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Preventing and Treating Alzheimer’s Disease Naturally

to speak to everybody today and to give them information related to my latest book, Natural Eye, Natural Brain Support – Your Guide to Preventing and Treating Alzheimer’s and Dementia and Other Related Diseases.

Click here to download the transcript.

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

Hello there. Good afternoon. My name is Michael Edson. I am a licensed acupuncturist practicing over 20 years in presence of natural eyecare. And you see the website, naturaleyecare.com. I like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to speak to everybody today and to give them information related to my latest book, Natural Eye, Natural Brain Support – Your Guide to Preventing and Treating Alzheimer’s and Dementia and Other Related Diseases.

I am a filling in for Virginia Duran today. And I’m excited to speak with you. The book. Is was the reason I wrote the book for a number of reasons. One, because I have had relatives with Alzheimer’s who are passed away from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. And one of the main book from natural eye care that Dr.

Grossman and I co-wrote he’s my partner is natural. I K you got to healthy vision in here. That book is an 800 page book and goes into how to treat eye disease naturally. And while doing a lot of the research for the book, what was really amazing to me was that the nutrients that actually support the retina and the rest of the eyes and the optic nerve when I was doing, looking at the research I kept on coming with.

Additional research related to the fact that they, these nutrients, of course, the blood brain barrier. And we’ll talk more about the blood brain barrier shortly, but it went to the brain and the brain uses these nutrients to keep the brain healthy. And the critical for preventing Alzheimer’s preventing dementia reducing brain fog and just keeping a healthy cognitive.

So I started collecting all that research and gathering it. I’m sorry. I have to find my pen here. Okay. And gathering it and accumulated over 3,200 peer reviewed research references related to how to keep the brain healthy and in the book. And we’ll go into more detail. I cover over four 50 nutrient.

And those nutrients, it gets complicated because a lot of nutrients have many different functions within the brain. So there’s a chart with over 19 19 categories of what different ways that these nutrients can help the brain. And I have an X mark in each category for each nutrient, and we’re going to go into many essential nutrients during this conversation.

Okay. I think we can start with. All right. So that is the name of the book. You’ll see. That is fruit and vegetables during critical to keeping healthy. Okay.

All right. The brain is really an amazing organ. It’s the most physiological active part of the body. As you can see it only 2% of the body rate represents 25% of the nutrients. With a hundred billion brain cells and sinaps seven to 10 synopsis per second. And we’ll talk about what a synopses in tobacco with seven to 10,000 cells a second.

We’re talking about trillions of interactions per second, and it’s really, if you think about that, how is this even possible? So there’s a lot of chemical activities that go on between neurotransmitters and hormones and. Interactions between the brain cells. But the only way that I can think of, and this is theoretical is that it’s some form of light.

Cause that’s the only thing that could travel that quickly, that can do so many transactions. And so that leads me to we’ll talk about chill all the time. So maybe that is what also what she is, and that travels that quickly in the body to help promote these types of choices or transactions that go on in.

Which is quite remarkable. And I talked about the eyes and the relationship to the eyes and the brain, the optic nerve is actually brain tissue. So it makes sense that what affects the optic nerve affects the brain. What affects the brain affects the optic nerve. The retina was created in the womb and the womb from from brain cell from brain cells.

So this correlation between. Healthy efficient and healthy brain function is very strong. As a matter of fact, from an eye exam that can often seen, they can also see early signs of Alzheimer’s, which is the beta amyloid buildup in the retina before it’s ever diagnosed as Alzheimer’s not withstanding multiple sclerosis, hypertension, diabetes, and many other conditions.

Appear on the retina often before, before it becomes obvious that it’s a health condition

it’s Alzheimer’s disease epidemic. And particularly related to the fact that people live in LA. And it’s for the most part nature related disease. In my opinion, there is a genetic aspect that we’ll talk about for sure that usually appears more people who are maybe 40, 60 years old. But the reason that these types of diseases are happening as they get older is the underlying causes of what can cause or contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.

