And one of the chapters in the book is all about self-care. So what are some of the things that you need before getting started?

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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 today’s presentation on facial acupuncture self-care. My name is Michelle Gellis, and I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to present to you today. Can we go to the first slide?

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So I put this present… i’m an acupuncture physician. I’ve been seeing patients for over 22 years now. And I put this presentation together because I teach cosmetic and neuromuscular facial classes internationally, and have been for over 20 years. And one of the questions that frequently gets asked to me is, do I treat myself?

And the answer is, yes, I do. So I thought I would share some of the information today with you. And one source of this information is from my book. I have a almost 500-page hardcover, full-color textbook resource manual on treating the face, and it covers everything from cosmetic acupuncture to Five Element acupuncture facial cupping, gua sha, microneedling, neuromuscular conditions, and a wide range of topics, everything related to treating the face.

And one of the chapters in the book is all about self-care. So what are some of the things that you need before getting started? One thing you will need is a magnifying mirror. I have one here that I got on Amazon. Fingerprints all over it. But this one lights up. Wait a minute. Let me center it. Can’t see what I’m doing, but it does…

Take my word for it. It lights up. There we go. And this is a great little travel one. I have a more substantial one at home that plugs in, but this is rechargeable, and it does the job. So before I get started, I can turn that on, and I can see what I’m doing Also, if you’re going to be doing acupuncture on yourself, you’ll need a sharps container and some tweezers if you’re going to be inserting any intradermal needles, which are those tiny little needles.

I think I have a picture of them in a future slide. But these are by Tweezerman. They have a wide grip and a slanted tip, which makes them really good for grabbing those little intradermal needles and inserting them. Arnica gel. I prefer the gel as opposed to the cream. And arnica gel is also really good for preventing bruising.

Also has a little alcohol in it, which helps to clean the face. And because of the different ingredients, some of the arnica gels can help with pain and sensitivity also The needles that I use when I do cosmetic acupuncture on myself are the .14 the shorter needles, the 0.5 millimeter and the .14, 1.0 millimeter needles.

And the longer ones I use for the more fleshy part of the face and the shorter ones I use for the more bony parts of the face. I do like the Seirin needles and using tubes for insertion so that I’m not coming at my face with just the point of a needle. So these are those intradermal needles I was talking about, and lots of needle manufacturers make intradermals.

I like these because of the way they were packaged. There was five needles on a little piece of foam, and then you could just pull them by the handle. And then I typically squeeze a wrinkle and push the, these tiny little intradermal needles in not perpendicular to the skin but parallel inside the wrinkle.

Q-tips are helpful to have in case you see any bleeding or potential bruising about to happen. And then it’s a good idea to have maybe a piece of paper. Look at yourself in the mirror. Decide what you want to work on. Do a little self-diagnosis. Maybe draw some lines on a picture. And that way you have something to think about when you’re doing your treatment plan.

And of course, make sure to check that you have no contraindications or precautions. I cover all of these in detail in my webinars and facial acupuncture has different contraindications and precautions than a typical acupuncture treatment would So you’re gonna make your plan. Where am I gonna put the intradermals, and which acupuncture points am I going to do for different conditions?

Am I going to do any threading of a longer needle into a ring– into a wrinkle? And am I going to do any points on my body? I typically don’t, but sometimes I’ll do maybe some points in my feet. Or if I’m going to lay down, I can do a couple of points in my hands, let’s say large intestine four.

And then while I’m lying down, those points can work Make certain to review your safety concerns as far as what to look for veins, arteries, nerves on your face. Re-familiarize yourself with facial anatomy before you start putting needles in your face, and then review your techniques. My classes have specific mandatory points and optional points that we use.

And so you wanna think about your own needs and which points are you going to use, and really use precision needling techniques when you’re working. So threading yourself is, You could see I’m looking at myself in the mirror here. Again, these are pictures from my book. But threading the nasolabial fold here with a shorter needle and putting an intradermal in.

