Tag Archives: Facial Acupuncture

Microneedling Neck and Hands – MIchelle Gellis

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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, my name’s Michelle Gellis. I am an acupuncture physician, and today I am going to be presenting on microneedling for Aging Hands, neck and Chest. So a little bit about me. I have recently published a hardcover 500 page book on treating the face. So you might wanna check that out. And currently I’m on the doctoral faculty at Yoan University, former faculty member and clinic supervisor.

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At the Maryland University of Integrative Health for about 18 years. I’ve been published several times in the Journal of Chinese Medicine, regular columnist at acupuncture today, and I’ve been teaching facial acupuncture classes internationally for about 20 years. So today I’m talking about a couple of specific topics within the general heading of microneedling.

So I’m gonna be talking about microneedling for the neck, chest, and hands. So I’m gonna go over the benefits of microneedling, how it works, contraindications, some special considerations when you’re microneedling the hands, neck and chest. And then some technique techniques. So why would we do microneedling?

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Microneedling is a great alternative to injectables, things like Botox and fillers and surgery to address things like fine lines, acne scars, loose skin, large pores, crow’s feet, lip wrinkles. Skin discoloration, like dark spots, stretch marks, and even hair restoration. So what does it do exactly?

How does it work? Microneedling stimulates your body’s own collagen production, the micro. Stimulate your body to produce collagen, and it also increases the absorption of any product that you will put on your skin by up to a thousand percent. And in my book, I have pages and pages of references to studies and white papers that have been done on microneedling and how it affects the skin.

I. So the benefits are, there’s very little downtime. It’s very low risk, highly effective, and the collagen that’s produced is your own collagen. So it’s very natural. It’s. Relatively comfortable. There’s very little pain and the results can last up to five years from a series of treatments. There are some indication contraindications.

You don’t want to do microneedling on people that are on blood thinners. People that are undergoing chemotherapy or radiation, people that have really any kind of moderate to severe conditions that are open or oozing that might require medical care, psoriasis, eczema, active acne, that’s pu warts, other things like that.

If you’re not sure, look it up. Speak to your patient’s doctor. Have them speak to their doctor before you start microneedling over any skin condition if your patient has keloids or if they are pregnant. These are all contraindications. So real quick education of the skin. This right here is the stratum corneum.

And so this hole piece right here is the dermal layer and the epidermis. And right at the base of the epidermis is this layer called the stratum basal, and this is where the stem cells. That produce new keratinocytes are formed. So you really don’t even need to get down into this dermal layer, which is where the blood vessels are.

So just by staying in the epidermis, you can stimulate the growth of. New fibroblasts and collagen. So the way the fibroblast stimulation works is these needles puncture. This would be like the head of a microneedle pad, puncture little holes into the skin. They heal very quickly, but they damage the epidermis, and the epidermis heals itself with new healthy skin.

So when we’re doing microneedling, we are going to use different depths for different parts of the face and the neck. And the neck and the chest are very sensitive. The skin on the neck in particular is very thin on the chest. It’s a little thicker. But you really wanna dial it down when you’re working on the neck itself.

So when you’re microneedling, you want to take into consideration the depth of the. Skin, the thickness of the skin that you’re needling and how deep you want those needles to go. Because on a microneedle pen, the needles go up and down and they’re going to penetrate into the skin, and there is a dial on microneedle pens showing you how deep the needles are going to go.

As I mentioned, skin on the neck and the chest can be very sensitive and thin. It can be crepey on the chest. There can be a lot of dark spots on the chest. On the neck, you can get loose and wrinkled skin. So here is an example of an aging neck, and you can see how thin and delicate the skin is here, and then when you’re working on the chest, you get these deeper wrinkles and folds and a lot of sun damage because the sun, when we’re out, the sun is going to hit our chest.

A lot of times we put sunscreen on our face, we put on our hat, but our chest is exposed. So this is an example of what a patient might look like before microneedling and then after, just so you can get an idea, they’re going to be red, but they, there shouldn’t be any bleeding when we’re talking about the hands.

The hands as people’s. Hands get older, they can get very bony veiny, and the veins can be right up at the surface. Their hands can be very sensitive. The skin can be very thin, and because the hands and the feet are so far away from the heart. The healing capacity, there’s the blood flow to the hands and the feet isn’t as good as the rest of the body.

So you can have some reduced healing capacity. So you wanna be very careful not to go too deep. So for a patient like this, when you’re working, you wanna make certain to avoid any prominent veins and to pay attention to any dark spots. I. This was a patient of mine came to me for three or four microneedling treatments, and this is what they looked like before and this is what they looked like after their third treatment.

I had just. Treated them. And I had dabbed at this spot right here, but you can see this spot here is almost completely gone. And just overall the skin on the hand looks much healthier. Little bit about the protocol. You wanna make sure if you’re working on their hands, that the patient washes their hands.

And if you’re working on the chest, you can use a neck. You can use a makeup remover wipe with some rubbing alcohol on it to get that clean. You wanna make sure you put gloves on. And if they would like numbing cream, you can put numbing cream on. I usually recommend like a 5% lidocaine cream, and then you’re going to let that sit for about 20 minutes.

You remove that either with a cotton pad or a makeup remover, white and. Then whatever area you’re working on, you wanna make sure to spray it or wipe it with alcohol, and then you’re going to apply your serum. I recommend hyaluronic acid serum. The product that I use is made by. A company called AccuLift.

It has vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, and collagen. And then you’re going to adjust the depth of the pen and the needle lengths and the speed of the pen according to how deep you’re going to go, depending on the thickness of. The patient’s skin. You’re going to use an up and down technique, and if you’re working on the hands, you’re going to go up and down.

So you’ll be going like this, you are not gonna go across the hand this way. And then if they have any spots, you would use a stamping technique and again, avoiding any prominent veins. For the neck, you’ll be working up and down and on the chest you can go up and down and left to right and use a stamping technique.

