know what are they thinking?
And you always want to know. That’s the perception we have, what are we doing to mold that perception make a different, but what I want you to do is really see what’s out there. What do people really understand? What we do, frankly, ask some strangers, see what’s going on. How do they go to the doctor by the way, you know, when they go in and do they pay cash, think of in your own practice, are you a mostly cash practice that can work really well, but think of yourself, do you go in to another doctor and pay cash?
So are you potentially limiting patients? Because we have to know what does the public know about what we do? Does it. Well, what happens if someone does an internet search for acupuncture? What does that say? Well, this is one from the Mayo clinic that talks about and inserts needles to reduce pain. So a lot of people say, well, it’s a pain relief, but is that all that you do?
I think there’s so much more. So what if someone who has fibromyalgia says, oh, I don’t have pain. I have fibromyalgia. I know that may sound counterintuitive. But it is sometimes how people think now on that same website, what they talk about, maybe it’s main to relieve pain, but it does get into things like nausea, vomiting, labor, pain, back pain, but you’ll notice it’s a very stringent on pain.
Now notice it does say menstrual cramps. That’s Mayo clinic. How about house? It says it’s an effective for a variety of conditions, but it’s not for everyone. If you choose an active person discuss with your doctor first, he has a practitioner licensed with proper training. So notice it just gives a vague, well, it treats sorta some stuff.
So again, is that really giving people anything about what we do think of your way? If someone went to your website, what did attract them for the type of condition they have? So let’s take a look. What else can you find on the internet? If you search, what does acupuncture do? The national institutes of health.
Of course, you’ve all seen this nausea, addiction, headache. So this goes a little bit beyond, but here’s one thing I would take a look at. If you’re someone who specializes in treating women with menstrual cramps or medical. Could I find you, if I were to Google acupuncture, treating menopause, would you come up?
Would it come up in the city? Remember internet searches are based on information that’s on your site. If the information is not there, it doesn’t appear. Do you have any type of blogs or newsletters that might give a little bit more what they call it? SEO. So people can get to your site. There’s a lot of things out there, but does it say it for you?
Well, here’s one from a company called Evercore and Evercore is behind the scenes on a lot of Anthem policies, as well as United health care. And you’ll notice here, it lists a lot of things that are way different notice asthma cancer, pain puncture. Might you have something that would promote and say, no, this could be helpful.
I have a couple of doctors in the state of Washington. That’s. They work with a couple of psychologists and psychiatrists, but that’s all they treat by the way it’s paid by insurance. But again, that’s something that they promote because most people would golf. It can treat that. I mean, what if you’re an infertility expert?
What if somebody is looking for that, would they be able to find you, is your, are you telling them what you really do? Let’s look at another carrier. How about American specialty health? And of course, I know everyone has a little bit of problem because they should pay more, but let’s talk about how does American specialty health cover?
Well, they talk about kind of, neuromusculoskeletal kind of what I call the chiropractic end of it. So it talks about headaches, hip pain, neck pain, back pain, and so on. So again, that promotion is there for that, but is it promoting. What, if someone were looking for this, what is it saying? Is this information on your site?
If you take this plan, here’s the conditions that we cover and we can help you. I mean, obviously marketing is done by every company. A RP uses acupuncture to market their product. Take a look. Here’s an ad for them. Medicare will cover here’s another one for a company called clever care. This is a TV.
They’re using acupuncture to cover. Now what about this? It says Medicare advantage. Is there anything that you’ve done? So if someone has Medicare advantage, they know they can come and see you. Is there anything as they pass by Medicare advantage here, take a look at this one. This is the United healthcare one.
And think of the promotion here. They’re literally using you to promote their business, but are we utilizing it to promote ourselves? Can you imagine if you have a zero copay acupuncture visit, do you think that’s very hard for some of the. Probably not now we would have to accept payment in full from these plans, but I’ll tell you they’re about a hundred dollars a visit and they cover much more than you think here’s their acupuncture coverage for this Medicare part C policy.
And you’ll notice that it says acupuncture, routine codes, but not all inclusive. And it’s not only including acupuncture, but what does it include? Therapies, things that you do, whether it’s massage exercise. Uh, myofascial release or manual therapy wash off 20, not so much more. Do people know that we do this?
Can it be something that might attract them? Always think of what is going to attract someone. What is going to make them know that what you can do can help them. Here’s another one from good morning America, where they talked about prescription for wellness and it indicates acupuncture. And. How about something like that on your side to make sure people know, okay, we do herbs.
Someone may be looking for that, tell them what do you do, herbs for? What can help? How does it help? And I’m not saying write some long drawn out article, but there’s a little bit of information that at least is introductory. So someone can go, oh, I think I want to try that. So here’s what I want you to do.
If you’re thinking of marketing, what do you mean. Start thinking, what is my thing that I do? How do I know people are going to find me if I do it? So here’s a couple of interesting offices that I think has done something in a positive way. The one on the left is an acupuncture office that they’re in a medical building.
And when you walk by their office, this is the sign. And look at all the things she’s talking about. Fatigue, stress, tension, anxiety. When someone’s walking by. They treat anxiety, they treat arthritis and notice it. Doesn’t just say pain. Now. Pain is many times the origin of most of these, but people often think, well, no, I have fibromyalgia.
I have TMJ. We want to let them know. Yes, we can treat it. Notice that even talks about veteran’s benefits. Look at the one on the right chronic pain, neck and shoulder stress, depression, insomnia tendonitis, Bell’s palsy, nasal analogies, weight control PMs. You want to think of who am I attracting? If you do a lot of sports medicine, guess what you should be talking about?
I do sports medicine. There, isn’t a professional team. That’s a professional sports team that doesn’t use and promote acupuncture. I know several acupuncturist who work directly with the teams and that’s their whole job. But again, are we promoting that this P do people know that they can come to us for it?
Often think of if someone says, what does acupuncture going to do for me? They may not. Because they’re going to have a condition that they’ve never heard, it’s going to be helpful. So I want you to thinking, when a person sees your website or your office, what do they see? What do they know? Will you be able to help them?
So what does it say? Does it talk about you where you went to school? Does it talk about your philosophy? Does it talk about the conditions? Would I be more important is a little bit of that. What have been some of your success stories of people you’ve helped? How you’ve helped them change? Think of that someone searching, like, if you think of it, if you did a Google search in your area and said acupuncture for menopause, would there be anything from your office that will come up?
If you put information like that on your website, guess what Google does. They pull that information and then that’s how someone would be directed to it. I want you to think, how does it attract. What is someone looking for? And remember, it’s not something that you need to write a lot, but something that’s going to go.
Oh, okay. Cause think of most ads don’t take that long. Does it really communicate to their needs? I mean, think of what is your specialty? What are the things that you treat? I have an office. He does only infertility. So I guess what’s prominent on it’s infancy. And he’s very busy because he’s had good success.
Everyone wants to come in because if you have a 50% increase and people getting pregnant, who doesn’t want to spend that extra money considering they’re spending 20,000, all, all the other things. So think of it this way. What is the barrier? I think one of the barriers of care is just people not knowing, but it’s often fear.
So is there anything on your site that talks about the gentle approach and that you won’t feel anything? Think the other barrier can help you. What does communicating to the patient about how it helps them kind of put it from the patient’s standpoint, if you were looking, would, you know, what’s helpful and of course, money, I think that’s often the biggest barrier.
So you want to start to think of, are there things that you’ve done on your site to show people you make it affordable? I always use cars as a way of showing you how we make things look before. When you see some of these fancy car commercials, particularly the mercury with Matthew McConaughey, do you know, they never tell you that car actually costs $80,000, because if they told you that you’d never want to buy it, but if they say, oh, you can lease it for 4 99, that seems affordable.
So also think of, are you having anything in there that helps the patient understand? Do you offer payment plans? Do you offer any other types of discounts do even take insurance and I’m not saying you have to, but you got to think of this. Someone has insured. And they want to come to you what they know.
So for instance, when you belong to any insurance or you accept insurance, I would certainly want to put it on my side. I want people to know, yes, we do take blue cross blue shield or Aetna. And I’m not saying you have to, but you got to think of if someone’s looking, how are they going to find us? And that leads me to something that the American physical therapy association talked about last year.
Now, as a seminar person, I teach seminars not only to acupuncturist, but to chiropractors, physical therapists and medical. And at one of the programs, and one of the things that the American physical therapy association literally said was this many of us look at the way chiropractors have branded themselves in the last few decades and feel a twinge of resentment.
Why can’t that be us? So think of it for a moment. Do chiropractors do a lot of marketing? Do they let people know if you’re in a car accident, you can see me. By example, if you treat the auto injuries, does anyone know you treat them? If you treat VA patients, does anyone know. Is there any way for you to find that out if I look at your site, because if I’m looking and I can’t find it.
It doesn’t mean anything to me, I’m going to move elsewhere. So realize that even these professional associations are beginning to realize that they have to do more, to do their own branding acupuncture. Let’s take control of the message. Let’s take control to put out there whether or not this stuff is covered by insurance.
I do not care because is there a value to what you do? Remember something my mom always said is this people buy what they want. And beg for what they need. Acupuncture is something people want not necessarily needed. And I hope you notice with the connotation. I mean, something that they value they’ll do think of how many people go, oh, I gotta pay that bill.
But what I really want these shoes in a way, that’s what we want to be. Someone who I know there’s enough value there. And trust me, the value can be high. What if someone’s had migraines taking medication that’s not helping. And they come in for a handful of visits to. And they’re gone. Is any of that information somewhere for people to see you allow the patient to do a testimonial?
I certainly would think of it. There’s a great opportunity here that I think all of us haven’t really taken heat of. You have control. Think of how much easier it is with the way you can market now with internet based. Forget Facebook. No, one’s looking at that anymore. Even Instagram too short. I mean, Tik TOK, forget it.
It’s just simply your site. People are doing searches. Are there any acupuncturist in this area that treats what I have or takes my insurance. So I want you to think of who are these patients going to be? If you have a mostly cash practice, talk about it, tell them why you do it. You’re making it affordable.
What if you offer pro pays or prepays? And then of course you have all these insurances. So in my opinion, there’s 12 ways to get. And I want to highlight a few of these. I mean, if you’re treating personal injury, workers’ comp VA Medicare parts seen. It’s why I bolded and underlined I’m in a Medicare part C policy.
It can be fantastic if you didn’t watch last month’s show with me, take a look. There’s some great opportunities. Here’s the thing. You need people that need your care and watch your care. And that’s where your practice will grow. Because one thing that I can always say is acupuncture does really work very well.
Once someone is. But what’s that barrier. Do I know that you can help me? How do I pay for it? That’s what mostly people are thinking. So we want to make sure we set ourselves up that yes, this is how you can come to us. Here’s how we can help. You always know there’s ways of promoting that. Like even on our website, the American acupuncture council network, here’s something last month we talked about Aetna.
Now has all of their commercial plans, not necessarily federal, but all commercial plans now have acupuncture benefits. Wow. What if you’re in the state of Massachusetts that you don’t even need to have a diagnosis? You can treat anything under their plan and there’s 12 visits. But what I want to know is does anyone know that besides you take a good look at how you’ve marketed and branded yourself when you meet someone, do they know you’re an acupoint.
Do they see someone that’s a professional, trust me, getting out in the public, having people know you is one of the best ways for people to come in because it’s people they trust and bottom line people, they help. So think of it. What have I done? Create a plan. Start to put a few things out and track what attracted people when they come in how’d you find me, then you’re going to start to learn what works.
Remember every business does that. Don’t be serious. They’re going to be people who promote and do better than others. Why? Because they have taken some, I guess, old fashioned put the nose to the grindstone and just tried some things, maybe what works for you is not for someone else, but there’s always something.
What I want to say to you is acupuncture has a great opportunity. The access that you have now to people and the understanding the growth potential is infinite. Think of addiction. Think of the VA and all the things that are there, but does anyone find you and I’ll leave it with that? What about a VA patient?
If you’re doing VA, if a veteran was looking for someone, what they find you don’t leave it to happen. Hopefully, we’ll take a little bit of this and do a little bit at a time. I’m not saying you have to be perfect, but it’s trial and error. What I’ll say to everyone is get out and help yourself. We’re always here to help you.
The American acupuncture council is your partner. We want to make sure you’re doing well. Anything that you need, if you need help with coding, billing, documentation, medical necessity, you want to verify that your notes are fine. Not getting. Come to us, we offer two services to do that. Just go to our website.
If you need further help go to our website, we’re always going to be there. Don’t be afraid to call or email. I’m going to say to all of you. Thank you very much. Here’s our phone number and information there. Ultimately, we’re here for you now. Pay attention Friday, coming up is the host will be Shelly Goldstein.
I’m going to say until next time everyone. This is Sam Collins, your coding and billing expert. I’m here for you. Go out and be a good acupuncturist..
Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Hi everyone. Thank you for joining us today and thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for producing and hosting this presentation. My name is Dr. Shellie Goldstein. And today we will be talking about cosmetic facial acupuncture theory and the treatment for enhancing dermal collagen. So let’s go to the slide.
Great. Okay. When we talk about enhancing collagen, and then we talk about cosmetic facial acupuncture, if this is really not a new topic, it’s based on the principles of my run, my. Rung needs beautiful appearance. And it is a holistic regime that was practiced throughout Asia for centuries. It was designed to promote systemic health and wellbeing delay, the visible signs of aging.
And it was a combination of acupuncture and herbs that were either topically applied or ingested. And that as the story goes, it was designed for emperors to keep their concubines looking beautiful and health. And for emphasis to maintain their youthful and raving appearance. But honestly, I believe that there were variations of this service of my wrong regimes utilized in most households throughout Eastern.
The today’s modern application of ancient. My rung is similar and slightly different. We generally use it today as an alternative or an adjunct to patient neurotoxins, volumizer, or other enhancing appearance enhancing services that are mostly familiar in our Western culture. I call what we do. Modern application, a tight, healthier, tighter, brighter, natural look, and feel.
And that is truly what it is when we, as a cosmetic facial acupuncturist, that one of the advantages of specializing in any type of profession is that our patients come in with a certain subset of complaints. They’re fairly common and throughout there’s, there are certainly some changes, but for the most part, Our patients come in and they talk about wrinkles increasing across their forehead, around their eyes.
They talk about eyelid ptosis, which is that drooping of the upper lid onto the eye itself, swelling or darkness under the eyes, possibly wrinkling or creasing between the brows and around the. And then in the cheek area, they talk about wrinkling in the cheek area, skin laxity, which is a loose pitted appearance, a nasal labial fold.
That’s the fold between the corner of the nose and the corner of the mouth. And then around the mouth and along the jaw. And they complain or talk about wrinkling or creasing around the mouth. Particularly the smokers creases above the lips and creasing horizontal creasing below the lips, marionette lines. Marionette lines are the lines that form between the corner of the mouth and the edge of the jaw area.
It’s a perpendicular line. And then the horizontal line is called the mental crease and it’s right underneath the lower lip. And then loss of definition along the jaw area. And then in the net, patients will talk about their skin being lax or platysma abandoned collectivism, abandoning, or these little bands that you see running in a vertical fashion along the neck area.
And then from a dermatology perspective, acne, rosacea, hyper dyschromia, which we often hear of is sunspots. When we treat with facial acupuncture, cosmetic facial acupuncture, there are both visible changes that we see and then internal changes so visibly. And this is our topic for today is toning skin laxity.
And we’ll talk about these more throughout the year, but today we’re going to focus on skin laxity. Other changes that you can see with cosmetic facial acupuncture treatment are saw. Softening of deeper wrinkles, eliminating of fine wines improvement in muscle tone, correcting and healing skin problems that we discussed, even in skin, texture, color, and luster and enhancing the overall appearance and vitality of the.
And then internally, because we are working from the inside out as facial acupuncturist will see an improvement in muscle integrity, a thickening of finning, a trophic tissue, which will ties in today’s presentation and improvement and the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of the individual themselves.
As we are adjusting channels, organs and other systemic impacts. When we talk about facial aging in our Western culture, we are often times used to immediate gratification. So when we are talking with our patients and working with our patients, we need to be really honest about what it is that we can actually do.
And I speak to my patients like this. I say, although the. Aging as part of the aging process, you’re not going to stop aging. It’s normal. It’s part of the intrinsic and extrinsic mosaic of aging itself. But what we can do is we can delay those signs of aging. And when we treat you with one treatment, we can see short term benefits lasting maybe three to seven days, and then generally.
When we perform this in a series of treatments, averaging 10 to 12 times per once a week, we can see longer benefits lasting between four and 16 weeks. And then we’re going to maintain the results or the benefits of your treatment with monthly maintenance treatments. And that’s approximately one time a month.
Now they may be a little bit confused as to why they’re not getting longer treatments or longer. Longer effects from our treatments because we are used to immediate gratification with longer term, say three months to six months with neurotoxins and maybe even longer with volumizes or filler. So I explain it to them as what we’re doing is we’re taking your face to the gym.
And we talk about going to the gym and the benefits of going to the gym as a cumulative effect. So you can’t go to the gym. And pump up and then expect to see large muscles, right? What you get is tired and a little bit sore. You’re not going to get tired or sore from facial acupuncture, but the concept is we are treating a giving a series of treatment to make an internal change that will last throughout time.
And ultimately you feel healthy and you feel better as well. In 1996, the first landmark study for facial acupuncture, measuring the efficacy. Yeah. Was in the international journal of clinical acupuncture. They took 300 cases. This wasn’t treated in China, that it gave them patient will acupuncture 10 treatments, one time a week.
And the patients noted a 90% market effect in terms of their subjective experience of the treatments. The benefits it’s said was there was an improvement in skin texture, stint, color, skin elasticity. Wrinkle reduction and overall rejuvenation. And also they noted that these results were not just confined to the face, but also included work from the practitioner’s point of view to address the entire body, the organ system, as well as the face.
So ultimately what we’re doing is Chinese medicine. We’re treating the body to sustain the changes on the face for appearance. And the reason why we are working in that vein is because we are traditional Chinese, Eastern medicine practitioners. And it’s because we still are applying the concepts of channel theory.
We are looking at cosmetic facial acupuncture as a whole systems approach towards diminishing the signs and symptoms of. This means that we, when we are support, when we are treating with facial acupuncture, we are treating and supporting the entire patient. That’s foundational because even though the wrinkles and the other facial concerns are the chief complaints, we are looking at it from a holistic perspective, and we know that the conditions on one’s face, the conditions that they’re talking about.
Skin laxity muscle tone. And that type of thing is really directly related to their internal health and overall well. When we treat with facial acupuncture, we’re not just working with the face as practitioners of Chinese medicine. We know that we need to consider and address all of them, energetic Meridian pathways and all of their corresponding organ systems.
And we treat them in the same way that we’re treating other conditions with acupuncture. We address those imbalances in those internal systems, digestive, circulatory, reproductive, neuromuscular, whatever it is and in doing so we are from the inside helping to diminish those visible signs of things. When we talk about these concerns, skin, laxity, wrinkles, muscle Capone, skin, dyschromia, et cetera.
We call those the symptoms. Those are just the symptoms of that underlying pattern is disharmony. And when we treat, we’re going to treat the root cause first with body points, and then we’re going to treat the symptoms. So we. Points on the extremities. And then, and along the torso, first, we do our diagnostics.
We treat the patient for their underlying condition. We apply acupuncture points on the legs, the arms torso, and then we address the symptoms or the facial concerns with points on the face. And then we take them out those needles out in the opposite direction. And that point selection on. Body is specifically related to the underlying pattern disharmony and the points selection on the face can be either on the Meridian, off the Meridian or around the associated channels.
And this is what we’re going to address today. When we think about acupuncture points, we know that acupuncture points are located in areas with higher concentration of superficial nerves. We know that there are a higher concentration of blood vessels around those points. And we know that there are neuromuscular attachments where those vessels and nerves penetrate the deep of the muscle fascia.
What we also know about points, acupuncture points in the body is that when we stimulate the acupuncture points, that sensation is transmit mid. From the peripheral nervous system to the central nervous system by the dorsal root ganglion. We also know that due to Nur, or when we look at neuro imaging, we know that there are acupoint stimulation is activity in the brain areas that is associated with that local area that we actually put the needle in.
But it also transmits into more distal areas, not on the knee, the point of needle insertion. This is important because when recently we’ve discovered that we have interstition when we first were looking at bodies and we would dissect cadavers and we would open them up and we would pull out this sheet of sticky film.
Substance and we would throw it away. Guess what we’ve been throwing away has recently been discovered as a very important structure in our body. It’s called interstitium and it is a fluid filled cavity that contains connective tissue, fascia, and fluid. And you can see this in the demonstration.
This is an, a. This top area is a microscopic expansion of what’s underneath and you can actually see that there, this whole area is the interstitium. So it’s made up of fluid fill barriers, and then it’s made up of these little structures that are more split support structures called connective tissue and fat.
Guess what? Within that fascia, we have college and college in is the primary fascial component of that connective tissue or on the face. We’re going to call it fascia. And that college in actually has an electric. Signaling component to it. It’s called college and Paz electricity, collagen fibers have this mechanical or electric property.
And it’s actually the basis for communication from the insertion of the needle throughout the fascia and into the, not just the local areas, but more general areas as well. And when we alter that college in, when something happens like aging and that college and those college and fibers get altered, it’s going to change the physiological response as that stimulation moves out into other areas of the face.
And in fact, what we’ve been looking at recently is that therapeutic efficacy of acupuncture, why acupuncture works may be linked to this, maybe linked to the ability of needle insertion in an acupuncture point to radiate outside of that local area and flow through the interstitial tissue, into other areas or other neighboring structures of the face or in the two.
Here’s what fascia looks like. You can look at the bottom, it looks like sticky film or some type of saran wrap that actually does two purposes. Either wraps around substances to protect them or connects them such as on the face from say the muscles to the upper layers of the skin and under repeated or intense stress that fascial tissue changes.
And it becomes disorganized and it decreases in flexibility and it loses its ability to signal. And if you look at this image right here, this is what college in stress looks like. This is how it changes from a more. Area, if you think of your face and you think of this area of the face and a younger person, it’s much more plump, but this is what that disorganization of college in fibers decrease in flexibility, decrease in an electric signaling and ultimately tissue breakdown.
So we’re going to look at how to change that. Here’s what it looks like in an image. And here is the superficial area or this top of the skin. On the top of our face. And as we age, it moves from the bottom, which is nice, organized, thick banding of co of college and tissue to disorganize broken down college and fibers that then create a pitting area in the surface of this.
When you think about a mattress, you think about a brand new mattress. It’s nice and full it’s, nice and plump. And as we sleep in that mattress in the same position over and over years and years later, it starts to form a little pit. That’s the same thing as the pitting effect that happens in our skin, that little dumpling or the little.
Drop in the mattress is what we see on the skin. And we start, we call that college in breakdown. And when that happens, skin has no place to go. So for the purpose of this today’s lecture, the loss of college and underneath the surfaces of skin causes that pinning and causes that skin to dry.
Now with an acupuncture needle, we can actually make a change. So when you know that acupuncture needle and creates a natural wound healing cascade to release growth factors to stimulate the production in deposition of college men in the dermal layer skin, what is that? When you look at the skin, there are the very top layer is called the epidermis and the very, very top layer.
What you look at when you look in the mirror or you look at somebody else’s called the stratum corneum and then underneath the epidermis is the dermis. And the dermis is actually the integrity or the health of that, of our skin tissue, a healthy cell. Start at the bottom of the dermis and make their way up to the top and float up to the top.
As the cells float through this tissue, the integrity or the volume of this dermal layer is supported by colleagues. And collagen and another T is elastin, but we’re not going to talk about that right now. So you can see this thick area in the top corner. There is our college and fibers and the very, very thin ones are called elastin.
And the little dots that you see are called fiberblast fiber blast. Are actually what needs to be stimulated in order to make collagen in the skin tissue and there’s research, particularly by a man named does Fernandez who has done a lot of work with Derma rolling or skin piercing with acupuncture needles.
And what he’s found is that when you place a needle into the skin you create a microtrauma in the tissue and that might . In this cascade of information to fibroblasts, I’d say, make college and into the fibroblasts, just make as much healthy colleges as they can possibly make. So it changes it from being that on uniform clumped appearance of college and underneath the tissue to lay a Ficker, as you can see a thicker line.
Of college and in the upper dermal layer and throughout the dermal layer as well, to support the upper layer of the epidermis. And we do this with needles. We do this with short needles because let me go back remembering the different layers of tissue and layers of tissue in the body. This layer, this dermis epidermis dermal layer is really the very, very surface.
Of the skin of the face. Because if you think about the pace and you just take your finger and touch your face well, before you know it your own, do you feel that before it, between the skin, the upper layer of skin and bone, you have muscles, you have connective tissue, you have nerves, you have. Your circulatory system, you have fat, there are so many layers that are between the surface of the skin and the bone.
So when we are treating this dermal layer, we actually have to have very shallow insertion. And we do that challenge insertion with small short needle. My favorite. And and also the favorite of many of the other practitioners that treat with facial acupuncture for appearance enhancement are serum.
Serums are always great needles. They, and what I like about them is the safety quality about them. Their medical grade stainless steel used around the needle shaft. They’re triple polished and clean cleansed with ultrasound and. Alkaline acid or water to remove foreign substances, and then they sterilize them.
And then the honing of them they’re specifically rounded to reduce damage in the skin tissue, because remember we’re working on paced people’s faces. There are a lot of nerve endings. There are a lot of capillaries and vessels. And so we want to use the best calling the needles that we can possibly use in order to get maximum results.
