Tag Archives: Michelle Gellis

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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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 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.

Facial Acupuncture for Treating Drooping Eyelids (ptosis)

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi, Michelle. Gellis here. I want to thank you for attending this AAC live presentation and thank you to the American Acupuncture council as well. Today, I am going to be talking about treating. I chose. And for those of you who don’t know me, I teach cosmetic and facial meaning neuromuscular acupuncture classes internationally.

So the topics for today are going to be how some possible techniques for treating eye TOSA. Looking at the etiology from an Eastern and a Western perspective and then different treatment techniques, including submuscular needling motor points. And I’m not going to get into scalp, acupuncture and cupping, but those are some other treatments that can be used.

To treat I ptosis. So what is ptosis of the eyes? I chose this is when the muscles that raise the eyelid and there are a few of them. So there’s the levator muscle and the superior tarsal muscles. And in some cases also the frontalis muscle, when these muscles are not strong in. One or both of the eyelids can droop.

So testers can affect one or both eyes. It can be congenital. It can be cause through disease or injury. It’s more common in the elderly as the eye muscles begin to weaken and deteriorate. And here are some pictures of different degrees of eyelid ptosis. So in this person here on the top left, it’s very mild and in the person right below them both of the eyelids are what is referred to as hooding, meaning the.

Eyelid itself is eclipsing the part of the eye that allows us to see, and this again, can happen with old age. It can happen due to disease or injury in the middle photo. We have a slightly. More pronounced degree of eyelid ptosis, and then in the photo on the far right. Someone who has severe ptosis.

And so I am going to go into, again, some of the etiology and treatment for the varying degrees of islet. So Don damage or trauma to the eye can happen through injury or anything that damages the third cranial nerve, which is the ocular motor nerve, which controls this muscle. If someone has Bell’s palsy stroke they something like this can happen from a brain tumor, even conditions like diabetes or my skin you gravis can cause ptosis of the another cause common cause of ptosis is Horner syndrome and that is a.

Nerve damage that occurs in the face and the eyes. And in that case, it most likely wouldn’t just be the eyelids, other sorts of brain injuries, spinal cord injuries cancer can cause harm. Syndrome and ptosis cluster headaches can also cause ptosis what a cluster headache is a severe headache that has a frequent pattern for a period of time.

And then it will go into recession from a cheese TCM perspective. Ptosis is due to a congenital deficiency. Either a deficiency of the spleen or the kidney or balls or an obstruction of the collaterals by wind flam, leading to some sort of malnourishment of the upper eyelids. When we’re looking at doing body points to.

TOSA is from a TCM perspective where you would differentiate between the spleen kidney deficiency with wind flam and points on the stomach. Bladder and spleen meridians are typically used in that instance. And some of the manifestations for. The deficiency of spleen and kidney is it’s typically bilateral.

There might be some soreness and weakness in the lower back and the knees, poor appetite, loose stools, and the tongue body would be pale with a white coating, deep, weak pulse. And so the treatment principle would be to reinforce the spleen, warm the kidney. And I’ve listed some possible points that you can do, and you might want to add in let her 20 and 25 use a mocks that are really tonify the spleen and the kidneys.

And then the explanation is listed here below.

for us spleen. Whoops, sorry for a spleen deficiency. With when phlegm, the manifestations would be more of a swelling and numbness in the upper eyelids, possibly difficulty moving the eyeball. Numbness of the limbs fatigue, poor appetite here, your tongue would have a pale body with a white and sticky coating.

The pulse is going to be soft and thready, and the tree treatment principles would be to reinforce the spleen and resolve the phlegm. And the primary points are listed. And then the explanation. For why you would do each one of these points is listed below. If we have time at the end, I’ll come back to this, but I’m always mindful of time when I’m doing this live presentations.

For a scalp acupuncture, I had mentioned that you can treat. Eyelid ptosis with scalp acupuncture. We don’t have time for a whole scalp acupuncture lecture, but needling the lower two fifths of the motor area on both sides. And. For doing motor point. So facial motor points, you could do the motor points for the and those are two motor points.