When you’re setting up expectations for your patients the results can take. Up to two weeks to see any sort of improvement. And I recommend four to six weekly sessions and the appointments are one month apart. So I’m sorry, not weekly sessions, four to six monthly sessions, and if they wanted to come in for some nano needling, which is a much more superficial.

Needling. It’s more of an exfoliation. They can do that after their skin is healed. So usually within a week. And they do need to know if they’re using any prescription products that they will absorb more quickly. When you’re setting up expectations for your patients, you wanna take into account their skin type, their age, lifestyle, diet.

How much sleep they’re getting. Water, they’re consuming what their skincare routine is, their genetics. Talk to them about their family and how they aged. Of course, your TCM diagnosis, I always include, I. And acupuncture treatment with my microneedling. And any blood, she yin deficiencies, excesses, stagnations, things of that nature.

Some of the possible side effects could be some pinpoint bleeding, redness, itching, burning, a little skin irritation or some pigmentation that should say changes. You also wanna send your patient home with some take home instructions. Let them know they could be red Peel flake for about 24 out 12 to 24 hours and schedule their next appointment for a month out. Soothe their skin with either aloe and Orica blend again. AccuLift has a calm spray. It has green tea.

And aloe and tica and CBD and some other things that are very calming to the skin. They shouldn’t put any makeup on the day of, stay out of the sun. No exercise because sweat can irritate the area, use very mild soap. And after the treatment they should start on a skincare routine. So this is what a microneedle pen looks like.

You have needle cartridges wall charger, batteries, extra batteries, and that way you can plug it in. It should come with instructions and a nice long cord. I recommend a minimum of 18,000 RPMs on the speed for the needles to go up and down for it to be effective and that you should purchase a medical grade pen.

The less expensive pens that are sold online usually are for home use for single person use. Professional pens have anti backflow technology and they are meant the pen is meant to be used for long-term use on many patients. And then the needle cartridges go in the sharps container afterwards.

So this little snippet I just showed you was a little piece of a much bigger class. I teach a four hour microneedle in class and a bunch of other classes live and recorded. You can check them out@facialacupunctureclasses.com. And any of the products I’ve talked about today, you can find@uluskincare.com.

Thank you so much, and thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity

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Treating TMJ with a Multifaceted Approach Part 2 – Michelle Gellis

And today I am doing part two of a two part lecture on treating TMJ with motor points, scalp acupuncture, and submuscular needling.

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Hi, my name is Michelle Gellis. I’m an acupuncture physician and I teach cosmetic and facial acupuncture classes internationally. And today I am doing part two of a two part lecture on treating TMJ with motor points, scalp acupuncture, and submuscular needling. So if you can go to the first slide,

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I previously was a former, I’m a former faculty member and clinic supervisor at the University, Maryland University of Integrative Health. I was there for almost 20 years and I’m currently on the doctoral faculty at Yoson University. I’ve writtenly written. I’ve recently written a book on treating the face.

It is a comprehensive guide, covering everything from the five element treatment of the face to cosmetic acupuncture, treating neuromuscular facial conditions, facial cupping, gua sha, microneedling, red light therapy, and many other. So you might want to check that out. So last time I spoke about TMJ and its etiology, its symptoms, treatments.

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As far as some Western medicine theory and TCM theory, and today I am going to go over a multifaceted approach to treating TMJ because it is a very common condition that we will see in our patients. The underlying theory in my treatment protocol is that neuromuscular facial conditions such as Bell’s palsy, TMJ, myasthenia gravis, and others can best be treated using a multifaceted approach.

So today we are going to talk about three of those. Scalp acupuncture, Facial motor points and submuscular needling. Scalp acupuncture is actually a fairly modern technique in our medicine. It’s only been around since the 1950s and really became popular in the 1970s. And we use our needles to stimulate different areas of the scalp, which stimulate different areas of the brain, which control different parts of our body.

And it is not based on acupuncture points. It is based on neuroanatomy and it makes it Very beneficial for treating the face because frequently when people have certain conditions that are very painful, it’s hard to do localized treatment. But by treating the scalp, we can affect. the face. So there’s three main areas that we would look at when thinking about treating, using scalp acupuncture to treat the face.

And that would be the motor area, the sensory area, and the foot motor sensory area. And depending on the condition, whether it’s more motor function or sensory meaning pain or neuropathy, you would choose the particular area. So again, it’s based on neuroanatomy. Basically, on the homunculus.

So looking at this, the face takes up a really large section of the brain area. So this is motor and this is sensory. And you are going to be needling horizontally through this loose connective tissue. So we have the scalp, the clo, the skin rather, the close connective tissue, the aponeurosis. And then we have the loose connective tissue, which is where we would be.

needling. So the landmarks that we’re going to be looking for are the glabella and the occipital protuberance. So we need to measure the scalp and we usually do that with two hands. And so you would look at the glabella and the occipital protuberance, and then you would draw an imaginary line between the two, and when you find the midpoint, you go back 0.

5 centimeters, and that is going to give you your your vertical line this way, and When you’re deciding on your horizontal line, you want to start at the midpoint of the eyebrow. So you are going from the midpoint of the eyebrow to the occipital protuberance. That is going to be you’re starting here 0.

5 centimeters back and you go right to the hairline when you measure from the midpoint of the eyebrow to the occipital protuberance. So this is the motor area and the bottom two fifths. So we have five fifths. The top one fifth is your lower extremities. So we’re not concerned about that middle two fifth, the upper extremities.

And so that would be the hands and the arms, and then the face and the head would be the right here, this section right here. That is the bottom two steps.

Another technique that we can use is submuscular needling. Submuscular needling is a technique that we use when we need to or want to relax an atrophied muscle or overly tense muscle and it is really beneficial for long term paralysis or if someone has a lot of tension in an area and there are several muscles on the face and head that we can use submuscular needling for, but TMJ, the ones that we’re going to focus on are the temporalis and the masseter.