And Siron also has a line called J 15 that are specifically designed for cosmetic patient acupuncture. And on the other side I tend to use the 40 twos and 40 fours. Although some people use forties, this in this area, the one set up about, I liked. Another great line is called dong Bancorp.
Their DVCS are made specifically for low loss of LMS. This is another option. They are also well-made and compliance with the world health, our organization in the U S and then FDA approved and throughout Europe in England. Because they are the largest manufacturer of acupuncture needles in the world.
They’re much more economically priced. They’re basically a fifth of the cost of this here and needles. Many practitioners will use these needles on the body and then they’ll use the on. There’s another company that I really like in use in that called Acue fast. And what I like about them is they’re environmentally friendly.
Their packaging is biodegradable and the plastic material is recyclable. Again, they are Korean made spring handled with surgical stainless steel, their machine sharpen. There’s another, they’re just another great needle. In order to eliminate some AQI trash, they come 10 needles in a package and a bliss and a vacuum seal pouch, and they sell the tube separately.
So in some of these treatments with that, I’m going to show you or the system, you may not need a tube. And so that book, optional tubes are different. And then the other types of needles that we use to penetrate the very surface of the skin, it is the intradermal needles, either the straight intradermal needles that run in a horizontal position for insertion and a horizontal manner.
These were invented in Japan and then the press needles, go in vertically. Those were come from. There are many types of intradermals. This is a really good line. It’s called thrive. Great needle. Hard to get because they come from England. They’re triple Pall, double polished, and there’s three.
Different sizes, the gold, the copper, and the silver again, just another example of a really good line. So those in you who are from the UK are watching from another country. This, you can see I’ve put on. Bottom the links in order to purchase them, or cammo here in the U S CRN has another, the spine next intradermal needles, I think is acupuncture.
We’ve used these most of the time. And again there, what’s interesting about them is that heat sealed blister pack. And then the little ring holder, you definitely need to use tweezers with them and they make them in certain different sizes with the. PO box of a hundred needles. DBC has started to make another intradermal needle.
That’s interesting as well. Again, five needles in a foam pack, and there’s a new one coming out. This is not on the market yet, but it seemed to be there in their first line of production this year. Ella piss. I liked them a lot. But they come in there again, the high, same quality at that as serum upholds their integrity of their production, of their needles.
They come in five needles in a blister pack. What I like about them is that they’re short. But they also have handles so that you don’t need to use tweezers. For those of you like me who are somewhat uneasy, need a tweezer compromised. And then there’s always the pie. Next introduce dermal is a single press tax press tax are great.
Not all states will let you leave a needle in there, patient. So you need to make sure to contact her, find out what your regulations are. Within your state to see if you can actually leave these in your patient when they’re not in the office. And again, they come in different diameters as well. So let’s get to the treatment.
When we are treating our patients, this is what we’re looking at here. You can see in the, before, this is the image that we were looking at before you take any of those needles that you want to use, and you can treat them either on the acupuncture point S either The point rate lateral to the corner of the mouth stomach for depending upon how you can see the skin pitting, you may want to go a little bit higher, but just remember that in order to get the beneficial effects, you don’t need to be on the point.
Exactly. So what I might suggest is say, needling stomach for me again. You’re going to do your normal intakes and discover your patterns of disharmony. So if you look at this, you’ll find most people who have this pitting that have some type of a spleen deficiency. Either. We explained us digestive disorder or something like that, because if you’re looking at the stomach Meridian, it runs right through this area.
And how many people as we’re aging, don’t have some type of digestive. Disorder. So remember your spleen, remember your stomach, treat the underlying pattern of disharmony and then come back and we’re going to go back and treat this spleen area. So say stomach for, and then take your smaller needles and you can slide the.
At a 10 to 15 degree angle. Now that’s very superficial. That’s almost like Japanese acupuncture where you’re actually angling them almost parallel to the surface of the skin. So you can take those needles either the intradermals or the the half inch, and just slide them into the area of deepest pitting.
You can also write in here in the integral. And the nasal labial fold, just slide them right in there. And then that’s and then this is what I did. And then after treatment 10 treatments, you can actually see. A much bigger difference. If you have other questions about those, you can certainly let me know.
I know these are are these recordings are available and you can always contact me just to let you know that I have partnered with the Pacific college of health sciences. We offer a program called facial applications for cosmetic, and he has met, which is a much more in-depth program that you can access in the way to.
Contact us is this phone number and email below, and it’s not, we’ll be learning my techniques. We’ll be learning other techniques with other leaders in the field, such as Matt Callison, Mary Elizabeth, Wakefield, Michelle Gellis Deandra Courtney, Carrie Hart. A lot more. This program allows financial aid will be as available classes begin January of 2023.
And then again, if you have other questions, you can follow me on Instagram. Or Ann or contact me@infoathamptonsacupuncture.com. So thank you again. Thank you for the American Acupuncture Council for allowing me to present today and also please join in next Wednesday too. With Chen Yen. She’ll be presenting at the American Acupuncture Council and hope to see you again.
Thank you. Goodbye.
I do have a question. Is it there is one question, Elizabeth, thank you. The, yes the course that is being offered as a hybrid program. So the didactic component of it is online. And then there five days of hands-on clinical learning offered once or twice a year.
Do I recommend patients take college and it really depends upon the college in remembering that college in is a large protein. And it may, or if you are explained to you deficient with terrible gut problems, you may or may not be able to absorb it. That’s the clinical and the written information or that, or the more.
Therapeutic information. However, that being said, I take collagen in every day. I use a company called Vital Proteins and honestly, I see a difference in my skin. Yes and no, I hope that answers your question.
Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Hi, everyone. I want to thank you. And the American Acupuncture Council for hosting me. Thank you for coming today. And if we can go to the first slide, I’m going to go ahead and hop. So today’s presentation is an overview of a multifaceted approach to treating neuromuscular facial conditions. My name’s Michelle Gellis and I teach facial and cosmetic acupuncture classes internationally.
And one of the. Things that I do in addition to just the cosmetic is I treat individuals that have various neuromuscular facial conditions that are affecting them in some way. So what exactly is a neuromuscular facial condition? Essentially a neuromuscular facial condition is any condition that affects the face, either the facial movements or any sort of sensory issues such as if someone has neuropathy or pain and some examples of neuromuscular facial conditions.
And certainly some of these are not. Just, they don’t just affect the face, but for many of these conditions, the most noticeable or troublesome part of the condition can be the part that affects the face. So Bell’s palsy, Ramsay hunt syndrome. Synkinesis stroke, Tam J trigeminal neuralgia. My esteem, gravitas, ptosis, Ms.
Shingles, and hemifacial spasm.
When I approach treating and the, of these conditions, the part that affects the Fest. I, what I have learned over the years in practice is that using a multi-faceted approach. Which I will describe is the best way to really take care of the issues and especially issues that have been around for a long time and to make your treatment long lasting.
These conditions such as Bell’s palsy and. TMJ can have a major impact on the face. And so there are again conditions that have to do with more muscular movement. And then there are ones like trigeminal neuralgia, which have pain. So the modalities that I use in order to. Treat. When I say a multi-faceted approach, I will use scalp acupuncture, facial motor points, submuscular and intramuscular, needling, facial cupping, and Derma rolling.
And some of these modalities can be used in conjunction and some are better for certain conditions and some are better for other condition. Scalp acupuncture is a fairly new series of techniques that we use in our practice. It’s only been around since the 1950s and it became popular in the 1970s and essentially you’re stimulating areas of the brain that correspond to.
Functions, whether they’re sensory functions or motor functions and it’s based, it’s not based on acupuncture points, it’s based on neuroanatomy. And it is really fabulous for treating any sort of neuromuscular condition, but specifically for neuromuscular facial conditions. And if you look at the homonculus if this is a cross section of the brain and you look at the homonculus, you can see the area for the face takes up the bottom two fifths.
If you were to break it up into two feds, two fifths, and one fifth, the face takes up a huge area of. The brain and the way scalp acupuncture works is you take a needle and you insert it into the loose connective tissue and you thread it into the new loose connective tissue corresponding to the area of the scalp that you would be working on.
So here is a map. Of a couple of the different areas. So we have the motor and sensory area of the scalp on one side of the head. And then this bottom two fifths here is where you would be needling in order to affect the face.
And I’m just going to talk through this video. Let me get it going. So this is me demonstrating how to put the needle into the scalp. First, you have to measure the scalp and the bottom two fifths is what you’re going to be needling until.
So this so the motor areas in front, the sensory area is behind it. And this part of the scalp can be sensitive. So you have to be careful when you’re needling and it’s helpful if your patient is sitting up and then you want to work very quickly. You don’t want to be too tentative when you’re going in.
And I’ll, you can either use a one handed method or a two handed method. I use a one hand for the insertion in the beginning, and then sometimes I’ll use two hands to push it down. And then once the needles and you’re going to stimulate it and For that, there are a lot of contraindications and precautions and scalp acupuncture is a very wide field.
It requires specialized training, but it went, especially when combined with some of these other modalities can really affect a tremendous change for some of these neuromuscular facial cues. So the next is our official motor points. So motor points are something that have been used. Actually I found some information back in the late 18 hundreds in a medical book.
A medical doctor had mapped out some of the motor points, but most recently people like Matt Callison and other researchers have really. Built on this foundation and have used motor points on the body, especially to restore muscle from.
So what exactly is a motor point? A motor point is essentially in a nutshell, the most electrically excitable, part of the muscle where the motor nerve bundle is attached, but it’s not a trigger point trigger points or something different, but it’s And frequently, many of the motor points that we’ll use on the face are also acupuncture points.
So it makes it easy for us to feel. And if a facial muscle is in spasm, if it isn’t moving properly, if it’s overly tense or overly relaxed, then by needling the motor point, it will cause it’s like a reset switch and it will cause it to get back into its normal functioning. As I mentioned, motor points are not trigger points, or.
Typically areas along the muscle that can be sensitive when you push on them. But motor points are something entirely different. And as I said many motor points are also acupuncture points, which is great for us. So here’s an example of a motor point, and this is the motor point for the frontalis muscle.
And. Coincidentally. It is also gallbladder 14. And by putting a needle into gallbladder 14 and stimulating it, it can help. If someone has ptosis, if they can’t raise their eyebrows, it can also help if they’re having some eyelid drooping. And another motor point. This is a quick video of a motor point for the mentality, and this was I’m going to play it and talk at the same time.
So this was a student of mine in. Class I was teaching, she had Bell’s palsy many years ago and she still was missing some muscle movement in her chin. So I went ahead and I needle the motor point for the mentality muscle. And try it one more time. You can see the needle. It when I stimulated.
The her chin started to move and Twitch, and I have a lot of these videos. You can see it moving right there. I have a lot of these videos. On my Facebook group, it’s called facial acupuncture. And on my Instagram page, I have a lot of, I do a facial acupuncture tip of the week and some of them are cosmetic and some of them are neuro.
That’s a good place if you want to see a bunch more of this stuff. So some examples of motor points. For example, if a person cannot smile, there are four main muscles that are affected the zygomaticus major, which draws the angle of the mouth upward and outward. This Acumatic is minor, which elevates the upper lip.
The LaVey levator labii superioris, which elevates the upper corner of the mouth and the resource, which retracts the angle of the mouth laterally. So by knowing which motor points to use, you can help someone who has lost their ability to smile.
The next thing is submuscular needling and. This is something that is uniquely suited to help with a lot of different disharmonies of facial and neck muscles. And essentially if a muscle, much like motor points, if a muscle is not functioning properly, that. You can needle either underneath the muscle or through the muscle and it will help to bring blood and she back to the muscle.
And it’s great for people who have had long-term paralysis. And when I teach my class, I go through all the different facial muscles. The big few are the corrugators, the frontallis, the temporalities and the massive tier. And you would needle from the origin to the insertion. So for example, this is the frontallis muscle.
You would thread needles on either side, just like this. Underneath the edges of the frontallis muscle. And you just put them in, you can stimulate them a little if you want, but you want to try to get underneath the muscle. It is a lot less painful if you do, if you’re working with a bigger muscle, like the massive tear, you might not be able to get underneath it.
So you would be needling through. But the, this is how you would needle. So underneath the muscle on either side, and this is what this would look like. And again, I’m going to talk through this. The first thing you have to do is measure the muscle. And the best way to do that is Asher patient to raise their eyebrows because the muscle is on either side of the eyebrow and when they raise their eyebrows, you can see the skin right over the muscle will wrinkle, and then you are just going to needle, right?
Underneath the edge of the muscle
are you usually use to. And that helps get my angle of insertion. Correct. And then I will press down on the skin to get it way underneath the muscle. Again, I’m not treating wrinkles. This is not cosmetic. This is a way of bringing muscle function back into the muscle.