It’s the extra point show how, and you would do an oblique absurd insertion. And there’s also a motor point halfway between gallbladder one and Sanchez 23. Again, you would do an oblique insertion also for the corrugator because the corrugator muscles work in conjunction with the eyebrows and the eyelid.

So treating the corrugator muscle. By doing the motor point that is just lateral to bladder too. And also treating the motor point for the front desk. Because as I mentioned, the frontallis, which is which are these muscles right over your eyebrows, the frontallis raises the eyebrows. So doing the motor point for the frontallis, which has gallbladder 14.

And again, a bleak insertion, and you can also do facial cupping and guash Shaw gently around the orbicularis ocular a little bit inside the orbital Ram. You can even stimulate the acupuncture points, all the acupuncture points around the eye, stomach to gallbladder one, the X per point. Ladder to you?

Yeah. Sanjay 23. So gentle cupping, gentle guash Shaw stimulating the point. We’ll all work on the ambiguous virus. Oculus. And if you choose, you could even use a Derma roller around the outside of the eye area. You never Derma roll inside the orbital rim, but really stimulating that area can be very beneficial.

So I mentioned these three points, bladder to you yell and Sangyo 23 when I needle them, especially with you. Yeah. I will lift the brow up out of the way and I will needle straight. Yeah. Under the eyebrow and for you. Yeah. If you go in line with the pupil, as opposed to the center of the eyebrow, if you go in line with the pupil, you can catch the edge of the levator muscle Azure noodling, and it really helps to lift this entire area.

I think I have a video.

Let’s see if I can get this sleigh, like really this. What I’ll do is I’ll pull up, but for her, I would just use the two and push underneath the brow like that. So again, I’m not on the lid on underneath the brown. Okay. Where they call this you yet? Don’t you? Yeah.

So those of you who don’t know me I do teach cosmetic acupuncture classes, which is what all of these other points are. And I incorporate this in my cosmetic acupuncture classes because as we age for many people, the drooping eyelids is very much a concern. And I realized the video is a little jumpy, but a few go to my social media.

I have a lot of these short little videos. I do a facial acupuncture tip of the week. So you could see it a little more smoothly than than you just did,

like really another. That can be very beneficial is gallbladder 18. This is not a widely used point, but it is a fabulous point for treating the eye area. If you look at this drawing from a medical textbook, this shows right here, the supra orbital nerve, and. This runs right along the Gallia up and erotica, which links the subtle and frontal bellies of the occipital from talus muscle gallbladder 18 is in line with do 20.

And so do 20 is here. The bladder line is here and then gallbladder. The way you can find it is you go to a gallbladder 14 and then 15, and you’re going to follow it straight back till you get to 18 noodling. This affects the entire occipital frontalis muscle and helps to open up the eye area.

So I had talked about the motor points for the , which is the muscle that goes all around the outer side of the orbital rim here. And the two motor points of. Between gallbladder one and Sanjay 23. And then the extra point Q ho. And you would treat only the affected eye. If both eyes were affected, you would treat both eyes, but if it’s just one eye that was affected, you would just treat the one eye.

And here is a picture of gallbladder 18. You can see it is in line with do 20 and it is right along the gallbladder line. Another point. That I will thread actually is I start at bladder four and the way you find bladder four is you go to bladder two, you go straight up to bladder three, and then you are going to come over at 1.5 soon to.

Bladder for. And when you were at bladder for you thread, a long, the scout all the way back to ladder six. You can use a half inch needle or a one inch needle, but this added in with the other points here. Whoops. I have a little delay here. So if you add these points, gallbladder 14 and Gulf letter 15 all together,

along with some of these motor points and you leave them in for about 20 minutes or so, what I do is I would leave the points and I might include. Some scalp acupuncture and with the scalp acupuncture, you would come in every 10 minutes or so and stimulate the needle. Then you would take the face points out, continue to stimulate the scalp point.