So here you can see the temporalis and the masseter. And what you would do is you would take. half inch acupuncture needles and you would thread them around the edge of the temporalis and underneath or through, if you can’t get underneath the masseteer. And by doing this, it brings blood and qi flow to this area.

So here’s another close up of what that might look like. It doesn’t really matter what direction the needles are going. As long as you stay right on the edge of the muscle and the easiest way to find the border is you bite down and where you have your patient bite down and you can feel the front of the edge.

of the temporalis, and then you are just going to, once you find the front edge, then you can follow it around on the temporal fossa, and this will go all the way back behind the ear, and you would just thread the needles all around horizontally along the edge of the muscle. And it looks something like this.

And then for the masseter, the easiest way to find it is ask your patient to bite down and it will pop out. And then you are going to place needles right underneath from the origin to the insertion. Right underneath the muscle and some people the muscles very thick and you might be going right through the muscle and it looks like this

some additional ancillary treatments that you could add in are to use some points to help relax your patient like Shen Men, you can also In the auricular area there’s a TMJ point that you can use and lower jaw, so you would look those up on an auricular acupuncture chart and for if they’re having sensory issues like pain, you would do both sides for scalp acupuncture.

And if it’s just one side, if it’s motor issues, you would just do one side and then cupping and Gua Sha can also be very beneficial. and submuscular needling of the massetere, temporalis and there’s also some auricular muscles that you can see right here in this picture. These are the auricular muscles.

You could also needle under those and in some individuals that is very beneficial. Why does it keep doing this

and also the motor points for the masseteer and the temporalis. So the facial motor points, the motor point for the temporalis is just anterior to gallbladder a. Okay. And it is on the temporalis muscle and you would just go anterior to that and you can needle that and stimulate it a little bit. And then there are two motor points for the masseter and one is stomach six is a motor point.

And then just below stomach seven, in line with the earlobe, there is another motor point. And you could needle both of those on the affected side or on both sides and stimulate those. And all of these used in combination can really be very beneficial to helping to relax the face, relax the jaw, relax your patient.

If they have TMJI cover this in great detail in my classes and there is my website, facial acupuncture classes.com. And you can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. I have I have a Facebook group with over 8,000 acupuncturists in it. There’s always a lot of conversation going on and I. Teach classes internationally so you can check out my schedule.

Thank you so much.

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Treating TMJ with a Multifaceted Approach Part 1

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Hi, my name is Michelle Gellis. I’m an acupuncture physician and I teach cosmetic and neuromuscular facial acupuncture classes internationally. I just completed my first book. It is called Treating the Face and it is a comprehensive guide. It’s a hardcover book. It’s a comprehensive guide to treating the face, both for cosmetic and neuromuscular Conditions.

I’m currently on the faculty at Yosan University on the doctoral faculty. And prior to that, I worked at, I was on faculty at the Maryland University of integrative health from 2003 until 2021.

Sorry, I having trouble getting going to the next slide. There we go. So these are the different chapters in my. book and it’s a full color book and some of the images that will be in today’s presentation are from my book. So today we’re going to talk about this is part one of a two part lecture on treating TMJ.

And today I’m going to go over the definition, the etiology, and using facial motor points to treat TMJ. And then in part two, I will go over using scalp acupuncture and submuscular needling to treat TMJ. So what is TMJ? TMJ is short for temporomandibular joint pain. It is also kind of part of TMD is another way of referring to it for temporomandibular disorders, and these are any issues that arise from any jaw pain, jaw problems that come from the muscles surrounding the jaw and can cause problems opening and closing the jaw.

And the temporomandibular joint, or TMJ. for short, is the actual hinge joint that connects the mandible to the temporal bone of the skull. So we’re going to go through, as I mentioned, the definition, and then we’re going to talk about motor points. is the temporal bone right here, and this is the mandible.

And here is the joint that we were discussing. And here’s a blow up of that. So you can see where this condyle goes into the temporal bone and there’s a disc here and there’s various nerves that are attached to it. What can happen through grinding the teeth? or injury or stress, which can cause tension.

People can develop temporomandibular joint pain or TMJ for short.

TMJ can manifest as many different things, not just in the jaw area. People can have pain behind their eyes, different issues with their eyes. They can have limited ability to open their mouth, clenching, grinding. They can have sore teeth. They can get headaches because of the location of the temporal muscle.

They can have issues with their ears, vertigo, dizziness, ear pain neck pain, and of course pain in the jaw and clicking and popping of the jaw. So as acupuncturists, we can do some local treatments with acupuncture and treat the channels that are involved. And so some local points might be stomach five, stomach six, you might treat gallbladder four, SI 19, Sangio 17, Tai Yang.

And then using some distal points, like large intestine 4, which is a command point for the face and jaw. Sand jaw 5, gallbladder 41, which are the master couple point of the young way my. And if they have constrained liver qi and they’re grinding their teeth, you could do liver three and liver four and you can combine some other points such as gallbladder 34, which can help to supplement liver three.

But one of the things that I have found in my practice to be really beneficial when treating TMJ are facial motor points. Facial motor, what facial motor points are, they are the most elect, they’re located in the muscle. They’re the most electrically excitable part of the muscle where the motor nerve bundle is attached.

And specifically, it’s the skin region where the muscle is most accessible to electrical activity. excitement at the lowest intensity. So you can actually measure them. Motor points are not trigger points, trigger points, or tender points, or ashi points, that when you press on them the person is tender.

And fortunately for us, when we’re looking at the face, many motor points are also acupuncture points. When you’re trying to figure out what motor point to use when treating the face, you have to determine what muscles are affected, and then you would look at the motor point on the face. That muscle.

When needling motor points on the face, it’s a good idea to use some ornicogel and a very thin needle. You don’t want to be using a really heavy gauge needle because stimulating the needle could possibly cause some bruising.

Here is an image I took from an old this is an old medical text and they actually outlined all the different motor points on the face and neck. This is from the late 1800s, which I thought was very interesting. Motor points have been used for quite some time. Here is a picture of a nerve and going into the muscles.