And then I’m going to. Once I’ve done one side. So here I’m showing if you angle to date, you’re not going to be able to get underneath the muscle. If you go to superficially, you won’t be able, you’ll just be hitting this.
So once you’ve done the lateral side, then you’re going to come in and you would do the medial side
and I’ll do, depending on their forehead, I’ll either do two or three on each.
This is just for one, our brow or one side of the frontallis. If you were treating Bell’s palsy, then you would just treat the effected side.
And if you were needling the temporary Ellis, this is what that would look like.
The next thing is facial cupping and guash Shaw and facial cupping and gua SHA is designed to bring blood and treat cheese circulation to the skin and the muscles. It helps to relax tight facial muscles. And facial tissue, it can move out stagnant, lymph and toxins. It helps the lymphatic system to function better and that the lymphatic system is functioning better than the whole face will function better.
It helps with inflammation and it will help to strengthen the vascular integrity of the face. And it can help with any sort of nerve entrapment, especially if facial fascia has trapped some facial nerves. So here’s a cross-section of the face and the face is the only part of our body where our skin is attached to muscle.
And so the functioning of the muscles and the nerves that. Make the muscles work is very important because if the muscles not functioning properly because of nervous and trapped, then the skin is not going to move and you won’t be able to fully smile. So here’s a picture of that bone, muscle skin on the face.
And this is a picture of fascial adhesions. So the fascia is this stuff it’s like when you have chicken. Pull the scan off that stuff that looks like spiderwebs. So it really helps to release a lot of that in the face. And facial cupping is not like cupping on the body. You don’t leave the cups. You Stimulate different acupuncture points on the face and the cups are meant to move.
And this is just a slide from one of my classes where I’m showing gliding and then suction and releasing down the neck into the lymphatic drainage area. And. Also Derma rolling is something that can help to stimulate the channels. Like our channel rollers that we might use on the body. Derma rollers have these tiny little needles on them and.
You can stimulate the channels on the face, stimulate the cheap and your patients can buy a Derma roller from you and you can teach them how to use it. And then it will stimulate they can do this at home in between treatments. So what are some of the. Neuromuscular facial conditions that that we’ve, we can work with that I’ve worked with.
I mentioned in the beginning Bell’s palsy, stroke, TMJ, trigeminal neuralgia, Ms. Ptosis hemifacial spasm. And I have enough time to just talk about one and I’m just going to talk about Bell’s policy, which is the most common form of facial paralysis. And typically it just affects one side of the face.
Usually it’s temporary, but. The people that come to see me have had Bell’s palsy frequently. It’s been years. They still don’t have complete movement of their face. They’ve tried everything and then they come for acupuncture. It can affect blinking opening and closing the eyes, facial expressions, hearing taste, the salivary glands.
And that I say hearing it can affect their hearing. So I use a multifaceted approach. I’m going to do my body points. I’m going to do face points and depending on their underlying conditions, what’s going on with them, of course, I’ll treat them constitutionally and then bringing the multi-faceted approach in I’m going to do.
Motor points on the scalp. So the lower two fifths on the opposite side, I might use your Shan, men and face points just to calm the patient, treat their face, and then have them do some exercises. Look at their face, have them try to move different parts of their face, figure out where the paralysis is.
And then do facial motor point. And possibly some submuscular needling to get these parts of the face, moving cupping and wash eyes. Great. Derma rolling is gray. And you’re going to want to see the person two to three times a week until they get the movement back in their face. So I. Teach a cosmetic and neuromuscular.
Acupuncture facial acupuncture classes. My website is facial acupuncture, classes.com and some of the products that I was showing the cups, the washout tools at Derma rollers microneedling devices are@akeelaskincare.com. And these are my social media links. I do have a bunch of live classes coming up and all of my classes are also recorded.
That is the end of my slides. And I, again, I want to thank the American acupuncture council for giving me this opportunity. Next time is Sam Collins. And I believe he’s next Wednesday. I can’t see that right there, but it is next week. So you want to check in with that he’ll be streaming live and do we have time for Q and a or.
People on that we can open it up to where there any questions,
crickets. Okay. I’m not seeing any questions in that chat box, so I am.
Not now, I guess there’s no questions now. Okay. Thanks again to the American Acupuncture Council. And if you need to reach me, you can just drop me a line at visual acupuncture classes.
So we extend the Huatuojiaji points all the way up to C1 on all the way down to alpha. All right. So I think let’s just go right into this video, which is showing the anatomy of the Huatuojiaji points.
Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Hello everyone. Thank you so much for coming to our webinar. My name is Matt Callison. I’m here with my colleague and friend Brian Lau. We’re going to be just, oh, there you go. Huatuojiaji points and spinal fixations. An emphasis of this will be on the middle jaw actually. This is something that is such an important technique that I want to share with acupuncturist.
This is over the last 30 years of clinical practice, just one of the go-to treatments when somebody is having any kind of Zong food type of injuries or Zong food patterns that we want to have a little extra emphasis in that treatment to help out that organ. So we’re going to emphasize the middle job in this particular discussion.
So before we get rolling Brian, is there anything you want to add or should we just go right into it? I will jump in. I will add that. I’m going to be working on some re streaming aspects that we’re doing just so we can get it stream live to our YouTube channel for future webinars, our Facebook page multiple platforms.
So I’m experimenting with some new software. So I’ll probably have a little bit of a backseat today. I might, I’ve been a little. But but I’ll mostly be in the background today. Thanks for handling. It’s exciting that we’re having that live broadcast. So thanks for handling that. All right. Let’s jump into the cadaver warning here.
If we could. So you guys, we are going to have a couple of different cadaver videos just to be able to show some of the dorsal primary, primary nerves and the depth of the Huatuojiaji, the anatomy of the Huatuojiaji points. So in the future, if somebody is watching this recording, you might happen to be at a coffee shop or something for that.
He just wanted to be really mindful of the surroundings that some people may actually end up seeing these cadaver images and it can really be quite upsetting to people. So let’s be really careful of this place. I want to make sure that we don’t offend anyone. But also they are here for you to be able to learn from so you can be able to help your patients.
All right. So let’s jump right in. It’s go to the next slide, if we would. And it’s talk about the definition of the . I believe most of us know that the Huatuojiaji points are 0.5 to one soon. Lateral from the lower border of the spot is process of that particular vertebra. In many texts, you’ll see that the Huatuojiaji points stop at T one.
I’m not exactly sure why that is. However, we’re gonna, we agree with Dan Bensky and John O’Connor in their text acupuncture, a comprehensive. That was first written in the 1980s. And they bring the points all the way up into C1, which makes a lot of sense, because if you have a dorsal Ramiah nerve, which goes all the way up to C one and all the way down to L five, then you’re going to have a walk toe jig point.
And the effect without points can be the same. So we extend the Huatuojiaji points all the way up to C1 on all the way down to alpha. All right. So I think let’s just go right into this video, which is showing the anatomy of the Huatuojiaji points. This will be a cadaver video, and we’re going to be cutting the video a little bit short.
It’s a long video, seven minutes and 46 seconds. It’s a great educational tool, but we’re going to stop about five minutes in so we can save time for the rest of this presentation. Yeah.
So this video is on our YouTube channel too. This one you might want to have access to. It’s really a great resource for looking at down the road.
Yeah. Excellent. So let’s go to video one, please.
Before getting to the cadaver video, let’s take a moment to review the relevant anatomy.
The Huatuojiaji points are located 0.5 to one son from the midline on the posterior aspect of the. For the thoracic region, it is imperative for safety. That the 0.57 measurement is used as a greater distance from the midline increases the risk of causing a pneumothorax, especially with deeper perpendicular needling.
The Huatuojiaji points are also motor points, depending on the depth motor points of different muscles. The most superficial motor points reached or that of the spin Alice, which is the most medial of the erectors being a muscle group, the deeper motor points reached are the part of the transversospinalis muscle group.
This group is frequently referred to as the deep pair of spinals. This video specifically examines the Huatuojiaji point at the level of T nine, starting with the skin and progressing layer by layer through the subcutaneous fat, the lower trapezius, the spinalis thoracic, the deep pair of spinals and ending at the laminate.
The video shows the layers and succession and potential safe needling depth for patients. However we do not advocate deep needling for every condition and assessment of the points and the patients must be considered for safety and efficacy. In some situations, a more superficial needle. Insertion is suggested and other situations, a deeper insertion is desirable palpating for excess and deficiency along with other findings will inform needle technique.
And then. At Accu sport education, we teach proper needling technique and depth for the Huatuojiaji points based on clinical efficacy, patient safety and patient comfort. A thorough understanding of the various layers is vital for proper needling. Let’s now look at these layers on a non chemically treated cadaver specimen.
All right. So with a deeper needling of Watson Georgie point at T nine, let’s look at the layers that we’ll be penetrating. Okay. So we’ve already gone over subcutaneous. There’s the skin subcutaneous fat.
And we have posterior aspect here at T nine. This would be the lower trapezius tissue here would be the participants’ door size. We’ve pulled that back, retracted back
then the next tissue that the needle will be going through at the Watchers yards, you will be the erector spinae. So we take the erector spinae. We retract that back. We go through the erector spinae, the need would then with deeper penetration, go into the deep of spinal muscles, which lie directly on top of the Lamanna.
So the deep needle of walk to a jig point, if it did go to the bone, it would go to the laminate. So this, now this take these deep paraspinal muscles off so we can show the bone.
So continuing with the anatomy, with the walkthroughs, Georgie, as we’ve discussed, we’ve got the skin, we’ve got the subcutaneous tissue. We’ve got the lower trapezius peeling that away the Leticia store side, we peel that away. The needle of the Watchers, as you pointed Tina, it’s not going to affect Leticia store.
So I was moving out of the way so we can see now the deeper layer we’ve got the erector spinae. So the needle would be going through the erector spine as well. We were tracking that back. Okay. So then now you can see here’s the deep pair of spinal muscles. That covers the Lamanna, the deed pair of spinals.
And if we were tracking this back, track that back now is great tissue that you can see
right there. That’s going to be the vertebra. So this would be the last. So the acupuncture needle would be hitting the laminate with a deep insertion. So 0.5 spoons. Okay, great. Thank you. All right. So that gives you a nice in-depth look of what’s happening with the Huatuojiaji points in the safety of the, as you point when you are 0.5 stone away from the lower border, that spine is processed.
It is protected by that laminate. Now what we didn’t see in that video, we’re going to be at the very. Very thin as a hair, the dorsal line. Now this dorsal rabbi nerve is a collateral branch that extends posteriorly from the spinal nerve root, the medial aspect of that dorsal around my intervates, the tissue of the deep pair of spinal muscles and travels all the way up in interface, the skin, all of the watchOS Yashi point.
There’s a lateral branch of this door, ceramide that then intervates the erector spinae at the outer bladder line. So your back shoe points are motor points of that particular level. And then we have a further lateral branch of that same nerve. It’s a collateral branch going into the outer bladder line.
So the dorsal primary is innervating the tissues of the Wachovia. Which would be motor points of the deep paraspinal muscles, the inner flatter line, the back shoot points. And then also the outer bladder line. Let’s take a look at another cadaver dissection that we’ve done so that you can appreciate the innervation of the dorsal primary rabbi at UVA 18, 19 and 20 and special note look at where the innovation site is going to actually be underneath that long, just in this muscle.
Brian, did you want to say something? Yeah. Before the video, maybe just the quick. Summary. So the next one we have what the setup for this cadaver video was, is we took a lot of time. This is a kind of a meticulous process to open up the layer between the erector spinae and the deep para spinal muscles, so that you can start to reflect back the erector spinae.
So in, before all that process, the, that fascia covers everything. It all looks one layer. So you have. Systematically go and tease it away and make it a model basically that you can learn from, instead of it being all intertwined. The fact that the fascia holds everything together and encompasses everything is informative and it gives you information to see how everything’s interconnected, but it’s a little hard to see the different layers.
So that’s the setup for the the video is, as we did take that time to tease away those individual layers. And you’ll see that when you see the video, so context for those who haven’t done. Good. You ready for that? Yep. Let’s do a video too, please.
As we’ve been discussing in the smack program, the Huatuojiaji point, the back shoe points, and also the outer bladder line are innervated by the dorsal primary route. The medial branch of the dorsal primary rabbi, which is a stem that comes right off of the spinal nerve root interface, the tissues of the Huatuojiaji point.
Then there’s a lateral branch that will then Intervate the long dismiss muscle. And there’s a lateral branch that then intervates the tissue on the other low-cost Alice and the outer bladder line. We can use back shoe points when we’re treating the Depot vexations. In addition to Huatuojiaji points to reinforce a stronger signaling system.
When we’re de fixating fatigue, fixations, let’s take a look at urinary bladder 18, 19, and 20. Lift the tissue up. Let me take a look here.
Here we go. Let’s take a look here. We can see a lateral branch right here. We’re right into the, longissimus innovating at you. You’re near bladder 18 coming right down here. Here’s another branch lateral branch. Now coming from going right into the long dismiss innervating urinary bladder 19. The longest-serving.