You can see I’m squeezing the wrinkle, and I’m placing the intradermal into a little chin wrinkle. So you want to go through your protocol starting at the lower part of your face, working your way up. I tend to work on both sides of my face when I’m needling, not one side and then the other. But that way I can work from the bottom up and do all of my threading as a first thing.

Something else I do on myself after I take all the needles out, I do facial cupping and gua sha. And for cupping, I recommend using glass cups with bulbs that are easy to squeeze. These are from AccuLift. They come in a set. This is what the set looks like. Comes with two cups, two gua sha tools, a little velvet bag, and a case for them.

And using cupping oil. These are available at acculiftskincare.com, and the oil has Arnica and CBD in it, things that are very calming for the skin and help to prevent bruising. So I take all my needles out, and then I’m going to do my cupping. Always starting with a lymphatic drainage. Again, don’t try to just wing it or make stuff up or watch some YouTube video.

It’s important to get properly trained before you do facial cupping and especially working on yourself. You don’t wanna injure yourself when you’re doing cupping. For gua sha, again I do the cupping first, and then I do the gua sha after the needles come out. I use genuine jade gua sha tools and the same oil.

And I always start along the clavicle, massaging lymph nodes and then walking working across the jaw, so from the bottom of the face up. And this entire protocol is available, again, on my website, facialacupunctureclasses.com. You can see I have CEUs recorded webinars step by step exactly what you’re supposed to do.

For microneedling, that can come in several different forms. You can either use a derma roller on yourself, or you could use a microneedle pen. And these are all tools available from Accu Lift. These microneedle pens are professional grade and professional quality pens. Or you can use one of these devices.

This is a Hydra needle, so you fill it with serum, and you would stamp the serum directly into the skin. And these are all forms of microneedling So if you would like more information on self-care for acupuncturists, for health professionals, you can go to my social, which on Facebook I have a personal page, Michelle Gellis.

I also have a professional page on Facebook, Facial Acupuncture Classes, and a Facebook group called Facial Acupuncture. I’m also on Instagram and TikTok under my name, Michelle Gellis. And I have two websites, facialacupunctureclasses.com and my affiliate, which is aculiveskincare.com for tools and serums and oils and things like that.

You can also get my book there. Again, I wanna thank the American Acupuncture Council for this time to speak to you about self-care, and I hope to see you again soon.

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“The face is the mirror of the soul.” But what if the relationship goes much deeper than that?

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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, everyone. My name is Michelle Gellis, and I am an acupuncture physician. I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to talk to you today

I want to talk to you today about something I think about every single time I work on a patient’s face. We’ve all heard the expression, “The face is the mirror of the soul.” But what if the relationship goes much deeper than that? What if the face isn’t just reflecting our inner world, but actually shaping it?

Today, I want to explore what I call the emotional feedback loop of the face, the bidirectional conversation between our expressions, our nervous system, our organs, and our qi. I want to show you why this matters profoundly, both as acupuncturists and as people living in a world that is increasingly interfering with that loop.

Let’s start with the Western research, because it’s very fascinating, and it directly validates what Chinese medicine has understood for thousands of years. In psychology, there is something called the facial feedback hypothesis. The basic idea is this. Your facial expressions don’t just communicate your emotions to the world, they actually generate emotional states within you.

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The face sends signals back to the brain. It is not a one-way street. This idea goes back to Charles Darwin. In my book, Treating the Face, I talk about research that was done And by Charles Darwin, and it really gained momentum in 1988 when researchers Strack, Martin, and Stepper conducted a now famous experiment.

They asked participants to hold a pen between their teeth, which forces a smile, or between their lips, which prevents smiling. Those holding the pen in their teeth rated cartoons as significantly funnier. They were smiling without knowing it, and their brains responded accordingly. A large international study published in Nature Human Behavior, nearly four thousand participants, nineteen countries, found that when people deliberately mimic a smile, it amplifies and even initiates feelings of happiness.

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Think about what this means clinically. The muscles of the face are not just motors for expression. They are afferent transmitters sending information back to the brain, back to the nervous system, back to the organs. When we activate the corrugator muscles, the muscles that are between the eyebrows, we don’t just look concerned, we begin to feel concerned Now here’s where it gets really interesting for our purposes as practitioners.

