Tag Archives: treatment protocols

Treating Neuromuscular Facial Conditions

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

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

Hi, everyone. 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.

Spring & Liver Detox

And today it’s very exciting because I’m going to be talking about the spring time and the liver detox.

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Hello and welcome. My name is Tsao-Lin Moy. I’m a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist with a brick and mortar practice in union square in New York city. And I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for providing this platform where we are able to share information and knowledge. For our community, both the patients we serve and also the professional community to keep dialogue open about how acupuncture and Chinese medicine can help people make informed decisions about their health.

And today it’s very exciting because I’m going to be talking about the spring time and the liver detox. Okay. So we’ll, let’s go to this slide. So springtime as a. You practitioners know is considered the time of the liver. It coincides with wood and the emotions are anger. The energy is moving up. We have this energy of pushing through the earth.

So during the winter months, which is the kidney time, is this a time of hibernation and also the energy. The emotion can be a lot of fear. And we have been experiencing a lot of that because we’ve got these news cycles and if we don’t release and detox from that, we end up getting. A lot of built up frustration and anger and you can, you see how it will affect our emotions and our patients.

And important that we are with the season, we look to move with the season and that actually makes it a lot easier for healing to happen. Okay. So spring element is, would also relating to the liver and gallbladder. We’ve got the energy of movement and also. The warmer weather and increased sunlight, which is great because that means we can get some vitamin D and that is also a metabolized and made through the liver.

So when you have good liver function, you are actually able to produce enough vitamin D emergence from the cold again, hibernation, and really from, as we’re moving out of the pandemic. We have a lot of stress hormones, a lot of people, maybe your patients were self-medicating with alcohol. People are on a lot of like multiple or poly farm, a lot of medication like anti-anxiety blood pressure, cholesterol, and not sleeping well, not exercising.

And so as the weather gets warmer, we’re going to start to have this movement and I want to be able to help our liver detox. So the, if we work with the energy of the season, which is now the liver energy, it’s a lot easier because we’re going with the flow. We’re not going against nature. We’re actually using the rhythm of the seasons and aligning our biological clock.

To heal right. Facilitate healing and yes, if anybody has questions, please drop them in the chat. Let me know. If you have something that you want to ask me let me know if this is interesting for you. If you have Some comments. And yeah, let me know where you are.

If you’re in New York or California or Australia just give us let us know in the chat. So in Chinese medicine, the liver is role is to, is the smooth flow of cheat. Also the emotions and the blood liver stores, the blood. And also filters and detoxifies. So at nighttime, if you’re not sleeping well, then you’re also, your liver is not processing.

Now the interesting thing about the liver, it is the only visceral Oregon that possesses the ability to regenerate. And interestingly that if somebody 50 to 60% of the liver cells can actually be. Killed let’s say for example, in a, someone overdoses on Tylenol, that can happen.

You have a lot of, if you have patients that have pain in their medicating with Tylenol, it is possible. Hey Alan, in the Berkshire it is possible to really kill, like really destroy your liver. And the thing is that the liver can actually completely repair in 30 days. If there are no other complications, meaning they don’t have other problems going on in their system.

So let’s go. Oops. Okay. So here we’ve got a. The anatomy of the liver. And if you can take a look at where it is. It literally crosses over the entire midsection and really like stips right under the diaphragm. So things like, with liver, it’s like the sighing, the feeling you can’t take a deep breath.

And the reason is because the liver, if it gets swollen and irritated, it’s right up against the diaphragm and with. Make it very difficult to breathe and then also can actually affect the stomach, right? Because the it’s continues to cause contractions in the the diaphragm and that’s where we get the flank pain, difficulty breathing.

And then the referral pattern of, feeling the throat is clearing up is clogging up the plumping. So here oh, we’ll go to the next slide. We’ll talk a little bit more. So the major, the five major functions of the liver, and this is according to Western medicine is. Digestion metabolism and detoxification protein synthesis, and actually storage of vitamins and minerals, which I think is probably in Chinese medicine.

When they talk about the liver, storing the blood maybe really meaning nutrition or neutral. Nutrients for the blood, right? So blood has to have a lot of oxygen nutrients for it to bring to all the other organs and the different parts of your body. Also as an aside, recent studies actually show that the liver has a regulatory function in the central nervous system.

And is innervated by both the sympathetic and parasympathetic fibers, which really does mean, it is responsible for the smooth flow of emotion, right? So there’s a feedback loop that actually happens and comes together. When we’re feeling either in a place of fear or also facilitating a place of rest.

And just another, for all you acupuncture people out there, practitioners to really take a look of the picture on the right, gives you an overview of where the liver is. And then on the left. We’re looking at, Hey, look at where all these points are. And in particular, you look at a CD, 12 moot point of the stomach.

It will really land right where that ligament is for the liver and just surrounds it. So it’s really between the liver and the. Great. And see B12 is a point for making blood. It’s a blood point. It’s a very important point. And then the other points that are on the abdomen, but the different move points, you start to look at where they are in terms of surrounding the liver and the gallbladder, and actually how that helps to increase circulation and lymph flow and really functionality.

So liver patterns I made a list here. I’m not going to go over the patterns because that is as entire modules in the foundations of Chinese medicine for the most part as a refresher like liver cheese stagnate. Really any kind of liver issue is most there’s stagnation involved.

Of course, blood led deficiency. We’ve got energy, the young rising, a lot of wind, when we see wind, we know that liver is involved. A lot of digestive it’s always, liver is involved in that to gallbladder the dam, Pete, and any kind of blood deficiency. And for sure, a women’s health and reproductive health.

So one of the things that I would say is, especially around this time in the spring also allergies, we’re getting allergies and you get itchy. That’s a liver thing to really take a look at your patients and whatever their you have as their diagnostic, just to look at it from a perspective of liver oh, how is the liver involved in this?

And I think that is a, a very interesting angle to look at. You can actually do it for other organs too, but really what role does liver play in this? And if we do a detox and I’ll talk a little bit more about detox what does that mean for the outcome? And especially you want to do it now cause springtime, right?

Okay. So liver congestion, we have in this country, a lot of liver congestion and fatty liver stress hormones, they increase the enzymes in the liver and cause inflammation, toxins, chemicals, antibiotics, medication, plastics are huge. Apparently a lot of microscopic particles we consume about credit cards worth of plastic per week.

And our body has to. Process that or not. It’s also all over the environment. So even when you’re having the healthiest diet it you’re, we’re still being influenced by the things that we don’t have control over. We see in the U S a lot of metabolic syndromes, like diabetes, pre-diabetes insulin resistance.

Especially with polycystic ovary syndrome, a huge, more than 50% of our population is. And then what follows is, cholesterol, triglycerides, and high blood pressure. Like these become the that’s the triple where we see then the next thing is heart disease. A lot of people will have their.

Gallbladder removed a li like cirrhosis, all of like alcohol, a lot of the problems are not necessarily coming from a consumption of only alcohol, but it’s the, it’s all of it. Know our lifestyle, the foods, a lot of things that are called food are not really food, their product. And they lack so much nutrition that they actually have to add in vitamins and stuff.

And we’ve got a lot of endocrine disease and disruption and allergies, a lot of allergies and sensitivity. So that gives us a clue that the liver is getting overwhelmed and is not able to filter.

Statistics. And this is an old statistic. About 20% of adults have fatty liver, 5% of children, and this is really linked to obesity. And then again, two thirds of obese adults and half of the children that are obese have fatty liver, which is pretty scary because that is going to. Predict, with an actuary, how many people are going to end up on medications if they don’t do something right.

And a lot is this non-alcoholic fatty liver, right? So this comes from a lot of food relief. And also what I want to say is menopausal women post men in their fifties, the lower estrogen also increases things like fatty liver and metabolic changes. Pros and cons of detoxing. The pros are a liver detox program.

And what w what a program looks like is going to help the organ itself work as efficiently as possible. And this is because the liver organ that’s its job is to detox and to filter. So we’re looking at. If you have a healthy liver, you want to help it along. It’s going to relieve inflammation and toxicity in the body.

It also will help to lose weight because a lot of toxins are things like chemicals and pesticides are in a steroid type. I guess form. And what they do is that toxicity will then bond with fat cells. So if you’re trying to lose weight, what happens is you have to detox your body. So then the fat can actually metabolize.

And again, that reduce can reduce cholesterol and it’s sport it, supporting the liver, doing its job. And we’re really looking at balance and harmony, right? The cons of it. And this is really. Based on a Western model. There’s no evidence that we need to detox. And actually, obviously that’s not true.

But it’s really gonna come down to how are we going to detox? Certain programs increased that we don’t really know, they, they’re not really measured, but for our purposes in Chinese medicine, we actually look at a lot of other things, we look, is your skin getting better, if it’s working, are you having better? Bowel moves? How about are you have better sleep, also, on the market. And this is really more of the Western stuff. That’s out there with supplements. They’re, they’re very extreme and anything that’s extreme is gonna put a stress on the body and then actually have the opposite effect.

Also a lot of the detox supplements. There’s no. It, unless you’re able to really have a good digestive system and absorb. And that’s the idea of like detoxing or digestion is that your digestive system is working so that you’re actually able to absorb and process nutrients. And if that’s not happening then all these like supplements and things that are being marketed.

Are really going to just clog up your system. You’ll get minimum benefit from it. So really have to look at what does, when we say detoxing things like maybe fasting for a little while and just having fluids. So allow your your body to get a break that is also a way of helping to detox, and eating better foods. Simple steps to guide your patients. Definitely food diet there. Herbal teas, exercise, breath, work, massage acupuncture. So next. Okay. So it within the diet and you might already know. Of course of food. Food is one form of Chinese medicine, one of the eight branches and really eating within season, looking at the five elements.

What are the flavors? What are the the meridians and the organs that they help? So food as medicine for the liver and to actually lower, let’s say, lower cholesterol, or try to get glycerides, eating things. Green vegetables, steamed roasted, right? Not fried, using less of those oils.

You want it to be very easy to break down garlic and onions. Research shows that actually improves Habad hepatic function. So you start to look at. Adding certain kinds of foods into what you’re eating, and also the way that you cook the food sour and fermented foods like coleslaw pickles kimchi are also probiotic and prebiotic interesting lemon, lemon with water, they say, wake up in the morning, have a little lemon with water.