Cause you want to leave that in for about 30 minutes and try to get your patient to lift their lid. And sometimes it helps. If you’re doing scalp acupuncture to have them sitting up, you hand them a mirror and have them really focus on lifting up their eyelids. If they can see in a mirror, it helps to connect the brain to the muscle group.

Once the noodles come out, then you would do your. Cupping and Guam Shaw and Derma rolling. And I also sell my patients a set of cups and I teach them how to use the small cup and the facial wash shot tool. And. That way in between treatments, they can be working on these muscles. It’s a great way to reinnervation the muscle to re educate the muscle.

Obviously your patients can not be needling themselves at home. Teaching them to work, these muscles at home can be. Very beneficial. And so the order would be you put in the body points, right? You’re going to treat the underlying condition. Then you’re going to do any points around the eyes and scalp.

And then once the eyes. Come out, continue with the scalp points, have them work the muscles, then the cupping and GWAS Shaw, and then the German walling.

This was a patient of mine. She was actually young. Sorry. She was actually young. She had come to me for. She was going to be getting married and she had ptosis of her left eyelid, her entire life. And she was concerned because when she got tired, It became more pronounced. It was more noticeable and she suspected, or if she was sick, it would become more pronounced and more noticeable.

And she was very concerned that moving forward that the day of her wedding in all of the wedding photo, That she would have this one, very droopy eyelid. So she came to me for about three months before the wedding. And. Worked very much. He had very deficient kidneys. I spoke to her about getting proper rest and drinking.

Plenty of water treated. Her kidneys, did a lot of work. And what I would do is I would do the points on her back. Lots of mocks, a heat lamp. Then I would turn her over. I would do the body points on the front of her body and treated her. Eyelids. And after about six treatments, she really started to notice a difference.

And then by the end of three months, the treatments were holding to the point where I only saw her from time to time and you can see the after photo. This was a close-up actually from one of the. Photos a day of the wedding. She did it before she put her makeup on her. Eyelid had opened up and she was very happy.

Think so worried about time. I talk really fast. Let’s go back to the beginning and I just want to run through the diagnosis. A little more thoroughly and then wrap it up. So for the actual points that you would use, if someone had a deficiency of spleen and kidney, the primary points would be the eye points that.

I spoke about, so gallbladder 14 bladder to tie on, which I didn’t mention. You could also do gallbladder one. You yell Joe 23, very gently manipulated, do 20 stomach, 36 spleen, six, kidney seven. And then the explanation is. Bladder 20 and spleen six reinforced the spleen and tonify that she bladder 23 warms the kidney yang, especially with moxa stomach 36 and do 20 reinforced.

She raised the yang and can help to lift things that are sunk in. Gallbladder 14 bladder to Ty young and you yeah. Are all local points. They helped to nourish the upper light eyelid and strengthen the local muscles for the spleen deficiency with wind phlegm, the primary points would be gallbladder 14, bladder two.

Ty young you. Yeah, again, so a lot of the same local point do 20 Sanchez, 23 and stomach 36. Again, spleen nines, blend three and stomach 40. So stomach 36 helps to reinforce the kid, the stomach chew spleen nine spleen three, reinforced the spleen and remove dampness stomach. 40 helps to transform phlegm, do 20 dispels the wind and gallbladder 14 also promotes a nourishment of the.

Upper lip. So I think that is everything. I don’t recall if we can do Q and a, but I don’t see any questions popping up. So I am just gonna conclude. This talk today. And next week we have Matt Callison and Brian Lau presenting live. And if you missed any part of this, or if you’re interested in seeing any of the other AAC, Facebook or Instagram live shows, they are available on YouTube and on the AAC.

So thank you again for coming and I look forward to seeing you again. .

Microneedling Benefits for Your Practice

Click here to download the transcript.

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.