Botulism toxin, known by the brand name Botox, Dysport, Xeomin, works by paralyzing the muscles of facial expression. Researchers have used this as a natural experiment to study what happens when you interrupt that feedback loop, and the results are striking. When people see a happy or angry face, they unconsciously mimic that expression.

But Botox prevents that muscle reaction, and it scrambles the brain’s ability to interpret other people’s emotions. In one study People who were using Restylane, which is a filler, not a muscle paralyzer, read emotions with seventy-seven percent accuracy. Botox users, only seven– seventy percent. We don’t just see someone else’s expressions, we mirror it micro-muscularly, and that mirroring is how we understand what they feel.

If you paralyze the muscle, you lose part of your emotional translation system. Research also found that Botox to the crow’s feet, those little laugh lines on the sides of your eyes, was associated with increased depression scores and reduced emotion recognition. Freeze the muscles of a real smile. So you only get those when you’re smiling really big, like a genuine smile, and when you freeze them, you reduce the feedback that tells your brain you are experiencing joy.

There is a paradox here, though. If you use Botox in the globu-ellar lines between the eyebrows, it can actually reduce depression because you can’t frown deeply, and they receive less negative feedback associated with worry and sadness. So in some cases, Botox reduces depression, but it also reduces the full range of emotional experience.

It creates what I like to call emotional flattening. If you lose the lows, you also are gonna lose some of the highs, and you lose your ability to fully read the people around you. As acupuncturists, we need to know that when we’re treating patients, if they’ve had these sorts of injections, it can affect them.

Their facial feedback system has been altered, and we can discuss that with them gently and professionally and from a deep place of knowledge. Now, I want to bring this to something even more fundamental. This isn’t just about adults choosing cosmetic procedures. This is about how we develop emotionally as human beings from the very beginning of life.

When children are very young, newborns, they are going to show a preference for their mother’s face within hours of being born. Newborns only hours old have been found to copy facial expressions, making an O with their lips or sticking out their tongues. This is remarkable because they’ve never seen their own face.

They are not learning through language. They are learning through instruction. They are learning through mirroring through the face. Research published in Scientific Reports found how much a mother’s– how much a mother mirrors her baby’s face in the first two months, and the mirroring that goes on between the mother and the child and how much mirroring occurs actually shapes the baby’s developing neural pathways and their ability to process expression for years to come Mirror neurons may be central to this process.

When we observe an emotional state in someone else, the mirror activity occurs in our own emotional center. We feel a version of what they feel through our face. So think about what happens in a family where expression is habitually suppressed. When parents chronically hold tension in their jaw, guard their brow, tighten around the eyes, children are literally learning to hold these same patterns in their own faces, and those muscular patterns are sending feedback to their developing nervous systems, shaping how they experience and regulate emotions for decades.

This is not abstract. This is psychology, and it is something Chinese medicine has always understood. In the Chinese medi– in Chinese medicine, the face is never separate from the whole person. Every zone of the face reflects organs. Every line, every color, every area of tension, it tells a story about the internal landscape.

The brow, the corrugator, the procerus belong to the liver. Chronic furrowing here reflects constraint of liver qi, the holding in of frustration and anger that has nowhere to go. And as Western research now confirms, that muscular tension is not just a symptom. It is perpetuating the emotional state.

It is feeding it back into the system. So this is not just carrying a meat suit around. The expressions that we hold back here are going to have an effect on the health of our organ systems. The area around the mouth, the obicularis oris, the depressor anguli oris, these all belong to our ability to feel joy and express joy.

And if these muscles have been paralyzed, then we cannot fully express joy. And if someone has experienced loss, chronic sadness, unexpressed grief, we can see this here also through the large intestine channel. The corners of the mouth will pull down, and that downward pull is sending information back to the nervous system.

Something’s wrong. Something’s been lost. What we are looking at when we look at the face is not just age. It is the history of a person’s emotional life written in their muscle, fascia, and qi. And what makes facial acupuncture so profound and so different from anything else we do is that we are intervening in that feedback loop.