Back down here now we’ve got T 11, 2 11 coming up, innovating right into the long, just miss urinary bladder 20.
Okay. So I hope you can really be able to appreciate the depth of actually when you’re needling the back shoe points going in a perpetrator. Needle insertion is something that we teach in the smack program. So we can take advantage of as much of that dorsal primary nerve as possible in the innovation, because innovation is going to be on the underside of that long, just a mess.
We want to get into that long dismissal in order to be able to help stimulate the back shoot points, which will also in addition to end up stimulating the sympathetic ganglion. So let’s go ahead and talk about that actually. So from that dorsal primary Ram, I wish we were talking about late, earlier. It was a posterior branch.
Let’s now talk about the intercostal nerve, which is going to be an anterior branch of that spinal nerve root. So in the thoracic region, obviously the anterior branch going, becoming an intercostal nerve, going all the way to the anterior aspect, interface, the tissues of that front. This is the reason why that we find our front move points and the back shoe points on the same level line is because of that thoracic nerve.
Now, if we take a look at the sympathetic ganglion, or if we can go back to that spinal nerve root, so the spinal nerve root then goes into. Just basically telling Newport location of it. So just anterior of the fatigue column, your sympathetic ganglion about sympathetic gangling on then has our branches that are going into most of the organs.
But this is where, what you can see there in your notes as being that young innervation so that the sympathetic nervous system being more than young aspect of it and the of the Vegas nerve actually being more of the UN. Of intervening in those organs. So let’s take a look at the connections between the dorsal primary nerve, the back shoot point, the front move point.
We can see how it’s all the same nerve. And so by stimulating these points, you are affecting the particular organ through the sympathetic ganglion, because it’s all connected classic treatment would be your therapy, which is discussed as your front moon, your back Shu point. But if we add the . In addition to that, we’ll be discussing here in just a tick, the do might as well.
All of that tissue, we use neural signaling because it’s communicating to that particular Oregon as well. Let’s go to the next slide so we can be able to look at a couple of different images. You have described this. So on the image to the left, this is a nice view from Clemente’s book. As you can see the dorsal primary nerve on that image to the left, the dorsal primary.
And then you have that the intercostal nerve then going scrounge to the anterior aspect to the front moot point. So you got a really good appreciation of the continuity of this particular nerve and how it can be able to stimulate with a highly conductive stainless steel needle. The acupuncture. And to be able to propagate Xi and a signal of our intent, then you can see that sympathetic ganglion also within that image of the lab, how it’s an extension and anterior extension of that thoracic nerve in the spinal nerve, this image on the right, you can be able to see also where your Backstreet points are, your Huatuojiaji, your outer bladder line and front crawling along those intercostal nerves between the.
All right. So let’s, now let’s talk about why we want to actually include the Duma with particular cases. So let’s go to the next slide
here. It’s really quite interesting to me is that the different branches? So the different pathways of the Dumas. So we know actually from school that the two miles is going to be traveling along the spot is processed. But there’s also different collateral branches in second branch and third branch of these different pathways for the do mine.
I found it really quite interesting. How, for example, here on the image on the far left the pathway, there is of the third branch of the doom eye and in the drawings of how similar the drawing is to the form. It’s the, being a deep pair of spinal. Innervated by the dorsal rabbi and how interesting that is, how it looks like it could be multiple.
So when our founding fathers are discovering and looking at the the do my through cadaver dissections, I can’t help, but think that when they’re looking at these deep paraspinal muscles and they can see this as being associated as part of the Dumas and not just the points of the doom, my the underneath the spinus processes, but how to do my, can be able to expand laterally to include the wok doji points, which makes a lot of sense, because the super spot is.
And the interest bondage ligaments, which attach from spinus process to spawns process are innovated by the same nerve, the dorsal around that interface, the Huatuojiaji points. So it makes sense to be able to add, do my points to particular areas where you want to be able to have a stronger sensation to at Oregon.
And you look at the image on the right, this is your low collateral. Look how the line of the going extending up from the kidneys themselves, that kind of looks like it could be the same type of fiber direction of the semispinalis, which is going to be part of the deep paraspinal muscles innervated by the dorsal ceramide.
So the similarities are really uncanning in my mind. All right. So why don’t we now talk about when there’s a fixation? So the next slide, please, the VTB fixations are commonly found at the same intervening, stagment of a chronic Zong who? Oregon pattern. For example, if somebody is having, let’s say digestive disturbances, like GERD or any kind of hyperacidity anything like that as effecting that middle jaw, it’s really quite interesting to find a, the Teebo fixation in the same level, that interface, those particular Oregon’s level with the back Shu point.
So what is a sativa fixation? So just to be able to put it really quite simply, it’s going to be where one vertebra we’ll go ahead and tighten on the vertebra above or below. It’s a fixation of the Fossette joints. Normally. Vertebrae we’ll go ahead and move into interdependently. They have motion when they get stuck or fixated, they become actually as one unit.
So in that particular case that can cause wear and tear within the deep paraspinal muscles innervated by the dorsal primary rabbi, and also lead to decreased signaling going into the organ systems themselves, especially with chronic material fixations. So if have the deeper fixation, it’s a stuck area.
It can decrease the amount of she going to the walk doji points to the back point to the front moot point. In addition to the organ itself, we want to be able to make sure that we can try to get rid of this fixation and open up the movement of the chief through the doom. I, what you’ll find with the VTB fixation with palpation is that one side will end up being excess and the opposite side will end up being.
You’ll know this through your palpation, by palpating, the side of the shortened deep pear spinal muscles. That’s holding that vertebra into that locked position. It will feel excess. It will be tight. It’ll be really quite tender. It’ll have some rigidity to it. And then on the opposite side, when you’re palpating, the Huatuojiaji point becomes more pliable.
It’s more open, it’s more deficient. So in my mind, this actually is going to be predicating, a different needle. I’ve been doing this for close to 25 years. So I’ve had a really good eye DM practice of how to be able to needle these particular Beattyville fixations through trial and error and by making patients really quite sore.
So what I did learn is that when you’re on the deficient side is to needle quite a bit, shallower more of a reinforcing needle technique. And we’ll talk about that here in just a little. Let’s go to the next slide and figure out how to be able to actually de rotate or de fixate these particular vertebra.
And Matt, quick question. Can you touch on the role if any, of needling into or stimulating the fascia and these needling techniques? That’s the question on.
Sure which level of the fascia, that’s like for once you get past the skin, you’ve got your superficial fascia and then you’ve got your deep fascia and then you’ve got the fascia that’s separating each one of these muscle layers and because the fashion intertwines into the different muscles themselves I guess I need a little bit more understanding of the question.
Can you answer that, Brian? Yeah, I would maybe need a little up question on it, but I think just to simplify it basically the fascia is going to have the same innovation aspects. So the needles even touching the superficial fascia, it’s going to have an effect on that. If you’re at the lotto level on the medial branch of the dorsal, Rami, if you’re at the back Shu point on the lateral bands on the outer back, Even just in the superficial fascia, it’s going to have an effect on that innovation.
Now, the musculature is going to start to become taught and ropey and irritated, and that’s going to start to become part of the pattern made. Maybe it starts with the food. Maybe . Yeah, digestive disturbance or whatever example we’re looking at. And then those musculature starts getting ropey and knotty.
So I think there’s added value in going deeper than the superficial fascia and going into the level of the myofascia, which is fascia, but also the muscle tissue and effecting the the deep holding patterns in those structures. And of course, if we’re needling the Dumas we’re needling ligaments, which are.
So it’s all part of that innovation aspect. I think something to note on that fascia is that with research that has come out over this last decade is that the refining that the fascia itself is a lot more proprioceptively innervated than muscles themselves. And so that’s part of what the needle technique, how important that is of lifting and thrusting and rotating and getting the mild fascial tissues to wrap around the needle.
Cause that really starts to signal product that hopefully that answered your question. All right.
All right. So just a very simple way of assessing and also mobilizing the thoracic vertebrae is when one thumb is going to end up being on the vertebra above. You just mobilize in a frontal plane and just see if there’s play to the Verdun broad. Does it move or does it stuck for example, like you’re just pressing your thumbs into a brick wall when it doesn’t move and it’s stuck, that’s going to end up being fixated.
That’s going to be the side that you’re going to have a deep needle on. That will be your excess side. So then on the opposite side, we want to make sure that we’re needling more superficial, more of a reinforcing needle to attack. And I think we have a video that actually shows this mobilization right now on TA and Tina and Brian, do I say anything before we show the video?
Yeah, sure. You’ll notice that the videos in portrait mode this video will be up on our Instagram page. If you want to check it out later, we’ll put it up on YouTube too. It’s nice to have reference for it, but it’ll be on our Instagram page for sports medicine, acupuncture. You can check that out.
If you want to watch it later. Of course, it’ll be in the recording of this webinar to all right. So let’s have that video. This video is assessing for a TA T nine Mightybell fixation. I locate the spinus process of TA palpating, the superior and inferior borders so that my thumb placement is in the middle of the spinus process.
Once the location is obtained, I applied the same method to the T nine. Motion palpation is then applied to the spinus process of these vertebrae in the frontal plane. The same method is applied to the vertebrae in the opposite direction, examining for freedom of motion, a lock sensation, or lack of motion indicates of a tibial fixation.
Okay.
Common, you’ll find for TiVo fixations in sets of two and three. So it’s a good idea to needle at also mobilized. And this is what I was discussing earlier, how it’s amazing how well this actually helps your zone food treatment. Alright. So it is very important in my mind, just from creating a lot of soreness with patients, with kneeling deep on both sides and how obvious it is that one side is going to end up being deficient.
So a lighter needle technique for sure. On the deficient side, only a half inch to three quarters of the. It can even be shallower than that if you’d like. And then on the excess side, we do want to get it down to the the deep para spinal muscles. Absolutely. Because that’s going to be the muscle that’s really locking on and holding that burden right into a locked.
So we want an excess or a reducing needle technique at the on the excess side and a reinforcing needle technique on the deficient side. Now let’s discuss needling into the Duma as well to help to reinforce this treatment. So then the next slide. Yeah, wait a minute. Quick thing, just to add to that, Matt.
The deep side, I think you can see the cursor going through. Maybe you get cheap, not so deep. And you can always then put the other needles in and that’s going to start to soften that area and then come back, maybe just before you, you leave the room and let the needle set. Maybe after you put the last needle in and then go a little deeper, cause the tissue or relaxed.
So it doesn’t have to just barrel in right from the start all the way to the deep tissue. Oftentimes it’s not an issue, but sometimes you want to do it in stages. So just to have that heads up.
All right. So what you’re seeing is from that same cadaver dissection that bride did with the videos earlier, how this is a lateral view, the rector spot has been taken off. And this is the deepest view. I’m not sure if you can see that copper handled acupuncture needs. That’s going to be chest underneath the spot is process.
So the needle is going to be inserted into the supraspinous ligament. So we have passed the skin past the subcutaneous tissue, which should have been removed from this particular specimen. And then you have the supraspinous ligament, which is attaching the tops of each one of the spinus processes. Then deep to that is your entire spine is.
That’s a large, broad ligament. So my finger there, the pinky is actually showing the depth of that interest by this ligament in my mind, this is where you’re actually starting to really propagate, do my cheese in this interspinous ligament. So once you start using needle technique at this depth, the patient will often feel the sensation either traveled up or down the spine.
So therefore in my mind, this is really the depth of the Dumas or to be able to see. At do my cheek moving now, importantly, like I said earlier is that these ligaments are highly proprioceptive and they’re innovative also by that dorsal primary nerve. So it’s just another point to be able to increase the signal for your Zog, Oregon patterns, as long for Oregon.
All right. So then what we’ve talked about really is just needling the Huatuojiaji point, the back Shu point, the front move point. Also the doom eye using a potato fixation mobilization. This is really a quick and easy way of getting pretty profound results. There’s a lot more to this. Obviously it’s we have six days discussing actually how to be able to do all of this coming up, module one in the sports medicine acupuncture certification program, that’s going to be starting in July in San Diego.
So this is going to be discuss really quite thoroughly a number of different aspects of it. In addition to look and help your patients go to the next. Is examining their posture and seeing where the Viterbo fixations usually occur. And it’s really quite curious with a lot of patients with organ disharmonies that they’ll have spinal beds, the spinal bed.
And you can see on this image on the left this particular patient was coming in with middle job disharmony lots of different signs of symptoms of acid regurgitation. And and you can see how the elevated ilium. And then you’ve got a spinal then of that lumbar spine and going into the lower to mid thoracic region.
That is usually where you’ll get a BTB. Fixation is where the spinal band then comes back to the do my, now this is going to be the posture of this particular patient. This is the initial office. After the acupuncture treatment. And then also with mild fascia release and reeducation techniques that we teach in this module.
