Tag Archives: Facial Acupuncture

Facial Gua Sha for Enhancing Cosmetic Acupuncture Results

One of the benefits of implementing or adding Gua Sha to your acupuncture practice is it really takes your business to the next level. It boosts your treatment results. It attracts new customers. And promotes your vis your professional visibility.

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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 is Dr. Shelly Goldstein, and I am bringing this presentation to you from New York. I have been practicing cosmetic facial acupuncture for over 30 years, and I currently run the. Cosmetic Facial Acupuncture Program at the Pacific College of Health and Science. It’s a training program for those of you who are interested.

But before I begin today’s presentation, I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for hosting me today. It’s always a pleasure to be here and let’s get started. This is one of my favorite topics. Always talking about beauty and health and different ways to enhance our acupuncture skills.

When we think about facial acupuncture, it’s not modern it’s dates back to the time thousands of years ago, and it was referred to as my. MYR means beautiful appearance. And it was a holistic regime practiced throughout Asia for centuries. And it was a combination of acupuncture herbs that are either topical or ingested and then various MYR treatments of which Gua Sha is one of ’em.

And that’s what we’ll be talking about today. With all of these, this, the intention was to promote systemic health and wellbeing and to delay the visible signs of aging. And initially it was used for the emperors to keep their concubines looking beautiful and healthy and for the EMS to maintain a youthful and radiant appearance.

But honestly, I’m pretty sure that there were variations of my wrong regimes utilized in most house. One of the benefits of implementing or adding Gua Sha to your acupuncture practice is it really takes your business to the next level. It boosts your treatment results. It attracts new customers. And promotes your vis your professional visibility.

And what does that mean? It adds monetary value to your service menu and at the bottom at the end of the line, it increases your business revenue, both in terms of your services that you provide. And then also these are wonderful tools to retail, and so you can make money selling them to your patients as well.

And the patients actually really love it. They enjoy the treatments. They like the results of the treatments and they really appreciate the home care engagement, which means when they take the tools home. They then begin to use them for themselves and it empowers them. It makes them feel like they’re participating in their treatment and they love the results and it feels good to it.

I don’t know how many of you actually use Quasha in your practice or on yourself. It really, it’s such a wonderful treatment and it really feels good on your skin. Not only that, but it gives you great results as well. So let’s look at Gua Sha, let’s look at the application of it and then how to use it.

And when we talk about Gua Sha, we’re specifically talking about it for the face today because we’re improving facial appearance. When you look at the different layers of the face, we look at it from bone, muscle, fat and skin, and to, and with Gua Sha, we’re primarily affecting those upper layers of tissue, which is the skin.

And for us, the skin is made up of multiple layers. The at the bottom is the muscle on top of the muscle is the subcutaneous or level of the hypodermis. And then the dermis and the epidermis is what you see when you look in yourself in the mirror, or you look at someone else it’s a top layer of skin.

And directly, it’s very thin as you can see in this diagram and then the dermis or the dermal layer as we refer to it is this much thicker area that sits directly below the epidermis below the dermis is the subcutaneous or the fat layer. And then below that lies muscle and surrounding all of those tissues either to attach them one layer to the.

or to separate the layers from the next or the individual components within those tissue layers is connective tissue. And here’s a diagram of connect tissue looks like this kind of sticky web of of tissue and it, so it’s sits in between the different layers of tissue. And it also is within the different layers that we just referred.

When you think about connective tissue, and this is gonna be very important for this conversation. We wanna look primarily at the primary components of connective tissue. So you see this red line running up and down, that’s called collagen and collagen is what provides the support for the tissue.

It’s like the mattress that you lie on and you get. and it pops back up and you lie on it and it pops back up and you lie on it pops back up and over time it starts to sink our breakdown. And so the collage and the structure of the collagen starts to break down over time. And then you have a last in fibers.

They’re the more angled little lines in this image. And there, the snap ability, what we call the ability for the tissue to. Back to its original shape after you stretch it. And you can see, I try on your hand, if you grab a piece of your skin and you lift it up, the ability for that skin to snap back into place, that’s due to this skin’s elasticity dedicated by the elastic fiber, and then you have another primary component.

Are these little blue. Circles that’s called. Those are called fibroblast cells and they make collagen. So something happens. It stimulates fibroblast cells to produce more collagen in the tissue. And all of these elements are bathed in hyaluronic acid. Hyaluronic acid is what’s responsible for that binding or the water that is within those tissues that provide primarily moisture within the tissues.

Now what’s important here is this. So if you look at this image, you can see what collagen depletion looks like with the loss of skin integrity. So on the face, and it first begins right at the angle of the corner of the mouth. And you can start to see a little pitting in the tissue as in, right in here.

So this is plumper tissue and then where it starts to pit or think of the. The collagen in that mattress that starts to break down well, that’s what happens in your skin. And so the tissue actually starts to break down the collagen structure starts to break down and it causes the tissue on the surface of the skin to have this collapsed appearance.

For us. What we need to know is remember the collagen that snap back collagen is actually the primary component in connective tissue. And what’s unique to collagen is collagen fibers have this mechanical or electric property, and that’s the basis of the ability to interact with other tissues.

So how is it that when we put an acupuncture needle, The skin, it radiates the Dutchy, it radiates through the tissue. From a Western perspective, it’s the collagen fibers that crab this mechanical and Al electrical property that actually caused that radiation throughout the tissue. And when there, when that collagen is activated or when this, we call it Paso electricity, it can be activated by a number of items or influences.

And when they are these external influences activate the collagen. What happens is it sends that electrical or that Paso effect through the tissue in this specific area, but into other neighboring structures as well. And when we talk about those external influences, we’re talking about pressure.

Vibration and friction. And what’s interesting about Gua Sha is it contains all of those. You can use your Gua Sha tool to apply pressure to the skin. And when I say pressure, what you’re doing is you’re taking the tool and you’re rubbing it across the surface outta either. Light with light pressure, medium pressure are maybe more firm pressure.

And when we do that, what you’re doing is you’re stretching the tissue to cause that small electrical current to slide across the skin. And we call that effective for a, what we call a mild FA release. And then there’s vibration is when we take the tool and we can jiggle it across the area.

And what happens when we create what we’re doing is we’re also increasing that neural signaling and we use it to relieve muscle tension, to stimulate lymphatic drainage and to. Circulation. And then there’s friction. We actually use across the gradient. So if the muscle fibers are running in a horizontal fashion, you may use the tool more perpendicular to actually run across.

The direction of the tissue to create a little bit tension. And when that happens, what we’re doing is we’re actually challenging, stimulating that fiberblast activity to create more collagen to help, to decrease pain, realign, collagen fibers. We can use it to break up adhesions in the skin tissue, which is great for diminishing scars.

And so we’re gonna talk about that a little bit. Now what’s important to note is when with classic Gua Sha treatment and for those of you who done it, what do you do? You take the tool you scrape across the skin, along the skin with the intention of creating T TKI are the little red dots that you see.

And then the redness, or it almost looks like bruising on the surface of the skin. What you’re doing is you’re almost breaking the capillaries and creating that blood, the red blood cells to excavate into the subcutaneous layers of skin. And then in, with the intention of, from a Chinese medicine perspective, moving blood and Chi harmonizing the tissue, and then we use it for multiple fascial and muscular imbalances, like muscle pain, tension tissue stagnation.

And from Chinese medicine perspective to relieve pain, wind cold and heat, and typically the discoloration resolves itself or begins to resolve itself within 20 to four to 48 hours. This is not the intention of facial acupuncture. Our patients generally do not like big bruises on their face. So when we apply facial Gua Sha on the face, we’re not promoting Pete.

That is not the intention of our treatment. What we’re trying to do is increase. We’re still increasing circulation and moving blend and chew. We’re still harmonizing the tissue fashion, the muscular imbalances, and we’re still relieving pain. Cold in heat, but we’re not doing it to the degree that we’re actually stimulating that the Ticia and there’s controversy about whether this is really a Gua Sha or not Ma naming that the intention or the purpose of Gua Sha is to excavate that blood, but it, but we do know that it works on the face and.

Because we’re not breaking those capillaries because we’re not promoting that TKI release or what we’re using it for more is to, from a cosmetic perspective, to soften wrinkles, to sculpt and contour the face to improve collagen, to create thicker skin, we can use it to break up scar tissue. And then very important is to resolve local blood coagulation or, and to break up lymph stagnation in the myofascial tissue.

One of the primary benefits of Gua Sha for facial acupuncture is in fact, this removal of stagnation of limp in the tissue.

To talk about the stones just for a moment. We’re using gemstones. So gemstones versus crystals versus jewels are basically the organic mineral that is caught and polished to create a specific shape. And we know that each of these different. Types of materials or minerals have different purposes and different properties.

But we’re also concerned right now about the shape and the shape for most of our treatments are gonna determine the function that we’re using the tool for. So you have an, these names are not. The technical names, but they’re common names. So you have the fin or that teardrop shape. You have the dolphin heart, you have waves, you have rectangular shapes, the spoon, the fish, the.

And ones so on each of these, the curved edge say the long edge and also the shorter edge of the fin and the tear drop in the hard shape. The longer edges of the wave, these are the, and the wand. These are used for that long sweeping movement that you’ll do. For sculpting different areas and moving li where is the combed edge?

Say this right in here. You can use it for wrinkles for the forehead area. So it’s really good for the top of the head. We have the pointed edges. Remember we’re talking about pressure specific pressure. So these little more pointed edges say the bottom of the wind or the bottom of the fish. Those are really good for acupressure for getting into the wrinkle areas and redo and minimizing lines.

And then you have the rounded paddle say this spoon. Or the top of the fish, or even the bottom of the second wave or the last wand. And those are really good for specific areas. Say under the eye for gentle lymph drainage dark circles and just general lymph drainage as well. So the really the type of tool that you use is gonna determine the.