Now, withstanding poor circulation. Inflammatory conditions, auto immune conditions, poor digestion. We don’t produce it many times in our system to break down the food. People become more sedentary. Maybe the emotional balance is not, they’re not, don’t feel as engaged in society. All these things play a part in both vision and brain health.

As you see that of 6 million people today. And it’s growing dramatically every year. It’s really an epidemic. Okay.

It’s a multi, multi neuro neurodegenerative disease, which means that there’s many parts that take place that cause dementia and Alzheimer’s and other types of improv, consents, and other types of brain illnesses. And it really needs to be looked at that. Because you can’t, it’s not a single issue problem, even though beta amyloid builds up in the brain and you also have something called tap protein in February and fibers that cause brain damage.

Why is that happening? And in order to really deal with Alzheimer’s and dementia and prevention, you have to look at the underlying visas, why that’s happening. And I mentioned a few here. Let me mention a few before, which is chronic inflammation. Blood-brain barrier, compromised blood brain barrier is what prevents unwanted materials from reaching the brain.

And that would include pathogens and metals and other types of materials that you don’t want to get to the brain. And when that gets compromised, then materials are getting to the brain that are causing brain damage as well. I mentioned nor epinephrin here, cause it’s one of those.

Hormones, essential hormones that acts as a neurotransmitter, the brain neuro-transmitters what passes information from brain cell to brain cell. And so neuro-transmitters are really critical. We’re going to go into more of that and it did mention that bit amyloid, neurofibrillary, tangles. HyperCat protein.

I was, what’s seen in the brain through MRIs when they see Alzheimer’s disease cow protein in a normal balance helps keep the micro structures of the cells to have that gets effected than the self structure start. The weekend. Beta amyloid in normal amounts is very important for motor transmission and brain function.

But when it builds. It starts damaging brain cells, also affecting mitochondrial function. And I know all of, what mitochondria is, it’s the energy cell of the body. It’s the battery of ourselves that keep the battery at the end of the cells functioning and energized. So my mitochondrial function, I was supposed to be looked at by.

And in the book I go into the nutrients that support the mitochondria support, the blood brain barrier, reduce inflammation also help reduce beta amyloid plaque and hyper phosphorylated tau protein and neural or tangles. These can be done through diet and exercise. The 40, the 3,200 plus studies in the book that are all in the, and the neuro neurological Magazines.

And then the research is in there. So it’s not, it’s medically proven, but it’s not really followed by the medical community.

Let’s start with diet and lifestyle. Cause obviously these are really critical. Eating a healthy diet is essential. What is a healthy diet? What like what the best diets having. Is to have lots of fruits and vegetables. Green leafy vegetables are really great. It’s very low in refined carbohydrates.

Obviously you’re avoiding fried foods and unhealthy oils, and we’re going to go into the fried foods and what not the foods to avoid. So you want to keep a low carbohydrate diet particularly all the white foods. What do you have? White rice, white pasta, white bread all the refined carbohydrates.

You want to keep a low sugar diet? Stevia is a good alternative if you want to sweeten something up. So there are different diets. The Mediterranean diet is good. The south street diet is good, but again, the common thing is a low refined, very low refined carbohydrates sugars. And. Some people like meat, I say eating meat, it should be as best as possible grass fed organic needs.

And and then foods to avoid avoid diabetes is, is an epidemic in society. And I think the numbers are up to 70% of people that have diabetes or have. So high sugar is one of the really severe detriments to, to the brain. What happens when we have excess sugar in the diet, the brain actually produces along with the pancreas its own insulin.

That’s how important insulin is to energy production within the brain. So when this excess sugar, that means the brain has to produce more insulin to break down the show. Insulin also keeps beta amyloid in check. So if you’re not having the insulin available to keep the in check it’s one of the reasons beta amyloid can increase and stop causing brain damage.

Insulin is also critical for other functions of the brain related to cognitive function. So avoid all sugary drinks, even juices to limit a very high in sugar aspartame and artificial sweeteners. They’re toxic to the brain. They produce as pertain produces a Spotify acid and methanol, which is toxic to brain cells.

