Today I’m going to be talking about L E D light. and the benefits and some of the contraindications. So if you can go to the first slide.

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi, my name’s Michelle Gellis. I am a board certified acupuncture physician, and I teach facial acupuncture classes internationally. Today I’m going to be talking about l e d light. and the benefits and some of the contraindications. So if you can go to the first slide.

So this is a little bit about me. I’m a formal former faculty member and clinic supervisor at the Maryland University of Integrative Health, and I’m currently on the doctoral FA faculty at Usan University, and I’ve been published several times in the Journal of Chinese. , my area of expertise is facial acupuncture, both for cosmetic but also for neuromuscular facial conditions.

And at the end of the presentation, I have some information about some of the classes that I teach. So what is l e d skin rejuvenation or l e d light therapy actually? So l e d light therapy is using light through light emitting diodes or LEDs to affect the skin and the body in. So these l e d lights and you can see a picture of a light device here.

These l e d lights can stimulate the cells in our body to do different things. They can produce collagen and this can help to rejuvenate the skin. And it can also. help with a lot of other things in addition to helping with skin concerns. So LEDs are different from lasers and I p l therapies that are other therapies that are used for the.

Because this does not use thermal energy. It doesn’t damage the skin in any way. There’s no downtime and there’s no trauma to the tissue, which is really nice for our patients. And this particular device, which. is a freestanding device. I like this type of device because you can move it around the table.

You don’t have to somehow prop it over your patient and you can get it as close or as far away as you would like, and it will function on any body part. So these panels, they of move, like open and closed to get to smaller parts and larger parts of the body. So what are some of the benefits, other benefits of l e d light therapy?

L e d light therapy has. Approved by the FDA for anti-aging, tightening and toning of the skin, helping the skin’s elasticity, improving pigment like dark spots, and any sort of molas, things of that nature. It helps our immune system because it targets the mitochondria of the. , which enhances our immune system.

It also helps with hair regrowth. You may have seen some of those caps and different types of devices. People, the red light devices that people put on their heads to help to regrow hair, and it also can help with inflammation and for things like joint pain, for concerns like arthritis. and the way, one of the ways that it helps with skin is it stimulates the fibroblasts to increase collagen production and it also increases the production of melatonin in the body.

So it’s great for. It stimulates the lymphatic system, so it helps with any sort of inflammation that may be going on. And also cell repair. So if you’re doing cosmetic acupuncture, You can include this with the cosmetic acupuncture treatment and it can help to with puffiness and also to reduce the incidence of bruising.

And because it does work with the mitochondria of the cell, it can help with the tissue. Injury tissue regrowth, if there’s been any sort of trauma. And again, it can also help with inflammation. So the device that I was just showing you is made it’s being sold by ocu. And they they have a website.

It’s called AccuLift skincare.com and Mossa OMS will also be carrying it. And it has four different types of light. It has a red light, which has a wavelength of 640 nanometers, and that is the most powerful penetrating is the red light, and that is for pretty much everything. It will take care of the skin cell, rejuvenation, oxygen content in the blood circulation, aches and pains, and promoting the collagen.

So you would use the red light definitely. If you were treating the skin. , the yellow light helps with oxygen in the skin, also circulation, red spots, red face. It’s great for rosacea and it helps to remove pigment in the skin. That’s unwanted, like dark spots, red spots. The green light is good for dark circles.

Also pigmentation issues, broken capillaries, sunspots, so it will target some of the red in the skin and if the person has over irritated skin. And then the blue light. Helps to kill bacteria and it’s wonderful to use, like if you’re doing any sort of microneedling, it helps to kill bacteria on the skin ahead of time.

Also, the lights can be combined, so you can have red and blue, yellow, and red. or you can turn all four colors on, and this will help with different types of concerns. So a little bit about infrared light. So this, the light that this device emits is a near infrared. So the T D P lamps that we have, they get hot that is far infrared, and these lamps they don’t get hot like a far infrared.