Treatment that you’re gonna provide, which is always nice to have a multiple different or different types of tools in your toolbox. Also what’s very popular. These days are the Combs, the edges or the Chrome. And this is for cross fiber friction. Remember we talked about going against the direction of the tissue.

So the bottom right here these are what we call Combs or for, or edges for cross fiber fiction. And there are a number of those tools available in the market as well. I’ll give you a link at the end. And then also to be aware of the thickness of the tools. So the thicker tools are more for long strokes, treating long areas where the thinner ones might be used for more targeted areas or shorter strokes.

Yeah. Now don’t confuse Gua Sha tools with a roller, the Gua Sha tools we’re really using for specific treatment. Whereas the roller is more of a massage tool. You might use it after your treatment. As a nice little massage. Some people use it to improve blood circulation. I think the gosh eye tool works a little bit better for that.

As well as decreasing puffy Ma, but people generally use it. They’ll finish their treatment. They’ll apply a little bit of oil or cream or something to the surface of the skin. And then they do use the roller at the end just to either improve circulation, calm, calm the skin again, depending upon the gemstone that you’re.

Jade might be used for cooling. Whereas the rose quartz is more beneficial for improvement, circulation, that type of thing. We talked about lymphatic drainage. And again, I want to emphasize that one of the primary benefits of applying Gua Sha treatment to your treatment. And I personally use it in the beginning of the treatment at primarily to move the lymph.

It’s the Pillsbury tube. It’s nice and squishy and puffy. It’s hard to actually activate the points and to get your treatment results in. But if you get rid of some of that lymph, you reduce some of that swelling that’s in the tissue, then it’s a lot easier to be effective in your treatment. So when you look, when I say lymph, what we’re looking at, for those of you who aren’t familiar, we have lymphatic vessels that are located near the vessels of the circulatory.

They run through the body and through the face at certain points in the lymphatic system, there are lymph nodes. So the swelling or the fluid goes through the lymph vessels, they get cleaned or purified. Pied in the lymph nodes and then they keep moving down and on the face, they dump at the sub super clavicular node right here, it’s around kidney 27 with the intention of going back and taking that fluid back into the circulatory system to repeat the cycle.

What’s interesting is that these lymphatic vessels and nodes follow the trajectory of the meridians or familiar meridians and pathways of acupuncture points. So let’s look at this when we are applying. Facial gloss off or lymphatic drainage. What we wanna do is we want to follow the meridians and the specific pathways in the face around the ears, behind the ears, down the SCM, into the clavicular head, right at the kidney 27.

So it looks like this. You have your patient, you clean their face, you apply a little oil because you’re, you are moving the tool across and it can scratch or irritate their skin. If you’re not, if you don’t have a certain amount of slip or ability to slide, but don’t use too much because then you can’t, you don’t have as much control.

Then oftentimes for Gua Sha, for lymphatic drainage, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna empty the portal, starting from the neck. So we’re gonna clean the we’re gonna slide the Gua Sha tool down the SCM. Across the clavicular area into kidney seven, and then we’re going. So we’ll do that several times. You can come up the back of the neck.

It feels wonderful. And then again, just empty this area, clear it out. And then we’ll move up to the face. So you will start across the jaw area. You’ll go along the cheek area. Again, the intention is just to move that li out back into the kidney 27 area. You will go either down the face, across the cheeks, around the eyes, but again, in the mid face and lower face, you really wanna move it into these little black areas where the nodes.

Down the SCM and across the clavicle on the forehead, you’re gonna sweep across the forehead again with our behind the ear, with the intention of sliding of moving all of that fluid through the nodes to be cleaned. Down the SCM and again, into the kidney 27 area. So that’s your intention and you can pull out maps either the one, the previous picture from here, right?

This image and find the nose and then just keep sweeping along the meridians into the nose, back into the kidney 27 area. Once you open up that the lymphatic system, get that nice and drained. Then you’re gonna focus on the areas of concern. So what are your areas of concern puffiness under the eyes?

Are you gonna do use wrinkles, treat it to treat wrinkles. Do you want to go on the spot side, sun spots? Do you. Skull this along the zygomatic bone. That’s your cheekbone. Do you wanna clean the Mandal the jaw area? Do you wanna massage the scalp, the neck, if there’s neck tension in the neck and the upper back and the shoulders.

So depending upon the intention of your treatment, those are the different tools that you’re gonna use, and you’re gonna apply different strokes to, to create the changes that you’re looking for. In general, we say that one to two sessions a week will give you longer lasting results, especially if you use have six to 12 sessions, but remember what our life pattern also determines the problems that we’re causing.

So if they’re constantly lifting their shoulders or your patient is constantly tightening their neck or furrowing their brows or frown. It’s gonna come or drinking or eating foods that create lymph inflammation within the tissues that will come back. And this is where it’s helpful to sell the tools to your patient and have them teach them how to do it themselves.

They’ll really appreciate it. and then here’s just a list for you of different points. Remember, we talked about using the pointed end of the tissue of the tool to actually go into the the acupressure points. And so you remove lymph. You direct your treatment towards your area of concern, and then you can complete your treatment by taking the pointed end and applying it into specific pressure points that are, or acupuncture points again, relative to the treatment results that you wanna obtain.

So are you treating the neck? are you treating the lower face? Are you treating the cheek area? Are you treating the forehead in the eye? So again, you’re tailor constantly tailoring your treatment to the to the specifics of what your patient needs. Of course, there are always a few precautions or contraindications for eye use.

So if someone has facial cancer cells on their face, you wanna be careful if they have extreme edema, you may wanna look into that. Why is that happening before you start draining? If they’re bleeding or clotting disorders, if by any chance you are a little too heavy handed with your glass eye toll, you could cause clotting, you could cause bleeding.

You could cause that TKI on the face. And again, we never use squa eye directly over open wounds or sore. And we’re careful about acne and eczema, particularly if the acneic lesions are open and oozing. And then when you see Ray moles tags or lesions, you probably wanna refer them to your dermatologist or their dermatologists prior to treating them.

And then precautions. If they’re pregnant or lactating, we may or may not use Gua Sha again, if they’re very weak or I, you may wanna do some treatments first that are more building and then immunocompromised, you would certainly want to make sure that they have permission with, from their physicians in order to move forward.

It’s just safety for. Once you have performed your wash hour treatments, you will notice right away. That you can improve facial contour, you can improve wrinkles, reduce them. You can improve skin tone and color. You can remove tissue, puffiness and swelling that lymph drainage that we’re talking about.

It’s really good for under eye circles or puffiness. You can also in moving the lymph and doing some sculpting, you can actually plump and tighten flacid skin. It’s great for easing muscle tightness, tension and pain. You can smooth, fine lines and wrinkles. You can sculpt the cheekbone and the jaw lines tighten the neck area.

Even skin color by working on the points that where the there’s hyper mentation or sun spots, and it really gives your skin this really rosy glow doing look and appearance. So it’s a wonderful tool to have it. Doesn’t take a long time to use. And it’s great as a retail and for in improving your bottom line, your finances and your business and That’s about it.

So I know this is short. I know it’s a kind of the cliff note version of Gua Sha. If you have more information that you’d like, or if you have any questions, you can always contact me through my website. If you’re interested in more facial courses for facial cosmetic acupuncture and lectures. And then I highly recommend if you’re interested in purchasing Gua Sha shop products, this is a great website.

She has beautiful tools in their reasonably priced. So again, I just want to thank everybody and thank for being here. Thank the American Acupuncture Council and stay tuned next week, where Poney Chiang is coming. He’s wonderful speaker and I, and he is always a delight to listen.

So again, thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you. For listening to this, I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s. Today’s good.

Cosmetic Acupuncture a Source of Profit

Today I will be speaking about cosmetic acupuncture as a major source of profit for your practice.

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Hi, my name’s Michelle Gellis. I am an acupuncture physician, and I would like to thank you for coming today to my presentation. And also thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for hosting today’s talk. Today I will be speaking about cosmetic acupuncture as a major source of profit for your practice.

I teach facial and cosmetic acupuncture classes internationally, and some of the questions that I get have nothing to do. The actual act of performing the the techniques, the protocols, the theory of cosmetic or facial acupuncture frequently. A lot of the questions that I get, have to do with setting up your practice marketing.

Timing of treatments and other services in addition to facial and cosmetic acupuncture. So I would like to cover those topics today so I can bring to light some of the lesser talked about topics when it comes to facial and cosmetic acupuncture. So first, I would like to talk about how to set up your cosmetic acupuncture practice.

First and foremost, before you begin practicing cosmetic acupuncture, it is imperative that you get trained now. Many of us feel that because we went to acupuncture school and maybe we had one class on cosmetic acupuncture or we feel comfortable and familiar with treating points on the face. I know I did because I am.

Classically trained five element acupuncturists. We use a lot of face points, but the American acupuncture council and some of the other insurance companies do require specialized training in. Cosmetic acupuncture. And the reason is because of the nature of the structure of the face, the nature of treating the face is heavily vascularized.

And you want to make certain to really understand if you’re going to be doing cosmetic acupuncture, how to be doing it, not just effectively, but safe. many of the things that we see on, especially on social media. Now people have hundreds of needles in the face and not only can that be painful, but it can cause bleeding, bruising, neuropathy.

So it, and it doesn’t have to be that way. You can. Get a wonderful effect from facial and cosmetic acupuncture by using very few needles, if you’re properly trained. So one of the most important things for an effective cosmetic acupuncture practice is to. Trained. And this goes for facial acupuncture as well.

So what’s the difference between facial acupuncture and cosmetic acupuncture? The way I use the terms, when I am talking about facial acupuncture, I am speaking about acupuncture for neuro or neuromuscular or muscular. Facial conditions, things like bells, palsy, TMJ, trigeminal, neuralgia, OSIS. There are a lot of diseases that can affect the face.

And there are treatment protocols which are highly specialized, which involve. Specialized techniques for treating the face. So that is what I consider to be facial acupuncture and cosmetic acupuncture is primarily designed to work with the muscles and the fascia and the skin and the blood supply. and even with cupping in Guha with the fat on the face to help, to reduce sagging wrinkles, skin dyschromia and other things which are more cosmetic, not always due to aging, some of them can be acne or rosacea.