Treating Neuromuscular Facial Conditions

So today’s presentation is an overview of a multifaceted approach to treating neuromuscular facial conditions.

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi, everyone. I want to thank you. And the American Acupuncture Council for hosting me. Thank you for coming today. And if we can go to the first slide, I’m going to go ahead and hop. So today’s presentation is an overview of a multifaceted approach to treating neuromuscular facial conditions. My name’s Michelle Gellis and I teach facial and cosmetic acupuncture classes internationally.

And one of the. Things that I do in addition to just the cosmetic is I treat individuals that have various neuromuscular facial conditions that are affecting them in some way. So what exactly is a neuromuscular facial condition? Essentially a neuromuscular facial condition is any condition that affects the face, either the facial movements or any sort of sensory issues such as if someone has neuropathy or pain and some examples of neuromuscular facial conditions.

And certainly some of these are not. Just, they don’t just affect the face, but for many of these conditions, the most noticeable or troublesome part of the condition can be the part that affects the face. So Bell’s palsy, Ramsay hunt syndrome. Synkinesis stroke, Tam J trigeminal neuralgia. My esteem, gravitas, ptosis, Ms.

Shingles, and hemifacial spasm.

When I approach treating and the, of these conditions, the part that affects the Fest. I, what I have learned over the years in practice is that using a multi-faceted approach. Which I will describe is the best way to really take care of the issues and especially issues that have been around for a long time and to make your treatment long lasting.

These conditions such as Bell’s palsy and. TMJ can have a major impact on the face. And so there are again conditions that have to do with more muscular movement. And then there are ones like trigeminal neuralgia, which have pain. So the modalities that I use in order to. Treat. When I say a multi-faceted approach, I will use scalp acupuncture, facial motor points, submuscular and intramuscular, needling, facial cupping, and Derma rolling.

And some of these modalities can be used in conjunction and some are better for certain conditions and some are better for other condition. Scalp acupuncture is a fairly new series of techniques that we use in our practice. It’s only been around since the 1950s and it became popular in the 1970s and essentially you’re stimulating areas of the brain that correspond to.

Functions, whether they’re sensory functions or motor functions and it’s based, it’s not based on acupuncture points, it’s based on neuroanatomy. And it is really fabulous for treating any sort of neuromuscular condition, but specifically for neuromuscular facial conditions. And if you look at the homonculus if this is a cross section of the brain and you look at the homonculus, you can see the area for the face takes up the bottom two fifths.

If you were to break it up into two feds, two fifths, and one fifth, the face takes up a huge area of. The brain and the way scalp acupuncture works is you take a needle and you insert it into the loose connective tissue and you thread it into the new loose connective tissue corresponding to the area of the scalp that you would be working on.

So here is a map. Of a couple of the different areas. So we have the motor and sensory area of the scalp on one side of the head. And then this bottom two fifths here is where you would be needling in order to affect the face.

And I’m just going to talk through this video. Let me get it going. So this is me demonstrating how to put the needle into the scalp. First, you have to measure the scalp and the bottom two fifths is what you’re going to be needling until.

So this so the motor areas in front, the sensory area is behind it. And this part of the scalp can be sensitive. So you have to be careful when you’re needling and it’s helpful if your patient is sitting up and then you want to work very quickly. You don’t want to be too tentative when you’re going in.

And I’ll, you can either use a one handed method or a two handed method. I use a one hand for the insertion in the beginning, and then sometimes I’ll use two hands to push it down. And then once the needles and you’re going to stimulate it and For that, there are a lot of contraindications and precautions and scalp acupuncture is a very wide field.

It requires specialized training, but it went, especially when combined with some of these other modalities can really affect a tremendous change for some of these neuromuscular facial cues. So the next is our official motor points. So motor points are something that have been used. Actually I found some information back in the late 18 hundreds in a medical book.

A medical doctor had mapped out some of the motor points, but most recently people like Matt Callison and other researchers have really. Built on this foundation and have used motor points on the body, especially to restore muscle from.