That it actually helps the liver to produce more of those enzymes to start metabolizing mushrooms. They’re very high in nutrient dense, low in calorie, and also have many antioxidants and anti-microbial properties immune function, they are a food. They also can boost the levels of leptin and leptin is that the hormone that tells you’re full and also helps to metabolize.

Coffee so recent I didn’t have a chance to put it in to the slide, to actually be in the slide. But like a new study is found that, coffee all kinds lowers the risk of liver disease and fatty liver cancer and death from liver disease. And really the benefit comes from drinking three to four cups of coffee, even de.

So they say and we’re looking at, it’s not about the caffeine. It is about what is the bean itself, if you’re going to have decaf, you need to make sure that it is the way that it’s processed. All of those things. So not just any coffee, like w you really want to take a look if you’re gonna drink coffee and coffee is a very strong has a strong psycho effects in the brain, neuro psycho effects in the brain.

It’s extremely strong, right? The also caffeine, has a big effect. The other thing you want to do is avoid animal proteins. You want to steer clear of a lot of. Meet a better to go with a fish something clean, like I wanna say cleaner, but easier to digest. Also dairies, very hard. A lot of people can not digest dairy and cheeses.

The other thing too is we’re looking at most of the dairy that we have is very, it comes from two cows or two to two genetically I would say modified but really bread. So they maximize output of milk. And so what happens is we don’t have a lot of variety and interestingly enough, that a lot more people are showing up as having a lactose intolerance again, avoiding processed foods because they add lots of chemicals and again, they may not even be food.

They may be products, that have little bits of food in it. Sugar is like a killer. You want to not have sugar? There’s plenty of things that you can have in fruits and vegetables, et cetera, et cetera, which your body will break down into the sugars that it needs again, alcohol. And if you are smoking really important to not smoke cigarettes, right?

Lots of chemicals and things your body has to process. So this is a, this is what detox would look like. Healthy living, herbal teas, and herbs. So dandelion, I put in dandelion, right? It’s poo gonging. It’s a. Antidiabetic antioxidative anti-inflammatory studies show that it ha acts on inhibiting oxidative stress in the liver reduces cholesterol and even reverses the streptozotocin induced diabetes, which is coming from taking a chemo drug.

So it’s really interesting that what I like about this is that you can actually buy. Dandelion tea over the counter. You can just tell your patients, go to traditional medicinals or you can buy, the dandelion and make it right. So very easy to do with not complicated.

Again. Chuck who Sao that’s more of an urban clear as in purge is heat a lot of like swamp swellings. It’s a summer drink. You can bring. Chrysanthemum again, milk fissile as well, and interesting Allo, it actually helps to clear the liver and constipation and kills parasites. A lot of people are, have parasites and a lot of digestive problems, and this is one way like clearing out toxins.

We’re looking at, okay, you’re activating this process and then you need to make sure that. And then again looking for drinking more like black tea or green tea, right? Because of its antioxidant effects.

Exercise stretching movement in particular like twisting movements, because that will actually massage the liver and also the organs. And so this is an opportunity like why exercise actually helps because as you’re moving, you’re also breathing and that will push down the diaphragm. And that actually helps to massage and milk, the organs to get their The blood and the lymph and the circulation

breathwork. And here just as an example of actually from the sod, you look at, it actually regulates the nervous system. And it also will help with the restorative sleep physically. You start to look at how the movement of the diaphragm and again, where the liver is seated will actually help to increase the limp flow and circulation.

And also you’re increasing oxygen into your body, which then you also, as you exhale, you are exhaling any of the Toxins. So you’re helping to filter out of the body in the system, giving it the oxygen it needs. And these are all free. You can do this on your own. It’s also just a great practice, especially if you feel like you’re sighing that’s a good sign that you need to do something.

Massage and lymph drainage. So the liver is the largest contributor of limb production. It accounts for up to one half of the body’s lymph fluid and, working with a massage therapist or actually certain kinds of movements are going to help to clear lymph and waste and swelling. And you can actually see, with patients have a little puffy phase puffy legs.

Poor circulation. We really want to help to. Drain the lymph. And most 70% of lymph vessels are just right under the surface of the skin. So things like skin brushing or gently, you could even probably do some lymph massage on yourself to help the flow. And also, people who have experienced a R serve up, have survived from cancer.

They have a, they really need to repair their liver, acupuncture and acupressure. You guys know all about acupuncture. And again at the beginning I said, the strategy and maybe think about how the liver is going to play a role in your patient’s health, especially now to shift from, okay, I’m going to do what I’m going to do.

My patient center. Custom radically customized treatment. And then I’ve got to see oh, from this angle, maybe liver is a big, like it is a big thing, but it really like slight shift of let me go with the season. Acupressure and Meridian massage, especially along the inner, the inner thigh, the legs, the liver spleen and kidney channels, really helping to move all of that up to, towards the big lymph area of.

The inner thigh and go to the next slide, I guess we’re done with that. So really I have to say very exciting is doing, the research right. To prepare for, Hey, what w what am I going to talk about? And the more that you dig in and research, especially if you suspect as a practitioner that there’s something connected to something else, you can actually go down a rabbit hole and find a lot of information.

And I, when it back in and I was looking at aloe, I was like, wow, aloe. Yeah, it’s good for digestion. But then I said, Hey, it, it actually relieves parasites too. And. And worms, and we never know we’re, where our food comes from. And so a very gentle and easy way for someone to drink a little bit of aloe juice and just help to gently move things.

And I think it’s a lot easier for your patients to incorporate yes. Drinking more water. I didn’t put that down, but it’s pretty obvious. If they can just add in some lemon to their water. It’s going to actually help them if they are thinking about when they’re moving or the movement to incorporate some kind of body twisting and moving and breathing, as a kind of meditative form, of course, we have to detox ourselves from social media, right? That’s a form of consumption, which really causes a lot of stress hormones. And that actually we see probably a lot of that, with irritability. And anger. And then of course, I talked about last time, a amygdala takeover and more inflammation.

And that would be really, a big area to really look at. Of course you need the social media because we’re doing this with the American Acupuncture Council. The but to really think about doing that just like a spring fast or something to take a break from some of the news that you’re reading and really like clear, clear out.

And again, also, in your home when to clear out the thoughts in your mind, but also, spring detox is also spring cleaning and maybe start to just really. Some of the attachment and also the fear that we’ve been, really take a look at that and how that’s been affecting our life.

So please comment and you want to join us next week with Poney Chiang he is going to be doing a fantastic presentation and please comments and messages. And also if there’s something that you really want to, some topics. That you were finding. Interesting. There’s always more so just know that this is all very much on the surface just to spark your curiosity and keep everything fresh.

What Happens when you put Gui Zhi and Fu Ling together?

today we’re going to be looking at formulas that include both Gui Zhi and Fu Ling together and what they all have in common.

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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 many errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi, this is Sharon Weizenbaum. I’m really happy to be here this month and I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for hosting me to give this series of talks. I hope it’s been educational and enjoyable for you. So today I’m going to keep on growing from what we talked about before.

So we started just talking about why classical formulas, and then we looked last time at. And today we’re going to be looking at formulas that include both Gui Zhi and Fu Ling together and what they all have in common. So I’m ready for the slides. So when we combine wager and pooling, you might remember from last time, if you were here that oops, back again.

When we were here last time we looked at the fact that wager treats upsurge that’s the first thing that the Shannon bonds have Jane mentioned about what wagers function is that he treats upsurge. And this is upsurge of young that loses its relationship with the. So when we combined greater and who’s playing, there is often an upsurge of pathological fluids.

So when we put greater and pooling together, we are bringing the warmth back in and transforming pathological fluids. So we’re going to look at how that works in a few different formulas. We’re going to, if you could change the slide. Yeah. So here’s a formulas that include wager and fooling. We’re not going to be able to go over all of these formulas today.

I’d like to just look at willing son and link way juke on tongue and mentioned the pooling Gunza tongue as a comparison. I think next time we’ll really go into glacier fooling one. Such an amazing formula. So useful clinically. They all are, but it deserves a lecture of its own. But all of these formulas have in common that they use Granger and fooling together.

And so they all have something in common and that’s transforming fluids and treating upsurge. Okay.

So here in my own words, since Granger is pungent and warm, it moves from inside towards the exterior. So punching flavor goes up and out in the body. We can see that a pattern that uses great jurors. One in which this function has not occurred. Glacier keeps the incoming young on the inside. So we’ve got young, that’s floating out, going upward, flushing up pathologically.

And when we take wager the new young that’s coming in is kept inside. And when it’s combined with Hulu and we can see that this as fluid accumulation due to failure of the young to steam, that yin upwards. And so the yen sinks into. Instead by giving glacier and pooling we’re reestablishing the warming upward and outward from within, in order to turn the pathological fluids into the life.

Giving steam. Okay.

Okay, so fooling is bland and it’s chalky. It means it’s a percolating earth. That means that actually strengthens earth, w if you’ve ever worked in a garden, like having really good soil rather than sand or clay means that the soil absorbs water and it drains really well. So we have a farm here and as working on our farm, we want this soil to be really good.

Absorptive. Soil because it holds water and it percolates watering. It helps drain water at the same time. So fooling really works that way in the body, increasing the absorptive capacity of the spleen so that it drains better. So this formula, which is a. The willing son is got a really high dose of fooling.

And actually it’s got a high dose of too much. Yeah. Also, so treats water causing Polis in the Abbey, gastric, just an art area. So in the water is really severe. You might even have pulsations as the water restricts the movement of the main artery. I’m also vomiting and retching dizziness, palpitations, inhibited, urine.

Okay.

So here’s a picture of our union symbol that I love so much. And we can see that the young is actually going down on the right. No, my hand is going down on my right, which looks like your left, but just imagine the union symbol that, that orange side is the fire that’s going down and the inside is going up, and this is what we would call young and right.

Relations. So in the, oh no, this slide has an animation. I hope that works here. Yeah. So in the pathology, the young is actually going up. It’s not rooting underneath the yen. And then what happens is there’s this accumulation of fluids. The youngest, not underneath the yen in order to transform it.

So gets swampy in the lower body and swampy in the middle,

and it can be swampy in the upper warmer. So different formulas that include quite you’re improving are going to treat water in different places.