Primarily when we talk about cosmetic acupuncture, what comes to mind is wrinkles, sagging, things of that nature. So getting properly trained is the first thing, if you are setting up your cosmetic acupuncture practice, a good training will include. Paperwork, such as intake forms your specialized contracts.

You will need specialized contracts before you start doing cosmetic acupuncture because you have to set up realistic expectations. You want to outline all the contraindications and precautions upfront. So there’s no surprises on the back end. So good training should involve a set of paperwork. If you’re lucky, you’ll get some marketing tools.

We’ll talk about those in a minute and also an overview of what tools you’ll need and how to use them. And maybe even where to get them. Some classes will. Provide tools for you to use some will sell tools there. Some will include the cost of the tools in your training. When I teach classes, I give my students everything they need to practice.

And then I tell them where they can get any of the tools that they will need moving forward. So what are some of these tools? You will need a good set of tweezers to insert intradermal needles because intradermal needles are an important part of helping to stimulate collagen. ANCA gel can be very beneficial for bruising, bleeding inflammation and knowing how and where and when to apply.

It is very. Q-tips are great for applying pressure. If there is some bleeding, I like it better than a cotton ball. You can apply direct pressure onto the point. And if there is some sort of a swelling occurring than, or little hematoma you can apply direct pressure. And then of course intradermals what type of intradermals to use?

How many, what size, what brand, these are all things that will be important pieces of information. When you set up your cosmetic acupuncture practice, I like using a floor lamp in my treatment room. It will provide adequate lighting so that you can see what you’re doing. The floor lamps that I like are these goose neck lamps, where it’s on the floor, but you can move it this way with a fluorescent bulb.

They are available usually at craft stores and possibly on the internet as well. I like having a. Like a foam, like a Tempur-Pedic type foam cushion on the table because sometimes our tables, although they are comfortable for the short term, our cosmetic patients tend to be on the table for quite a while.

So having that extra layer is really nice, gives it that spa feel without a huge investment. And depending on where you live a table warmer is really nice too, because you will have arm and leg points exposed. In some instances, your patient’s neck and chest might be exposed because they have needles in them.

And of course their head and face will be exposed. And this will. Warm up the body and help the blood flow up to the face. Depending on what style and brand needles you have having an extra garbage PA in your treatment room comes in handy because you’ll be working at their feet at their arms doing your body points.

And then you’ll be sitting at the head of the table working on their face. Having a couple of small trash panels, I found to be very beneficial. A hand mirror so that your patient can look at themselves. They can point out things to you that are areas of concern, or they could look at themselves after the treatment and then a small magnet.

They make these They’re it looks like a pen, but it’s an extendable magnet. If one of the intradermal needles were to fall someplace, instead of using your fingers to pick it up, you could use these small magnets to pick them up.

What about marketing tools? What are some of the things that can really get you noticed? I have had a cosmetic acupuncture practice for almost 20 years. And. I still to this day, have paper brochures explaining cosmetic acupuncture. When I teach classes, I have a marketing kit available and I have pre-made brochures that my students can download.

So they don’t have to design them. They can customize them, however they would like, but having brochures in your waiting area. so that when your, maybe your non-cosmetic patients are waiting for a treatment, they can pick them up. Maybe they won’t read them right in the moment. They’ll take them home.

They’ll look at them and they know what questions to ask. I also have a book in my waiting room and I. Testimonials from my cosmetic acupuncture patients plus before and after photos. And if you’re just starting out, you might say I don’t have any before and after photos again. When you get trained, ask the person who’s training you.

If they have photos to share, this is something I also provide in my classes, so that students. Before they even have foreign afters, at least they have something verifiable that they can show to patients. And also on your website, you should have a separate section just for cosmetic acupuncture and have your S E O your search engine optimization.

Pointing towards this as far as log posts your social media can PO can point to this page directly on your website. The more activity the page has, the more is going to be shown when someone is in your area and they Google. Cosmetic acupuncture or facial acupuncture and whatever city you are in, but the testimonials having them both on your website and in your waiting room can be very powerful.

As far as your social media, you have to know your audience. There are certain. Types of social media that lend themselves more to the videos, certain lend themselves more to stories and sharing, but definitely if you want to focus on facial and cosmetic acupuncture, getting your perform afters, having your videos, having your hashtags, everything set up.

To drive traffic to your TikTok or your Instagram or your Facebook pages is very important. And I know a lot of my younger students left Facebook or were never on Facebook. They say it’s for old people. Many of your clients will be old. So keep that in mind. If you’re not on Facebook, if you’ve never been on Facebook, if you got off of Facebook, you might wanna reconsider having a Facebook page, maybe just for your cosmetic acupuncture piece of your practice and for nothing.

I do have a Facebook group that I run, which has over 8,000 people in it. It’s called facial acupuncture and being connected with other people that are doing what you’re doing helps to it, it raises you up because you learn from each other and it keeps it front and center in your mind. I, when I was first starting out, I used to have spa nights where I would invite my patients who might be interested in cosmetic acupuncture.

I would have some products out. I would talk to them. I would maybe do a little demo or just do a couple of intradermal needles so they could see what it felt like. during that time, you could do giveaways. You could even do an instructional class, let’s say on self care, cupping and Guha. So if you sell cupping and Guha kits your patients can, this is something they can do at home.

In between treatments. You could teach a little class on the Accu lift facial cupping set. It comes with a video for you to learn the self care piece, plus it has directions on the box and this can be a wonderful activity. A lot of my students have either done this for free or charge their patients.

So they might get a free class if they buy a cupping. or they just charge a couple of dollars and they buy a cupping set and they take a class that way packages providing if it’s legal in the state where you practice providing a package. Of let’s say you buy 12 facial acupuncture treatments, and maybe they get a free Derma roller or a free cupping session.

I would not do buy 12, get one free because that is really giving away a lot of your time. But something minimal doesn’t cost you a lot of money, but they feel like they’re getting something you wanna check with your local acupuncture board and make certain you’re allowed to do that. But those are great ideas for cosmetic acupuncture, because the important thing to think about is cosmetic acupuncture is a cash based business.

Insurance will not pay for cosmetic acupuncture. So your patients are paying you cash. You’re not having to go through the time and the trouble of filing for insurance. You get paid right away, right there. And there’s no having to deal with all of that paperwork and paying someone else to file it or.

You could also do patient classes on Derma rolling. Same thing with the facial cupping in Guha, you get some Derma rollers and the OCUL lift Derma rollers are the only Derma rollers. Which are approved by the American acupuncture council for use in the treatment room. You might wanna check those out as well, also converting your current customers.

So you have your clients, they’re coming to see you maybe. Complaining about getting older and they feel like they look tired all the time. Here is a whole audience that you already have people that are already coming to see you, and you can share stories about other. Patients who have the same concern and you help them.

And sometimes I’ll just throw in a couple of extra points to lift a brow or thread or wrinkle so they can get an idea of what it’s like. And typically they love it. Another question I get asked a lot is about the timing of the treatments. People are worried, I’m gonna be spending all this time in my treatment room.

Isn’t it more cost effective for me to just have three or four rooms going at once. And how am I ever gonna make any money doing this? The answer is you have to Once you get your flow going, you can have two rooms going at once 15 minutes to get the needles in. While that patient’s lying on the table for a half an hour, you can go, you can treat another patient.

Then you come back in, you take the needles out, do your cupping in Guha, and then you. Back to the other patient. So you can easily get two rooms going at once and whatever you typically charge for an hour treatment, I would charge that. And then half that again. So one and a half times what you would normally charge for a one hour acupuncture treatment.

You’re going to charge one and a half times. Because your patient will be in the room for about an hour and a half, maybe a little less. So it is entirely possible to have two rooms going at once. Maybe not. When you first start out, when you first start out, it might take you a little longer to get the needles in, but once you’ve done it a few times, couple a dozen times, you should be able to get the needles in, in about 15 minutes.

And be on to the next room. What about ancillary services and by ancillary services? Cupping in Washa Derma rolling microneedling. How do you work this in? As I just mentioned I never do. Cosmetic acupuncture without doing facial cupping and GU jaw. So it’s how I end my treatments. It helps with bruising, it relaxes the patient.

It’s something that I look forward to and it helps to bring the blood and the cheat out to the skin level. And it’s a really nice way and a treat. You can be trained specifically in facial cupping in Guha, or you can take a comprehensive course in facial acupuncture, cupping and Guha, which is what I would recommend.

Also, you will have patients who don’t want needles. And with them I can do in a half an hour. I do just facial cupping in Washa and I would charge accordingly for an abbreviated, half an hour cupping in Washa treatment. Derma rolling is something that you can offer as an add-on and. What I like to do would be more like Derma rolling and facial cupping in Guha, or I might do derro on a neck and chest and just do the facial acupuncture on the face.

I don’t like to end a facial acupuncture treatment with Derma rolling, because it can be a. For the skin. You can sell your patients of Derma welder and teach them how to use it, and then they can use it at home in between treatments, or you can offer it as a separate service. And then depending on how much time you wanna spend with the Derma, rolling will determine.

What you would charge and charge accordingly. Now dermas are single person use, you don’t wanna be sharing them between patients. There’s no way to Barb aside or autoclave these safely, because little pieces of hair and skin fragments, microscopic can. Stuck in between the needles and you could cross-contaminate.

So if you were going to offer it as a service, you either keep the Dermer roller for your patients for when they come and you would clean it and use it just on them, or you reduce it on them and send them home with it. And then if they wanted you to do a treatment on them, when they come back, they would have to bring it.

As far as microneedling, I do microneedling as a standalone service. So I will do facial acupuncture, and then microneedling. And the only caveat to this is. If someone only wants or needs microneedling, let’s say on their neck, on their chest, on their hands, I can do cosmetic acupuncture.