So what exactly is a motor point? A motor point is essentially in a nutshell, the most electrically excitable, part of the muscle where the motor nerve bundle is attached, but it’s not a trigger point trigger points or something different, but it’s And frequently, many of the motor points that we’ll use on the face are also acupuncture points.

So it makes it easy for us to feel. And if a facial muscle is in spasm, if it isn’t moving properly, if it’s overly tense or overly relaxed, then by needling the motor point, it will cause it’s like a reset switch and it will cause it to get back into its normal functioning. As I mentioned, motor points are not trigger points, or.

Typically areas along the muscle that can be sensitive when you push on them. But motor points are something entirely different. And as I said many motor points are also acupuncture points, which is great for us. So here’s an example of a motor point, and this is the motor point for the frontalis muscle.

And. Coincidentally. It is also gallbladder 14. And by putting a needle into gallbladder 14 and stimulating it, it can help. If someone has ptosis, if they can’t raise their eyebrows, it can also help if they’re having some eyelid drooping. And another motor point. This is a quick video of a motor point for the mentality, and this was I’m going to play it and talk at the same time.

So this was a student of mine in. Class I was teaching, she had Bell’s palsy many years ago and she still was missing some muscle movement in her chin. So I went ahead and I needle the motor point for the mentality muscle. And try it one more time. You can see the needle. It when I stimulated.

The her chin started to move and Twitch, and I have a lot of these videos. You can see it moving right there. I have a lot of these videos. On my Facebook group, it’s called facial acupuncture. And on my Instagram page, I have a lot of, I do a facial acupuncture tip of the week and some of them are cosmetic and some of them are neuro.

That’s a good place if you want to see a bunch more of this stuff. So some examples of motor points. For example, if a person cannot smile, there are four main muscles that are affected the zygomaticus major, which draws the angle of the mouth upward and outward. This Acumatic is minor, which elevates the upper lip.

The LaVey levator labii superioris, which elevates the upper corner of the mouth and the resource, which retracts the angle of the mouth laterally. So by knowing which motor points to use, you can help someone who has lost their ability to smile.

The next thing is submuscular needling and. This is something that is uniquely suited to help with a lot of different disharmonies of facial and neck muscles. And essentially if a muscle, much like motor points, if a muscle is not functioning properly, that. You can needle either underneath the muscle or through the muscle and it will help to bring blood and she back to the muscle.

And it’s great for people who have had long-term paralysis. And when I teach my class, I go through all the different facial muscles. The big few are the corrugators, the frontallis, the temporalities and the massive tier. And you would needle from the origin to the insertion. So for example, this is the frontallis muscle.

You would thread needles on either side, just like this. Underneath the edges of the frontallis muscle. And you just put them in, you can stimulate them a little if you want, but you want to try to get underneath the muscle. It is a lot less painful if you do, if you’re working with a bigger muscle, like the massive tear, you might not be able to get underneath it.

So you would be needling through. But the, this is how you would needle. So underneath the muscle on either side, and this is what this would look like. And again, I’m going to talk through this. The first thing you have to do is measure the muscle. And the best way to do that is Asher patient to raise their eyebrows because the muscle is on either side of the eyebrow and when they raise their eyebrows, you can see the skin right over the muscle will wrinkle, and then you are just going to needle, right?

Underneath the edge of the muscle

are you usually use to. And that helps get my angle of insertion. Correct. And then I will press down on the skin to get it way underneath the muscle. Again, I’m not treating wrinkles. This is not cosmetic. This is a way of bringing muscle function back into the muscle.

And then I’m going to. Once I’ve done one side. So here I’m showing if you angle to date, you’re not going to be able to get underneath the muscle. If you go to superficially, you won’t be able, you’ll just be hitting this.

So once you’ve done the lateral side, then you’re going to come in and you would do the medial side

and I’ll do, depending on their forehead, I’ll either do two or three on each.