One, in addition to emphasizing different exercises that will help to continue to stimulate your treatment. I may keep mobilizing that spine for the patient to do at home. So these are all things that we’re teaching. Now let’s take a look at the next slide. This is before and after. The first treatment.
So we did the acupuncture treatment as discussed before I did some artifactual work, had to perform some exercises and you can see how the elevated alien from the left of poor treatment is now neutralized. That helps to straighten up the spine. And you can see that his do channels now much straighter.
So that’s going to start taking stress off that middle jaw and on the road to healing for this particular patient. Brian, is there anything that you wanted to say with that? Yeah, just a quick something on this previous slide that both the myofascial and the corrective exercises you notice are movements more in the sagittal plane.
So going flection and extension. So without getting into spinal mechanics, moving in that way, we’ll help D rotate and take the side, bend, soften the side, bends in the spine. So you’d think, just the viewer to look at it without knowing spinal mechanics necessarily, you would think that. You would want to have them do a lot of side bending because of its side bent one way maybe you could sign better the other way, which would help, which would do something.
But this is just another strategy. We get a lot more into it and classes, but that’s why you might notice that it’s a movement in those different planes to balance is fine from a different perspective. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. So we have some contact information on the next slide there.
If you guys have any questions at all, feel free to reach out to us. And I think Brian, if that’s anything else for you, we can give thanks to the American Acupuncture Council so much. This is really fantastic. Thank you. And make sure that you come on back next week cause Sam Collins is going to be back talking about insurance and billing and such.
He’s a real cool. A fun lecture to listen to. Yeah. Sam’s full of energy. Brian, always nice hanging out with you and thank you very much, counsel, and we’ll see you again. Bye.
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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Hi, welcome to this week’s American Acupuncture Council’s Live Facebook podcast show I’m your host for today. Poney Chiang of neuro-meridian.net coming to you from Toronto Canada. The topic of my presentation for to you today is window to the soul. My personal MRI research application of gallbladder 16 in Chinese name is I window and its application for oculomotor dysfunctions.
Let’s jump to the slides.
So I want to preface by give me a little bit of information about what we do know currently about the indications of points on the scalp. They’re the most common indications of points on the scalp. And I’m talking about your co your common traditional acupuncture points from the gallbladder gardening vessel, bladder Meridian, as such, I’m not talking about microsystem line style of scalp acupuncture.
If you look at some of the indication of the points on the scale, they all seem to have some application to headaches, dizziness, perhaps convulsion, perhaps something indicative of epilepsy. But if you look at these points a little bit more kosher detail, we’ll start, begin to notice that the points that say over the occipital region benefit vision, for example, points, governors versus 18 butter, nine gallbladder 19, for example, have visual reads.
Functions and it’s long been thought that one possible mechanism for this is that there must be some kind of transcranial effect of stimulation. The points on the scalp that is able to send a message to the visual cortex that happens to also be located hospital area of the head. And perhaps that is the mechanism by which these points such as due 18 bladder nine and so forth are able to have a visual related effect.
Certainly if we were to look at points in the temporary region, it’s been said to benefit deafness, for example, points like all about our 10 GABA, 11 Sandra 18 and 19 and so forth. These points are very close to around the year area, but the resolve of the temporal region. And that’s also precisely where the auditory cortex corresponds to.
So another example that perhaps the mechanism has a transcranial effect. If you want to take this concept before. And apply that the the knowledge of the homonculus among this is the representation proportional representation. Of of the surface of brain and as a corresponds to the body.
So you might be familiar of the, these lit there’s little figures. I call them California reason type of cartoon characters, where they have very big hands and very big mouth. And that’s because the hands and feet have the most densest nerve endings. And therefore they receive proportionally greater representation on our, on the cortex or surface of our brain.
And that’s the idea of a homonculus. So if you apply that to the way that the functions of do 20 has been passed down, which is one of them has many functions. The ability to treat Energen are the problems in Chinese medicine. We always say that it’s the idea of treating opposites of do 20 country problems and do one or rent one.
But if you think about the homonculus it’s represented It’s a way such that the midline is exactly what the foot and genitals are located, then followed by Sally laterally, Diablo shrimp, and even more Laddy the face. So by stealing the midline, you are stimulating the anal genital portion of the homonculus.
And so that’s another way we can understand how a point like do 20 said to have the effect, the tree enter general problems on the other end of the pole might actually be again, functioning, fine transcranial effect, but specifically to the somatosensory cortex region of the energetic whole representation of homonculus.
Now the other points that suggest that might have points that we able to treat conscious. Such as the gallbladder 15, there are some points that able to treat persistent vomiting, such as gallbladder eight. Now, could that be because of some kind of vestibulocochlear problems so that if your sense of balance is off, then you feel basically emotions stationary, and also want to always want to vomit all the time.
And so the list goes on. And so there’s definitely a lot of traditional indication that suggest that the results are getting must be a result that can be explained to the central nervous system. For example, if your eyes are staring upwards, okay. Or for example, you have hemiplegia such that say, for example, you have a stroke, for example, and there are certain number of points.
So I should do 21 do 24 and so forth that treat these kinds of problems. So th the fact that we can put needles on the scalp and be able to treat paralysis of parathas is on the bottom. Below the neck. We mean that somehow we’re able to obviously not put any needles in the extremities. The fact that we can have that effect must be through some kind of central effect on the peripheral nervous system, central nervous system effect on the peripheral nervous system.
So there’s a lot of these indications to be passed on to us. And it’s always me implied that the mechanism must be some kind of transcranial effect. And and so what I decided to do as part of the research I’ve done in the last two and a half years is to take a very systematic MRI based approach to look at which points on the scalp corresponds to which part of the surface of the cortex of the brain, so that we can add more insight as to what some of these points are doing, but also perhaps add more information that has yet to be passed down, to look at what other application we have of these.
So in order to do this we designed a MRI’s research project using six males, six female, they’re all right-handed. They all happened to be acupuncturists, and then we scan them all. And then we use a software to then image analysis software to label the acupuncture points on the scalp.
And the name of the software is called brain site. The report at 40 IQ points on the scalp. There’s 34, regular points, six extra points. And it’s because system’s home is is symmetrical left and right. So it’s actually only just three unique points. The front end boxes are unique, left, and right.
Are not unique because they just mirror images of each other. And how to income tie on Diana, et cetera. So in total tally 40 acupoints per person, whereas product subsequent to the scanning process. And then we’ll use this, the Mr. And the analytical software to tell us which part of the surface corresponds at the scalp correspond to which part of the surface of the brain.
Then we average this cordon is in all 12 subjects. And then we can then use existing research about what we know about these areas on the surface of the brain. And these areas of the brain are called Bryman areas, named Abby neurologist by the name of Broadman. And then from that information, we can then go on to interpret.
The functions of these points, and that allows us to compare to existing scale acupuncture systems. It allows us to look into the names of these points, a traditional nature of the points. If the points give us a hint of what these points are supposed to doing and how that match the modern research, that’s already been established from the Brahma air research.
We can compare to traditional functions at these points. And most importantly, can we broaden the application? Because as I said, initially, a lot of these point just say they treat headaches and convulsion and dizziness that there’s gotta be more to it than that. So hopefully this research will help us ha add more ammunition to our tool belt.
This is a example of a research subject that we were preparing prior to the scanning process. We put these little sticky pads on the hairline. These are actually vitamin E oil capsules. And the reason why we do that on the hairline is that as a lot of acupoints actually, in fact, all the acupuncture points on this job are located by using the hairline and either interior, lateral, posterior hairline, as a reference point.
So it’s important that we define the hairline because what happens in the MRI, the hair actually doesn’t show up so we can not go back and reconstruct the hair if we didn’t prepare this in advance. But fortunately these vitamin E capsules do show up in MRI so that we can figure out what the hairline once was.
And from there, it’s just as good as having the actual hairline and with the software go in and actually plot the points on the scalp. This is an example of a MRI software I’m RS facility at the York university, where I’m an adjunct professor where the research was conducted. And yet. As the subject is being Stan, we get this little blister bumps things.
That’s the vitamin E capsules that are, that is defining hairline. And you can see, you don’t see any hair in the MRI. Okay. But instantaneously, we get a read out and we start able to take section on images of the brain prior to actually defining which part is service or brand correspond, to which points on the scalp.
We have to let the Mr software know the XYZ boundaries of the brain. So that when we did, we used, when you talk about, which part of the surface of brain, which coordinate XYZ so that we can cross references for do they exist in prime, in research. For example, before we do that, we have to define what, how wide and tall and deep as XYZ these are.
So this is there’s a software. We can see here where we’re defining that with these green boxes and to ask they pursue aspect, latter aspect, for example, and it should appear in a few aspects, so on and so forth. Okay. And then once we do find that information and we tell this image Mr. Software, where is the space that they are permitted to work within, then we label, I keep on your points on the scalp, as you can see over here, but we didn’t have enable any points that are below the skull.
Okay. So for example, do 16 or do a gallbladder 12 is actually below the mastery process. So that’s technically off the scalp off the skull. Points points a submersible line like gallbladder 20 and bladder 10. For example, if you feel that they’re below the occipital bone. So again, if you’re off the bone, that means you’re too far away from the brain.
And so the assumption is that then is far less likely that a needle can have an effect on the brain if the needle is not actually even on the region of the cranium or the skull. So this is for that reason, these points are excluded. Okay. And then as you can see, once we plot that down, the computer, the Mr and ethical software can start immediately giving us information.
And so this is a bit too small for you to see, but you can start to see some of the points have been labeled and that we can correspond to different regions of the brain. And and then we can. Very cool image like this, where if you imagine that the scalp and the cranium is no longer there, then all you have is just the needle as the vis directory penetrating into the servers that are brain.
So these are the exact same points you saw earlier labeled on the scalp, but the software allows us to determine where that is in a coordinate system. It’s called stereotactic coordinate. That was the XYZ I mentioned on the SCUP. And this process is called registration. When you correspond the location on the scalp to the surface of brain there’s process in neuroscience on your imaging studies is called registration.
So essentially we registered 40 points, combination of regular and extra points on the scalp. For 12 individuals. And then from there we retained the coordinates and we averaged the coordinates of all 12 people to arrive at the average coordinate on the scalp or on the surface of the brain corresponding to the 40 points as being passed down.
So the reason we’re doing this is so that we can confidently say that I say the point bladder nine, for example, on the average human being is effecting coordinates XYZ, and therefore affecting this specificity functional. This is an example of a pretty little picture that we can get from the MRI analysis software.
In this case, we’re only showing you the bladder points on the scalp and these different colorful areas that are brain correspond to different Brotman areas that I mentioned. So there’s already been over 50 years probably like over 60 years of research on the ramen areas and what they do and that knowledge is always being updated as we speak.
So once we figured out what the coordinates are on the scalp, not only are we able to learn what functions they have as we are today, as more research are being added to these functional areas we will be able to add to the indication that we’ve learned for these traditional 40 points on the scalp.
So for the purpose of today’s. Presentation. I’m going to only focus on one or two points. Obviously this is a work that took me more than three and a half years to conduct. I wanted to focus on just two points. And as you saw on the title of the presentation to today, I’m gonna focus on a points gallbladder 16, and how we can apply that for ocular motor dysfunctions.
Before I go there, I need to give you a little bit of brief introduction about the surface anatomy in the brain. Okay. So while you’re looking at here is the interior, the frontal lobe, occipital lobe, temporal lobe, and parietal lobe, and the frontal lobe is further divided into different gyrus. This one here is a superior frontal gyrus.
This one here is called the middle frontal gyrus, but they can further divide that into rostrum, his head or Caro tail portion. So that’s where they put different color. And finally are. If there’s a superior and the middle funder gyrus, then there must be an inferior frontal gyrus, but that is further divided in three different regions.
They’re called pars or
and so forth. Don’t worry about so much. I just want to help you appreciate which part gobbler 16 falls into. So it’s going to be falling into this superior frontal gyrus portion. So it’s an F so it’s in the frontal lobe. Here’s a central sulcus, so that have the motor and premotor regions. And as a matter of sensory regions on either side, but even more interior to that, we have what’s called the prefrontal cortex, which is divided into three different viruses.
Okay. So what we’re going to be focusing our attention to is specifically in a superior frontal gyrus region or the prefrontal cortex. And if you now overlay the prominent information on top of that, This line division here between one prime area, 1, 2, 3, and four. How there’s different colors, that’s the demarcation of those central sulcus.
That’s the motor in, and there’s a matter of century you’re there. And if you go forward, we have brought from area four, which is the motor cortex. Six is the premotor 8, 9, 10, so on and so forth. And so as far as prime and correspondence goes, if you remember the image from before the superior frontal gyrus is processing over here, then we’re looking at maybe GABA, prominent area, six province, area eight.
That’s going to be approximately where the point GABA is 16 is located. This is just a quick, low reference a slide for everyone, because I know that unless people are using traditional points system to do the points, scalp acupuncture head, it’s been a while since they learned these tune measurement and we’re testing on these in school.