So I would put in the body points and the face points, and then I could put numbing cream on them. And then once I take the needles out of their face, I could do the microneedling, or even when the needles are in, I could potentially do the microneedling once the numbing cream comes off. And this way the person is getting the best of both worlds, especially if they have problem areas around the lips, on the chin.

But you don’t wanna be doing cosmetic acupuncture and microneedling on the same area in the same treatment. And microneedling is extremely profitable. It’s very easy to add into your practice. And people are charging anywhere from 350 to $700 for a half an hour. Microneedling treat. Yes. So you have your initial investment of your microneedling tool, like the ACU lift MicroPen or and then the only thing you have to replace are your serums, which are not a tremendous investment up front.

And then you can add this on as a treatment. I think that is all I have for you today. You can find me on social media at facialacupuncture,classes.com or on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok Michelle Galles. And again, thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for hosting this. And I look forward to seeing your next.

My Favorite Points for Cosmetic Acupuncture

thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to talk about my favorite acupuncture points for the face.

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi, my name is Michelle Gellis and I want to thank all of you for coming today to my facebook live presentation and thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to talk about my favorite acupuncture points for the face.

I have been teaching cosmetic acupuncture for almost 20 years now. And during that time, I frequently get asked what are my all time favorite points for either lifting the face or enabling more movement, more fluidity and the facial expressions and. So I have put together my top seven and I’m going to start out with points that I use in my protocol that are mandatory for my students.

And they are what I call steps. 3.5 or stomach three and a half. It’s almost like stomach three and three quarters because it’s pretty low down. So normally when we find stomach three, we get in line with the center of the pupil and we come down. Over the cheek and that is stomach three, but for stomach 3.5, you want to come down until you’re all the way over the cheek area.

And you are going to needle straight up into either the fatty part of the cheek, or if you’re a. Patient is very thin. You can even get underneath the cheek bone and right into the foramen in the orbital rim. And so that stomach three and a half, and the next point is small and test an 18, which is found on the outer canthus of the eye you come down and the same thing, you’re going to needle straight up.

And in some individuals you’ll be into the fatty part of the cheek, maybe into the Fatia or to what we call the mass layer, which is the superficial muscular aponeurotic system, which is what enables the muscles to control the movements on the. And for some individuals, you’ll actually be able to get underneath that cheekbone.

But when you needle both of these in an upward direction, it can really provide a lifting effect to the face. And I have a picture of that in a second. The next is Sanjay 17 for the gels and the lower face. Stomach nine for the neck and balancing the hormones. You yeah, for the, I’m sorry, you yell for the brow area and yin Tom for the frown lines and stomach for the mouth.

So let me go through each one of these individually. So here is a photo of. Of someone where I have needled stomach three and a half, and you can see it’s almost down into that stomach four area and then small intestine 18, which is way over the cheekbone and you needle straight up. And you can see how this could have a lifting effect on the cheeks, on the mid cheek area.

The next is San Joe 17, which is behind the ear. It’s in that space that really deep divot behind your ear. And. When I needle this point, I needle it towards the nose. You want to be careful. There’s a lot of glands back there and, but this point is wonderful. Is great for the lymphatic system.

It affects the whole lower part of the face that we call the gels. I always joke when I’m teaching and I say there’s two types of people that have gels and people that are going to get them because as we age all of the. Fat and muscles and ligaments that used to be up here, the ligaments loosen and the fat kind of slides down.

And we ended up with a less defined jawline. So by noodling this point, And then whenever I do facial cupping, I always cut this point and I do wash Shaw back there. It really has a very lifting effect on the lower part of the face. And also on the neck area.

Stomach nine is. Definitely one of my all time favorite points. This is a picture of yours truly, and thought it was a great example of a neck. So I went ahead and marked stomach nine on it. And so stomach nine can be found. It is inline with the prominence of the laryngeal prominence and the way you find it is you ask your patient to swallow.

And when they swallow, you will feel the prominence, the laryngeal prominence, you put your finger on it and you slide right over into the empty space between the larynx and the S. And if you’re having trouble finding the SCM, you can ask your patient to just press against your hand and the SCM will pop out and.

Once you found the SCM and the larynx, then you put your finger in between the two and you feel for a pulse and wherever you feel a pulse don’t needle there you can push against where you’re feeling the pulse with your finger and then needle straight in. I use a half an inch needle. You don’t have to needle very deeply, but this point is.

Wonderful for a lot of reasons, it helps with hormones, right? It’s right by the thyroid. It also helps to open the energy up to the face is a local treatment for the neck and. I’m a classically trained five element acupuncturist. This point is called people. Welcome. It can really people who have shut down, maybe they’re a little shy or they’re.

Pushing people out of their life. Maybe they have things they want to say, but they weren’t saying them this point can help to open people back up. It’s especially important. Since the pandemic where people were in and not getting out. So this stomach nine is definitely one of my favorite points.

Next is you. Yeah. Now when I needle this, I don’t needle it in the traditional way, which the traditional definition is at the center of the brow you needle straight. And the way that I needle it is I take a half an inch needle, a two, I put the two underneath the eyebrow. I go to the center of the pupil and the center of the pupil lines with the levator muscle.

So you want to get above the orbital rim. You don’t want to be noodling on the eyelid inside the. You get above the orbital rim. Sometimes you have to lift your patient’s brow up a little bit and you take that tube and you get it right underneath the brow. And then you, once the tube is right underneath the brow, you can just push the needle right up.

And so you can see in this picture that I have. Where I’ve needled underneath the brow. And then I have followed this up with bladder two and Sanchez 23, all three lifted a needle in a kind of lifted direction in order to really pull that brow. So you, yeah. Now is a real heavy hitter when it comes to lifting the brow and it can even help, not just with the brow, but with the lid.

next are those frown lines. And some people we have just the one line in the center. And if that is the case, I will thread in Tom right through the wrinkle. I needle it in an upward direction, right through the wrinkle. And again, I’ll use a half inch. Needle. And this serves two, three purposes. One is it relaxes this whole area and relaxes your patient.

And it also works right on the procerus muscle, which is this little triangular muscle here, which pulls this whole area together. And You can also needle with little intradermal needles, if someone, so you can have just the one wrinkle or you can have the two wrinkles, which they call the Eleven’s and this woman has those.

And then some people, they get the, what they call the a hundred and Eleven’s where they’ll have a wrinkle. Medial to each eyebrow, plus they’ll also have a wrinkle right in the center here. So you can use yin tongue needled and you can also use some intradermal needles and get into those other little wrinkles right there.

And this will. Both relax, your patient lacks the procerus muscle. And locally, any time you take an acupuncture needle and you thread it through a wrinkle, you’re stimulating collagen locally in the scan, fibroblasts are created and it helps to Create a collagen in the area. So the wrinkle itself can fill in because even if you just relax the muscle, there can still be a resultant, a wrinkle in the area.

And the last point. Which is another favorite of mine, and this is a real powerhouse for the whole mouth area. And the mouth area can be difficult to treat because there are a lot of different issues or concerns that individuals have with their mouth, not just cosmetic, but also with issues with movement.

And I’m going to back up real quick, a step. This can be the same with, I was talking about using you yell for the brow. If someone has had Bell’s palsy, you can use the point noodle, the way that I said, and this can help get movement back into the brow area, lift their lid. If they still have drooping, or if they’ve had a stroke.

Stomach four is right in this area called the Modi OLIS and it is just lateral to the corner of the map. And the reason why this is such a powerhouse and why it’s one of my favorite points is the muscle around. It’s not shown in this picture, but there’s a muscle that goes all the way around the outside of the mouth.

So this is the or us and people get wrinkles all around their lips. So by treating pretty much any of the acupuncture points, like run 24 or stomach for any of the acupuncture points that light around them. You are going to treat the whole obicularis Oris, which really plays into these wrinkles around the lips.

So that’s one reason. And the other reason is people can get these frown lines that go they’re called marionette lines, but it looks like the person is frowning, even when they’re not. And the wrinkles go from the corner of the mouth, down to the jaw line. And by treating stomach four, you can see all the different muscles that stomach four is attached to.

So the Buka Nadir, which is very deep here, the resorts, which pulls the mouth this way. And you have your zygomaticus major and that helps to pull the sides of the mouth up. You have your , which runs, it hooks onto your jaw and then goes all the way down over your clap. You have your levator angulate Orus your depressor anguli Oris.

And your what we call the D a O is the depressor anguli Oris, which is this muscle right here. And this muscle right here attaches right onto your platoon. So you can see all these different muscles. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I think there’s a muscles that are attached to this modal list, which is our stomach four.

So by treating stomach four, you’re treating all of these muscles. You’re helping the wrinkles. You’re helping the drooping that can go on. And also laxity since the Dao is attached to the . When you treat the Dao, you help to reduce any pulling on the platoon FISMA, which can cause those SMA bands that can happen.

I love stomach four and I highly recommend it. You can needle it straight in. And it’s one, it’s actually a motor point for treating the whole mouth area. And so those are my favorite points for treating the face. There are many more, there are many muscles on the face, but those are my top.

And if you want to learn more about. Cosmetic acupuncture or acupuncture for treating neuromuscular facial conditions. You can go to my website, facial acupuncture, classes.com, and learn more about I’ve got a lot of free videos. I have a lot of free information handouts and plus my class informing.

So thank you for showing up today. And I look forward to seeing you again, next time.

Ethical Concerns in Facial and Cosmetic Acupuncture

So as acupuncturists, we are all required to do some ethics training. Things will come up when you’re dealing with taking care of your facial and your cosmetic acupuncture patients that are a little different than your traditional patients.

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi, my name’s Michelle Gellis and I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to present on Ethics in Facial Acupuncture. I’m ready for the first slide.

So as acupuncturists, we are all required to do some ethics training. And over the years I have a full acupuncture practice and cosmetic and facial acupuncture practice. And what I have come to know to be true is that frequently. Things will come up when you’re dealing with taking care of your facial and your cosmetic acupuncture patients that are a little different than your traditional patients.