So looking at willing son, when you combine this combination of plagiarism, pooling with Xhosa, jeweling and bite you, then you’re really working on water that has sunk down mostly into the lower body. To the extent that let’s say. There is thirst. And so when we give wager, we’re bringing that young back into right relationship and it steams that upward like that.

So the pathological fluid becomes this physiological mist. It spreads in the body. And with this formula, a key symptom for this formula. Thirst. And the reason why it’s thirst is because when that water is pooling down below, it’s failing to steam upward into the stomach and moisten the tongue. So it’s all puddled downward and not.

Physiologically moistening upward. So thirst is really a key symptom and it’s a bit hard to understand, isn’t it? Like you have all this pathological water. Why is the person thirsty? And it’s because it’s sunk down into the lower body. So when the wager comes in with the fooling, it brings that young into yen.

That’s being now absorbed into the body, steaming that upward all the way to the total. And you’re also able to pee out pathological. Okay.

So if we look at a formula here where we have more great. Like a really strong dose in Williamson. The glacier is actually quite low. We’ll look at the ingredients in a moment, but in this formula language, Yukon, tongue wager is a lot more and there’s a bunch of fooling and then it’s combined with guns and bite you.

Now, if we remember from last time that flushing up of grader can really affect the heart. And This formula language you gone, tongue is for water. That’s more in the middle warmer. We can see that with the gun sound bite. You instead of Xhosa Ling, so more in the middle warmer. So I put the cloud in the middle, but also the flushing up is going to really easily affect the upper body.

So there’ll be flushing up, not just a beyond, but a flu. They’re going to, that young that’s out of right relationship is going to act on the pathological fluids and make that flush up. So you get upper warmer symptoms of even more pulsations, palpitations, dizziness, nausea. Meniere’s syndrome.

This formula can be really good for many years syndrome, if there’s this water pathology. So that’s the picture of how that language you’re going to tongue works.

Young comes back into right relationship, and now let’s see.

There we go. So the water disappears and instead there’s that life-giving steam instead. Okay.

And of course it enables normal urination.

Okay. So now if we take out that bite, you and we add Shung Jong instead. Now, what does shone John do so good dose of Schunk Jong with great germ pooling. So we still have flushing up. We have flushing up a pathological fluids, but now we take out the bite you in. Sean, John. And really what this is for flushing up.

That’s really effecting the stomach. Showing John is really a stomach herb and it it kind of warms and steams fluids that are inside the stomach. So this formula is going to be more for vomiting up fluids, coughing, or vomiting up fluids. And it’s actually a much more Physical formula where the very physical in terms of affecting those stomach, particularly where as the language you’ve gotten, Tom by Jew is a deeper herb and a more dense, urban, a slower herbs, it’s what I mean by slower is that dog acts very rapidly to just evaporate the fluids in the stomach.

But I do works in a slower way and in a more it’s a denser verb. So it works in a more physical way. I, and I, that’s not exactly what I mean, a physical way that affects the psyche and more internal Functions in the body. So things like dizziness and spirit disorders where the water flushes up and affects the Shen.

So even like panic attacks for the language going Tong, whereas this formula would just fooling guys out on these worms as much more about just vomiting and you’ll be vomiting, fluids.

So great. Jeremy will bring that young right back into right relationship. And then there’s that nice standing up and warmth. And then the natural movement of the stomach can be restored, which is to go down. The stomach is meant to go down.

So here’s, we’re going to go back over each of these. Here’s the rulings. So you can see that the that the wager is actually small compared to the herbs for water. And really what this means is that the flushing up symptoms on so much, when you look at formulas this way you can see from the dosages in the way that they’re combined.

What the pathology is going to be, that there’s not as much flushing up of water at the same time. There’s pooling up a water and it’s sinking lower in the body. Okay. Slide.

So again, here, because the fluids are sinking down. You are thirsty and not often, this is called mouth thirst because your mouth is dry. But since there’s a lot of fluid there, they, you often don’t want to drink a lot. You want to sip and moist in your mouth. And even if there’s a lot of fluids that drinking could.

Cause if you guys are water, it could cause upstairs. And it could cause vomiting. And the key signs for Wilmington is also a floating posts. And that’s because the young has so left the year and there’s this separation of young Indian, up here, it’s dry and down below it’s wet. So we think of where the pulse is as where the young are, where the life force is floating up in the book.

Often, what I find is that in the Guan and triple says, it’s wiring. Why are you? It’s really a water poles because the water. Constricts the flow of the life force. And then there’s abnormal urination. Cause there’s a cooling up of water down below, and that could be frequent urination in continents or inhibited your nation where there’s a stopping and starting.

And I really suggest you ask your patients about this. So a lot of times, so you ask like, how’s your urination and they’ll say, oh fine. And. It’s normal. It’s normal for me, but if you ask a little bit more deeply, do you ever sit down and you’d have to wait a little while before you be, or it stops and starts?

A lot of people will say, oh yeah, a lot of men will say, oh yeah, it’s just my prostate. And and that you want to take that as that means there’s water stagnation down in the lower body. So all of these things that urination can be Abnormal urination as well. So the agitation is because up here in the upper body is dry and that dryness and warps agitate the heart.

There may be vomiting. There might even be a slight fever, richness, and even sweating with that feverish madness. So the young is leaving the yen. The yen is staying in play in non distribution of fluids. Okay.

So here we have a picture of the pot biology. You can see the young is leaving. And so there’s dryness, especially above the heat could be agitating. It’s going to be flushing up heat and there’s all this fluid that’s causing abnormal urination. So I have that, that lower dry there, because it’s very common with a willing sun pattern to actually have dry constipation because the fluids are leaving and cooling up, leaving the intestine dry.

And what I do in clinic is if there’s this pattern of water with a dry stool, Then I really increase the Baidu by about three times the normal nine grams, because Baidu is really excellent for helping water go backwards, supposed to go, getting water out of the earth, into the large intestine.

So we don’t necessarily know you think of bite. You he’s been more as a diarrhea or however, it’s good for diarrhea for the same reason, because it helps water go where it’s supposed to go. So it’s an excellent constipation or been John dome. Jamie even talks about that. So that’s why I have that lower dry there.

Cause it’s not always just in the. That you feel the dryness, it can also be in the margin testing. Okay.

Okay. Now we’re going to look at the language you’re going to talk, and this is more, we don’t have so shell, we don’t have jeweling. So that tells us that it’s more in the, it’s not as much in the lower warmer we have Baidu and Gunza instead. So it’s more related to the middle of. And so you have the flushing up and we have a lot more water.

And actually the dose of wager and fooling are relatively high compared to wooing sun. So there’s lots of water and lots of flushing up. So compared to Wilmington, flushing up is a really important symptom for language event. So let’s take a look at. Physiology of it. You bring wage or back inside with fooling and bite you, and it just transforms those fluids and young gets in right relationship, so we really want to think of Granger as an urban gets young back inside where it’s meant to be.

And when it’s combined with fooling, it gets it back inside. So it can transform both.

And of course functional urination.

And you can see the happy days because now that upsurge is going down just a little side on how to diagnose the water. What you’re really going to be looking for is water sounds in the abdomen. This might be subjective for the patient, but you can also put your hand on the person’s belly, especially around their stomach, middle warmer, and stretch it and tap on it and see if you hear sloshing water sounds.

So that’s looking for water slashing sounds in the back. But again, the tongue could be really wet, possibly a thicker white coating, but more often a watery slippery coding or this formula and the pulses will be wiring for this. And if it’s cold or they could be also Tight, but definitely wiring because there’s this fluid accumulation and, Leo do, Joe says that the wiring pulse is the fluid accumulation pulse.

And when we think of the winery pulse, we usually think of liver cheese, stagnation or something, but here. It may also be submerged because the water is submerging the life force, but it’s also constraining it. So the wiring POS is really just saying the lifeforce is constrained in some way. It may be constrained by blocked emotions.

It may be constrained by really tight muscles, but it could also be constrained by fluids. So we want to think of the wiring pulses, also a pulse we can explain by the accumulation. Fluids in the body. Okay.

So inside this formula is the formula

which is a teeny tiny formula. Which includes teeny tiny for me means that it only has two. Of course, if it only has one or it’s teensy tiny, which is one or teeny tiny is two herbs and tiny is three herbs, just so you know, my nomenclature, but this is a teeny tiny formula wager and gun cell. And the Grainger’s in a two to one ratio with gone south and this nourishes and warms the heart and treats palpitations.

So the fact that this formula is inside language, tells you that. We’re really at the same time, bringing. Physiological nourishment back to the heart, so instead of the heart being flooded with water surging up on it, it’s being nourished by this warm nourishment with wager and gone sell.

And also, I just want to mention something. I said that this formula language you got is really good for panic attacks and. And part of what happens is, the life force is warm. And really, if you think about the fact that when we’re dead, we’re cold, then the idea of cold is the opposite of life.

And so when we have water in our body, that’s pathological water, meaning it’s not water, that’s infused with warm it’s cold water. And that starts encroaching on our heart. It can feel like death is encroaching on the heart. We associate cold with dead. Then this cold water is coming up into this space of the Shen the space of the heart.

And it can feel like death. And that’s why a lot of panic attacks are feeling. That you’re going to die. Like you’re driving down the highway, you get scared, you think something terrible is going to happen. Even though everything is fine notes, this feeling of impending death. So not all panic attacks are due to water or a language you’ve gone.

Tongue pattern. There are other reasons why panic attacks can manage. Energetically in the body, but definitely water is one of them. And water often comes with this feeling of I want to die or I’m going to die. So just something to keep in mind.

Okay. Now I just want to compare the language Uganda Ugandan. , for me looking at these formulas as a younger herbalist, I would just get dizzy oh my God, they all have almost identical ingredients. Like how do I ever remember what the. Subtle differences are about. And so one thing to look at is, the herbs that are similar and then the herbs that them are different.

And we already did this looking at language. You’re going to talk including by June. How that kind of goes deeper into the body where Shung Jong is really about the stomach transforms fluids, rapid way inside the stomach. And so the fooling guns, her tongue is, by having Shandong, instead of bite you, it really treats the stomach.

But also look at the dosages. The fooling gods have taught me is a really small dose. And it’s used for a relatively light problem. It’s an excellent pediatric formula for vomiting in children. And also it’s used just lightly for a very short period of time. Had an episode of vomiting.