So we have the sensory nerve and then we have the motor nerve and the motor point. is, as I mentioned, the most electrically excitable part of that muscle.

There are many motor points on the face. We’re not going to talk about all of them. We’ll just be focusing on a couple, because when we’re thinking about TMJ, the muscles that are involved are going to be the masseter. and the temporalis.

So here’s the temporalis muscle as you can see, and here is the acupuncture point gallbladder A. The motor point for the temporalis is just anterior, it’s one cun anterior to gallbladder A, and you would use a perpendicular insertion. The goal is to go into the muscle, but not through the muscle. The temporalis works with the massetere.

Here’s the massetere to move the mandible up and down and by when a person has TMJ, the temporalis can get very tight and by releasing this motor point, it can relax the entire side of the head and face. and jaw.

Another muscle with motor points that we would use for TMJ is the masseter and here is an image from my book of the masseter and then the it has two motor points and one of them is small intestine, six. And the other one is just below stomach seven, it’s just inferior to stomach seven, and it is level with the earlobe, and you would needle this about a half to one soon deep, because you’re going through the flesh and the fatty area of the face right here.

And this is really wonderful for jaw pain as well. Now this is demonstration of what can happen when you needle a motor point properly. This is not the masseteer or the temporalis, but it was a good display of what happens when you needle a motor point. So, I wanted to show this. Where’s my Ah, there we go.

So this person had had Bell’s palsy and they had a lot of trouble pursing their lips and so this is actually muscle on the chin and you can see when I stimulate the needle, see if I can get that to go again, when I stimulate the needle This is in the mentalis. When I stimulate the needle, how it really jumps, it’s already moving on its own.

And then once I stimulate it, it really causes the muscle to jump.

So next time we are going to talk about other ways of treating TMJ using scalp acupuncture and submuscular needling. And I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity. You can go to facialacupunctureclasses. com and let’s see, I have a slide here. Sorry. You can go to facialacupunctureclasses.

com and you can learn more about some of the classes. That I teach. Thank you so much.

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Microneedling for Acne and Acne Scars – Michelle Gellis

So why microneedling for acne? Microneedling is something that is historically been used for cosmetic concerns and when you’re thinking about acne and acne scars microneedling, the only thing that it’s been FDA approved for is for treating acne scars.

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My name’s Michelle Gellis, and I am an acupuncture physician. Hi, my name’s I specialize in facial and cosmetic acupuncture, and today I am going to be doing a presentation, a short presentation, which is part of a longer class that I teach on microneedling for acne and acne scars. So you can go to the first slide.

A portion of this webinar is taken from my book. Let’s see if I can get in the middle. It’s called, thank you. It’s called Treating the Face, and it is a comprehensive guide on treating the face for health professionals. Everything from cosmetic and neuromuscular acupuncture to facial cupping and gua sha.

And there is a chapter on microneedling. So many of the images today are from that. And this is just some photos from the inside of the book. So why microneedling for acne? Microneedling is something that is historically been used for cosmetic concerns and when you’re thinking about acne and acne scars microneedling, the only thing that it’s been FDA approved for is for treating acne scars.

And I’m going to explain that in a moment, but it can also help with acne itself. So what are some of the benefits for microneedling for acne and acne scars? So microneedling can help with the scar itself, it can help with the discoloration, and it can also help with the skin texture. Microneedling will break down the scar tissue.

for the acne scars and it encourages healthy skin regeneration and it helps with the hyperpigmentation, which is a darkening of the skin that can happen when you have had acne. And overall, it will improve the skin tone and the texture making the scars less noticeable. A little bit about acne and there’s different types of acne.

So here is a normal sebaceous gland and hair follicle. And what can happen is the pore of the follicle gets infected with bacteria, and if the skin is healed over it, then you have a white head. If it’s open and oxygen gets to the bacteria, then it becomes a black head. If it gets infected, then you can get this redness around the white head, and If it is inflamed and infected, then you can get a large area of redness, and this is called pustule.

There are also different types of acne scars and boxcar scars. Scars are more of a square shape, ice pick scars are round and deep, keloid scars are raised, and rolling scars are when you have scars that run into one another. What microneedling does is it controls So the little injuries that are, cause when you do microneedling, it stimulates collagen production.

stimulates the skin’s wound healing responses, activating these fibroblasts, and these fibroblasts produce collagen, elastin, and to repair the skin. Microneedling. Also creates little microchannels in the skin, so whatever products you may be using get better absorbed. Here is a picture of a cross section of skin.

Here is the and this is just the epidermis, so the outer layer of the skin. These are all the dead cells on the top. And this is called the stratum corneum, and down here at the bottom, this is the stratum basal, and these are where all the new skin cells are produced. And so when you microneedle, you are both helping the stratum corneum to be exfoliated and you’re reaching down past the keratinocytes down into the stratum basal where the new fibroblast cells create healthy collagen.

So there were many different microneedling devices. There are a dermaroller, which is a non mechanical device where you just roll these little needles on the skin. There’s also a Dermastamp which you stamp onto the skin and you can fill this with serum or different products. And these are really meant for in home use to treat the skin at home.

This is a microneedle pen and this microneedle pen has different speeds for working on different areas of the skin. And it also has different depths. These are little needle cartridges. that connect onto the pen that go into the skin and I offer a four hour training on using a microneedle pen for wrinkles, hair loss and also for acne and acne scars, so how to actually use a microneedle pen.

the pen. So here are some before and after photos of acne and acne scars. This one was microneedling and this one was just using a derma roller. So some of the contraindications are if someone has actual acne. active pustule acne, you don’t want to be microneedling over that. If there’s any sort of infection going on, you don’t want to microneedle over that.

If the person is pregnant, you don’t want to be using a microneedle pen. You could do some derma rolling, but the biggest concern is infection and introducing any sort of infection. So you would want to make You were microneedling with a derma roller or a derma stamp that your device was clean and sterile.