Sometimes we don’t remember exactly where they are. If you look at the, to measure over here, this black line here is supposed to represent the hairline. And then so gallbladder 16 is if you look at this two measurement here, right here is 0.5. Green is a 1.1 0.5. So that means that in total God, our 16 green gobbler 16 would be to turn from the interior and tear hairline.
Approximately I want to just mention that the the point location. And air land and not to scale. Okay. It there, they’re only, the color is only meant to tell you the relative measurements that the arrows themselves are not to scale to one another. Okay. So the make any case, gallbladder 16 is over here and later on, you’ll find me mentioning the point bladder six, notice that they’re quite close to each other.
And and they were roughly fall on that. Definitely call out, fall on the front of the frontal lobe, for sure. Cause there’s a front half of the head, but because they’re on either side of the midline, they’re going to be corresponding to superior frontal gyrus, and then the middle of front of the gyrus, we’ll be here and then finding inferior, energize to be even more lateral as we come from a middle center out.
Okay. So that’s talk a little bit about part of the scalp functional area. That’s really that critical is functioning area. Something called a frontal eye field frontal. I feel a previous FEF for short in non-human primates is in progress area number eight and but when I was conducting this research in the beginning I was a little bit disappointed because the point gallbladder is 16 which had a Chinese name for the point.
You can see here, the point is I window mood, trunk. Okay. It suggests that there may be some kind of, I really to function to this point. So I thought, oh, wouldn’t it be pretty cool if this is a point to do with irony function correspondent to the frontal eye field, because it’s not the first time it’s never it’s.
We have seen a lot of examples in the past where the name of the point doing this project is function. So wouldn’t it be cool if the point name I window matched frontal eye field, but unfortunately I was a little bit disappointed because all the research literature showed on a nonhuman primates that the frontal eye field was located in area.
We’re in fact that point gallbladder 16, I window, was actually located in Bravo six. So it was, close they’re right beside each other, but wasn’t really reading on. So I thought, oh, maybe there is had to do with the way that the needles angle a direction maybe, or maybe just coincidence.
There’s actually no correlation whatsoever between name, the function and the point. But fortunately as more research came out about the front of IPO in humans, as opposed to non human primates, it turned out that in humans, the front that I feel was indeed I’m prime and . So I was very excited when I found out about that, because that means that gallbladder 16 falling up brother area six is a perfect match.
It’s the frontal eye field, which I’ll explain it as functions for matches the Chinese name of the point for I window. That’s pretty pretty cool. And it’s in of itself. So what does the front. I find the I field is involved in movement of the eyes, but specifically horizontal darting, quick glancing movements, not slow tracking movement at a cold pursuit.
These quick lateral or inferior superior starting movements are costs the cards. Okay. And and so the front door, I feel plays a role in this quick psychotic movements of the eyes. If you had lesions on your, I’d say frontal eye field on the right side, then what’s going to happen is that both eyes are going to deviate towards the side of the lesion.
So it may say her lesion on the right front, the, I feel both eyes are going to deviate. Towards the right to the right. If you have lesions in the left frontal eye field, both eyes are going to deviate to the left. And what that means is that they are unable to track to the opposite side.
So in other words, you’ve had lesions on the right from the infield IDV to the right then I’m unable to do psychotic mood. To the left. Okay. So there are a lot of quick neurological tests that that you can learn that to be able to assess. And you’re not neurological patients as to if they have any ocular motor dysfunctions, you need a psychotic test.
The ocular motor functions belong to the midbrain. So cranial Creo nurse three and four primarily are located or have their nucleus in the midbrain cranial nerves. Cranial nerve six is also involved in in the eye movement. But that’s more located in the Pines, but for the most part, a frontal eye field test gives us an appreciation of the integrity of the midbrain, because if the migraine was compromised in some way, perhaps by degeneration, there is nucleus, which includes the nucleus of.
Three and four, you said ocular motor and and and trochlear nerves then you’re going to have eye motor movement issues. So these are called ocular motor dysfunctions. So here’s a graphical representation of what I just mentioned, suppose that you have a damage on your right motor cortex.
So in this case it would damage your right frontal ICU as well. Then what’s going to happen is that your eyes are only are going to deviate towards the silent region. So if say delusional deviation, and that is because the the right brain controls as, movements on the left. If there does the dementia, the right brain, then the dotted line.
That control movements to the left are not functioning. Therefore they are unable to oppose to the move of movements to the right. Therefore that’s why all your movements are going to end up to the right. Okay. So don’t worry so much if this is a more deeper neurology that you’re ready to dive into, but it’s very powerful tool because acupuncture is able to treat central nervous system problem.
It’s great. It’s been proven to be able to treat great peripheral nervous system problems. Now what’s next. Now we need to actually show the acupuncture had benefits well beyond just the peripheral nervous system working as you use as a treat central and peripheral nervous system problems. So here’s the image acquired for the goblin Meridian region.
And as you can see, I’ve labeled GABA point 16, 17, 18. And this is the lateral view, and this is the bird’s-eye view. And what I’ve done is I’ve drawn in yellow dotted lines, to the extent you, the Sockeye in that region, because it’s a bit, this is because zig-zaggy, it takes a bit of training to visualize this.
What we’re seeing here. This, the superior inferior Sockeye here is called the superior frontal circus. So the superior funder soccer separates a superior from the Gera and the middle front of the jaw, right? And this thought, and over here is the precentral. Soccer’s this darker more notice?
My here is the central sulcus. Therefore the line that’s in front of it is the precentral circus. And it’s been reasonably established that the frontal IPO in humans are located. It’s located at the cross section of these two soccer. Where did this line meets? This line is where the P where we’re the frontal I feel is thought to be located in this general region over here and now look at where the point GABA R 16 is located.
GABA 16 is very close to this intersection area. And if you were to follow them, varied direction and Meridian and needle from 16 to 17 or intuitive, posterior, why as indicative as air dashing over here, that needle is covered this entire frontal IFL region. And gallbladder 16, as I mentioned is Chinese name is I window.
So perhaps it’s not a coincidence that the ancient acupuncturist named this point I window, because they realized, find empirical observation experience. These points have something to do with eyes and vision. Similarly, at another point that’s located very nearby to this area. And a prostitute over here on the bladder Meridian called bladder six it’s Chinese thing is called light guard, meaning it guards or protects light and light to suggest that optics when the eye light enters your eyes, how you pee, you’re able to see it may not be a coincidence either.
That another point that is very close to the frontal IFU approximately over here also has in its name, something suggest stiff a vision or site.
Okay. So this is a side-by-side comparison, butter six over here. . Over here and there. So if I were to supra, bring gallbladder 16 over to help you visualize go by 16 would be where my cursor is pointed. See how those two points are very close to each other. So if you were trying to in intersect that area, you would need on call bar 16 posteriorly and viruses laterally, and in a intersection kind of way here.
And that will allow you to cover the frontal eye field as much as possible.
Now I’m going to segue a little bit to talk about something else that’s in this area. We’ve been talking about Brahmin numbers, area six. What is, what else do we know about ? Other than that as free dated frontal eye field, as you can see from this bird side, We have probably here four and six, probably the air force actually motor cortex.
So corresponds to movement at execution, but problem area six is in a premotor cortex. And the difference between six and four is that four has more to do with the planning of the movement. Whereas, sorry, six, as much as the planning, because as you get closer to the frontal loads, more reasoning decision-making so six is the coaches that are fun to look.
It has some more to do the thinking aspect and movement. Whereas for itself, the motor itself is the actual movement portion. Now, if you looked at this picture more closely, you’ll see that number six actually has two colors. The darker one is the central portion. And the light, the lighter ones are flanking it.
So the lighter ones is actually the true premotor cortex that’s involved in preparation, the movement. That’s more medial portion as. As a different name, it’s called a supplemental motor area. It’s still a , it’s a supplemental motor area and it is important in initiating complex sequence of movement. So it’s very specific for initiates it is.
So it’s the middle part over here. Brought me a six, the supplement area initiates it. And then the regions flanking it, prepares it. And then finally the motor area itself executes the movement. Okay. This is important because these points are mentioned GABA 16 and I’m better butter six. They fall in the, in addition to being part of the funder, I feel they also fall in this supplement and more area that initiates complex sequence of movements.
Okay. In addition to the funding, I feel being known to be important for control eye movement. We actually know the reason that it does it is bad. There’s direct connection between the cortex where these Fanta IFA regions are located to the ocular motor system in the midbrain, the track technology, or the study of the connections between different regions that are bringing it has asked me to be established.
That is a direct correlation to the mid-brain area. So even though maybe areas of what’s called subcortical structures are too deep for us to affect funds of scalp acupuncture, we might be able to indirectly reach it by stimulating the surface of the cortex. If we know which part of the more deeper structures it connects to.
Now, just as a interesting little trivia if. Not only do we think that is how to do the movement, you remember how it had in the supplement Moria motor area. It has to do with initiation something. And I mentioned how it was closer to the frontal lobe. So I had to move to do a thinking.
There’s actually a lot of interesting research that shows that the frontal I feel is involved in thinking as well. If you ask somebody a question and they don’t have the answer right away, watch the way they think a lot of times people will point their eyes upwards or point their eye to the left, or right.
As they’re thinking as if the answer is somewhere in space to the left or to the right or to the above, really people are not looking down when they thinking, but that’s actually engagement of your front frontal. I feel you’re fun to, I feel part of the brain is helping you to retrieve memory information.
So the eye movement control. My ashy be indicative of memory, recall functions as well. Very interesting. So just because, oh, I’m not interested in neurological eye movement problems as the bit to neurological for me, don’t think of it that way. It’s actually a way for you to assess somebody’s memory and, or or a memory degeneration.
And as these movements improve, it’s actually indirect way for you to to assess whether the patient’s memory and pay and information recall. And the speed and accuracy of that recall is improving or not now. So that’s a little bit, that’s a lot of background, but now I’m going to jump into how I applied these points for two very interesting cases that are very different.
The first case is a case of what’s called Havana syndrome. Have you ever syndrome is something that made the cover of time magazine in the year approximately in the year 2017. And it was happening to diplomats of Canadian, us diplomats, R B station in Havana and and the SIM, for some reason, there was a concerted presentation of neurological symptoms, very similar to concussion symptoms that was happening all across Havana, but only in the embassies of the committee Canadian and the U S diplomat star station there.
So there is, there was white speculation that perhaps there’s, this is some kind of political. Motivated attack some kind of weapon that is unknown, that is perhaps some kind of energy, pulse, electromagnetic energy of some store. Nobody could explain it, but it was undeniable that there was this was happening to not just Americans, but the Canadians and only seeing, not seeing the tourists are visiting there, but only seeing this in the staff that was working there.
So this is being recognized as a real thing and so much so that the journal of American acupuncture association, Gemma actually published a report of the symptoms and the title of the paper is neurological manifestations among us government personnel reporting, direct directional, audible, and sensory phenomenon.
Yeah. Cuba. The the symptoms for these patients are very much like concussion symptoms. They might have dizziness or nausea, headaches, sensitivity to light. They have balancing problems. They have some eye movement disorders. Some of them find that they have the sight difficulty or language, memory loss.
And so these, this, these symptoms are symptoms that the patient never had before. So it was considered a type of acquired injury, but it just that in this case, there was no known trauma physical trauma to the head that could explain this concussion. And there’s suspected that this was perhaps some kind of secret weapon, energy propo projection that was affecting those people.
But these people get tested and Realogy cause second opinions and undeniably have these symptoms. For some reason, I got an American who his mom is the Canadian and they were visiting Canada and and for six or eight weeks or so. And so the mom did the research for the son and mom listen, Canada.
So found me and sent his son here to see if I could help him. And so it was, it’s pretty interesting never in a million years, but I think that I get to treat like the Havana syndrome up in Canada. And so these are the symptoms that the patient presented with 35 year old male civil servant had an acquired brain injury in April, 2017.
Imaging results show that they’re scattered white matter of the brain and S as a focus in the cerebellum area. So it doesn’t make sense. The Serbian has to do the movement, coordination of movement. So if the patient presented with some kind of movements of balance, where it’s about has a balance as well, problems, that would make sense because there’s some kind of scattered white matter.
That’s visible for imagings person who has SIBO, headaches who have tinnitus, but that tends to abate after two weeks later. But the subro headache continued. There’s some challenges, balance issues, patients that reports that there some difficulty retaining information. And also they’re very easy to have ice strains and one of the triggers, bright lights, and also when he was rotating head while tracking with his eyes.
So that’s a, you’re looking at something, but you had to rotate your head, fix your gaze on that, something that kind of eye fixation combined with neck movement. We’re bringing line headaches or sense of dizziness, imbalance and so forth. And also he found that he’s not as precise with his use of language.