I can take Boolean guns. So Tom, where language you got to talk, we can see altogether, the dose is much higher and here we have this really high dose of pooling compared to, and fooling Gunsight tongue and a high dose of Granger. So it’s much more flushing up and where the fooling concept time is more for water in the stomach itself.

Okay.

So the line for liquid you’ve on tongue, it says line 28. If after vomiting or purging there’s reversal fullness below the heart with cheese surging up into the chest, dizziness upon standing a deep, tight pulse. So again, it’s like submerge and it’s submerged by cold waters. Tight and the more cold it is, the more tight, the less cold, the more wirey the promotion of sweat will lead to move into the channels.

So this is not a pattern where you want to just give grades your tongue or my long tongue. And that, that will further deplete the young and the yen. Okay. Then the jink way, it repeats the. Same idea of language of on Tom

and there’s a picture of the four ingredients.

So here’s the middle warmer and it’s all wet.

And there’s this flushing up into. The heart caused vomiting and retching palpitations, chest depression. I’ve used this for people who have been diagnosed with CLPD or have really bad breathing problems that are due to water stagnation in the middle chronic cough.

And it can go into the head. Dizziness, blocked, nose rhinitis impaired sense of taste. You’ve got this water coming up. Meniere’s syndrome, plum pitchy. Headaches hypertension, even epilepsy, I can really block the channels. Benton is this running piglet, which is often like a panic attack and acid regurgitation, making the stomach go up.

But it can also those fluids in the middle can cause constipation. And again, you’d want to really increase the Baidu. If it’s causing constipation, if it’s diarrhea you probably want to use child by June, the stir fry find you, but that water can even cause a Minnery I’ve seen it cause amenorrhea and language you got Anton can.

By clearing the water, it can help to clear the water in the womb. And often I use it in combination with other, I know we’re going going beyond our time, but I’ll just finish. Okay. So here are just some things where it can affect the language you can. Tongue pattern can cause these different kinds of symptoms in the box.

It can not the cheese, so it can, cause if it’s in the middle of warmer, it can make you feel distended and, full in your epi, gastric region or in your bowels.

Okay. I think we’ve gone over that email. So we’ll just go through this, the fooling concept more in the middle warmer. And. Here for the fooling concept, talking again, just comparing these because they’re so much alike. This is a pattern of stomach, young deficiency with water stopping in the epigastric area.

It can cause epic gastric palpitations. This method warms the stomach and scatters water. This is why the dosage of Schengen must be relatively large. Lots of formulas. We see just a little in here. It’s relatively large because we are transforming fluids in this. Combining this with cooling and wager assist the function of opening the yarn transformation of the G.

And I would add the down bearing of the stomach.

So thank you. I really I love talking about classic formulas and how they work. And so it’s really nice that the American Acupuncture Council has given me this opportunity. And I want to also, if you’re interested in more educational opportunities, the white pine circle is an incredible. Get all kinds of amazing teachings along this line.

If it resonates with you to think about herbs and formulas this way. So you can go to white pine circle.org. And and I also teach it to your program called the graduate mentorship program, where we go through everything having to do with diagnosis and herbal formulas over a two-year period with a lot of close contact with.

So anyway thank you again to the American Acupuncture Council, and I will see you next month.

Being Laser Focused on Patient Results – Lorne Brown

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I want to, again, thank the American Acupuncture Council for inviting me to continue hosting my show on their series to the point my name’s Dr. Lorne Brown and I’m the founder of healthy seminars. And I have run my practice in Vancouver, BC, and I’m the author of. Missing The Point why acupuncturists fail and what they need to know to succeed.

Our topic today is being laser focused on patient results. And I’m very excited. I’m going to give a thorough introduction to our guest today, which is Dr. Steve Liu. And we’re going to talk about being laser focused on patient results. And you’ve probably heard me talk about this before, where I say to her.

Thriving fulfilling practice where you’re helping people and you have abundance in your life as well. Yin and yang have to be in right relationship. And that yin and yang is your clinical results or clinical skills. And then there’s the practice management, your business skills, and many, I’m a charter account and I’m a CPA and I’m a doctor of Chinese medicine.

And it’s important to have those in balance if they separate or they’re out of balance and you have no practice management skills, even though. Skilled practitioner in the world, you may have no patients, so you’re not really helping that many people. So my goal is for you to develop that practice skill.

So with integrity, you’re helping your patients. So you experience abundance and you help heal your community. When we talk about being laser focused for patient results, it’s a pun, but we’re actually going to talk about low level laser therapy and how this can not only. Help with your clinical results.

And that’s why I’ve asked Dr. Steve Liu to come on with us. But also I’m going to share a little bit about this, the practice management of, by adding that special added value in your clinic practice, that you’ll become more attractive to your patients. So let’s introduce Dr. Steve Liu. He’s become, he’s not only a colleague, but he’s.

A friend of mine over the short period of time that I’ve gotten to know him. He is a licensed acupuncturist from from Arizona. He used to be an electrical and laser engineer in the Silicon valley. So he’s been fantastic for me to talk to when I want to ask about the different lasers out there and how they work, because he’s got that background and he’s combined low-level laser therapy, which the scientific community calls photobiomodulation and what we call laser acupuncture.

In his acupuncture practice. So he’s integrating the two and it’s been doing that since 2000. So he’s had quite a few years since the year, 2000 of combining those. So he’s the perfect guest to have on our show. You should know that he is a member of the north American association for photobiomodulation therapy since 2001.

And he was it’s presidents from the years, 2008 to 2010. So that’s quite a feed as well for an acupuncture. To be ahead of that north American laser association. He also served as the president of the Arizona society of Oriental medicine and acupuncture as well. And he’s also served as a board member of the international society for medical laser application.

So you’re starting to see. Steve is very involved in the communities and sits on boards because of his skillset and his knowledge. And he founded in 2006, the American society for laser acupuncture as lat and in his practice. He treats many conditions. He’s going to talk about some of the neuropathy chronic.

Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease as well. So let’s bring Steve on and I’ve got some questions for Steve. I want to let our audience know right away. Steve, these are the questions I’m going to ask you. So for all those of you, why do you want to pay attention? I’m going to ask Steve why laser acupuncture and regular acupuncture, why he sees it as a perfect.

I’m going to ask him what he’s using it for in his practice. Why are people attracted to his practice and what is giving him better clinical results since he’s doing the combination. And then we’ll talk a little bit about as lad as well. So Steve, welcome to the point. I’m so glad to see you again.

My good friend let’s dive into this why laser acupuncture and photobiomodulation also knows a lot of laser therapy. Why do you think this is a perfect marriage for us acupuncture?

Thank you Lauren. Thank you. Thank you again for the wonderful introduction. And my name is Steve Liu. I’m a laser acupuncturist.

That’s what I call myself now. I think there’s a three folds Y acupuncture and TCM will form a Perfect marriage. And number one we see a lot of older patients. And I always tell my older patients that we are not 20 years old anymore, including myself. So our healing ways slow. So we, as as an acupuncturist, we always try to convince patients that how to help heal faster, but then they are older and laser can leave.

Help speed up that healing along with acupuncture treatment and number two, or, some patients may be afraid of needles. So they are needle phobic and kids, especially, and younger people or even older people. So you can use a laser acupuncture in place of of the needles.

And number three, I think is the most important part is the. When you see chronic pain, which is what we see all the time, it’s very challenging as and because these are patients that came from, I call them medical rejects because they’re being rejected by the medical professionals, whether it’s medical doctors or chiropractors.

And because the techniques they tried and they don’t work for these patients, then they come to us as a last resort. And how are we going to heal these chronic. And laser is the one acupunctured get the healing started. We know that we can do that. And then once we got healing going, we need the laser to help speed up.

And I think that’s the best part of that in this matter.

Yeah, I think I’ve heard you call it. It’s the great normalizer. And so you’re finding that using the laser with your acupuncture, you’re helping these older chronic patients bodies behave more like they’re younger or an acute stage. So you’re getting those results.

Yes. I love that term normalize it. That’s why I use that too, because when you have a older patients and how do you get this healing going? Just like a young people and whether they are 60, 70, 80, 90 years. So I have a, my oldest patient now is 95 year old with chronic back pain. And she’s walking around with pain, without pain.

How I can do it because I normalize that. And with acupuncture using laser. So I love that word, Laurence, the normalizer the laser to normalize,

What are the conditions that you predominantly see in your practice? And I know there’s many out, like I predominately see gynecology, fertility, PCs, endometriosis, and I’m using my acupuncture laser.

You’re doing a lot of other conditions outside of the fertility. Can you share where your clinical experiences. The laser acupuncture along with acupuncture.

Yes. I love to talk about that because later I always tell patients that. Photobiomodulation works on cellular levels and what are not cells in our body is everything right?

So we, this laser work on muscles and tendons and soft tissue. That’s what I really like to work on because as I see a lot of these cases in my clinic, but they also work on the nerve tissues and which is very challenging for us like a neuropathy. And I wrote an article for the acupuncture today a few months ago that.

To me, it’s a, one of the best technique we can have is combined, combining acupuncture, like often and toes around the toes. But at the same time, use the light right around the toes and balls of feet, because that’s where the nerve has become dysfunctional. So this is why the nerves also offer quite very well.

Laser works on the Mito con. So for instance, Parkinson disease, sometime the scientists called the mitochondrial dysfunction in the brain, even though it could be the substantial Niagara without the they’re not producing enough dopamine, but what if you shine the light in the brain? And there’s a tons of study for that.

So why don’t you combine the. That body acupuncture, scalp acupuncture with light over the scope. And it’s wonderful combination that you can have. So this is why there’s an unlimited, sky’s the limit. Really? The sky’s the limit. When you combine in photobiomodulation laser therapy. With acupuncture.

So this is why anything you can think about you can use laser. So I don’t have any pain case that without laser, it’s always as a part of the electricity on the needles. And I always have laser around the needles and I always have a heat over the needles. So I called it the whole enchilada.

So this is why it’s a wonderful results. And that’s why we can get referrals from your clients. And from the top.

Sorry, I just want to summarize that you’ve been using it in your practice to help slow down the progression of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. And you were sharing a little bit about the mechanism.