We are releasing the muscular holding patterns that have been perpetuating emotional states, sometimes for decades. We are restoring the flow of qi through the channels that govern the emotional experience and helping the face and therefore the whole person In part two, we are going to go deeper into specific techniques on how to work with these patterns clinically I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council again for this opportunity to speak to you today and make sure to check out part two

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And the topic of my talk today is the importance of clearing blocks before doing cosmetic or any facial acupuncture treatment.

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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 an international educator, and I am also the author of the book, “Treating the Face.” It is a comprehensive guide for acupuncturists and health professionals. It is a full-color, 500-page book encompassing everything having to do with treating the face.

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First, I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to speak to you today. So what I’m going to talk about today comes from chapter two of my book, which is all about five element acupuncture. And the topic of my talk today is the importance of clearing blocks before doing cosmetic or any facial acupuncture treatment.

So what is a block, and why is it important to treat them and clear them? So a block is the im– is an impediment to the smooth flow of qi throughout the body. It’s if you think about water going downstream if you think of your qi as like a river flowing, and if there were sticks blocking the water from going downstream, that is energetically what a block to treatment is like.

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So how might it show up? Blocks can… The effect and how it could show up is it could make symptoms worse, or it could make your treatments not as effective. And this is important to us when treating the face because when we are treating someone’s face we’re not just treating them from here to here.

All of my cosmetic treatments involve a full body acupuncture treatment, and this is because we are treating the whole person. So if the qi is blocked anywhere, then it is going to affect our cosmetic acupuncture treatments, and this can show up in, again, the treatments not being as effective or your patient can have increased side effects from the treatment strange sensations, headaches, dizziness, these types of things.

So it’s really important to clear energetic blocks to treatment before treating the face. The health of the entire body is reflected on the face, and our face is the most yang part of our body. So things like wind and heat and a lot of different stagnations and deficiencies can show up on our face.

They can show up as red spots, dark spots, dryness, puffiness, especially under the eyes. And when we’re thinking about the face and blocks in particular, all of the yang organs, all of the yang channels converge up on the face, and we’ll get back to that in just a second. Thinking about our five element…

I’m a Worsley trained five element acupuncturist I think a lot when I’m designing my treatments, I think a lot about the emotions and how the emotions affect our overall health, and our face is how we express our emotions. And if we can’t or don’t express our emotions due to some sort of blocked channels, blocked qi or perhaps there’s neuropathy somewhere, or your patient has been getting some sort of neurotoxins in order to relax certain muscles, or if your patient has a condition like Bell’s palsy or myasthenia gravis and they can’t express an emotion, then this is not just affecting the face, it’s going to affect our overall health.

So the first thing that I always do when I’m doing a cosmetic acupuncture treatment is I check for and treat any blocks to treatment. So today I’m gonna talk about two blocks to treatment, and one of them is referred to as aggressive energy. So aggressive energy is contaminated, polluted qi that might be circulating through the channels, and it can affect all aspects of our mental, physical, and emotional health, so body, mind, and spirit And there’s really no way just by looking at a person or talking to a person or probably not even feeling their pulses unless you’re highly skilled to know if someone has aggressive energy.

So what we do is we test to see if the person has aggressive energy through an aggressive energy treatment. So the treatment is a test, and the test is also a treatment. So by testing for aggressive energy, you’re treating the person. The points that we use are the AEPs on the back, all the Back Shu points and they are bladder thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, eighteen, twenty, and twenty-three.

So we’re going to go top to bottom, right to left. We’re going to put the points in, and we don’t push the needle all the way in. You just tap the needle in so that they’re just hanging there, and then you’re going to put in a test needle, one in the upper jiao, one in the middle jiao, and one in the lower jiao.

And if the redness around the acupuncture points, the Back Shu points, is different in size or color than the redness around the test needle, then that is usually a sign of aggressive energy. And the test needles are put either between the inner and outer bladder line or between the inner bladder line and the spine, any place that’s not an acupuncture point.