And that for example, he would say things like I put the feet on top of the stairs, what he meant was he put the slippers or shoot on top of the stairs, but, footage slip an issue I’ve raised similar ideas, but just to represent what, one of the represent that my part of the body or pods represents something that you wear, but in his brain, they, you could see his brain.
Wasn’t able to retrieve that information as effectively. So given the limited amount of time who was going to be in Canada, we were only able to do eight sessions. And so at first it’s, his headaches would be averaged every two average twice a week, but you started having about two hours and this is much, much better than, when when this order just started.
And then the tongue is thick white coat from root to tip or suggested. There’s not a damn a system that he does. He are redness in the root of the town. There’s hate in a liberal region and heart, mild heat in the heart region. Definitely. More suggested lower jaw heat and liver fire, and a lot of dampness.
Okay. And he had this injury in about June, so April, 2017, but didn’t come and see me until December of 2018. And and so it’s closest to six months after the incident. So I treated points. As it relates to the LA dentist, I see on the tongue, but points high stakes PCs, six, these are points that are known to have the ability to calm the autonomic nervous system.
So I was using that to help them reduce some of that stress and anxiety from dealing with an unknown ETL disease and disorders uncertain as to, whether am I ever going to get better, especially when this solar information know about this kind of problems. So it was necessary to calm and relax the patient.
And I also did the F the scalp for sensory motor area. And so if those of you have studies, scalp acupuncture, there’s these two lines around the vertex or the brain, and these points also have a global because it’s shadow, there’s the Corpus callosum, either hemispheres, they have a global level, right hemisphere, so a balancing effect.
So I tend to just start more conservative and more general without focusing in too much. I did do a speech area too, because it has on war retrieval issues. And then in terms of your acupuncture, I did points in the vestibular point because he had some business issues that will occur when he has fixing his diaper, moving his head and hypothalamus because there’s a point that also regulates oughta nervous system.
The next session I continued to treat the scalp acupuncture areas. Now I added the balance area, which is located in the hospital region. Still have the speech area and for the. I still have thalamus then now at a singular gyrus, which is a point that is just about the course proper skill OPSM.
And so there’s a little bit deeper down at the surface of the brain. And then I added some points in the body at different points in the body. Gallbladder 39, as is a point of if there’s a point of marrow, which should release the idea of brain and Chinese medicine. I thought it too. Now, Ching now changes the point.
That’s relative to the horizontal crease of the ankle is what is two, two up and once in lateral from from a stomach 41, it’s now changed, literally means clarity to the brain. So it has some kind of neurological symptoms as well. So I. Cognitive significance. So I thread it all by three 19 arching.
So I’m at 40, as you know is for phlegm. And Sandra has five, there’s some studies that shows that it helps communication between left brain, right brain. So I had this kind of idea. I’m starting, I’m putting on to treat this patient. And then it wasn’t until the third treatment that I decided to add GABA R 16 I window.
Because at that point I was learning to make sense of the research that was presented to you earlier. I thought, I wouldn’t have to ocular motor movement. It can’t hurt if I try to add that point as well to see what happens. By the beginning of the fourth treatment, a patient hasn’t had any headache for three weeks.
Whereas previously he was ha he would have headaches at least twice a week. So I, what I suspect is that some of that headache is actually due to the brain, trying to. Makes sense of balance. And I related information between the eye movement and the cerebellum areas of the head. And when I cannot make sense of that information, your your point of reference, your point of balance is off and makes you feel dizzy.
And that can then, bring out a sense of nausea or may bring a sense of headache and so forth. Even though I wasn’t directly treating headache by calming down the sympathetic nervous system by working on the balance and ocular motor area, or the fungi, a few areas that made him have better balance and in, so doing may his brain able to not have to divert his resources to other types of problems.
And so unfortunately men, he has no disease. He has no disease. Okay. And then and then the, one of the main thing that you constantly need new will be what are the kinds of things that you’re constantly new were given business problems is that when he was driving, he would have to shift this case between his eyes and the GPS, and was driving, looking at the row, looking at the GPS and that change of eye movement and depth movement will cause them to become busy.
And that was coming that habit every single time. So that was a very good tool for us to use, to gauge our progress. If he was able to have, if that is the getting better, then we know our team is working. So the fifth treatment, he no longer would get cheap headaches or dizziness. When he, when you was doing the GPS looking at GPS, looking on the road.
Okay. And so we continue to do the similar type of thing. Continue to come the cemetery nurses using points as is Vegas point, the reticular formation points a year, shaman points in a year. And and and he, on his last visit, he came back he was starting to have a little bit of headache, but it didn’t cause nausea like I normally would do, but that, that dizziness or headache that brings some for changing eye movement was still not there.
So it seemed like that was very stable improvement. So I like to think that the GABA are 16 point that I use in combination with cerebellum points or vertical points played a big role in helping him be able to have more confidence in both independence to be able to drive on his own and go about on his own.
The next case is a pediatric cerebral palsy case. The child was born in 2020. And and has history of taking prednisone to limit seizures that has only seen on EEG is not seen clinically like by the parents or, day to day. And then the the patient is Delvin, developmentally delayed.
He’s born on may 20, 20, but only began rolling more than a year later in June, 2021. Normally you expect that, maybe like seven, eight months maybe. And so there was definitely some delay And there’s a child has tendency to lower the head and gaze to the bottom, right?
So the head is lower case the bottom, and there’s an inability to control the eye movement. And and there’s also some spasticity of the fingers at difficulty opened them to grasp objects.
And there’s a tendency for the eyes to want to, rest towards the bottom. So the I is better to, as able to there’s more awareness spatial awareness of the things that are alive and less awareness of space on the right side. At almost 22 months, almost two years old was still unable to crawl.
So this is a child who was very delayed and neurologist believed that what he, mostly, I, he has his say we were policy was maybe some kind of brain damage or something to show that in happening in utero. And he was born this way and had difficulty lifting his body up from the stomach.
Usually you should be able to crawl and go on all fours, there’s Encore and I’m moving. There’s no precision grassing object brain to the mouth to chew or, to bite on that the kids are supposed to have. And and then. And so does the general tissue, we gave him this child.
So patient didn’t want to see what we can do at scalp without scalp acupuncture or with with acupuncture. And I mentioned the best thing to do would actually be scalp acupuncture because because this is undeniably a central nervous system problems. Scalp acupuncture is a system that was designed for this.
And I explained to the risk and possible risks and so forth. And because of the concern that the fontanelle might not be closed, this child is too, they are developmentally delayed. So we cannot confidently say that if fontanelle is fully closed, right? So for that reason, they didn’t feel comfortable doing active scalp acupuncture point closer to the vertex of the head.
But I explained to them that, hospital region, those fundamentals those bony plates would have fuse already. And so it would be safe to near that area. And I, we might be able to do the balance minds for, to help with balance related issues. So we, for the fourth three sessions, We did the balance point and the scalp and all we just did with just plain six pericardium six and sand gel five, Sandra five.
I mentioned I’m insured for using, I mentioned before research shows that it helps to stimulate left-brain right-brain communication , and its main states are specific points to affect the tibial nerve in the median nerve to help create sensation into the fingers. And oftentimes that’s been helpful to help open up spasticity of clenched fingers and toes.
And so after three sessions, parents report that the right hand that was previously the most close is now able to open a much more. And then both hands are now open about 75% of the time. Whereas before there were closed a hundred percent of the time and I’m there and requested if I could do something about this passage in your bicep, which I basically just do a local Twitch response, muscle twitching cabins.
And I said very forth. This is now the fifth treatment, hands up, fully open, and now is able to actually grab toys to this mouth, but it’s not doing it with any type of purpose or desire to read something and grab it and bring it themselves. If they happen to swing their hand and grab something, then I’ll bring it to them out to divide it.
Okay. And then we also did some nutrition recommendations such as Alliance, Maine. It was just been shown to help re regeneration of nervous system tissue. And then we continued to help them with treating spasticity in the calf and by surgery. This is just local muscle needling is very similar to.
A technique that a surgical intervention that that they have created in Western medicine is called social surgical myofascial, lengthening where basically they are making tiny decisions in the ligament to help the extension. So they have less contraction of muscles. So we were doing acupuncture.
Needles was essentially the same thing, just a little bit less invasive and less surgical. I added copper scholars point in a year. That’s the point that the cruise stimulation communicates to me left and right brain. And then the patient stopped coming for a month because of scheduling reasons with me.
But despite not having any treatment for a month, fingers are remains open. And now the child is able to start sitting up and lean four on the high chair. Whereas before, if there was four on the high shirt, there’s just totally fall over on their face, on the high chair. So that means that there’s some core control that this child didn’t have before
we treat it local Twitch response on mussels hamstrings and gastrocs and soldiers to help with the spasticity that this child is presenting. And and then and then the parents, Charles the P the, this boy had a brother. And so because of a busy being, having a newborn in the family, he they stopped bringing him for awhile.
And then. And then I want to the reason why I show this slide is that there’s a point here called master sensorial point over here. And and what it corresponds to is actually the junction of all the different lobes of the brain. So the frontal parietal occipital temporary, so and so forth.
So this point of the brain is it’s called the masters and Sora point because essentially because the junction or the lobe stimulates all the brain at the same time. Patient, the parent came with a new imaging results showing that there was diffuse Y white matter patterns across the brain.
So I needed to have a way to, to treat. Across the whole brain and it has been in and they’ve and they also found that there was extra amount of degeneration in the course of Corpus callosum, which is why I needed to focus on points. I sent out five and the regular course crevasse and point to try to focus on th delivery, more stimulation to the regions.
So they came back in January 15th and they had a seizure in late 20, 21. On top of, having a younger brother, they were just too busy and didn’t come for awhile. So because of that, they put the doctors put them on an anti-seizure medication. Just to repeat what I say, or their CT shows us there’s reduced white matter and and thinning of the all across the brain and thinning of the Corpus callosum.
So this is why the treatment needed to have the masters in short point to stimulate the whole brain, but also to specifically focus on the Corpus callosum, because there was thinning of the Corpus callosum. Now the patients feel that they’re seeing a lot of progress and it’s been awhile. Now this, they feel that is pretty safe with their son.
So there’s now they requested me to do scopic Highlands in other areas that are approved, that they were previously worried about. The fontanelle is being closing. So the air would be the first sensory motor on the midline. And now I think, can you do to balance the area and Knoxville region? And then so after we did that one treatment with including the the Prada lobes and the frontal lobe for the first time, Patient came back and noticed that there was market improvement in the core strength.
The kid was starting to lean over in a high chair, but now actually it’s able to complete sit up in the high chair on his own. And actually when they’re lying down on the stomach and a bag trying to change the diaper is starting to want to do sit-ups to come back up. So this is very interesting because the only thing that was done differently was areas that are known to affect the core and immediately that got, that, got that, that improve.
So we can see if it’s working, don’t change it. We keep on doing that. And and we can understand why we do that because the area, of course, the first sensory motor area and the mid line, as you re very close to the supplementary motor you’re right. I mentioned to beginning, which helped initiate movement.
And then in February, on February 2nd, February, I decided that since this kid has this preference of the eyes going down to the bottom and has difficulty seeing things on the left side, there’s obviously some kind of ocular motor issues. What do I have to lose by trying to put the gallbladder 16 there and also put governing vessel 17, which corresponds to the primary visual cortex is back.
So what is both of the sensory aspect division wide for the movement as a vague vision? And can you do the rest of the point? And at the end of that session for the very first time the child was hugging the mom’s face. Okay. And so according to the mom has never, the child’s never done that before. And then that was pretty promising, but two days later I received an email from the mom and this is a video I’m going to show you.
After only adding the gallbladder 16 point, which is really the eye movement that at the child biweekly or weekly physiotherapy session, when they’re playing with toys and learning to move their hands and eyes for coordination purposes, that there was for the very first time a intense, intentional grabbing of objects, fixing it, seeing, grabbing it and being able to bring it back with purpose, not just randomly.
Okay. So this is a video that I’m going to show you to finish today’s presentation. And and so let’s have the video please,
so you can see very well. He is reaching for the. This is it, you have been using the special how many times he never did. And then the mom is commenting that they always use this for all the time, but this person
Okay. So that means that as they move the toy away, he’s aware of it and is changes, naked eyes to continue to track that toy. So this is, I just thought it was very interesting to be able to share that outcome, that research with you, that scholars 16 call I window, has in his name, something to his vision and based on our MRI research.
Safe to say that is probably the frontal eye field, which is involved in ocular, motor hyperbole, and specifically for six psychotic movements. So I hope you appreciate the excitement that I get when I do this kind of research, but as obviously the reward is to be able to help, we are conditions like Havana syndrome and the two little boy who, is so severely developmentally delayed.
Now we actually can help them in their physical therapy or occupational therapy so that they have a better chance of having a a a a higher quality of life. Thank you very much for your attention. And next week for our our show, our guests are going to be Brian Lai and Matt Callison
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