It, it’s outside the scope of our interview today to go into detail, but there’s photobiomodulation that you’re using in your practice. So you’re using it as laser therapy. Then you’re doing laser acupuncture, laser on the points, and then you’re doing needle acupuncture. So that’s what you’re doing.

And the mechanism of photobiomodulation the laser therapy. You talked to the mitochondria, the battery, the cells. And so if those batteries of the cells are repairing, they can divide better. So there’s that healing response and what we see with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s regulates inflammation. Chronic systemic inflammation is becoming the cause of so many diseases.

So if it can help with that, Reduction in pain and then all these other disease processes, scar tissue, and adhesions. So if we think of all of those injuries with scars, and then you talked about the nerves, even nerve regeneration, and then blood flow increases blood flow to the area. So that’s why, we’ve talked, you said is the perfect marriage, right?

And then the needle-phobic patients, this just opens up your practice to everybody now because there’s probably. Close to 50% of the people that would want to see you as an acupuncture, see, to get relief, but they can’t come through your doors because their fear of needles is so bad. And so by doing non needle acupuncture, you now open your door to other people.

I often hear from our colleagues, that are doing the needle, that all, how can laser acupuncture work or is there a research that it works? You and I both have access to the needle and the laser, and we love using both. And we. The laser. So that’s why I like hearing from you because you’re not biased because you have both, you’re trained in both and you can use both and you are choosing use both, but can you share, is there research, what’s your, what are you aware of about the research on laser acupuncture, having an effect on the body similar, or if there’s any difference from needle accurate?

When I thank you again, Lauren, you’re such a good summarize a thank you. And my, when I first heard about laser acupuncture with my from my mentor, Dr. Margaret Naser in Boston, and that she published first study on the. With the laser acupuncture, you can look it up. And and she was so excited when that first heard about her and got to know her, and then she got so excited.

And then call me up since this is the first time in may journal American medical association journal that actually published a study that contained word. Acupuncture and laser acupuncture. So that was the first thing. That first time I was just blown away with what laser and laser acupuncture can do for something like a carpal tunnel, as you can see, involve a median nerve.

So what happens in front of this? I began researching more and more. There’s a study that I run into a study. They use a regular laser acupuncture, shine, the laser lights on the acupuncture point in the year to help quit smoking. And I love to see more studies and I would love to do someday in the future that I can do on the quit smoking.

I do acupuncture, quit smoking myself. But when I come to like a pain, like a lower back pain and a soft tissue injury pain, and I really have to combine acupuncture in the. And the laser member lasers there to help lower the inflammation. We don’t stop inflammation. Inflammation is a part of a healing.

That’s how acupuncture help. Okay. So when we put needles into the tissues, guess what we produce some low level inflammation, and that’s why we need. But lasers is there to help speed up that, that mechanism Becca kickstarted by the acupuncture. But when patients really have a problem with needles, for instance, you can use laser acupuncture in place of the knee points.

So you can use a red lasers on the distal points like. All these points on the fingers and the palms and the risks. And then you can use an infrared lasers on the body, like a stomach 36 and spleen six. And so on screen 10. And deeper because you want to target the third nerves underneath that acupuncture point.

So this is why we can combine laser and acupuncture or laser acupuncture by itself. So this all can come to. In the therapy

and not all lasers are created equal. And so the wavelength matters. So the color of the light’s going to matter about how it’s going to affect the cell, the tissue, and how deep it’s going to go.

The power of the laser is going to affect. The dosage of photons at the target tissue. So that’s important because how much time you need to keep the laser on the body. And so some of the lasers are, can be a large investment for acupuncturists. And this is why I love talking to you because I know Steve that you’ve built lasers because you remember everybody Steve’s a doctor or Chinese medicine, and he’s also a electrical and laser engineers.

He can look at a system. He actually helps some of the manufacturers improve on their systems. Cause he’s got that skillset. I wanted to ask you a little bit that first of all, not all lasers are created equal. So some lasers, although there are a couple hundred dollars, they’re no different than using a PowerPoint light.

You’re not going to get any therapeutic value really on it. So still. You have to invest. It seems to get a good laser. Personally, I want to share this story and then just talk about how you have found that, how this is helped your practice grow by having the lasers. And th the story I want to share with you is my first laser I invested in.

Was about $6,500. And I used it for onsite for IVF clinics, laser acupuncture because the clinic had shown that it increased implantation rates by 15%. So that was a big investment and that’s what I use it for, but I wanted to get the results, help my patients. And it made our patients more attractive to our clinic as well, because we were offering this and then I wanted to help with egg quality, and that required a different laser system and help with endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome and and engaging the relaxation.

There’s lots of things we can do with the. And so that system costs me $20,000. Now I got to share something with you that I was not expecting, but I understand why it ha it helped. Because when you create value, the marketplace, your patients will seek you out. They will. They will see you over other people.

They’ll actually people get on planes, pre COVID to are to go to our clinic, to be treated with our laser for fertility and PCRs. They’ll drive an hour in my city to come to our clinic, even though there’s many acupuncturists in their area, because they want somebody, a clinic that has the experience, the knowledge and the good quality lasers to get them results.

So here’s the quick story. And then I’m curious to hear what your experience has been I have when I introduce the laser for fertility in our clinic, several of the patients that I was treating, and let’s just say they were being charged $95 back then for acupuncture only. And I would recommend twice a week and many of them would say they couldn’t afford twice a week.

So they’d come once a week. Or some of them said I can’t afford. And they did not have. When I introduced the laser, we increased the price of having acupuncture with the laser. And so we increased the price to say one for $140. So actually it was 130 back then. So 95 for acupuncture only, or 1 35 for both.

And what we know, and it was three times a week because we were following a group that had done, had seen an improvement pregnancy rates when they did the laser fertility approach three times. In the follicular phase. And so we replicated that and that’s what we educated our patients, these patients that said they could not afford $95 once a.

Or even twice a week, it started coming in three times a week. So what I learned from that is it wasn’t that they couldn’t afford it was that they didn’t see the value in what I was doing in acupuncture, how I educated them to spend $95 a week or $95 twice a week. They just didn’t see the value there.

But when I shared how laser fertility has the potential to improve egg, quality and pregnancy rates, whether you’re trying to concede that. Or an IVF and share some of the research. They then were willing to pay 1 33 times. To get the results. So it was never always about the affordability. It was. Is there enough value to pay that much money?

So I wasn’t expecting that, but that’s what the laser has done in my practice. It has made me, it has separated me from other clinics that are just doing acupuncture because many of the patients are learning about this, get an educated, and they actually want the photo by modeling. With their acupuncture.

What was your experience? Have you found that by what you’re doing and you have a fast program, which you can introduce as well because you’re getting the results in using laser. Has that also a major practice, even that much more busier before you compare to before you added the laser?

Yes. I always say results resolved.

And as an acupuncturist and. Pretty much all the time is the last resort, a practitioner that patients see and see you, you want to produce results. And to me, laser is the is probably the only way that when it’s combined with acupuncture really get the result. And because you heal, you.

And I know sometimes it’s hard to say the word cure, but then it’s how it works. And so yes, this is a value added because you can do, you can charge you $150 for acupuncture, but if you does not if you do not produce the results, it’s still worthless. But if you add it in this so in my practice, I combined a laser and acupuncture was when fee I don’t have an additional fee for laser.

I consider as a value added so that when I produce results, They are, they’re going to see effect within a few treatments and guess what? And then when they were completely here, And they are going to refer all their friends and relatives and neighbors. And then the thought is, begin to hear about you name and they began to refer their clients to you.

So guess what? You can love busier practice. That’s how I see it. And that’s why it’s a laser is a result driven. And and I absolutely agree with you that Lauren is. I don’t think it’s really the money. It’s a, it’s the result when the patients see the result and they say they will pay for it.

Yeah. Definitely want to get, they want to get the results and adding the laser helps give you that result. And they also is the education like, so when the understand for whatever reason I just, it’s an observation. They understand photobiomodulation, it’s more modern, it’s more sciency. And when you can see the mechanisms, they understand that and they’re willing to give it a go or give it a try where acupuncture is old and they’re questioning it.

I’m not saying it doesn’t work. I use both. So it does work. And I have found that it’s. It’s something that has been attracted to patients. And I always say in my book, and when we talk at the beginning, we want to help them with integrity. So when you charge, because again, when you’re making investments in $20,000 lasers and you only have so many there’s value there.

So if you choose to charge more. You’re doing it with integrity because Ava invested in more equipment, but your patients don’t care about that. They don’t care about your debt or how much it costs you. They care about what kind of value they’re going to get when they pay you. And so I’ve made that investment and then patients are willing to endure.

In me because I have the tools to help them get the results. I know in your practice, you have a program called fast for chronic pain, and you go off and we’ll help people under 10 treatments get incredible relief, chronic pain, and so that makes you busy, but that fat program requires laser and it does.

Correct?

Absolutely. It’s the key F a S T I came up with this idea is how to heal and again, a lot of the time you can cure these a chronic soft tissue problem, like tennis elbow, conference elbows, and people come in and say, I bought these for three months. I have these for three years.

Why? Because all the cortisones, no, the anti-inflammatories and all this, they literally stopped the healing. But the needle is there to help kickstart a healing. But how do you get this healing going in the better rate, quicker rate that could useful rate? When Joel, like when you were in 20 years old laser lasers there to help speed it up.

And so laser is really the key and to help. And so I can literally tell my patients that with intent treatments, you will be. Done. And then the pain’s all gone, all completed relief. So this is why, and I’m I’m very proud of this this program FST and you can look it up and I intend to bring it up in my conference with Aslan, which is American society for.

Lola laser acupuncture therapy asset work. And we’ve intend to have a conference in this later this year and that bring this fancy program certification program out. And I’m working on that pretty much every day, try to figure out how to get this program together and in module of structure and Lauren and I are trying to figure out how to put this one together.

Yeah, looking forward to that. And so that’s, website’s important. So if you’re looking for more information about laser acupuncture and photobiomodulation, that’s the term that’s replacing low-level laser therapy is photobiomodulation and laser acupuncture, check out the athlet website. Cause you’ll see more information available there.

And this is something. Again, I’m going to put the practice management twist on it is when something is a value and people want it. Then other people start to offer it just like acupuncture. It’s not just train acupuncturist that offer the acupuncture nurses. Do it, doctors do it, physios, do it.