And you will leave these needles in until the aggressive energy clears. I always leave them in for at least fifteen minutes just in case. And I do this on all of my patients for the first treatment and typically within fifteen or twenty minutes, the AE will clear. Another block that’s very important to check for and to clear when you’re treating the face are entry/exit blocks.

And if we think about the flow of energy in the Chinese clock, the energy goes from heart to small intestine to bladder to kidney, etc., etc., around the Chinese clock. And energy moves that way through the channels. So when you’re feeling the pulses, if you notice that the, let’s say, small intestine pulse, which comes right before the bladder pulse, if that small intestine pulse is really big and pushy and the bladder pulse is very small, then it sh- can be a signal that the energy is not getting from bladder to small intestine, and there is an exit/entry block.

And the way you treat this is by treating the exit and entry points of these two channels. So the exit point for small intestine is small intestine 19, and the entry point for bladder is bladder one What you would do is you would if you feel this on the pulse, then you would treat small intestine 19 by tonifying it, and the way we do that is we put the needle in and we turn it 180 degrees clockwise, and then we take it out.

And then I do bladder one and a half kind of on the bridge of the nose and instead of getting all the way into bladder one, and you are going to tonify that, turn it 180 degrees, take it out, and then you would do the same thing on the other side. And usually, this will clear any blocks. You can also suspect these blocks in addition to the pulse.

People usually report they’re having ear issues with their ears. Some, so something physical, headaches and the headaches that cause you to go like this and it feels better. And this is really important because you don’t want to be treating the face unless the face is completely open and the energy is flowing freely.

Can you put up the slide, please? So there are several other blocks that we check for in five element acupuncture having to do with the Shang cycle and I cover all of these in my book and I go into depth about spirit blocks possession husband-wife imbalances, and all of these have to do with getting the chi to move smoothly throughout the body and the face.

You can take the slide down

That is a little bit about why it’s important to clear blocks before doing any facial treatments on your patients. And if you would like more information, you can visit my website, facialacupunctureclasses.com, and check out some of my recorded classes and my live classes. And I hope to see you in class one day soon.

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So for today, I would like to start out with contraindications. And this is a big subject because it takes into account.

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Hi, this is Michelle Gellis. I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to speak to you today. This is part two of the top 10 questions that I get asked about cosmetic acupuncture. A lot of the answers to these questions came from my book, treating the Face. It is a comprehensive guide for acupuncturists and health professionals.

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It is a hardcover book and it is about 500 pages, full color book, and I talk in the book extensively. About how to set realistic expectations with a patient and how to answer their questions, whether it’s a potential patient or whether it’s a current patient. And during my training that I offer to acupuncturists and people who are trained and licensed to perform acupuncture.

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Is marketing information that they can hand out to their patients or put on their websites because a lot of these questions are questions that I get over and over again. And in my almost 25 years in practice and teaching I have found one of the top 10 questions that. People ask me. So last time in part one I talked about how does it work and how many treatments will I need before I get or before I see results?

How much does it cost last? How long do the treatments take? How long do they last? So if you miss part one, you can check that out as well. So for today, I would like to start out with contraindications. And this is a big subject because it takes into account. Two things. One is physical contraindications that patients might have that can be major red flags or maybe minor warnings before you treat them.

And then the other is things that your patients may have. Had done to themselves as far as any sort of treatments or procedures that can be either a minor or a major contraindication for your treating them. So let’s talk about physical. Contraindications to treatment with cosmetic acupuncture.

And the first one is I break it down into two parts. So it’s high blood pressure and you might be thinking a lot of my patients have high blood pressure. A lot of elderly patients have high blood pressure. How am I ever going to do this if high blood pressure is a contraindication? And what I say to you is this, if someone has treated, medicated or untreated high blood pressure, do not make this person or these people your first patient or patients.

You definitely want to treat a few. Healthy patients before you take on patients who have any sort of health conditions. And the reasons for this are you want to build up your confidence, your skills, your knowledge, and really get an idea of how powerful your treatments are before, you dive into someone who maybe has high blood pressure, it’s well controlled with medication, but you do a treatment on them and your treatment causes their blood pressure to shoot up and why would this happen?