And so I put this I put a course together it’s a two hour CEU course to cover. Facial acupuncture, ethics. And this is an overview of that little bit about me. For those of you who don’t know me. I was on faculty with the Maryland university of integrative health from 2003 to 2021. And I teach facial acupuncture classes internationally.

Here are some of my publications. You can look them up. On my website, which is facial acupuncture, classes.com and there is the NCC a O M code of ethics. Now each state will have its own code of ethics, but since this is a nationally broadcast show, I put up the NCCC Aon, a O M code of ethics just as a guideline.

And in a nutshell, the code of ethics state that you will work within your scope. You will practice integrity and respect, and you will also. Participate in events like this that helped to contribute your learning. And so the topics I want to talk about in the time we have together is an overview of communication.

So the ethics of communication, how do you see. With your patients in an ethical fashion, the ethics of contract. So having integrity between what you say and what’s in writing, how to document with your facial patients and then the ethics of touch when you are when the face is concerned. Under the big umbrella of ethics of communication, our listening skills, which I’m going to talk about in a minute.

And then really that goes to understanding your patients. And this can be unique when it comes to. Facial acupuncture because we have in, or we may have in our heads, some ideas of how we think about aging, but how do your patients feel about aging? What does it mean to them? Where did they get those ideas and letting them communicate to you?

What they are unhappy with as far as their appearance and what they’re happy with and not projecting our thoughts and our ideas on aging and appearance onto our patients. So this all comes back to listening skills. So the Chinese. Character for listening effectively is the ear and the king. So the ear above the king the number 10 or maximum the eye and the number one or single, and then the heart.

And essentially what it means is. When you’re still, you listen with the heart and the ear is worth 10 eyes. Tic not Han had said an hour of mindful listening can change the life of an individual. So what does it mean to be a good listener? When I was teaching at M U H a. Used to give a one hour lecture just on listening skills.

So here are some of the highlights a an Indian philosopher had said that to observe. Without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence. So to be able to be in the presence of our patients without putting our values and judgements on whatever’s going on over there, and then being able to listen to them is.

The most, one of the most important things when we are doing cosmetic acupuncture, it is very human to have our preferences and our opinions, but letting go of the sheds, the expectations, the beliefs, the judgments can be very freeing, both for your patient and for yourself, not interrupting. So putting yourself on.

Just let them talk because every time you interrupt them, you give the message that what you have to say is more important than what they have to say, and it can cause your patients to shut down. Being a little more quiet, providing where you assurance paraphrasing what they said, these will encourage talking, denying.

If your patient says something is a concern to them making light of it or saying, oh, don’t be ridiculous. That’s not a big deal that will cause them to shut down, interrogating them. And this doesn’t mean question asking, it means really bombarding them with questions. To the point where they’re not comfortable.

Advice-giving people come to us for a certain amount of our professional opinions, but too much advice giving patients will shut down and then psychoanalyzing your patients. If you are a therapist that. They should be coming to see you for that. And many states, I don’t know about the laws in every states, but in many states even if you a licensed therapist, you’re not supposed to be doing psychoanalysis in your treatment room, they’re two separate things.

So listen for their feelings, ask them, don’t tell them And what you think or what you feel really get into how they feel about different things. And this will give you information about where and how you should be approaching treatment as far as their eyelids their jowls, their lips really listen to what it is they’re saying.

I’ve had patients come to me with concerns that really weren’t that obvious. And through questioning and listening, I come to find out they had something else going on in their life. And so this drooping, eyelid or thin what they felt were very thin lips a wrinkle or something. Really was not that apparent became a big deal to them because that’s what they were focusing on.

Let them tell their story. Even if you have the same story, keep your story sharing to a minimum, your stories that you share should be teaching stories. This is not a conversation that you’re having with one of your friends. This. About really drawing a picture in your mind of where your patient’s coming from and being able to listen to what it really is they want.

So paraphrase and check in with your patients. Each of the 800 words that we use on a regular basis. Has an average of 17 definition. So if you’re all unclear, check in with your patients, listen between the words. People really want you to hear what they’re not saying. And this can come through with their tone, their body language, let their face be the guide to your understanding of.

What they’re saying, listen to those incomes for in consistencies. Are they telling you how happy they are about something, but they’re all slumped in their seat. Make observations about these types of things. Really getting a picture of what your patients want. Why they are coming to see you.

This all falls under the umbrella of respecting their dignity and in order to set realistic goals and outcomes,

you want to be able to like over pro over. Under promise and over deliver. So when you’re telling them how you’re going to help them with any concerns that they have. Have integrity in what you say, let them know what are realistic expectations and stay within your scope of practice. If someone is asking you to do something, that’s not really in your wheelhouse, just refer out.

American acupuncture council does require that you get training. In cosmetic acupuncture by someone who they have deemed appropriate to teach you cosmetic acupuncture is not just something you can learn. By yourself by watching YouTube videos or just making stuff up. There are certain country for indications and precautions and guidelines for cosmetic acupuncture.

So respect the dignity of the patients who come to see you. They need to understand that this is a safe space, that if you were going to use any before and after photos, it would only be done with permission that you are going to check in with them every step, along the way. Everything that happens in the treatment room is confidential and really keeping appropriate boundaries.

Also things like gender and race diversity. People’s sexuality. So much of this is tied into our appearance and have that in mind when you’re talking to people when they’re discussing a body part, certain races of people have we all have different face shapes and. Certain individuals might want their face to look more Caucasian or less Caucasian or their eyes to be more round or less round.

These are all things we can actually work with, but again, use the listening skills, understand what’s going on for this person. And it will guide you. With your boundaries and how you are communicating, setting realistic expectations is really important. There’ve gotta be verbal expectations on the phone written expectations.

When you’re talking to the patient, you write down what it is that they’re expecting, and then you have to communicate to them. How many treatments might this? What might the results look like and be clear and honest about this. There are a lot of things that go into setting these expectations. And when I teach my cosmetic acupuncture classes, we go through quite a bit of there’s quite a bit of learning around.

How can you determine what the outcome might be? And some of those things are your patient’s diet, their lifestyle, their genetics, their actual chronological age, their constitution type from a five element TCM perspective, their TCM diagnosis, and then their history. Have they spent a good part of their lifeline out in the sun.

So this is all part of the big picture because not everyone is going to get the same results. General rule of thumb is people are going to come once or twice a week. And then you reevaluate after six to eight treatments. And. For most individuals, they are going to be looking at 12 to 20 weeks of treatment and then maintenance people are going to continue to age for someone who’s younger or has less signs of aging.

They may need fewer treatments and it goes the other way as well. So how do you talk to your patients? Cottage medic acupuncture. What can you do? How does it work? This is a pretty extensive list, but it’s certainly not comprehensive. And that is, it works with your body. I always do body points.

When I do cosmetic acupuncture, it works with the face. It brings blood and cheat to the area. It increases circulation. It helps your digestion. And if a person has had a facelift and they are fully healed, like a year out, it can help their face lift last longer. And improved digestion immunity, circulation, and is going to carry nutrients out to the skin, helps to create collagen and elastin in the areas where needles have been inserted.

But it does take a minimum of 28 days to produce collagen. So it’s not a one and done and. There are things that contribute like facial expressions. And as I mentioned, lifestyle, that can cause a lot of these conditions or signs of aging. And if the person continues to do it, it can take a lot longer.

So when you’re talking to them, you set the realistic expectation. You find out from them what they would like to accomplish. You go through your TCM diagnosis and if they’ve had any outside treatments done, they must speak to that person to find out when it’s okay for them to have acupuncture and everything should be documented.

Everything that they say. If they’ve had Botox, any sort of surgery on their face. Injections lasers, peels, all of that stuff should be documented. And then what it is they would like help with and what your treatment plan is, and then go over it with them.

As far as contra-indications major ones should be screened for on the phone. Things like high blood pressure migraines debilitating or severe health conditions seizure disorders, epilepsy, hepatitis coronary disease, some of the. Or red flags. You wouldn’t even begin with the patient. Others. You can still have them come in, but you would have to discuss a treatment plan with them.

And it may be that you have to treat them for the condition for a while before you start the cosmic. Acupuncture, cosmetic acupuncture can make Botox wear off. You cannot do cosmetic, or you should not do cosmetic acupuncture on individuals who were pregnant. And just because of the way cosmetic acupuncture brings energy up to the head, it can bring on.

Migrants as far as documentation, of course, I’ve mentioned notes, how and when to take photos is important. We don’t have time for that here, but it’s an important conversation. You can visit my webinar for the expanded version, but I do recommend strongly that you take before photos. And then privacy.

Any previous procedures, how to know if they’ve had certain things done and then how to talk to your patients about it regarding touch when you’re working on the face Lillian bridges have. Said that treating the face is trauma work. And whenever you’re working on someone’s space, there is because all of our emotions are stored in our face.

There is the possibility that things will get released at sometimes resolved, but there’s the emotional aspects of the face. And then any sort of. Deformity scars, acne scars. If they’ve had skin cancer, car accidents, these types of things are shown that we don’t cover our faces up. So when you’re touching someone’s face, when you’re working with their face, be mindful of all of these things.

And I always do a follow-up after the first time I meet with a patient. I contact them within the next day or so. Although bruises are in my experience, fairly uncommon they can happen. So you want to find out how they’re feeling, how the experience was. Did they get any bruises? And I always talk to them about that ahead of time.

So there’s no surprises. So you have to prepare your patients upfront for any Contra indications. And always screen them for the precautions. And here is a list of all of the courses that I offer. They are all offered as recorded webinars. And I also have live hands on training throughout the us, Canada, the UK and Austria.

So I hope that was beneficial. And let’s see. I can see who we have next time. Ah, next time is Sam Collins and thank you so much. And thank you to the AAC for this opportunity to present.

The Anatomy of Facial Aging

When we practice, we will start with the Western medical perspective and this lecture we’ll discuss facial anatomy. And then also the morphological changes that occur. The face ages over time.