This is just for one, our brow or one side of the frontallis. If you were treating Bell’s palsy, then you would just treat the effected side.

And if you were needling the temporary Ellis, this is what that would look like.

The next thing is facial cupping and guash Shaw and facial cupping and gua SHA is designed to bring blood and treat cheese circulation to the skin and the muscles. It helps to relax tight facial muscles. And facial tissue, it can move out stagnant, lymph and toxins. It helps the lymphatic system to function better and that the lymphatic system is functioning better than the whole face will function better.

It helps with inflammation and it will help to strengthen the vascular integrity of the face. And it can help with any sort of nerve entrapment, especially if facial fascia has trapped some facial nerves. So here’s a cross-section of the face and the face is the only part of our body where our skin is attached to muscle.

And so the functioning of the muscles and the nerves that. Make the muscles work is very important because if the muscles not functioning properly because of nervous and trapped, then the skin is not going to move and you won’t be able to fully smile. So here’s a picture of that bone, muscle skin on the face.

And this is a picture of fascial adhesions. So the fascia is this stuff it’s like when you have chicken. Pull the scan off that stuff that looks like spiderwebs. So it really helps to release a lot of that in the face. And facial cupping is not like cupping on the body. You don’t leave the cups. You Stimulate different acupuncture points on the face and the cups are meant to move.

And this is just a slide from one of my classes where I’m showing gliding and then suction and releasing down the neck into the lymphatic drainage area. And. Also Derma rolling is something that can help to stimulate the channels. Like our channel rollers that we might use on the body. Derma rollers have these tiny little needles on them and.

You can stimulate the channels on the face, stimulate the cheap and your patients can buy a Derma roller from you and you can teach them how to use it. And then it will stimulate they can do this at home in between treatments. So what are some of the. Neuromuscular facial conditions that that we’ve, we can work with that I’ve worked with.

I mentioned in the beginning Bell’s palsy, stroke, TMJ, trigeminal neuralgia, Ms. Ptosis hemifacial spasm. And I have enough time to just talk about one and I’m just going to talk about Bell’s policy, which is the most common form of facial paralysis. And typically it just affects one side of the face.

Usually it’s temporary, but. The people that come to see me have had Bell’s palsy frequently. It’s been years. They still don’t have complete movement of their face. They’ve tried everything and then they come for acupuncture. It can affect blinking opening and closing the eyes, facial expressions, hearing taste, the salivary glands.

And that I say hearing it can affect their hearing. So I use a multifaceted approach. I’m going to do my body points. I’m going to do face points and depending on their underlying conditions, what’s going on with them, of course, I’ll treat them constitutionally and then bringing the multi-faceted approach in I’m going to do.

Motor points on the scalp. So the lower two fifths on the opposite side, I might use your Shan, men and face points just to calm the patient, treat their face, and then have them do some exercises. Look at their face, have them try to move different parts of their face, figure out where the paralysis is.

And then do facial motor point. And possibly some submuscular needling to get these parts of the face, moving cupping and wash eyes. Great. Derma rolling is gray. And you’re going to want to see the person two to three times a week until they get the movement back in their face. So I. Teach a cosmetic and neuromuscular.

Acupuncture facial acupuncture classes. My website is facial acupuncture, classes.com and some of the products that I was showing the cups, the washout tools at Derma rollers microneedling devices are@akeelaskincare.com. And these are my social media links. I do have a bunch of live classes coming up and all of my classes are also recorded.

That is the end of my slides. And I, again, I want to thank the American acupuncture council for giving me this opportunity. Next time is Sam Collins. And I believe he’s next Wednesday. I can’t see that right there, but it is next week. So you want to check in with that he’ll be streaming live and do we have time for Q and a or.

People on that we can open it up to where there any questions,

crickets. Okay. I’m not seeing any questions in that chat box, so I am.

Not now, I guess there’s no questions now. Okay. Thanks again to the American Acupuncture Council. And if you need to reach me, you can just drop me a line at visual acupuncture classes.