With a microneedle pen, the cartridges are thrown out, but since you’re going deeper, you do run more of a risk of infection. Other contraindications are keloid scars, any sort of bleeding disorder, any sort of skin condition. or if the person is using Retin A or Tretinonin this thins the skin and can be a contraindication.

Other contraindications are if the person has open wounds or cuts, any allergies to any of the ingredients in the numbing agent that you might use or the serum any sort of autoimmune disorder. And, or if they have active cancer or they’re going through radiation therapy.

Some precautions that you would use are to make sure, as I mentioned, that your tools are sterile. And you might also want to do some patch testing, especially if the person has darker skin. And you want to avoid any overly sensitive areas, especially areas where the skin is very thin, the red part of the lips.

inside the orbital rim. As I mentioned do a patch test and avoid any areas where there’s pustule apnea, rosacea, or broken skin. When you’re thinking about different types of skin that might be better suited to microneedling, you want to think about the Fitzpatrick scale. So that’s how dark someone’s skin is.

So darker skin types are more prone to Inflammation sorry, post inflammatory pigmentation. So you would want a patch test if someone has dark skin. And then you would adjust the needle depth and frequency for sensitive or any reactive skin types. So what this boils down to is really doing a thorough consultation to meet the person’s individual needs.

As far as results, typically people come once a month and results are typically seen within three to six treatments. And during the time the person is getting treated, they should avoid using any retinoids, exfoliants, whether it’s a physical exfoliant like a scrub or a chemical exfoliant like alpha or a beta hydroxy acid.

They should not have any exposure to direct sunlight for 48 hours after the treatment. When you’re doing, whether it’s microneedling or dermal rolling, you want to use some sort of a serum when you’re doing your treatment. And then post treatment you want to have something such as aloe, arnica, something that will soothe the skin.

And when you’re treating the skin during the treatment, having something with Peptides, hyaluronic acid, vitamin C, collagen, these are all good ingredients to have when you’re doing the micrometaling. So the hyaluronic acid will hydrate the skin, and it also helps post procedure. The vitamin C helps to brighten the skin, and as I mentioned, you want to avoid any kind of harsh chemicals.

So the first thing that you do is you clean the skin, and then you have to prepare the skin. That might mean putting on a numbing cream if the person wants numbing cream. And then you are going to start in the less sensitive areas. Possibly on the forehead and then work your way down work in different sections.

And this will give, so instead of trying to do the whole face at once, you work in a small area and you don’t wait for the skin to get pink before you go to the next area. Okay. You would treat the area like four times in each direction and then move on to the next area. You can always go back. It is a light to moderate pressure and really the device itself will do the work.

You don’t have to press too hard because that can cause trauma to the skin. And I’m sorry for my slide, really formatted it looks like. Some of the words got cut off.

Typically for acne scars, superficial scars will respond well to depths between 5 to 1. 0 millimeters. Deeper scars like those ice pick scars or the boxcar scars require 1. 5 to 2. 0 millimeter especially if they’re on the chest or the back. I would probably say more 1. 0 to 1. 5 and see how that works when you’re working on the face.

As far as the frequency for active acne, you are going to work every four to six weeks, very shallow depth, and again, don’t treat any active pustules or you don’t want to spread the bacteria. and you want to use an anti inflammatory serum and acne targeted serums and treatments afterwards. If it’s a scar, same thing every four to six weeks, you’re going to go a little deeper depending on how severe the scar is.

And as I mentioned, they should notice a difference within three to six weeks. months of treatment. Once the desired results are achieved, they can come in for maintenance every three to six months to maintain the skin health and they should be doing care at home with products. After the treatment, gentle cleansers, avoid sun exposure, use your serums.

They should cleanse with a mild non fragrance cleanser, and a hydrating serum. So some of the things that might occur afterwards and so redness, swelling, peeling or normal infection is very rare, but it is certainly a possibility. But typically, you get mild redness, peeling, swelling, which subside within 24 to 48 hours.

Something that’s great is if you can combine the microneedling with other therapies, either within the treatment or in the case of acupuncture, you would alternate. So what I do with my patients with acupuncture, is I will give them three weekly acupuncture treatments during the month, facial acupuncture.

Then on the fourth treatment, I will do microneedling. And so I work the microneedling in. Red light therapy can be used or LED therapy can be used, especially the blue light because that helps to kill the bacteria. of the acne and putting these things in combination can really yield the greatest benefits.

It’s very important that you document everything, keep a record of all the treatments, including the needle depth, what products were used, and the client’s symptoms. responses or reactions, and make sure to schedule the follow up so you can monitor the progress. Always use before and after photos so you can document the changes because people don’t always notice the changes.

And then by doing the patient education, you can ensure the best safest outcome for your patient. So this is my social my website is FacialAcupunctureClasses. com. I’m on Instagram and Facebook under my name Michelle Gellis and I hope to see you in class sometime.

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Choosing Safe and Effective Cosmetic Tools Part 2

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Hi, my name’s Michelle Gellis. I am an acupuncture physician and I teach facial and cosmetic acupuncture classes internationally. Before I get started with today’s lecture, I wanted to talk really quickly about book that I’ve just written and the name of the book is Treating the Face and it is a 500 page hardcover book with over 350 color illustrations all about treating the face Everything from neurological conditions to some five element and also cosmetic.

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So, if you can go to the first slide.

Today I am going to be doing part two of a two part lecture. on how to choose safe and effective cosmetic tools for your treatment space. So last time I did an overview of some tools and I went through some safety. And today I am going to talk about some Practical considerations, things like ease of use and functionality, how to match tools to different skin types, and then how to set treatment goals, and also how to integrate different technologies using these different tools into your treatment space in order to get the best results.

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So the first thing I’m going to talk about are microneedle pens. And I have a microneedle pen here. And the microneedle pens when you’re thinking about ease of use microneedle pens are great. They typically you want to look for ones that have both a, like a Battery that you can use or a plug that you can use.