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi, my name is Dr. Shellie Goldstein. I’m an acupuncturist specializing in cosmetic facial acupuncture. And I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for allowing me to be here today. It’s always a pleasure. Today’s presentation is the anatomy of facial aging. This is actually very important, particularly for cosmetic facial acupuncturist, because although we are practicing traditional Chinese medicine we always need to take into account the anatomy of the face and the way that it changes over time.

So this is. Presentation is almost the foundation of our sense skills and being able to get great results. When we practice, we will start with the Western medical perspective and this lecture we’ll discuss facial anatomy. And then also the morphological changes that occur. The face ages over time.

And then we will touch on Eastern medicine, acupuncture strategies for treating the aging face. And throughout my series with the AAC, we will break these down into smaller formats and address them individually. But today is just an overall of what you need to do in order to, and know in order to understand other lectures.

When we think about facial aging, from the perspective of Western medicine, we’re really talking about this biological process that happens with the resulting of a gradual reduction and the structural component cell function and the Chinese medicine. We think more in terms of the G and the energy and the organ systems.

Whereas from a Western perspective, we’re really going to look at the anatomical features of the face. And then the morphological changes that we see as the face ages over time. And when we think about a young phase that has a normal volume, nice and full with very well-defined contours along the jaw line and the cheekbones, that type of thing.

And then as we age these regional facial aesthetics, these units that we’re talking about begin to change. And from a Western medical perspective, those changes are mainly due to a number of factors, a reception of the bone fat tissue changes. Muscle attenuation or the changes that occur with the muscles of the face.

And then the skin gets thinner. The skin gets flacid. It develops elastosis and then we have ligaments in our face that we’ll talk about. And as those shift, they also reposition the soft tissue that it attaches to. When we look at the facial planes, we look at them and two different systems.

We look at them horizontally, and then we look at them vertically. So horizontally, we talk about the upper face, which includes the hairline and the upper hairline to the inner campus area at the top of the eyebrow. And the mid face is referred to from the inner campus plane to right below the nose. The

And then the lower face is considered right below the nose to the jaw area. And then we look at them from a vertical center line as well. So we have the very center, the vertical center line, and then moving out to the center of the pupil is the next vertical line. And then the third vertical line is right in front of the ear lobe.

So we’d go from upper to middle to lower upper face, maybe. Lower phase. And then from the center line, moving out to the center of the pupil and then directly in front of me. And these are fairly standard. There are obviously some changes that occur with different types of faces. So say a Caucasian face may have a narrow or nasal base and a larger tip projection that intercampus area widens at when compared to other faces.

Whereas in Eastern Asian face is going to have a very somewhat weaker facial structure framework. It’s a little more. Delicate. It’s a little wider, a little rounder. The eyebrows are a little bit higher. The lips are a little fuller. The nasal, the bridge is a little bit lower. And then the flaring of the nasal Alia or exists more with an Eastern Asian face.

And then the Malheur prominence in the mid face. This Malheur area. Right along here is more prominent. Lips are more protuberant and then the chin is a little more pushback or receipted for a Latino or Hispanic face. Typically the bises a zygomatic distance right in here is a little wider. The maxillary protrusion is a little wider.

The nose is a little wider and then the chin is a little more receded. And then an African-American faces much has a much broader nasal. I decreased nasal projection. The Bilac by maxillary protrusion exists where the orbital is a little more pro per ptosis, a little bit lower. And then the tissue is a little plumper, a little bit softer.

The lips are a little more prominent and there’s an increase in facial convexity. So there are so much changes, although we’re still dividing them up and along the same trajectories, both horizontally and for. When the face ages it moves from when you think of a young face, it has a very wide, upper number, upper face and upper mid face, and a more narrow and pointed lower face.

And when we look at the younger face, what we see is our eye goes directly to the upper portion of the face. So we look at eyes, we’re looking at a very high cheap, but when we look at a nice wide area and the upper face and the upper mid face, and then as we age, it moves, the weight of the face actually moves.

It drops. LA drops and then turn becomes more medial. So that in this case, as with the aging face, the weight of the face actually moves down. We start to lose, you can see along here, we lose the definition along the dry area. And the weight of the face moves from say upper and outer. So it up and wide to more medially, and.

This creates a lot of changes in the face. Then what are going to look at that right now? We know we have bone and then above the bone, we have soft tissue and in order to really get effective treatment results, we really need to understand the relationship between Eastern medicine. And the biomedical anatomy with regard to the morphological or the psychodynamic facial changes that were time.

So let’s break these down and let’s look at them as they exist from bottom to top. So deep search deep to the surface. We have bone, the basic structure of our face that holds the shape of our. On top of bone, we have muscle on top of muscle. We have fat and then superficially, we have skin. So let’s look at them.

Let’s look at what happens with bone first as we age bone resorbs, which means that it starts to break down and it breaks down from the openings that exist. So for example, the eyes get a little bit wider. The eye socket gets wider. And we’re looking at this boat. This is a CT image of two females. This one on the left.

She’s between 20 and 40. This is someone who is over 65 on the right. And you can see, and the earlier one you can see a nice squared face, open eyes. Here’s the nasal bone and it’s nice and thick and foam. And look what happens over time. The openings start to open up and get white. The F as the face itself starts to get smaller.

So the openings get wider. The skull itself starts to shrink. So it gets smaller. You can actually see it starting to push down. When the skull starts to push down, what happens? You lose the form. So the mid area, the maxillary area get shorter. The mandibular bone, the mandibular area starts to break down too.

It starts to push forward to, you can actually see this rotation, this inward medial rotation of bone that you see changes in dentation. And so we see the height of the face starts to decrease the eye socket, start to expand. You get temporal hollowing. Here’s the temple there starts to break down and get hollow.

And the piriform, this is the nasal pyriform. This is the openings that we were talking about. The nasal pyriform gets wider and we get the resorbtion of the breakdown of the mandible read in here, along the base, the maxilla on the top. And then this causes changes in your teeth, changes of indentation.

It starts to push for. And then the entire face starts to rotate and protrude. And this is what it looks like. What we begin to see as eye sockets, start to increase the nasal pyriform starts to widen the mandible. And here starts to shorten the mandibular length starts to break, to lengthen and shorten as well.

The nose starts to change and the maxillary area right in here, this angle starts to get change. You start to see changes in the height of everything which pushes the teeth. When that happens, this is what so the darker areas is where the bone is starting to break down. What happens to all of the soft tissue on top.

All of that tissue starts to, it has it’s losing its support. It’s losing its underlying foundation. So in even in a healthy tissue, it’s going to start to stag. It doesn’t have the foundation anymore. So it starts to sag and drop and move medially. As we saw. On top of bone, we have muscles. Now the faces unique, the face has two site types of muscles.

It has superficial muscles and it has deeper. The deeper muscles generally attached, like on the body from bone to bone, our bone to muscle and the deeper muscles in the face are primarily located in the mid face, this mid area. And they’re designed to move bone and it’s attachment. So primarily what we’re talking about.

Is the mandible. The mandible is the only loose bone on the body. Everything else is connected. And so the main purpose of the deep muscle muscles of the face is actually to move bone. And it’s primarily for chewing for moving the mandible back and forth and for chewing. Now the muscles on the superficial muscles are a little different.

We call them the muscles of expression are medic muscles memetic, and these muscles are different than the rest of the muscles on the face and the deep muscle the deep muscles of the face and on the body, them a medic muscles are designed to move other muscles and move the skin. So rather than moving both.

Or bony attachments, they’re going to move muscles and they’re going to move school. They’re very flat and you can see them in this cadaver. There here’s a medic muscle right here. There’s one around the eyes. There’s one here in the cheek area. Here’s one right here and then around the mouth and then the participant muscle along the neck and with age rather than atrophy, they attenuate.

So what does that mean? We think of muscles atrophying over time. And it’s mainly from lack of use, but when you think about the muscles of their face, We use them all the time. We use them with our expressions. We use them when we talk, we are eyes they’re opening and closing all the time. We are constantly using the muscles of our face.

So they don’t they don’t really atrophy. They attenuate. And when we see a tango what that means is they get short. So they move, they reduce in their amplitude of movement and they get stiff and straight. And instead of being nice and flexible and moist and resilient, they start to straighten, they start to stiffen, they get stuck or they reduce an amplitude, so they don’t move as well.

And that limited amplitude of these mimetic muscles leads to a more permanent or more contrasting. Position. Whereas we, if you look in an aging person and it looks like their muscles are frozen, they aren’t moving, they aren’t moving back and forth or contracting and relaxing. They’re stuck in their position.

And when these muscles get thinner and tighter and stiffer or straighter the skin on top of them starts to crease our we start developing a facial asymmetry and when we get wrinkles. So a lot of this is combining the changes in structure and the bone plus the changes or the attenuation of the mimetic muscles of the face.

And then we see systemic changes in the integumentary system. The integumentary system is made up of three layers. It’s made up the subcutaneous or the fat layer it’s made up of the dermis, the mid layer. And it’s made up of the epidermis, which is the very surface area of our standards. What we see when we look in the mirror or when we’re looking at.

Let’s start in the deeper layer in the subcutaneous or that fat layer. We have two layers on the body, the face we have the deeper layer and we have a more superficial layer and they look different. You hear in this cadaver, we can see on the on the surface of the the left side, this is the, it’s a little lighter yellow color, and it sits on the surface.

Whereas the deep fat is a little darker in color and it’s deeper underneath the surface of this. Regardless see that as we look at the phase and as we look at the fat in our face, the fat is what provides the structure or the plumping plumpness of. Some people have more than others, as you can see. I don’t have a lie.

But they’re all of these fat pads, we think of them as being all across the face in a uniform position. But in fact, that’s not the case. They are actually separated by ligand implements. So they’re partitioned in sex, sectioned off and held into place with ligaments. As we age changes occur.

And those, the fat we call it descent and deflate, which means that it moves as it breaks down. It starts to lose its form. It lose its integrity and then it moves. And oftentimes it moves under the eye socket. And in this fold between the nose and the corner of the mouth, it’s called the nasal labial fold.