The light spectrum that we’re working with is mainly in here. However, when you combine the lights, you can get a little further into the near infrared. , which helps to go down a little deeper when you are trying to deal with aches and pains and muscle issues. So the red light. The near infrared red light again, it stimulates collagen, fibroblasts, and it does have some anti-inflammatory action.

And as I mentioned this has all been approved by the fda and we can use them in our treatment room for all these different things, including. Stimulating the mitochondria of the cell. And this is a link to one study and there have been many studies that have been done on. Red Light therapy.

The nice thing about red light therapy is there’s no risk of burning the skin, and you can treat a large area within a very short period of time. A typical treatment is between 20 and 30 minutes, and there’s nothing special you need to do afterwards. There’s no downtime. The person doesn’t have to stay out of the sun or put any special products on their skin.

It is safe for many different types of skin and , it’s completely pain free. It’s very comfortable. It’s actually very relaxing. It’s easy to use. The machines are easy to use. The Accu Lift device comes with step by step manual and also video training and. , it really does have a wide range of uses in the treatment room.

Back pain, hip pain, leg pain lots of different things that you can use it for in addition to just rejuvenating the skin. Here, here is a picture of me. You could see I’m wearing the same shirt right before the presentation. I thought I would just chill out under my red light and it’s very relaxing.

It has a timer on it. I don’t think I have a picture of the controls, but the controls are easy. You turn it on and then there is a timer. You can set it from zero to 30 minutes. And power I always turn it all the way. and then what color light you want to use. You just cycle through whether you wanna do red, blue, green, yellow, or a combination.

So there’s different seven different settings. Red, blue, green yellow and red. Red and blue, and then all four. And. It’s on wheels, so you can just move it right around your patient, which is nice. And when you’re done, you can just wipe it with a cavity, wipe something that is safe, and that way if your patient coughs or sneezes or anything it will remain clean.

and it stores up pretty small. You could just stick it right in the corner. And the other thing is, if you’re doing cosmetic acupuncture, you can put your needles in and then you just place this right over the needles. And you can see with these adjustment knobs, you can lay it, you can have it so it’s completely flat like this, and you can put it right up against.

The person I don’t know. I did not include the contraindications, but there are some contraindications. You would never wanna use the device on someone who had cancer, skin cancer, any kind of cancer, because it does stimulate cell growth. You don’t want to use it on. People who are pregnant any sort of open wounds, anything like that.

But this is all included in the training. This is really just an overview on the devices . That’s pretty much all I have to say today about red light therapy. These are some of the other classes that I offer. I haven’t even added the red light therapy class on here, but I teach cosmetic acupuncture certification.

I have a, an advanced certification, which is essentially all of these classes. I also just have a, like a basic five module certification. I teach facial cupping, facial guha, facial derma rolling, and skincare microneedling, both with a microneedle pen and derma rolling. I also have to meet, and these are all C E U N C A O.

California and Florida approved CEU classes. I also teach ethics and safety within facial acupuncture treating neuromuscular facial conditions self-care for acupuncturists and anatomy of expression. . So that’s my topic today and let me move this out of the way. Oops. If you are interested in learning more, definitely visit the AAC channel.

They have lots and lots of instructional video. And I wanna say thank you to the AAC for the opportunity today to spend some time with all of you.

So what I’m going to talk about is the different topics I’m going to speak about today are the different types of hair loss and how microneedling is within our scope of practice of Chinese medicine, and then how it can stimulate hair growth.

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi, my name’s Michelle Gellis. I am an acupuncture physician and I am the founder and president of Facial Acupuncture classes. I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to speak to you today about microneedling for hair. Can we go to the first slide?

So what I’m going to talk about is The different topics I’m going to speak about today are the different types of hair loss and how microneedling is within our scope of practice of Chinese medicine, and then how it can stimulate hair growth. And some protocols for microneedling the Scalp. So I teach a one hour CEU class on this topic.