And also you want to be able to adjust the depth of the needles. So you might wanna go to me for this. So these needle cartridges click on and then there is a little adjustment ring here where you can adjust. The depth, these numbers signify the depth of the needles on the, how deep the needles will go.

And then on this particular model, this is an AccuLift micro pen. On this one, the This end shows you how fast. It says number four. Sorry, trying to catch the light here. You just adjust, you push the, whoops, this way, you push the button on the top, and then it lets you know how fast The needles are going up and down.

You can go back to the slides. So you want a pen that has an easy to use dial for your depth adjustment. And that way, when you’re working in different areas of the face, neck, chest, hands, back any parts of the body. You can adjust the needle depth and then having it either recorded or cordless gives you some versatility and lightweight pens.

If you’re doing a lot of microneedling, you don’t want something that’s too heavy in your hand and a really simple cartridge adjustment. So the needle cartridge, you should be able to click it in, snap it on and make sure that it’s something that will stay securely attached. And replacement parts should be easy to get as well.

Just like with any. electronic device batteries can wear out on these over time, over years, and being able to get replacement batteries, cords, things of that nature is very helpful. So derma rollers, you can go to me again. This is a derma roller and they have this head. You want to get one with a smaller head that’ll fit in smaller areas.

And I like the ones that have needles that are shaped like little pyramids. They tend to not bend as easily. And these are actually integrated right into the head of the Dermaroller. And the handle has a design that makes it easy and comfortable to grip, to get a good grip on it and to hold in your hand.

And these have 540 microneedles on them, and they come in different lengths. These are also made by AccuLift. You want to make sure that any microneedle device that you have comes in a nice case to keep it clean, and that it’s protected. Pre sterilized. You can go back to the slide. The nice thing about derma rollers is they perform a lot of the same functions as a microneedle pen, but they don’t require any batteries.

You just take it out of its case and you don’t require any numbing cream. You just roll it on the face and you can rinse it after you use it. They are for single person use. But you can use them over and over again, and then you can sanitize them once a week just to make sure there’s no bacteria or anything on them.

Go to the next slide. Let’s see. I can do that. Hydra needles and Hydra rollers are very similar. Can you go back to me again? And these are great because, so this is a hydra needle, you can see, let me see if I can get those needles up here, tiny little needles right in the tip. and it has a plunger and when the plunger is depressed, serum comes out of this glass vial.

So you press it on the skin and it’s infused into the skin, whereas the HydroRoller, which is very similar, has these gold needles on it also, but this one you roll onto the skin. So these are great. They’re very versatile. You can build them. They cap, keep the contents from evaporating and you can travel with them, which is really nice.

Okay, go back to the slide. Just make certain whichever products you choose have steps and instructions. And again they don’t require a lot of pressure. The needles are very short. And they travel well.

Facial cupping sets are also wonderful. Oh, I’m using mine to hold my computer up. Hold on one second. Let me let me grab the cups. This is funny. I’m just gonna grab these out. And so this particular set comes with two cups. of two different sizes and two, so two cups and a large one and a smaller one and then two jade gua sha tools and the facial cups are really I like the ones that are glass and They’re easy to use.

They’re easy to clean because they’re glass. They glide well. And so these are things you want to look for. Also, they should be easy to squeeze. You don’t want to get facial cups that are too stiff or too hard to squeeze. And these smaller glass cups fit well on the face. With the Gua Sha tools jade is certainly preferable to a lot of times they’ll be plastic or synthetic or I’ve even seen metal ones.

Really not designed to be used on the face. They can cause injury. You don’t want to cause any redness. or Payne when you’re working on the face. You don’t want to leave any cupping marks when you’re working with the cups and that’s where the glass is really unique because it will collide and it will work well.

You can go back to the slide. Instructions are important. The the set that I used has instructions in the box and on the box and it really makes it wonderful because you can refer to it yourself and you can also sell them to your patients and they can do some self care at home, which is nice.

So the shape you can see here in the slide, the shape of these Gua Sha tools is very versatile, has notches for around the jawline. These flat sides work underneath the jaw, around the temporalis, across the forehead. And then these rounded edges are really nice for stimulating acupuncture points, for massaging the temples, and for working in between the eyebrows.

And Fosha is wonderful for releasing any fascial adhesions, stimulating blood flow, really getting that Qi moving into the face, and it’s very calming and relaxing at the end of a treatment.

Red light devices tend to come in two general categories. There are the tabletop ones which are nice. You can easily just move them from room to room and they typically have an easy setup. They’re lightweight, easy to store, Get them out of the way. They do have some limitations though over the floor models.

Of course, the floor models, you can easily move them all around a patient and depending on the size of your treatment room would determine whether or not it makes sense for you to have one of these. They Usually are the same power. They come in different powers. Some of them will go as far as a pain setting.

Some of them are really just for cosmetic. But when you’re looking, you want to get one that has really simple controls, a built in timer, that has an automatic shutoff. So if you can’t get back in the room to shut the lamp off, it’ll shut itself off and it should come with some sort of eye protection. So microneedle pens are best for really aging skin deeper scars, discoloration, also for fine lines.

They’re good for normal skin combination oily skin. You certainly don’t want to use it over any inflamed or pustule acne, a very sensitive skin, and it’s great for stimulating collagen in the long term. Dermarollers are better for not quite as severe signs of aging, home maintenance, and again, if someone has very sensitive skin, they’re probably not the best choice.

You don’t want to use them over active acne as well. And that’s it. So more advanced signs of aging, the micro and scarring microneedle pens, derma rollers for less. The hydro rollers are like the hydro roller and hydro needle. are just like a dermaroller, but they will infuse serum right into the skin, and again, you don’t want to use those with very sensitive skin.

So the HydroRoller, you can work quickly over a larger area, whereas with the HydroNeedle, it’s better for spot treatments. fine lines, dark spots just little areas. You certainly can use it all over. And it’s, you can actually take a hydroneedle and put, if you have a hair loss product that you’re using, you can put it right into the hydroneedle and use it for that.