And we see as people get older, This area begins to thick, and it’s not a wrinkle it’s actually partially due to the movement of the tissue and the muscles immediately towards the nasal labial fold. But it can also be due to fat right in here that is moving from the center of the face, into that area.

And it’s also due to just simple loss of fat in the mid-face area, so that we see a flattening or a deflating. In the mid-face area, but then we also have the illusion of being thicker in the nasal Lavia. Also what we see as changes in the upper area, the forehead, the periorbital area, the temporal area.

We start to see a breakdown of fat into this area. And then some of this also lands along the jaw. And that is partially what happens when we start to lose our jaw area are the cut that we see in our general area. We may think that it’s all skin that is starting to fall down. And in fact, some of that may be due to fat, build up along this jaw area that creates that asymmetry from side to side, but also that loss of definition in the jaw area.

On top of the fat layer or the adipose tissue of the deeper areas. We see the dermal layer. The dermal is right here in the middle. And then on top of that is the. And the dermal area is where the health of the cells develop cells begin their growth cycle at the base of the dermal area. And they begin to float up their base.

Then this nutrient of hyaluronic acid and fluid proteins, vitamins, everything that we need in order to create healthy cells occurs on the German. And floats up to the top, moves up to the dermal layer, the epidermal layer, and then spreads off. So not only do we have a number of nutrients and bathing solutions in this dermis, but we also have our our rector Pillai muscles, their muscles that we feel when we get the chills and our, and the hair starts to stand up on our.

I sweat glands, a number of sebaceous oil glands, a number of different vital substances are in the dermal area out of this. It’s composed of a papillary layer, which is a loose meshwork of thin connective tissue. And then the deeper area is the thicker layer of connective tissue. And if you look in this side image, this is connective tissue.

We’ll go into this a little more deeply, but it’s a very loose matrix, a loose structure, whereas the lower areas a little bit. And then on top of that area is the epidermis. The remembering the epidermis is that theory surface layer of the skin it’s made up of a number of different layers, seven different layers.

On the very top are dead cells. They’re filled with keratin. It’s what we slough off and we fully ate our skin. And then as we move deeper to the dermal layer, the cells are a little bit healthier. They’re a little bit plumper. They’re a little thicker. They have a little more, most moisture in them. And then as they move through the dermal cells, move through the dermal layer into the epidermis.

They start to thin out, they start to flatten. They lose their moisture. And then at the very surface is the dead keratin cells. As we age a number of things happen, one is the health of the cells that are floating up from the dermal layer up to the surface, the cell health and the dermal layer starts to change.

We start to lose the water content. They start to be a little thinner, a little drier. So they’re not as healthy as they move up to the surface. Also the structure of the dermis. Remember we spoke about that connective tissue starts to lose its integrity. Collagen and elastin are the main components that hold up the integrity of the dermal layer.

When that starts to become disorganized and break down, we actually lose the integrity of that entire dermal layer. Think of a mattress that’s thick, and as we lie on it over and over, it gets a little bit thinner and. Like we lose the integrity of our mattress. Over time, we lose the integrity of that dermal layer and then cells on the top are thinner.

They are dryer though, less subtle, they’re less plump and the entire area sinks. So here’s the mattress, here’s the sinking of the skin and the mattress. And it looks like their wrinkles been. In fact, it’s just loss of college and loss of integrity and skin aging on the surfaces. Remember that connect that.

In that connective tissue. So connective tissue is throughout fascia is a type of connective tissue and it is the most abundant form of collagen fibers in, in, in the tissue of the skin. There’s fascia on the face, which attaches to the bone, the lining of the one, the periosteum, and it encapsulates and protects the muscles and the deeper layers of.

Tissue. And then there’s a superficial and that superficial, it’s like a thin layer of say sticky film or saran wrap. So it’s a little sticky and it attaches to the muscles and then the muscles attached to the skin. And every time a muscle moves, it causes the skin to move. And that’s how we get our expressions.

And then. All of these are in a horizontal plane and then running in a perpendicular plane are our retaining ligaments. There are a number of different retaining ligaments in the face. Remember they surround and encapsulate fat, but they also are like little plugs. They hold all of the loose tissue.

That’s running in a horizontal plane. They hold it all together. So what happens as they age? They start to attenuate as well. They start to dry out. They start to thicker, they lose their integrity. And as all of the horizontal tissue starts to shift, starts to dry out. Remember turn more immediately the these re retaining ligaments start to move as well.

So again, everything moves medially, and again, we start to lose our Mallory projection, and this is what we. If you look at this is on this end on the, to the left is aging as a young face from the frontal and then side view. As we age, we can start to see shortening in the far ahead, we start to lose or flattening in the mid phase and then loss of definition along the jawline, as you can see.

So let’s look at this. So here is a younger face. Nice to see the height up here. Eyes wide, open forehead. Nice and relaxed. Now look, this is what happens as we start to age, remember everything starts to drop down, move more, more immediately. We develop that nasal labial foam. We develop a long here, the repositioning of fat loss of structure.

Everything starts to fall and then loses it. Here we see this side is a younger face. B is the older face. Can you see how the mid face starts to flatten? We start to see a deeper nasal labial fold. We start to see loss of collagen and elastin, particularly in around the mouth and loss of definition along the job.

I hear it as a. Here’s a younger face. Hirsi is the older face deepening and the nasal labial fold loss of definition. The jaw line, the corners of the mouth start to turn down. This is another conversation about muscles and the effect that muscles have on the phase. Particularly the mimetic muscles.

And then in terms of treatment, how are we going to treat this? We see this changes starting to happen. We see the the changes that are starting to occur. Some that you can change. You can’t really change bone loss. These the, that have already lost some bone. It’s very hard to change, but we can make a.

And we can do that with our acupuncture treatments. So in the link shoe, there are a numerous discussions about needling guidelines specific to the layers of the face, the skin, the flesh between the areas between that flesh and the channels and around the muscles at the local level. In the link shoe, they talk about the skin, the flesh, the muscles, the tendons, and meridians all occupied different places in the body and that different diseases respond to different methods.

And when we talk about diseases in this case, what we’re talking about is. And if illness are aging is superficial, the different needling that we do, it will penetrate and injure the good flesh. If we do not treat it at the superficial layer or we miss it, then we’re not going to get the right results.

So when we treat what we’re treating, as we talk about the superficial layers, we’re talking about the epidermis and the dermis. So when we’re actually treating them, we have to angle the needle in a way that we’re actually treating the epidermis and the dermis. So we’re actually aligning that. Very flat.

When we talk about angle of insertion, what we’re talking about is relative to the skin surface. So we would lay that needle right at the surface of the skin, and we say five to 15 degrees and we can treat the superficial wrinkles. We can treat skin atrophy. Pain. There are a lot of pain receptors in the dermal layer of the skin.

And so we can actually help treat pain by laying that needle in a very superficial layer. We can use it with intradermals. A Japanese style of acupuncture is very good for addressing for our purposes. Introducing. Japanese acupuncture to treat the epidermal and dermal layer of the skin. If we want to move a little bit deeper into the hypodermis or the fat layer, we’re going to angle it a little bit deeper, not much because remembering if you actually place your hand on the surface of your skin, if you push a little bit, you’re already at the bone.

So it’s very superficial, very shallow. So we’re going to angle the needle at a 15 to 20 degree angle. We use it for skin atrophy for any type of fat atrophy or deflating. It’s really good for prevention. For aging on the deeper channels at the muscle. If we want to address the muscle layer, we’re going to name and go that needle on a 45 to 60 degree angle.

Really good for treating muscle attenuation trumps. Muscle trauma or prevention. And then for the bone, we’re going to go right or into treating the meridians. We’re going to go at the angle of the bone, which are the more 90 degree angle. So that’s also great for prevention, any Meridian problem or trauma to the face.

So here’s an example. This is a different protocol or a protocol. This is just an example of how we might use and to the muscles in the neck area at a 45 degree angle. If we’re going to treat the meridians, we might go right into the acupuncture points on the face, a shallow noodling into wrinkles and the, into the dermis and the epidermis treating the muscles, the corrugator muscle.

You can see this deep corgi. Fold, and then 90 degrees into the meridians. And this would be a before and after picture of what you can expect to see, say, and this is a 10 treatment series. So that’s it for today. There again, I have a number of different lectures for you where we take a deeper dive into the individual.

So thank you very much. Again, thank you to the AAC for allowing me to present today. Stay tuned next week for Sam Collins. He’ll be presenting next Wednesday. He’s always exciting. Very interesting to listen to. And see you again. Thank you.

Microneedling Benefits for Your Practice

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Hi, my name is Michelle Gellis and I am going to be speaking to you today about the benefits of microneedling for acupuncturists. I wanted to say thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity, and we’re going to go to our first.

Over here. As this is a picture of me, for those of you who don’t know me and today as I mentioned, we’re going to be talking about the benefits of microneedling and micro needle noodling. What it is the use of tiny needles to beautify the skin. And this can be like a microneedle pen or a microneedle Derma roller, and, or what’s called a hydro roller or a Hydra needle, which is a little device where you put liquid in and you.

Infuse it into your skin directly. So all of these different devices are very modern ways of beautifying the skin, but they are based on the Chinese principles of using needles to beautify the skin, which is something that’s been done for thousands of people. And it is not just so it is preventative as well as it is restorative.

And it doesn’t just work on the outside. Microneedling if done by an acupuncturist will work on the inside as well. The principles and the practice of microneedling is almost identical to practices that we already have of either circling the dragon to treat a scar or some sort of just chromia in the scan or.

Intradermal needles or a seven star hammer, like a plum blossom needle for things such as hair loss and other skin concerns. And seven star hammers are used in Chinese medicine to treat blood stagnation, neuropathy, scars, and alopecia, but we can do the same thing with some of these other more modern.