So you you’re getting like a little snippet, but I wanted to do a nice overview for you on microneedling for hair loss. So a little bit about me. Taught at the Maryland University of Integrative Health from 2003 to 2021, and I am currently on the doctoral. I’m on faculty at the doctoral program at Yoan University, and as I mentioned, I have been teaching facial and cosmetic acupuncture classes internationally since 2005.

There are many different types of hair loss and in general terms, some are due to stress or illness and So I’m just gonna go through the like the Western medical differentiations of different types of hair loss, and then we’ll talk about how we differentiate in Chinese medicine, the different types of hair loss.

So in Western medicine we have male and female pattern. This is Androgenetic alopecia, and this is the most common form of hair loss that we see for men. It’s either right on the top here or in the front, and in some cases both. Also there’s telegen. Hair loss where large numbers of the follicles on the scalp stay in the resting phase.

But so we have different phases with our hair growth. Some rests, some grows, and. If we stay in the resting phase too long, your hair falls out, but then new hair doesn’t grow in, and this is typically due to some sort of a hormonal imbalance, thyroid childbirth, or a shock to the system, like a surgery, a fever.

We’re seeing this with covid. People lost their hair with c. Sometimes it is from a vitamin or a mineral deficiency, and so that’s algen. And then there’s antigen, and this is from a medical treatment such as chemotherapy where your hair just suddenly falls out. Almost, it’s almost like it spontaneously falls out due to medical treat treatment.

There can be autoimmune conditions like rat at a rat. Da , I’m having trouble saying it. The slides are small, but that is an autoimmune condition. And tinia cap is ringworm, which is fairly uncommon in Western society, but it does happen. And then there’s scarring, alopecia, and there’s several different categories.

Of this. There can also be hair shaft abnormalities and hypori, which is another type of hair loss in tcm. We divide sudden hair loss. Into four categories, and that would be sudden hair loss due to blood, heat, and wind. And we see this more commonly in adolescents that are tending towards because Adolescents tend towards blood heat, which is going to generate wind, and the signs and symptoms might be some itching, right?

Irritation from the heat. There might be a headache. The tongue is gonna be red with a thin coating, and the pulse is thin and wiry and rapid. As with any. Heat condition and so the treatment is to clear the heat and the wind and we can also have sudden hair loss with a chi and blood deficiency pattern.

this would be after a sudden illness or postpartum because of chi and blood cannot ascend up to the hair. And so the treatment for that will be deify, the chi and blood. . Also, we can have gradual hair loss due to damp heat. Typically this is from dietary type conditions. People have damp heat from eating diet that would generate that in the body.

And the scalp would be greasy and sticky, and you might get some itching and the hair could fall out in clusters. The tongue is gonna be red with a greasy coat, and the pulse will be slippery and rapid, and the treatment would be to clear the dampness and the heat. We can also have a gradual hair loss.

Due to a liver and kidney deficiency pattern, and we see this most likely in middle age. And so this would be the kidney deficiency type of hair loss that is most common, and that would lead to some of the male and female pattern. Boldness that we would see, and the hair will be dull, sometimes yellowish white, and they will have typically typical kidney deficiency patterns, like a sore back knees, dizziness, and red tongue.

The pulse is gonna be thin and rapid, and the treatment would be to nourish the liver and the kidneys. Another reason for hair loss in Chinese medicine would be mental and emotional disorders, such as stress, grief, and worry, which can cause the hair to sin and fall out. When we’re thinking about microneedling in Chinese medicine we tend to think of microneedling as something that is more of a modern technique.

But the Chinese have used needles to beautify the skin for thousands of years. And in Chinese practice it’s referred to as Ma Huang, which translates to beautiful appearance. And so using needles to rejuvenate the skin has been used for Thousands of years. And although the tools that they used and the terminology was slightly different, microneedling, which is also known as collagen, induction therapy, is almost identical to what we might do with a seven star hammer or even when we’re stimulating our channels with a channel roller.