Chiropractors do it. I know in our profession. Acupuncture’s don’t like it, then other people are doing acupuncture, but when something is effective, other people get it into their scope with photobiomodulation laser acupuncture, massage therapy are doing it. Chiropractors are doing our physios. They’re doing it.

So it’s out there. It’s really big in Europe, but more so in Australia, less so in north America and in Canada, in the us. But it’s great. It’s gaining a momentum so quickly right now. And so this is. Learn about this because. It’s going to be something that if your colleague has it or the physio has it, and if the physio can do acupuncture and laser, and you only do acupuncture as a public member, you’re going to go to somebody that can do both.

Steve said, one fee for both. Somebody’s going to go see him versus somebody on the same street that can only do acupuncture. So this is my invitation that. If you don’t give this some attention, there’s a possibility that you’re going to miss out and other modalities, other professions are going to have incorporated this.

So I think it’s important that acupuncturists incorporate, especially the laser acupuncture part. And as Steve said, at the beginning, it is a credible marriage. Practitioners that I talked to that are using photobiomodulation with their acupuncture. Never turned back. They love it. And again, I, my whole focus is on gynecology, fertility using the laser acupuncture with my needles.

Steve, I want to thank you again for joining me today. Can you tell us a little bit about asthma? That’s what we’ll finish off here. But just tell us a little bit. The asthma organization that you’ve created and just what’s available for acupuncturist on that website. Yes.

Thank you. Lauren athlet against Stanford American society for laser acupuncture therapy.

I came up with this idea back in 2006 and I reserved the domain name as lab. Beautiful. And it’s nice and short, and I need to have this name reserved obviously long time ago, but I haven’t had a really chance to really get him going until last year. And then this is really the year 2022.

We’re going to learn. I help bring this to the community. This is a, you can look it up and there’s a mission statement. I really want to use this as a community for Acupac. We are the acupuncture. We cannot own laser acupuncture, not any other like chiropractors was physio in massage therapists.

We are going to have it. And in order to, for us to integrate this tool into our practice, you guys need to, of course be educated. And I love to be the educator and also teach you how to sell. Lasers devices and what is technology and what is led and what’s the different between laser and the LEDs and what are all these companies they’re making all these devices, then what’s the protocol for all of these providers and so on.

So this is a community I like to have, and that’s always all for us, the acupuncturist. And then, so we can. Successfully integrate that into our practice and make like a Lauren. I know Lori is a very passionate to make us a good businessman as well. And it’s important. It’s Ian in not only need to have a good skills, but we gotta be a good businessman.

You notice this. Thank you gotta

have. You gotta have those business skills. So it’s not so many people give it a negative connotation. And we’re talking about, you just got to know how to run a practice. You got to know how to charge for things so you can keep your doors open so you can keep treating your community.

It’s just really simple. It’s matte and you can do it with integrity. And so that’s where we talk about the laser therapy today and laser acupuncture. So as lab we’ll have a conference or as a conference, it was information. Unhealthy seminars.com. We have continuing education courses available for laser therapy.

On our community library, we have many interviews with experts and researchers on laser acupuncture, Dr. Steve Liu being one and is going to be offered many more. So do check out healthy seminars.com for the photobiomodulation laser acupuncture courses. All right. You’ve been listening to. To the point with AAC and tune in next week when Sam Collins comes in and joins us on the AAC to report to the point show.

I want to thank you, Dr. Steve Leo, and I want to thank you guys for tuning in today.

Adrenal Exhaustion and the Nervous System

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Hello and welcome. My name is Tsao-Lin Moy, and I’m the founder of Integrative Healing Arts in Union square in New York city. And I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for putting these lives on for your entertainment and also for educating you about acupuncture and Chinese medicine.

Please and comment for today we’re going to be talking about adrenal exhaustion and burnout and the amygdala hijacking, which has a slightly different and okay. So let’s go to the slides.

Okay. There we go. All right. So today we’re going to be talking about adrenal exhaustion, burnout, and the amygdala hijacking and what strategies that we can be using with acupuncture and Chinese medicine. So here we go.

All right. So what we’ve got here is what adrenal exhaustion. And in Chinese medicine, we call that the kidney yin and yang deficiency, where the beginning young is out of balance. And what we see is elevated cortisol. We’ve got low melatonin, a lot more physical conditions, such as fatigue irritability problems with sleeping.

So we start to see the day and night shifting. It’s very common that your patients may be on some kind of prescription medication. There is a lot of tiredness and Schedule is irregular, right? So they may be taking anti-anxiety medication sleep aids, antidepressants. All right. So this we see is very common.

Most of our patients that come in have something going on with their kidney energy and given the situation that we’re in right now with the news and everything happening around the world that for sure. This is going to be coming into your practice. And we’ll go to the next slide and look at what are going to be strategies for this level.

And we’re looking at so strategy here is really regulating the yin and the Yom the nervous system, because this is where we’re starting to see that it’s out of balance. A big component is going to be sleep right for regulating the circadian rhythm. We can address it with diet, right? Making sure that our patients are drinking enough water staying away from alcohol getting some exercise.

Very important is going to be detoxing from social media because that actually gets people really upset. And to clear those cookies as I call them that type that tend to follow another what we’re looking at for your patients is acupuncture for sure, because we know that it’s. The brain chemistry and the neuropeptides that actually allow the body to go into that deep, relaxed state herbal medicine.

Some of it, yes. Definitely supplements. If you. The basic we call the formulas such as the shadow side, the free and easy wander or something like way P tongue, where there’s going to be a lot more worry. So this is going to be, for someone who is relatively healthy that they’re just going, that they’re out of balance, right?

So we’re like, Like the exhaustion, it’s a little bit different from the Western, what we call exhaustion, where they may be given anti some kind of steroids. But here we have an opportunity for the person to shift back into balance and go into some more state of relative balance. We call it and as a practitioner, We also do social support therapy.

We talk with our patients about how to balance their life really important. A lot of times when people are very stressed out, it’s very difficult for them to do something like meditation. And what I have found in my practice is really offering them breath work. And that could be the 4, 7, 8 breath work.

There is also Wim Hoff, which is has been. Become very popular. There are lots of videos of how to do it, and if somebody is feeling stressed out, all they need to do is to shift their breathing. The other thing too is to really look at taking time in nature. And at this moment when you’re working with your patients that are in this particular kind of imbalance, they actually are pretty open to listening to suggestions.

The time in order to stabilize, I would give it three to five months really consistently coming in for treatment and then also to create and cultivate different habits where they can manage their stress and become aware of it and actually be much more proactive in it. So the next slide.

Now burnout is what we look at is a whole other level of kidney depletion, right? Compared to adrenal exhaustion, which is a little bit more of the physical is such, we’re looking at more of the emotional, and here we’re seeing that this is this more inward and racing thoughts, but also the trouble of blue sleeping.

So I’ve underlined sleeping because that is a huge problem. And this is going to be really a key for addressing something with your patients, like where can you start? So when someone comes in with so many symptoms, it’s very important to keep your treatments. Another thing that we see with burnout is that there’s more depression going inward.

Even self-medicating the people may be on a lot of medication. The essence is being drained. And then we also see with the physical manifestations, we start to see things like chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia auto-immune really like depletion, and really. Feeling defeated. And so here is we’ll go to the next slide, like how we’re gonna let’s change to this next.

Okay. So as I mentioned, oh, we want to go back one, let’s go back one. We can very similar to adrenal exhaustion. The idea is you want to. Rescue them in a way, strengthen the mind body connection and their ability to really connect with their body. So this is a place where, we would use acupuncture and for all of you that are live.

I would be very interested to find out like, what acupuncture points would you choose? Because right now this person is really so depleted. What kind of points would you use? And the thing with the more exhausted that a patient is, and this can also happen from a recovery, from an illness that, you know, they.

You might want to do a lot for them, but in fact, the less is more. And the areas to really focus on are going to be the really deep and restorative sleep, because that is where their nervous system is going to be able to do a reset. If they can do a practice like meditation or yoga just to get their chair moving and to build up their energy formulas would be for someone.

Adrenal exhaustion. You want to support the kidneys and also the stomach and spleen, a very classic, maybe the blue Jong ichi Tong, really to help them to nourish. And again my recommendation is. To for them to add in something like breath, work and breath work is we can see it. If you’re exercising that you actually do get really good oxygen saturation, which will help with deeper sleep.

But for someone who’s really exhausted, you really don’t want them to. To, I wanna say encourage them to go back to a, in a adrenal field way of living where they’re running marathons all the time, or getting up and trying to do too much. And in fact, the more serious let’s say or the condition, what we’re looking at with the adrenals, you really want to offer them something very simple because they can’t really take any, anything more.

Okay, so we’ll go to the next slide. My little clicker is not working here. So here is an example of breathwork. So breathing, we’re doing more than just regulating the nervous system. You’re also reducing the cortisol levels. And this is really important when we’ve got something going on with our adrenals and our kidney energy.

And again, when we breathe in, we’re actually looking at that lung and kidney relation. And here studies have shown that this higher level of oxygen actually encourages deeper and restorative sleep, which is known as a slow wave sleep. And why is that important? Because people with extreme adrenal exhaustion and burnout have, will tend to maybe sleep a lot, but not get the restoration there.

So all right, we’ll go to the next.

So here is a don’t know what happened to the top of it, but here’s, I wanted to show a picture of what somebody looks like when they’re really terrified. And this is actually a kid who is on a rollercoaster. And what is happening is the wa eyes are wide open. The heart rate is increasing.

They start to breathe, very shallowly, dry mouth sweating. And then what we look at is the tightening of the extensors. And this is really the do check. So in all that stress you see with animals when they get stressed out that the back of their neck tenses up. And so we see a lot of our patients come in with neck and shoulder, tight neck and shoulder TMJ.

And that is, innervated by the cranial nerves. So we’re looking at this connection with stress levels and then how it manifests in the body. So we’ll go to the next slide. So what are we looking at? We’re looking at the kidney and heart being out of balance. We’re also looking at the liver and spleen out of balance. And so this is this water, fire relationship. The water really would, your kidney energy really helps with your heart energy, that connection. And when you’re, it’s out of balance, we’re looking at too much fire, right?