Devices. So here is a photograph of a, what we call a dark spot or a liver spot. And Yeah, little wrinkles that might form around the lips or in the nasal labial area. Typically we will take small intradermal needles and insert them with tweezers, superficially to bring blood and Xi to the area. We can also thread larger needles and doing things like this helps to release.

Stagnation, any sort of fascial adhesions, which can cause the skin to fold and wrinkle and help to encourage the growth of healthy cells. So these are things that we can do with regular acupuncture needles. But this can also be done with a Derma roller or with a micro-needling pen. And this will mimic the, these are modern ways of mimicking some of these ancient techniques.

When I teach microneedling in my classes, I do. So as part of a holistic TCM practice, I incorporate my five element. I’m a traditionally trained five element acupuncturist, and I incorporate it as part of my. Overall system of health and wellness. So I do my diagnosis either your five element or TCM Dyke neurosis, and then you would use body points to help to build the cheap yen blood move stagnation, move, stagnant, fluid, stagnant sheet, stagnant blood.

And this is all in service of treating the outside because in order to treat the inside, you have to treat the outside and vice versa in order to treat the outside, you have to treat the inside. Here is a map of the face. And one of the principles of our medicine of course, is the connection between our skin and our internal organs.

And this is actually mapped out on the face as a microsystem where different parts of the face, when you treat them, it affects. Different organ systems.

So what are some of the things you might use microneedling for in your treatment room for a cosmetic. Purposes, it can be used for fine lines, acne scars, loose skin, and large pores, crows feet, lip wrinkles, any sort of dark spots or melasma things like stretch marks and even hair restoration. Many people have suffered post COVID hair loss and microneedling can help them.

So how exactly does it work and what does it do? From a Western standpoint, when you puncture the skin, when you make little holes in the skin, your body is stimulated to build its own collagen. Plus if there’s any products you’re using, like I showed this little Germa stamp here. The Hydrus stamped.

You can put fluid in here and infuse it directly into the skin. If you are, even if you’re just Derma rolling, or if you’re using a microneedle pen, you put your products on and then when you. Use these needling devices, these microneedling devices, it helps to infuse it because many of the products that we use, we put them on our skin and they never get absorbed.

So what are some of the benefits of microneedle Lang versus maybe some of the Western treatments, some of the more invasive treatment. That people are having done, whether it’s fillers or toxins, such as Botox with microneedling this very little downtime, it’s very low risk. It’s very effective.

There are many clinical studies many clinical studies that have been done. If you go to my website, which I’ll show you at the end. If you go to my website, you can see many articles that I’ve linked to and blog posts that I’ve written on this. So it’s very low risk. It’s very effective and it allows your body to produce collagen.

Naturally it can help with stretch marks, acne scars can decrease hair loss, encourage new hair growth. Like with eyebrows. As we get older, we lose the tails on our eyebrows can help with. Wrinkles on the neck and within cosmetic acupuncture, the neck can be a really difficult area to treat. So when you’re dealing with the neck, those fine lines around the lips crow’s feet.

So areas that would require a lot of small needles, the microneedling devices can address those. It is not painful or most cases it’s not painful. And the results last a long time. So the needles create these little micro channels and then a micro channel stimulate a healing response and collagen and elastin are produced.

And when that happens, the skin becomes firmer. Any depressed scars, start to gradually. Diminish, and this will help to smooth the wrinkles over time. You can do microneedle laying on your face, your neck, your scalp, your stomach, your thighs, your arms, pretty much anywhere on the body. You don’t want to do it inside the orbital rim on the red part of your lips or Ani, any mucus membrane.

So here’s just a little refresher. Here is a cross section of scan. And when we’re microneedling, we are just working right in this top layer here, the epidermis and the collagen induction therapy. As I mentioned, works on the wound healing responses. There is this all. Inflammatory reaction that happens.

And then the body recognizes it’s been injured and it makes nice new, healthy skin. So here’s a, just an example. This would be with a Derma pen, but it looks very similar with a Derma roller dermis stamp and you can see how it creates temporary little. Micro wounds or microtraumas, and then the body heals itself.

So if you’re already doing cosmetic acupuncture, like what are the differences and what are the similarities? So with micro needle, Lang you’re working very much on the skin level, the fine lines, any depressed scars, you don’t want to go over raise scars. With the nano needle. So there are little nano needles that you can get for the microneedle pen, which you actually can use inside the orbital rim and on the red part of the lab.

And the results happen fairly quickly. There’s a little downtime depending on how deep you go. And then the results are very long lasting up to five years with cosmetic acupuncture, your really working with the underlying causes of aging. You’re going much deeper till the muscle, the fascia you’re working with the blood and the cheek.

And it’s much better for the sagging skin jowling and your patient is going to need 12 to 24 treatments with microneedling. It’s four to six treatments and there’s no downtime with cosmetic acupuncture. So what can you expect? This is someone before treatment, during treatment and after treatment, they really should just be a little pink.

Like they have a sunburn, there should be no bleeding. Germer rolling. However can be done in your office. Or you can sell your patient a Derma roller and. Have them take it home and with proper instruction, they can do self care between treatments, which is really great. So here are some before and after pictures of a microneedle laying, this was with the microneedle pen.

So here are acne scars, and then you can see these fine lines around the crow’s feet around the eyes. And this is actually a picture of me. This was before I had done any microneedling on my eyebrows and this was after. And you can see not only is my entire brow thicker, but I have new growth in here where I didn’t have much of anything going on before.

And I don’t have any eyebrow pencil or eyebrow mascara going on here. You can see my eyebrows now. So I’ve been microneedling my eyebrows for about six months now. And I started to notice a change after about eight weeks. It was quite astounding. How do you set up your pricing? Let’s say you were already doing microneedling.

You already know all of this stuff, but you’re not quite sure about pricing and maybe how to market it. So the way that pricing is set up, typically with microneedling is. You’re going to charge per session. And depending on where in the country you are treating is how you would market your per session treatment and your packages.

Now one way that you can find out, what is a good price where you live is to maybe call some of the Medi spas and see what they’re charging. The caveat to that is I always do full body acupuncture along with my microneedling. So I put the body points in and I put, if I’m going to use numbing cream, I put the numbing cream on.

And then I come back in and take the numbing cream off and I do my microneedle. And so my patients tend to be on the table for about a half an hour. And so you want to price accordingly? Taking into account the fact that you are giving them an acupuncture treatment as well. And also depending on where you’re practicing in the country, you have to check with your local acupuncture board and make sure it’s okay for you to do packages, but you can also do a package because most people are not going to be satisfied with treatment until they’ve had at least four treatments spread out once a month.

Some other pricing options are to maybe only do the brows. Some people only want their mouth area done. Now with microneedle Lang you could do someone’s brows and then give them a. Cosmetic acupuncture treatment afterwards with the mouth area. What I have done with my patients who have a lot of lip wrinkles instead of using a lot of intradermal needles is I’ll put the numbing cream on I’ll do their body point.

And then I do any lifting points, points around the eyes, forehead, things of that nature. And then I come back in, take all the needles out in the fairs, take off the numbing cream and I do the microneedle and around the mouth, you can also just do neck and chest. You can do the back of the hands.

Microneedling is very effective for the back of the hand. And I don’t know if you can see my hands I’ve been, I am right now as of this recording, I am 60 and I hit don’t have any of those dark spots on the back of my hands. And I credit it all to microneedling because I started out many years ago when I was in my four days doing a Derma rolling on the back of mine.

Whatever CRM I used on my face, I put her on the back of my hands and then I would roll it in and then I would wash my face and it just helped everything absorb. So the vitamin C serum that I used really got absorbed very well. And I really feel like it’s helped my neck and the back of my hands and my overall.

Skin health doing the DerMarr walling. And then during the past year, I’ve started microneedling all myself with the microneedle pen as well. Also you can do knees and elbows, which Or another place where people tend to age along their elbows around their knees. And if someone has stretch marks, so these can be like standalone treatments and you can just decide how much you want to charge.

I’ve given you an idea of what I charge in my treatment space. And but you want to check around and see what’s going on with. As far as the microneedle pens, what you want to look for in a device is something that has a minimum of 14,000 RPMs. And that’s the speed. So when you’re turning it on, they have.

I could get my camera here. They have different levels and whatever speed you set it at when it’s at the highest speed, it should be a minimum of 14,000. This one goes to 18,000. Also, you want to look for that? The tip is a bayonet tip, which means that instead of just a little point of tip, it has a couple of connectors that you can put right in, turn it having a pen that comes with a couple of batteries is great.

And then if the battery does. Being able to screw it off and have a plug-in attachment is wonderful as well. Look at the warranty and make sure that the settings are easy to read that there’s a guide on it. And that you can tell. Where you’re setting the needle depth. So you’d be able to easily adjust and see the needle depth and also.

That it comes with a good user’s manual product support. And ideally it should have some marketing material that come with it. So you don’t have to go through the process of printing out brochures, coming up with information for your website, et cetera. And training, making sure that you get properly trained on whatever device you’re using is very important as well.

And so this is just talking a little bit about the side products. When you’re looking at products, you want something that is organic, so it doesn’t have chemicals in it. You will have patients that are vegan. They’re not going to want animal products or something. That’s vegan, something that’s easily absorbed.

And has properties that brighten the skin, nourish the skin, won’t clog the reporters, something that reduces inflammation, the products that I use have arnica and CBD. And and you want some after-care products for after you’ve done the treatment? I have arnica and aloe. Product that I give to my patients.

And then you want it to be slippery if it’s not slippery enough that you’re going to get drag on your device. This AccuLift skincare is my company, and I mentioned you can go to my website. AccuLift skincare.com for. Information on microneedling in general, you don’t have to be a customer.

There’s many blog posts and many pieces of information about microneedling in general. And I also teach cosmetic acupuncture classes. This is my website, facial acupuncture classes.com. All of my classes are recorded and they. Carrie CE use. I think that is my last slide. Next week we have Yair Maimon and he will be presenting for the American Acupuncture Council.

And I want to thank AAC again for having me on again, and I will see you again next time.