Surrounding the dragon to treat scars and but using a micro needle, derma roller, or a derma pen. And I’ve brought one with me today for you, toc. So this is a ACU lift micro pen. There are many manufacturers of micro needle pens. But these devices you turn them on and they have different speeds that you can set the pen at, and then the there’s a.

Guide right here. And let’s see, I gotta go in the right direction up. And as you can see, as I twist the the little dial, the needles, these little needles where am I? Go, come out, you can see the little needles there. And when the pen is on, they vibrate up and down like this, and they penetrate the skin.

So

when we’re using acupuncture, For to reduce hair loss or to increase hair growth using micro needle pen or der helps to reduce the inflammation that might exist in the hair follicle. It also increases the flow of blood to the skin and to the hair follicles. allows any nutrients that are in your blood to go out to the surface, and it helps to stimulate hair growth.

Acupuncture, full body acupuncture will help to reduce some of the stress, which as we saw is one of the causes for hair loss and acupuncture enhances your immune system. So if part of the reason that your hair is falling, Is because of an immune deficiency or something that’s stressing your immune system.

Doing full body acupuncture along with microneedling can help balance the hormones. Enhance your blood flow, enhance your immune system and allow your hair to naturally grow. Little picture of what it, like a cross section of what it looks like when the needles go in. So what does microneedling.

Actually do. It does two things. One, it stimulates your body’s own collagen production, and hair is made out of collagen and elastin, and it also opens the skin up. So when you do microneedling, , it should be done very superficially. It should not be done very deep. There shouldn’t be any bleeding, and it allows for the absorption of any products that you put.

On your skin. So if you’re using some sort of a hair growth stimulating product and you put it on your scalp, our scalps are pretty thick and it can be difficult for the product to get in. But if you put the product on and then you do the microneedling, it allows it to go down. Pass the outer layer of your scalp and get into where the blood supply is and allows the product to be picked up by your skin.

Here’s a few photos. There have been a lot of studies done, and I’m not gonna go through all of them. I do have a few references and there’s a bunch. My website. So ACU Lift has a website, and on the website there’s information about microneedling and different. Studies that have been done on microneedling, but this is just some pictures before and after pictures for microneedling that were done by a company that makes microneedle pens.

As I mentioned, I’m not gonna read through all of this, but clinical studies that have been done on microneedling and showing how much more effective microneedling. Was then even using minoxidil, which is currently known commonly known as Rogan. And some other studies that were done showing the body points that were used in conjunction with the micro needle pen and.

So you can flip through these as I mentioned on the website, and the protocol is that you would clean your patient’s scalp with either an alcohol spray or some witch hazel. You would let that dry. You can put numbing cream on the scout. And then put a shower cap on it because the heat will help it to absorb.

And you definitely wanna use numbing cream because microneedling, the scalp can be very sensitive. Any, if you’ve ever pulled just like one here, you know how. Sensitive. Our scallops can be once the cap is on with the numbing cream. If you have an l e d one of those l e D lights, you can set that on blue and that helps to kill an bacteria.

And then you. Insert any body points that you were going to use to treat the different conditions that we spoke about. You would wait about 15 minutes. You come back in, you wipe off the numbing cream, and then you put whatever serum you’re going to use. Aiff does make a hair serum. And before you would choose any prescription serums, your I.

Strongly recommend contacting a medical professional eye, the hair serum. I use on my patients that I sell is all organic and vegan and very few ingredients, but it’s all very good, even just on its own to help with hairy growth. And you don’t need to set the pen. Needles too long. So usually what I’ll do is I set it at 0.25 or 0.5, and then you work from the hairline back.

You can either go in a linear direction or you can use a stamping. So you can either stamp or you can work straight back. It really depends on how much hair they. Let’s say it was someone like myself, their hair is thinning a little bit like maybe right here, and you just wanted to get in there and help to stimulate.