Facial cups are great for puffiness, tension contouring the face. Pretty good with any skin type, but you want to stay away from any broken capitals. capillaries, or any active raised, inflamed, or pustule skin conditions, really good for enhancing the circulation, lymphatic drainage, and giving that healthy glow.

The facial gua sha tools will help with any tension in the face. Relaxes your patient, improves the skin texture, and it’s pretty much good for any skin type, except for any active wounds or infections. The red light device is wonderful for almost every type of skin, anti aging, redness, acne, and the only, there are some contraindications if someone is on a medication that’s sensitive to the light.

And you can use it with some of the other tools, but I don’t usually recommend using red light before or after microneedling just because I like the skin, unless you’re using just the white light, the blue light to clear the bacteria.

So for microneedle pens, you want to optimize your results. You want to clean the skin, disinfect the skin, adjust, adjust the depth of the needles, use good high quality serums, keep the speed and the movement consistent, and then the cartridges. have got to be discarded in your sharps container every time.

For the microneedle derma rollers, you want to choose the right length for your patient’s particular skin. You can either, this should say or before or after, but you can either use the serum before or after. I guess you could do both, but If you put serum on first and then you roll, you’re really going to have to be diligent about cleaning that roller and make sure that when you’re rolling, you work in multiple directions, gentle, consistent pressure, and you’re going to be replacing those rollers about every three as much as six months, depending on how often you use them.

And with the HydroRollers and the HydroNeedles, you’re going to want to use good quality serum and pretty much the same as a DermaRollers. You’re going to work in sections. You don’t want to press too hard. And if you’re doing a deeper treatment, you don’t want to treat more than every two to four weeks weeks.

The same thing with the hydroneedles, and you do want to keep them clean. You clean the head of the device after you use it. With the cups, make sure you’re using a high quality oil and Be careful not to use too much suction. You’re going to follow the lymphatic system and you can do cupping as much as three times a week and you want to choose the right cup size for the person’s face.

With the gua sha tools, again, make sure there’s Good high quality oil and use proper techniques. You’re going to be doing more of an upward and outward movement and you can work on different acupuncture points. I always tell my students you can go for the Gua but not the Sha. And red light devices, you’re going to choose the right wavelength depending on your patient, make sure their skin doesn’t have any product on it, and you can use it as three to five times a week, um, for the best effectiveness.

Bringing these, this all together you really want to tailor combinations of treatments. Depending on your patient you can layer your treatments. So you could do some dermarolling and then some red light. What I do is I sit down with my patient and I am going to adjust my treatment plan depending on their needs.

I might do acupuncture and put the red light over it. I always do. cupping and gua sha after a facial acupuncture treatment. And I educate my patient about what it is I’m going to be doing and A lot of these tools, not the microneedle pen, a lot of these other tools you can sell to your patients for at home care in between treatments and make sure that you take before pictures and really track their care.

progress, speak to them about their goals ahead of time, and then check in with them and see how they’re doing. Again, my name is Michelle Gellis. If you would like to reach me, you can go to my website. FacialAcupunctureClasses. com. You can learn about my classes and any of the products that I spoke about today.

And you can also find me on social media under my name. And I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity today.

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Choosing Safe and Effective Cosmetic Tools – Michelle Gellis

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Hi, my name’s Michelle Gellis. I am an acupuncture physician, and I am going to be doing this short presentation for the American Acupuncture Council on choosing safe and effective cosmetic tools. For your treatment space and this will be part one of a two part lecture. So go to the first slide, please.

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So a little bit about me I have been teaching cosmetic acupuncture for a little over 20 years. I’m on faculty. at Yosan University, and I have recently published a book which let’s see, you can, let’s see, this way you can see what the book looks like. It’s a hardcover book and it is called Treating the Face.

Oh, thank you. It is over 500 pages of color, Images and information about treating the face, 5L Lumen acupuncture, cosmetic acupuncture, neuromuscular acupuncture, facial motor points, scalp acupuncture, submuscular needling, facial cupping, facial gua sha, microneedling, red light therapy, skincare, and more.

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And self care and you can get the book from my website facialacupunctureclasses. com. I know a little bit about buying tools for treating the face because when I am treating patients, I have a few different tools that I use. And I have a where I actually have designed and sell tools. But I have spent a lot of time looking into different tools and devices and their efficacy and their safety.

And in order to save all of you a lot of time, I thought I would just put together some really good information on what you should look for when you’re deciding what sort of tools to bring into your treatment space. Some of the tools that I use in my treatment space that are very popular are microneedle pens, dermarollers, hydrorollers, hydroneedles, facial cups, Facial Gua Sha tools, and red light devices.

For today’s lecture, I am going to talk a little bit about each one of the tools, their benefits, some considerations that you might have when you’re looking into these tools, and then also safety concerns. So first is microneedle pens. These are relatively new devices. They’ve Been around for 20, maybe 30 years, but essentially they are it.

They call them pens because they look like a pen, and at the tip of the pen are tiny little needles that vibrate in and out, and they puncture the skin, and they cause microtrauma to the skin, and they cause microtrauma to the skin. When this microtrauma happens, it causes the skin to remodel to produce collagen, and it can be really effective for things like fine lines and wrinkles.

And the treatments are very fast. They, it doesn’t take very long, about 20 minutes to treat the entire face. You can also use these on the neck, the chest, the back of the hands, pretty much any part of the body. But you do need to be trained in how to use them. It’s not intuitive how to do microneedling.

And, They’re really just treating skin level concerns. Another concern with these is sterilization. So when we talk about safety, we’ll talk about that. Another device is derma rollers, and derma rollers are similar to microneedle pens in the way that they work. However, these are manual. Microneedle pens either run on battery or you plug them in, or some of them are both.

And these devices, you just hold them in your hand and you roll them on the skin. And they have tiny needles which penetrate the skin, which help to stimulate collagen. And, will also help to exfoliate and increase the absorption of any products that you might put on the skin. They’re not going to be as precise as a microneedle pen and they can’t always be sanitized as well.