Not enough of the balance of water for two cool things. We’re also looking at the wood and earth relationship out of harmony. So what happens is we end up with things like emotional turmoil the worry of the spleen, the fear of the kidney actually cause the heart and the psyche to like escape.

And then we have the. The liver, which is the wood and responsible for the smooth flow starts to control. Everything goes out of balance. And we realized like, Hey, what’s happening? The liver energy is trying to control everything. And so what we see is a lot more of that literary and. And at this point, I invite a lot of comments.

What do you think, what kind of points might you use when you see this? What’s, what is when you start to see this happening and I’m sure it is in your practice what point prescriptions might you use? So I’m very interested for your opinion, please come right. Or we’ll go to the next slide.

All right. So here the five elements chart, or we see the liver’s role is the smooth flow of cheap emotions and blood and interesting studies recently show that the liver does have a regulatory function with the central nervous system. And there are fibers, both sympathetic and parasympathetic fibers.

That are linking to from the liver, going to the brain. Very interesting that right now we’re looking at, Hey, the liver does have access to, the brain chemistry. One of the things in Chinese medicine, as we know that the liver stores the blood while we’re at rest. And what that actually means is it actually helps to filter it.

And then when needed the blood the clean blood actually goes out to the. When that’s not happening, such as when stress hormones are increased they actually increase enzymes in the liver and cause inflammation and toxicity. And so we see this with women that are, pre-menstrual a lot of that those emote, the strong emotions come from inflammation of the cytokines, which is like right before the bleed aspect of the cycle.

We’ll go to the new.

So what happens when we’re under prolonged stress and I’m putting in fear what happens is that the brain starts to remodel and we get a lot more systemic change. And this is as we’re going to be moving into, what is the definition of an amygdala hijacking or a takeover? The amygdala is a almond shaped a part of your Olympic system or your reptilian brain.

It’s about emotional survival. It filters all of your senses. And the more that it’s triggered, it actually grows larger. And then what we see is an underactive hippocampus, which has to do with a lot of memory starts to shrink. And so what this does is that it. Causes the individual to not be able to regulate themselves, it interferes with self-regulation and we see things like a systemic decline. So some of the symptoms are also the memory problems, a lot of distortions of paranoia, things like conspiracy, more angry and manic behavior. And this is, these are. Behaviors. We also see with patients that have early onset with dementia and something like Parkinson’s right.

And also we look at there’s an increase in this amygdala activity in patients that have bipolar, especially during their manic episodes. So we’re looking at here’s this connection, the more exciting. A person gets and more this fear, the swinging, the extremes that we’re looking at, the amygdala is involved in it and causes can cause a lot of turmoil.

So we’ll go to the next.

So the amygdala is this almond shaped structure in the brain, and it’s involved with processing the emotions. So going back to where the five elements are. When the amygdala is triggered and hijacks the person we call the, or the brain that those emotions are distorted. And so there are the two structures that are, there are part of each one of the brain, and they’re located near the base. And what we see is when the. Amygdala hijack brain parts, brain, no longer function. It actually just shuts it down, but without the ability or the use, and this is in the frontal lobe, which is like decision-making a person is unable to think clearly and they have confusion.

And they’re not in control of their responses and we actually need, we see a lot of it. We see a lot of it that’s been happening in the news where people are having outbursts and screaming, and everyone says this person was like a really nice person. I don’t understand. But what happens is they got triggered.

We’ll go to the next.

So the amygdala engagement, the more that it’s engaged, the more difficult it is for someone to think clearly. And self-regulate so when you get the amygdala hijacks, a control of a person’s ability to respond Nat rationally. It’s tapping into fear oriented perceptions and views, most things as a threat.

So this is where we’re looking at. It’s a real serious Shen disturbance because the liver is out of control, right? So the more things are out of control seem out of control. The more that the liver energy starts flaring up and Causes the the mind or the shin of the heart to leave in the, and that’s like a disturbance.

The response usually tends to be aggressive and can be very violent. So we look at episodes where someone may have anger management issues or sudden outbursts and blow ups. So what’s the next.

So here is a picture of someone who is like the earlier picture that I had there, where there was a little boy who was actually showing fear where you could actually, that was that momentary fear where what happens is the eyes are opening up and the heart is racing and here is actually a picture of somebody.

Who is actually in this state where they’re acting extremely irrational. So when some parts of the brain are revved up, others are shutting down and this, like the fear can actually cause the areas of the brain to the. Have judgment to just not be there. And so it’s very difficult for the make a good decision.

So here is actually a picture of what has been known to be as a Karen. She is this woman who just lost it and then it is actually terrifying some people in their own car. And I’m sure she’s a very nice lady. However, she went off and this is when you actually see this irrational behavior.

So we’ll go to the next excellent.

So how can we rescue this? I checked the medulla. Technically when the amygdala is engaged, it takes about six seconds or like the chemicals to recede. So this is, so that we don’t live in this state for a long period of time, whatever the problem is, if it’s triggered over and over, we start to see that it grows up there.

And then what happens? We get this perpetual behavior that continues to be reinforced. So if you have a patient that’s coming in, because they’re, they, they’re having a lot of problems that what’s important is to help them become aware of what’s happening in their body so they can take steps to prevent it.

And really important is going to be. Addressing the liver. And even though this is what we considered a Shen disturbance we may want to give all kinds of calming Formulas, but the problem is that the liver is gone wild. And until that can actually be stabilized, that we start with the end of just treating some of the symptoms.

So it has to be at least two or three pronged where Getting rid of the inflammation that is literally in the liver and we’re coming up upon spring. So this is a really, we may start to see more of this energy coming up because of the season. And what you can do is have your patients start drinking things like nettle tea, dandelion, and burdock, really to help clear that out.

The other is to do some breathing and breath. So this is going to help to reduce the cortisol levels. It’s going to also help address their. Acupuncture. Definitely. The thing is if they are really in a heightened state that actually you could trigger something with them, with acupuncture very interested in, which possible treatment strategies.

Could be aggressive energy treatments might be the thing is if you start needling on the back surface, that’s the sympathetic area. So you actually might have. Actually stimulate something more with the do channel being in excess, you might want to think about treating Ren the fund, the front more funds to bring energy more towards the part of the body.

With herbal formulas again probably less is more definitely there issues when people have. These outbursts that are related to low things like low vitamin D vitamin C. So you might recommend some of the supplements if you are unaware of what supplements there are a suggest or how they work to do a little bit of research on it.

Sunshine, we need a lot of sunlight that actually is going to help also with the liver, right? The liver process is D No processed foods. We know that causes a lot of inflammation. We want to avoid alcohol and a lot of other stimulants. So let’s go to the next slide. Comments. All right, here we go.

Stress negatively impacts our body, mind, and spirit, and really long-term stress affects the body’s ability to regulate itself and actually makes changes to the brain and these negatively affect cognition and are also connected with mental disorders. And including dementia and previously I talked about PTSD.

So in the case, Also in the case of something like PTSD, we really look at how the brain chemistry is altered. We see this, this is one of the challenges is that it’s not as easy as when someone just has an adrenal exhaustion to actually go back. And balance themselves that we are actually dealing with someone who their brain is functioning a little bit differently.

However it is possible to help them to to heal right. To heal. Just as a quick, PTSD is more of a site that is considered a psychiatric disorder. And it’s related to someone having an experience or a trauma that then they will relive over and over again. So they have that flashback and that becomes a barrier for them to use.

I would love to hear some comments. I’m sorry if my the presentation got off to a Rocky start we had a little bit of an adrenal surge when we didn’t know whether the The computer was going to work or the mic. And I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council. And for next week we have Lorne Brown that is going to be joining the American Acupuncture Council.

So hopefully you can join us next week.

Easily Incorporating Facial Acupuncture into Your Practice

So the topic of today’s talk is the benefits of incorporating facial acupuncture into your practice.

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi everyone. My name’s Michelle Gellis. I am a board certified acupuncture visit. And I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me the opportunity to present to you today. I’m going to go right to my first screen. Thank you. So the topic of today’s talk is the benefits of incorporating facial acupuncture into your practice.

A little bit about me. I was on faculty at the Maryland university of integrative health, formerly the Thaisa FIA Institute since 2004. My undergrad degree is in computer science and I have been published several times in the journal of Chinese medicine. And the Maryland acupuncture society newsletter, the acupuncture desk reference, and several other publications.

Here are some of my publications listed. You can get all of this information on my website, facial acupuncture classes.com. I have listed here. All of the classes that I teach, some are cosmetic acupuncture. Some are treating neuromuscular, facial conditions, facial anatomy facial acupuncture self-care and.

Safety course. And most recently I am offering a course in microneedle Lang for acupuncturists and also. An advanced certificate course in facial acupuncture. So today we are going to talk about incorporating facial acupuncture into your practice. So we’re going to go through an overview of what is involved and incorporating facial acupuncture into your practice and the importance of training.

Documentation safety, red flags. What tools might you need? Is it important? What sort of tools you use when you’re doing cosmetic acupuncture? The benefits of facial acupuncture, not just for your practice, but also for your patients. And also why providing a full body treatment is important. Whenever you are working on the face.

So I’d like to start out by giving a definition of facial acupuncture because most of us think of facial acupuncture as something that is done for cosmetic reasons. Facial acupuncture incorporates both cosmetic acupuncture and also acupuncture for any neuromuscular facial conditions, such as Bell’s palsy, TNJ trigeminal, neuralgia, stroke, ptosis, any conditions that affect the face.

Facial acupuncture can use acupuncture, needles, facial cups, wash Shaw tools, Derma rolling, and or micro-needling. And facial acupuncture is not some new trendy technique. It has been used as early as the some dynasty. There are several historical references in the PSU when regarding treating the face both for beauty and for other reasons.

And there have been some studies done on facial acupuncture, both for cosmetic and for neuromuscular conditions. And I’ve listed some of them here.

One of the questions I get asked all the time is, does it work? So I put up a few before and after pictures. Sometimes I’m reluctant to use before and afters because myself, I don’t have a professional photography studio in my acupuncture practice. So my photos are only. Good as my camera and my lighting.

And so I, as much as possible, I try to use the same lighting when I take pictures. But this actual, this top left picture here was taken in a class. I was teaching. One of my students was doing cupping on someone’s neck. And you can see just from releasing. The SCM, how the lines on the side of the neck relaxed, this is another patient of mine and they had a deep scar right in their nasal labial fold and through treatment.