You would be better off doing a stamping motion than trying to run the pan. But even if you’re doing a stamping motion, you start at the hairline and you work your way. Back. And after you’ve done that, you, if you have an l e d light, you can put it on red, leave it on there for about five to 10 minutes to allow the serum to really penetrate and for the blood flow to increase and.

Then you would take out your body points and you’re done. I always sell some serum to my patients and tell them to use it twice a day. And I’ve had some really great success with myself and with my patients. Trying to, at this spot me right here I had lost a lot of hair during covid. I don’t know if I was pulling my hair outta my head or what, but had started.

Some hair thinning in that area, and it’s pretty much all grown back now, which is great. So the serum that I’m talking about, can you pull my spot up? It this bottle looks a little larger. I, the bottle itself is I think it’s two ounces but it’s Very easily absorbed light oily serum.

And that’s a picture of the pen. And just real quick, the courses that I offer, I have a facial acupuncture basic certification. I also teach facial cupping in Guacs, Derma Rolling, and skin care microneedling. I teach a two part course on treating neuromuscular facial conditions. I am a classically trained wisely five element acupuncturist, so I have a course, a two part course on the anatomy of expressions about our emotions.

And how our emotions can affect our appearance and vice versa. Also, facial acupuncture, self care for acupuncturists. I have an advanced techniques course for those stubborn to treat conditions. I also have a safety course, and I’ve just added an ethics course so you can meet your se safety and ethics.

Requirements and I also have a comprehensive advanced certificate class, which is self-paced with monthly optional zoom meetings that we do. And there’s also a live hands on component. I do travel. As I mentioned internationally teaching hands on classes you ever get a chance, get it on my website, facial acupuncture classes.com, and I am available on Facebook.

I have a Facebook group for questions and answers and should we open it up for questions here or, If anyone has any questions now, I’m happy to take them. I cannot see the chat window though. Okay. So next time the American Acupuncture Council will be hosting Poney Chaing, and that will be on Friday.

Thank you again to AAC for this opportunity and I hope you’ve found this beneficial.

And I am going to talk to you today about facial fascia and what it is and how it can affect your facial acupuncture treatments and how it can affect your patient’s appear.

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi, my name’s Michelle Gillis. I am an acupuncture physician and I teach facial and cosmetic acupuncture classes internationally. And I am going to talk to you today about facial fascia and what it is and how it can affect your facial acupuncture treatments and how it can affect your patient’s appear.

So I wanna thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity, and I need to see the first slide.

So what is facial fascia? That is going to be the first thing we talk about today, and after that we will discuss how it affects your facial appearance. and the movement of your face. So it’s not just about cosmetic, but also how your face functions, and then some treatment modalities, things we can do in order to affect the function of the face by treating the fascia.

So facial fascia is composed of two layers, and the first is the superficial facial fascia, and that is On the outer layer, and that is, it’s right underneath your skin and it helps to support your face and hold everything up, and it’s responsible for giving you a youthful appearance and. It also can carry a lot of tension in it and restrict circulation to the face so things can get trapped, whether it’s lymphatic fluid or blood.

And even some of the superficial nerves. Then we have the deep fascia layer, and that kind of forms a girdle and it is called the mass layer, the superficial muscular epi neurotic system. So the superficial layer itself. Has the superficial fascia itself has two layers. It has the outer layer, which is this kind of fatty layer, and then we have the mass layer, which is right here and.

That is what allows us to make facial expressions. It takes the nerve impulses from deep and sends them out to the muscle, which then translates out to our skin.

So the superficial. Fasha layer is what is responsible for our facial expressions. And the deep fascia layer, which includes the fascia of the temporalis because the temporalis is connected to the face the parotid fascia, which goes down into the neck. The periosteum, which works around the part of the skull that connects to the face.

and the septum, the area around the orbit or the eye area. And this is where the deep fascia exists on the face. So here’s a. Pictorial representation of a piece of bone and a muscle and the skin. And the reason why this is important is because our face is the only part of our body where the skin is connected.