With the microneedle pens you throw the tips out after you use them, the tip, but with the derma roller you tend to use it over and over again, not from patient to patient, but If you’re doing these as in office treatments, you can use the same device on a treatment on a patient multiple times. A HydroRoller is very similar to a DermaRoller.

As you can see here, there are tiny little needles. on this device and this glass container at the bottom gets filled with serum and you roll it on the skin and it infuses the serum right into the skin. So the benefit is you’re really combining two treatments into one. You’re getting the stimulation of collagen and you’re getting the absorption of the product but It’s really going to be limited as far as how much serum it can hold.

A hydroneedle is very similar to a hydroroller, but this is more of a stamping device, so it has these tiny little needles with a little plunger. And you feel, you fill the reservoir with serum and then you would stamp it into the skin. So it’s very precise delivery and, but you just want to use it in specific.

areas.

Facial cups are wonderful. They’re a great add on to cosmetic acupuncture treatments. They help to stimulate blood flow and qi to the face. They’re non invasive. They don’t hurt and but you do want to Make sure you get trained in using them. You don’t want to leave any bruises or cause any injury to your patient’s face.

Facial gua sha tools are made, I like the ones that are made out of jade. Jade is very much a part of our medicine but they can be made out of various different materials and they can also be made in different shapes and The benefit to using them is they can help with lymphatic drainage and they can break up fascial adhesions and they can really sculpt the face if someone has like puffiness under their eyes.

If their jawline is sagging, you can use a gua sha tool for this. Again, you want to make certain that You are properly trained.

Red light devices are Again, something that are a little bit more modern than let’s say our acupuncture needles, and they come in different forms. Here we have one that just sits on the table, and then this one is a freestanding device, and each one has its Benefits. These tend to be the ones that just go on the table tend to be less expensive.

The freestanding ones are more flexible. You can move them anywhere around and it’s just the important things to look for. We’ll talk about in a little bit, but they are pain free, they’re non invasive, and they can heal with a lot of skin level issues. And some of them even have settings for pain.

Safety first. Most importantly, when you’re looking at devices, you really want to take into account, are these devices safe as well as effective, because there are a lot of devices for sale in many places, online, on TV, at your local store. cosmetics shop or uh, wherever you shop, it seems that they have all different types of devices.

So you really want to make certain that what you’re getting is safe. So first I want to talk about microneedle pens and the things that are important. With a microneedle pen are the needles themselves, because those are the real powerhouse of the device. So the microneedle pen needle cartridge, which is disposable, The needle should be made out of stainless steel or titanium, and then so the stainless steel keeps them stainless steel keeps them strong, and the titanium keeps them strong, and very few people are allergic to it.

Check. to titanium. So it’s good if the needles are made out of that. And also the motor of the pen itself, you want to make certain those needles are going up and down at least 16, 000, preferably 18, 000 RPM, because you don’t want The device to be dragging on the skin. You want to make sure that these cartridges get firmly attached into the pen.

And also make certain your pen is CE certified for safety and reliability. And you can even check with the American Acupuncture Council. The American Acupuncture Council has approved the AcuLift Micro Needle Pen for use in the treatment room. Also, anti backflow technology means that not only do you have three connectors on the tip, But also on the inside of the pen, there’s three places where it connects and that the cartridge itself clicks on and stays in very tightly.

For Dermarollers, again, titanium, stainless steel, very important for durability and safety. And you want to make sure these needles are lined up. and that there are enough needles on the roller so that your patient doesn’t have a lot of pain. If there’s too few needles on the roller head, then they can have pain when they’re being The handle should be well constructed, should fit well, feel well in your hand, and you want to make sure that it rolls smoothly.

It shouldn’t be dragging on the skin. With the hydro rollers, there’s a lot of concerns as well, especially since you’re using these devices over and over again. So you want to make sure once you put the serum in, that it This reservoir is sealed well. Again, needles that are either stainless or titanium.

And with the HydroRollers, having them gold plated can add an additional layer of it being hypoallergenic, microbial, added durability wonderful for conducting serums and Making sure that your device has well made needles for precision and for comfort. And gold can help with the healing response. So these are all things to look for.

And then when you’re buying one of these devices, you want to make sure that it’s packaged properly, that it’s sealed and that it’s sterilized. Many of the same concerns that we have with hydro rollers, we’re going to have with hydro needles. So the material and that the. Top screws on tightly, sterile packaging, easy to clean so the top should be able to come off, you can throw it in with some sanitizing tablets, and again, the gold over titanium needles.

For facial cups, The cups that I like are the glass cups. You don’t want them to be plastic or silicone. They can drag on the face. You want to make certain that everything that’s involved here is non toxic. And cupping sets that have at least two different sized cups, because these are small smaller cups.

They’re only just for comparison, the larger cup, the opening is about the size of a dime, so they’re pretty small. With the Gua Sha tools I already mentioned, I love Jade. If you’re using Gua Sha tools that look like this, make sure they’re actually made out of jade and not green glass. They should have a smooth finish.

They should feel cool in your hand, be chip resistant. And if you can find out where they’re sourced, ethical sourcing is also a nice bonus. For the red light devices, when you’re looking at quality and safety, you want to make sure that they have a minimum of 630 nanometers. 850 is where you’re going to be getting into those pain settings consistent power.

And it should have some sort of heat management. If the device itself does get warm, which it shouldn’t, you should still be safe to touch it. And look for something that’s durable, that’s sturdy, that’s not a flimsy device. Okay, so we’ve talked a little bit about the different devices and safety.

And next time we are going to talk about some more practical considerations. ease of use, matching the tools to different skin types and different treatments, and also integrating different technologies. How do you integrate all of these different devices? So thank you so much, and I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity.

Again, my book is available right now only through my website in the US. If somehow you’re catching this in another country, check with your local booksellers online. We have some distribution going on internationally. Thank you so much.