The reason is. Cosmetic acupuncture by nature is designed to open the channels up to the face and head and really increase the blood flow, the flow of qi up to the face and head and left unchecked. If you don’t really have good skills or if you do too much, or if your patient’s blood pressure is a little high that day, you could give your patient a headache or worse.

So let’s assume you’ve been doing this for a while. You’ve done many treatments on many patients, and someone calls you and they say. They have high blood pressure. It wasn’t very high to begin with. It was maybe borderline. They’re on medication. It’s very well controlled In that situation, you could start out very slowly, very few points and check their blood pressure before and after.

Treatment and see how they do. They might be a better candidate for more intradermal needles or microneedling rather than treating a lot of chest, neck, face body points. That are designed to bring all this energy up to the head. In my protocol, I specifically have designed. The point structure so that it will bring that energy up.

But you could potentially leave some of those points out. And I talk about this in my classes. My classes are available, recorded and live throughout throughout the world. I, I taught classes all over the world, and you can check out my schedule on facial acupuncture classes.com and look into some of these concepts and some of the theories behind them.

So that, that is high blood pressure, a big conversation Also, pregnancy. You do not want to be bringing all this energy up to the face, head and neck when someone is pregnant. Also, there are points in my protocol that are designed like large intestine four to release things like impurities that would not be good for someone who’s pregnant.

So pregnancy is a contraindication. People who are just generally unwell you don’t want to be doing cosmetic acupuncture on them. People who are diabetic have seizure disorders. People who are very sensitive to needles. As far as contraindications. In my book, in my classes I have a release form and in it are all the different contraindications and all the reasons for them.

So there definitely are some physical contraindications and you would wanna check those out. Additionally, if someone has had Botox recently, you would not want to treat them for about three weeks after the Botox treatments ’cause they take about two weeks to settle in. I like to err on the side of caution and when I say Botox, any neurotoxin.

Dysport. Xeomin I don’t know the brand names of all of them. And then after that, they need to find out from whoever injected them exactly where the neurotoxin was injected. People sometimes forget, or they’re not quite sure, and you wanna avoid that area completely because. Doing cosmetic acupuncture in that area can cause the neurotoxin to wear off.

As far as other treatments such as fillers, peels, lasers any other surgeries on the face. I would direct my patient to the person who did the treatment, and have your patient ask that person. When is it safe for me to have cosmetic acupuncture? There are so many treatments out there now. It’s impossible for us as practitioners to know for each.

Level of chemical peel or laser specific laser treatment, and their practitioner should know the answer to that question. As far as a facelift, cosmetic acupuncture can make facelifts last longer, but because the face is going to continue to age after the facelift, but the cosmetic acupuncture can help.

So that it happens more slowly. And you definitely want to wait about a year after a full facelift before doing cosmetic acupuncture, mainly because of.

Issues that they might have with vascular issues, neuropathy swelling, those types of things. Okay. The next question that people ask me is do I need any specialized training before I do cosmetic acupuncture? I’m an acupuncturist. I know where the acupuncture points in the face are. And the answer is unequivocably.

Yes. In fact, the American Acupuncture Council does ask on whenever you go to renew your license, if you’re doing anything that is outside of the norm for acupuncture and you’re doing specialized treatments. And if the answer is yes, then they do require you to have specialized. Training.

And there are just a few of us in the US that are registered and certified to do cosmetic acupuncture training. I am one of them, and you can check out my classes@facialacupunctureclasses.com. But the reason for this is understanding safety. Around treating the face and neck and head, understanding all of the myriad of contraindications and precautions.

Also their underlying conditions, needle placement, these, and then having a protocol that you can follow that. Doesn’t require so many needles. I go on social media and people that have so many needles in their face, and it’s so not necessary. So specialized training is a must.

Bruising is another question that I get. If you are trained properly. If you are getting using high quality needles and precautionary techniques, such as using arnica gel and really understanding the anatomy of the face, my book has a whole anatomy chapter. The unique nature of treating the face, because the face is so heavily vascularized and the muscles are layered.