To the skin layer is connected to the bone through muscle, which is why you can move the skin on your face without having to move. Any part of your face so you don’t have to move joint in order to move the skin on your face, everywhere else on your body, if you wanna move the skin, one of your body parts has to move.

The skin can’t move Separate from the the body part.

So one of the things that can happen is, so here’s the bone and here’s the fat and the muscle and the skin. And what can happen is, so as the muscle contracts, the skin gets pulled towards the bone and we can get. Kind of wrinkling of the skin, right? If you smile, if you raise your eyebrows, if you pull your eyebrows together, if you purse your lips right, you can purse your lips without having to move any bone at all.

Just by moving the muscle, the ais ORs, and what can happen is, We can get these fossil adhesions, which are like scar tissue. They can happen as we age. They can happen through injury, they can happen through overuse or underuse. And it’s this very fibrous collagen fibers. It’s like if you think about, if you have like a chicken.

And you pull the chicken away from the bone. There’s that layer. It almost looks like really a strong cobwebs, and those fibers can. Trap nerves and blood and other things. And they can cause these adhesions where it can prevent the full expression on our face of different facial expressions, the full movement and.

Like if an individual perhaps had a stroke and things, or Bell’s palsy and things don’t move for a long time, then you have to physically get this area moving because of these muscle adhesions that can form. So here’s the bone. Here’s a piece of bone, and here’s the fascia, and here is a nerve, which as you could see, could get trapped in the fascia and it could prevent the signaling so the muscle won’t even.

The signal that it needs to move because the nerve is trapped or it can reduce. The ability of the muscle to move well, and it can also restrict blood flow. You can see there’s veins that could also get trapped. So here’s a picture of someone with Bell’s Palsy. They’re making a facial expression with the right side of their face, but the left side of their face isn’t moving.

At all, and part of this is due to nerve damage, but it can also be from entrapment

and wrinkles. When we think of wrinkles, we think of something that happens as we age, and in many cases it can be from sun damage, it can be from just the skin getting older, but also if you habitually make an expression and the skin is attached to the fascia. If that fascia is restricted at all, then you can end up with these deep wrinkles.

We see it a lot in people’s far heads and even sometimes around the eyes with crow’s feet or the lips. And also with jowling. , and I’m gonna talk about a couple of ways that we can help with this, but sometimes wrinkles and sagging are reversible just by doing things to the fascia layer. So here we have an example of forehead wrinkles.

Perhaps this person made the expression where they raised their eyebrows a lot. Also, this is when I said jowling. This is what is referred to as a jowl, and it can happen through the aging process. Things loosen and they become a fixed into a new position. Sometimes it’s from excess weight on the face, sometimes it’s from habitually frowning.

And When I was young, my mother used to say to me, Don’t make that face. It’s going to stay that way. And there was actually a lot of truth to that. A lot of our facial expressions get etched on our face over time.

So what are some of the treatment modalities that we can use in order to affect this fascia? On the face. One very effective treatment is facial cupping. Now, facial cupping is something it’s a skill that you would need to learn. It’s not like cupping on the back. You don’t want to try to use your glass cups and cup the face the way you would’ve back, or a neck or a shoulder or a.

Facial cupping uses small cups. and they look like this. And you would use these small cups and oil and you would glide these cups across the skin. You don’t park the cups and you do it in such a way that encourages lymphatic drainage. And works with the anatomy of the face. And this is a cupping set that is made by Oculus Skincare.

And so there’s a slightly larger cup and a smaller cup for different types of wrinkles and. Rubber part is very easy to squeeze so you can squeeze and move and release and squeeze and move and release, and really keep that chi and energy going. Facial Guha is also another technique that we can use.