And over time, the scar dissipated quite a bit another patient who had. Chin wrinkles. And the sides of her mouth will really turn down and through treatment. The chin wrinkles really smooth down and the corners of her mouth started to turn up. And this is a demonstration of using some intradermal needles to help, to break up the melanin that can cause some of the dark spots that we can.

A couple more before and afters. So the patient who had deep four headlines and through treatment, both body points to clear up some stagnant liver Che and some local points. Her far had smoothed out quite a bit, and this patient was concerned because her eyelid. Had started to droop and her eyebrows.

And I just treated one side of her face, the left side of her face. And you can see how much more lifted the one eyebrow is.

So what’s involved in bringing app facial acupuncture into your practice. Many practitioners are reluctant to consider bringing cosmetic acupuncture because they have misconceptions. And one of them is that it’s extremely time consuming. And if done properly, you can actually have two rooms going at once.

With facial acupuncture, you put the needles in one patient while they’re resting on the table, you put the needles in another patient, and then you can go back to your first patient or your cupping and guash Shaw. And then you can go back to your second patient, so you can have two rooms going at once.

And also the pricing should be when you’re pricing cosmetic treatments for. Facial acupuncture. Your pricing should be one and a half to two times what you would normally charge for a regular treatment, depending on what you are offering. For micro-needling you can charge two to three times some, sometimes more what you would charge for the same amount of clock time in the room.

Many practitioners are charging three to $500 for a half an hour microneedling treatment also from a marketing standpoint. Facial acupuncture. It opens up your world. You can convert your patients who are currently coming to see you for whatever they’re coming for, conditions, aches, and pains.

They can become your cosmetic acupuncture patients, and also you can specialize and capture that. Market of people who have neuromuscular facial conditions and specialize in that if the whole cosmetic thing is not what you’re interested in doing

before you begin or embark on a practice of facial acupuncture. It is really important that you get trained. And if the American acupuncture council is who you have your insurance through, they do want you to get trained in cosmetic acupuncture. And part of the reason for that is there are special forms questions.

There is a unique way of documented. Before during and after treatments, when you are working on someone’s face in that capacity, you want to be able to document any previous procedures they’ve had. You want to be able to screen them for any red flags, Contra indications, and this can be really important.

When you’re talking about putting a lot of needles in someone’s face and head unlike most forms of acupuncture although you can cause harm when treating someone just in general, when you’re working on someone’s space, the skin on the face is very thin. The skin, the space. Highly vascularized. And facial acupuncture brings a lot of energy up to the head.

People can suffer a migraine, have a headache. There’s even the potential. If you’re doing techniques. Improperly of the patient having a stroke or fainting, and these are all things you need to be able to pre-screen for also the anatomy of the face. Although we do learn about it in school. Most of us don’t spend a tremendous amount of time noodling the face.

And as I mentioned, the face is highly vascularized. There are over 44 muscles on the face. Far ahead. And then, working into the neck, you’ll probably want to work on the neck as well. So you’ve got veins and arteries, facial vein temporal vein nerves, the two major nerves that go into the face, tiny little capillaries.

And of course we know the face tends to bruise very easily. So learning how to. Take the proper precautions and learn the anatomy so that there’s no danger of harming or even injuring or causing unnecessary bruising to the face. And part of this has to do with needling technique, learning what to look for and.

Also, I’m not using so many noodles I seen, and I think I have a slide in here. I seen untrained acupuncturists take a stab. Pardon the pun at doing cosmetic acupuncture without being trained and sometimes the results or. A little scary looking and really unnecessary. You should not need to put hundreds or even dozens of needles in the face in order to effect a good result.

So here’s some examples of either poor technique or just too many needles. Here, this is a neck and these needles are very deep. And some of them are very close to the juggler vein here on the left. This person’s far ahead, has way too many intradermal needles in it. There are ways to work with lines and wrinkles without using that many intradermal needles here, the intradermals aren’t inserted in a way.

Actually it would be building college in at all. And then over here, this person just has way too many needles. Really just unnecessary. So here’s a couple of pictures I took. My students had needled in class. This is one way that I teach to help, to smooth out a deep line. And this is through submuscular needling and using special needles.

Designed for for the face to work with crow’s feet. And here is a technique I teach and it is submuscular needling to tighten the . I have a quick video. I’m going to show of another skill that I teach and it has to do with the anterior dynastic muscle. So I’m just going to, it might be a little jumpy, but I am going to hop in and get it rolling.

And I’m going to have to talk about. Because the sound is not going to work. So in order to is gastric muscle, let me turn the same. We’ll use one finger, Michelle. The sound is being picked up very pretty well. If you want to leave the sound on the video. Great. Let me start it again. Is.

In order to locate the digastric muscle, you will use one finger and you will locate that mastoid process right here. And you also want to locate the hyoid bone, which was right. But you want to do is draw an imaginary line between the two of them and then using your index finger, you’re going to pal pay along the line and you’ll find a very thin muscle right here.

And that is the posterior die-cast. And if you draw an imaginary line between the hyoid bone and the underside of the chin, you can palpate for the front of the digastric muscle. So the dyad strick goes from the man, the ball, and then it takes a turn here and attaches back here at the mastoid process.

So the part of the gastric muscle that we’re going to needle using submuscular noodling is right here underneath the chin. And this will help with the if someone has a lot of excess or laxity there. To feel the digastric muscle on the, and here, you’re going to ask your patient to open their mask, go ahead and open your mouth and then close it.

And you can feel the underbelly of the digastric muscle. It’s about the width of a pencil. So again, it comes from here and then. Comes up to the height and then it attaches here. So what you’re going to do is once you found the muscle,

you’re just going to grab it with two fingers and you’re going to just use a half an inch red Saron needle and get right underneath like that. And you can usually get two needles and just like that. And then they’re gonna come along on the other side

and you’re going to be right here. No, you get it right underneath the muscle like that. One more

get right underneath like that. And then you’re going to do the same thing on the other side. See how there’s the one muscle is right over here. And then the other one is here. So you would just crisscross the.

Okay.

Oops, sorry. So that is

that is a demonstration of how you would do some submuscular needling under the chin to help tighten the chin area. So let’s see tools. There are tools that you need that are different than you might use. Regularly. Good needles are really important. I love sirens. My experience has always been that they have a very smooth insertion and there are specialized needles for the face.

Really very tiny. Also when you’re doing any facial cupping using glass cups and specially designed guash shot tools. I love Jade very much a part of our tradition and during the lockdown period of the pandemic, I designed a cutting in wash up. And that can be found@acculiftskincare.com. Also, you need tweezers.

I liked the wide grip tweezers. Those are used to put intradermal needles and then arnica gel is my favorite to help. Bruising also, there are things that you can either use in your treatment room, or you can sell to your patients for at-home use like Derma rollers the, these items right here off to the right as a hydro roller in a Hydra needle.

And I don’t want to get into it. Now there’s information about these products. They’re great for infusing CRMs. You can even put Traumeel and different types of homeopathics in them to infuse it into the scan, but it really helps to revitalize and refresh the scan. And you can use these for some of the neuro.

Conditions as well. Microneedling is very popular right now in our profession. In most states, it is within our scope of practice and it works on the skin level to take care of scars. Discolorations fine lines, even on the body for stretch marks. And that is an entire class and topic onto itself.

But there’s just a wealth of information and it’s a great add on, and it doesn’t take a lot of time in your treatment space. So this is a and tool that you’re looking at and two batteries, the cartridges, which are disposable. That’s the new. Tip. And then this particular, the AccuLift micro pen comes with a court, so you can plug it in if you choose the intradermal needle.

Require a little bit of scale to learn how to use. And these are put around this is a picture of some encroached fee and this was a picture I saw on social media of someone trying to teach themselves how to do it. And really again, on necessary way too much. Okay, so just to wrap it up they shall acupuncture can bring a reliable stream of income into your practice.

It’s cash because we’re not working with insurance companies. Insurance does not pay for cosmetic procedures. And people tend to spend money on cosmetic things before they’ll spend money on their aches and pains. And it is a way for you to widen your scope of practice gives you a unique skill set. You can learn facial motor points, scalp acupuncture, specifically designed to help with neuromuscular facial conditions.

And as I mentioned before, you can really capture that niche market and set yourself apart because not all practitioners are going to do cosmetic acupuncture. For your patients, cosmetic acupuncture. Is a way for them to revitalize their appearance with Al injectables or fillers or toxins, they get a full body treatment.

So it helps their digestion. Their immune system helps to reduce inflammation and it’s all done. Naturally. We don’t put anything into the body. We don’t take anything out of the body. It can help with double chins. If they’ve had a facelift, it can help their facelift to last longer. And it stimulates college in naturally.

This was a patient of mine who had eyelid ptosis. And as you can see her one lid is lower than the other. And through treatment, both of her lids became more even, and she was getting married. She was very self-conscious. She didn’t want. To have this drooping eyelid, because especially as she got tired, it would get much worse.

And she was told she’d have to have surgery, but she didn’t need to have surgery. I mentioned things like skin conditions here is someone who had cupping and wash Shaw on one side of their face, not on the other. And you can see just right there on the table, how all that heat dissipated. So things like rosacea molars, melasma acne can all be helped with facial conditions.

Doing a full body treatment is really important because you don’t want to just treat the superficial signs of aging you want to get underneath. And treat the zone and the Fu the substances to help the body to get back out of disharmony and into harmony. Dealing with the emotional underpinnings of why we get some of those facial expression lines.

I have an entire class called the anatomy of expression, which gets into that and looking at something like fear. Which muscles are used. And what points might you use to help to relax the face? Because when the face relax, the body relaxes, there is a feedback system between the face and the body. I mentioned micro-needling.

This was me doing some needle Lang on someone who had sun damage on their chest, a microneedle. Again, it’s very quick. And there are a lot of benefits and the results are very, long-term and they only have to come once a month between treatments. Here is my 2022 practice schedule. All of my classes are.

And then you can come for an optional hands-on practice session if you choose. And if you sign up for my advanced certificate program, the hands-on classes are included. That is all I have for you today. And again, I want to thank the American acupuncture council. For this opportunity to present and give you an overview of bringing facial acupuncture into your practice.