Some are thick, some are thin, some are tiny, some are large. Some are deep, some are superficial. Really understanding how to needle the face, understanding good. Precision needling techniques will really reduce the chance of bruising. I rarely bruise a patient, if ever anymore. And the last thing is, can cosmetic acupuncture help with other conditions?

And the answer is yes. When you know how to treat the face and in my classes I teach about facial motor points, submuscular needling, some scalp acupuncture. For treating the face, you can help with things like TMJ, Bell’s Palsy, trigeminal neuralgia. Stroke ms. Myasthenia gravis even facial herpes and a lot of different skin conditions that affect the face, like acne, rosacea, hyper and hypo pigmentation.

So this all, is included in a really good comprehensive facial and cosmetic acupuncture training. And you can be the facial acupuncture specialist in your area because it is a highly specialized training. I hope that answers some of your questions. Again, if you didn’t see part one, you can check it out.

This concludes part two and I want to again thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to speak to you, and I hope to see you in class soon.

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The first question that I get asked about cosmetic acupuncture. And this is a big one…

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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, this is Michelle Gellis. I am an acupuncture physician, and today I am going to speak to you about the top 10 reasons. This is part one of the top. 10 questions that I get asked both from practitioners and patients about cosmetic acupuncture. A lot of the information that I’m going to speak about today can be found in my my book.

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It’s called Treating the Face, and it is a comprehensive guide for acupuncturists and health professionals. It’s all about treating the face. It’s a 500 page hard cover, full color book. So you might wanna check that out. It’s available@facialacupunctureclasses.com. Okay. Before I get started, I wanna thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to speak to you today.

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The first question that I get asked about cosmetic acupuncture. And this is a big one because I get this asked almost all the time, is does it work? And the answer to that is Unequivocably. Yes. And there have been numerous studies research studies that have been done, and a lot of them are cited in my book or journal articles that, you can research both on my website or online, and what they have found is cosmetic acupuncture helps to improve the. Thickness of the skin, the depth of wrinkles on the skin, the color of the skin, and the overall vibrance of the skin, both on the face, the neck, the chest, around the eye area. So it absolutely does.

Work. The next question that I get asked very frequently is, how many treatments will it take in order for these treatments to work? How many times will I need to come in? And that is actually a really big question because the answer is, it depends. The way I like to think about cosmetic acupuncture is it’s like going to the gym.

So if someone were to come to you, if 10 people were to come to you and say. How many times will I need to go to the gym before my muscles look like they look when I was in my twenties or before I am fit or before I lose X amount of pounds? The answer would of course be, it depends because it’s going to be dependent on.

With your skin, it’s going to depend on several factors, so it will depend on your age. And the reason for this is as we get older, it takes longer for our bodies to produce collagen. So that’s one important factor. Another important factor is your lifestyle. So that takes into. Account a lot of things.

How much sleep do you get? How much water do you drink? How much alcohol do you consume? Do you smoke? Exercise is a big factor because the skin needs oxygen in order to look good. And so smoking plays into that as well because smoking takes oxygen. Out of your bloodstream. Exercise also increases the blood flow of the skin.

And having a healthy blood supply is very important to vibrant looking skin. Also sleep. If you’re not getting enough sleep, your skin is not going to be going through that. Turnover and repair process. Sun damage is a big factor, so if you have a lot of sun damage, it’s going to take longer for you to see results and you might need more treatments, more in depth.

Treatments, longer treatments than someone who has no sun damage on their skin. Genetics play a big part in determining. How you will age. So both the shape of your face and just your, the thickness of your skin. Is your skin lighter or darker? All of these different genetic factors will play into how many treatments you need.

People with darker skin don’t. Show signs of aging as far as sagging and fine lines and wrinkles as people with lighter skin and people with thinner skin. And our skin tends to thin as we age, but some people just have thinner skin. People with thinner skin are going to show more signs of aging than people with thicker skin.

So that will also play into it. The foods we eat will also determine how we age. People who are eating nutrient core diet are going to look older than people that are eating a nutrient rich diet. It takes vitamin C and protein in order to build collagen. And collagen is the building blocks of our skin.