And here are some facial guha tools. You can see that they are these are made out of Jade and they’re specially shaped to work around the gel. The cheeks to work along the temporalis and underneath the chin, across the clavicle. Lots of places where we can get these adhesions and by. This kind of physical movement of doing the cupping and then the guha afterwards.

You help to keep the lymphatic system of the face moving, the blood and the chi moving, and also to really get in there and break up those fas adhesions, especially with the guha tool on the forehead. You can spread the wrinkles and you can really get in there and break up a lot of that tension and that tight fascia.

So this is a picture of me just doing some gua along the jaw, jawline, sculpting the face, helping to lift everything up.

And the next technique that we can use, which is very beneficial for submuscular needle, for treating facial fascia is submuscular needling. and this is a technique where you would work on different areas of the face. And I teach a whole class just on submuscular needling, and it involves taking your needles and getting.

Underneath the muscle. So you’re really getting underneath these memetic muscles. I’ve lost my mouse. Where’d they go? You get underneath the memetic muscles. And you’re going to needle right through and down. And this can help get into the superficial fascia and then into some of the deeper fascia depending on which part of the face you’re working on.

And you would insert a few needles. Underneath the muscle, depending on what part of the face you’re working on. So I have a quick video that I’ll show in a moment, but you can use this to work. Underneath the mace here, you can use this to work along the attachment points for the pla. You can work into and underneath the anterior digastric.

You can work underneath the corrugator muscles. You can work underneath the frontals muscle. Pretty much any muscle were on the face where you have access to the margins of the muscle you can get underneath there. And this can really effectively break up some of those fossil adhesions, which is really quite wonderful.

And let’s see. I don’t know if you’ll be able to hear this, but you can see it and I can talk through it.

In needling, the frontalis muscle, the. Way that you isolate the muscle is you ask your patient to raise their eyebrows. Go ahead and raise your eyebrows. Okay? And then, so this is the frontals muscle and you can find the border of the frontals muscle. And the way that you needle is you’re going to go.

From the origin to the insertion, so you find the borders up here in the insertion is here. And typically what I do is I will put in usually three needles, and then you get right underneath the muscle lateral on either side and. I will put in two needles on the medial side, and when you’re needling, what’s important is that the angle of the tube is the angle that the needle’s gonna go in.

So if you go like this, it’s gonna go too deep. If you go like this, it’s going to be too shallow. I use. My thumb or a finger to help to guide the needle. So you wanna keep your fingers out of the way when you’re actually inserting. That way you can get to the correct depth right underneath the muscle.

That’s lateral side. Then you’re going to do the medial side, and usually two needles. Suffice. And I do the one side and then I do the other side and I’m using half inch noodles. You can use one inch noodles depending on how big your patient forehead is, so you just get all the way down underneath the muscle.

And isolate the muscle and needle right underneath it, and this, you would just leave the needles in for anywhere from 15 minutes to a half an hour. And this is especially helpful. Let’s say your patient has Bell’s Palsy or some sort of facial paralysis. You can do it on both sides. You can do it on one side, wherever the muscles are affected.

This is just a list of some of the classes that I teach facial and cosmetic acupuncture, facial cupping. A lot of what we talked about today is from my treating neuromuscular facial neuromuscular facial conditions class. I do some self care for acupuncturists safety ethics, microneedling. And a lot of the techniques that we use for cosmetic acupuncture can also be beneficial for treating neuromuscular facial conditions like osis.

Or if someone’s had a stroke, TMJ and vice versa. A lot of times when you’re working with a neuromuscular facial condition that your patient might have, it also helps to benefit the Movement of their face and therefore their skin will look healthier and more vibrant. So I think that’s everything.

I wanted to thank the American Acupuncture Council again, and next week we have Matt Callison and Brian Lao, and I hope to see you again next.

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.

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 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.

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.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi, my name’s Michelle Gellis 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.