It determines the thickness of our skin and the how our skin is held up is through the collagen and the elastin. And also another thing going back to age hyaluronic acid, as we get. Older, we have less hyaluronic acid in our skin, and that is what makes the skin kind of plump. So you want to make sure you’re drinking lots of water, eating healthy fats.

Especially the omegas, the Omega threes really play into. The cell functioning and the cell turnover rate. Another thing that determines how many treatments you’re going to need is what sort of products are you using on your skin if you are not. Using quality products that have peptides and vitamins and different minerals.

Things like copper, zinc vitamin A, vitamin E, vitamin C in some cases, things like hyaluronic acid, serums, retinol, serums. There are. Lots of different ingredients that can go into serums and also day and night creams that you might put on your skin. These will affect how your skin ages and how many treatments you’ll need.

So really to summarize, if you look at the starting point. And how much sun damage, how the person is taking care of their skin, whether or not they’re exercising, sleeping, what they’re eating. Stress. I left stress out. Stress can certainly affect the skin. The facial expressions that we make can get etched on our face.

And in my book I have a whole chapter called the Anatomy of Expression. So people who are very stressed can get those kind of lines between their eyebrows. People who are depressed can show certain signs of aging. So these are all very important factors. All of that said a general rule of thumb for cosmetic acupuncture is once a week for about three months, so about 12 treatments once a week.

And most people, depending on where we’re starting, most people will at least begin to see. The effects of cosmetic acupuncture, and for most people, a good percentage of the people after that time, they can begin going to get treatments less often. Another question is, how much does it cost? And this is another, it depends question.

Depending on what you are including in your treatments. Whenever I do a cosmetic acupuncture treatment, I do acupuncture and I also do cupping. And while SHA and for most of my. Time treating patients. The bulk of my practice was in Maryland. I was in a very rural area, but I was charging anywhere between 150 and $200 US for a treatment.

And again, if you are in a major city like New York. Or Los Angeles, you might be charging a little more. I strongly recommend that you base the cost of the treatment on what it would normally be for you to treat a patient, and then half of that, so one and a half times the cost of a treatment because your patient will be in your treatment space for about an hour.

To end 15 minutes to an hour and a half depending on how quickly you work. On top of that, some people add in derma rolling, they add in red light therapy. So these things might be charged as an add-on to a standard cosmetic acupuncture treatment.

The next question that I get frequently is how long do the treatments take? And this kind of piggybacks on the last question, which is how much does it cost? And so you’re going to be. I tie the cost into how long the treatment is actually going to take, and usually once you’ve been in practice for a while, you can get your patient in and out of the treatment room in about an hour and 15 minutes.

Sometimes an hour and 30 minutes. It depends on whether or not you’re just treating the face, whether or not you’re going to be working on their neck how how many wrinkles they have, how much signs of aging are there, because you might wanna add in more needles and spend a little more time. But the good news is once the needles are in, they can rest on the table and you can go and treat another.

Patient. And another question I get a lot is how long do the treatments last? How long do they last? And this is also a, it depends question. So I’m gonna go back to what I was speaking about earlier, and that is normally people will come in once a week for several weeks, let’s say 12 weeks.

And then after that they don’t just stop going again. Think about the going to the gym analogy. So if you were going to the gym, you wouldn’t just. Stop going, but if you did stop going there would be a certain amount of time where you would still be noticing the effects until eventually they were off.

So for cosmetic acupuncture, I tell people once you’ve achieved the desired effects, at that point you can start coming less often. Every other week or once a month, once most of my patients have dis have achieved the desired effect. They start spreading their treatments out. They come once a month, just like if they were getting their nails done or getting their hair colored or getting a facial.

So that kind of answers the. How long do the treatments last? For some people treatments can last a very long time. I know. When I. Stop seeing patients during the pandemic. A lot of people were buying facial cupping and guha kits from me. They were doing a little self-care at home in addition to using their serums and their lotions.

Some of them were derma rolling at home. So these types of things can help to augment the treatments for at-home care. So this concludes part one of the top 10 questions that I get asked about facial acupuncture. I’d like to again, thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity and we will see you next time for part two.

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