And And it causes also hyperactivity in the brain. So you want to avoid those at all costs. Again, Stevie is a good alternative avoid generally foods that are in aluminum cans. Okay. So cause aluminum producers aldehydes and aldehydes prevent the breakdown or. Cause increases in production of protein in the brain.

And that is that would, could include amyloid plaque and tau protein and diminishes the body. The protein analysis is the body’s the brain’s ability to break down protein. It restricts the body’s ability to do that. Keep meat down to a minimum. The studies have been clear that diets, high meat.

The likelihood of the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. So meats are not withstanding, but with the hormones and the pesticides that are added and void fry foods. So five foods cause damage to the brain toxic to the brain and they also they. They increase ROS reactive oxygen species, which is a very aggressive form of free radicals that put down healthy cells.

So we all know that free radicals have a, have an extra electron at the end, and they will Quip that electron from a healthy cell causing it to be unhealthy and die. And that’s why the antioxidant is just because the antioxidants provide the extra electron to neutralize the free radicals. And we’re going to go into antioxidants and essential nutrients such as gludethyon which is a master antioxidant.

This is one of the few along with superoxide dismutase that can neutralize the full spectrum of free radicals in the body. And it’s the, actually the antioxidant. And the greatest quantity in the brain and the studies have shown that people with Alzheimer’s are significantly deficient include a thigh on the brain.

So you wonder why the doctors are telling people to minimally supplement with glutathione, but that’s only one of the many ones that are deficient, while I’m on the topic. The other ones that are deficient B complex is between. Vitamin T3. Some of the minerals such as magnesium, selenium sink these are all critical and when deficient, they can cause a brain damage because the free, radical, the cause of the free radical activity.

But also what’s really fascinating is that deficiency in somebody in these nutrients can actually mimic Alzheimer’s dementia. So in fact, for people that are that have a diminishment of. They may look like the habit and they may be being treated for it by the doctors for Alzheimer’s.

But yet, if the efficiency is just because of the nutrient deficiency, that could be the underlying cause. And not that they actually have dementia Alzheimer’s exercise cuts across all. I mentioned 19 categories. I mentioned that I have in the book, it cuts across all 19 categories. By the way curcumin does as well.

Ashwagandha’s really good. They basically a thigh on these do cut of course, most, if not all the categories of what they help to help with the brain stress. We live in a society, highest stress. We know it. And I was looking at a study this morning that said 3.2% of people in the United States are suffering with PTSD.

And that could be the trauma that can be due to the chronic stress associated work relationships, money, and stress can actually reduce the size of parts of the brain, including the Mignola, which among many other things, processes our emotional memory. Stress is important to keep that under control meditation, yoga, Qigong.

These are all taking regular walks in the words. These are all really important breathing. Remember to breathe. When we get stressed out, when we get upset, we stopped breathing. Stop, take some nice long breasts, calm down, get everything going again. Emotional balance. We know that the five elements of Chinese medicine, wood fire, earth, metal, and water.

That keeping emotions in balance are really important. Being angry and stressful cake is excess cortisol production in the brain and cortisol and causes excess hyper excitability. And that can actually be as a point of cortisone is for neurotransmission can cause destruction in brain cells as well when it’s, when there’s too much in the brain.

The colon archaic system is essential for brain functioning. And for neurotransmission is the communication between cell, the cell the brain cells a set of colon. I mentioned because that’s one of the critical, among many actually born into critical neuro-transmitters in the. Coleen is one of the underlying precursors, the acetylcholine.

And what’s interesting about set of Coleen is that’s one of the main treatments that the drugs try and address is the imbalance of a set of calling through a set of colon. Esterase so set of colon esterase and shed a calling, keep each other in balance. So what the does. Is it helps reduce acetylcholine, acetylcholine esterase to try and keep the set of calling up.

But the drugs don’t work. My, my relatives got the drugs. They just continually get worse because they’re not looking at the wider picture of what the underlying causes of the imbalances are and addressing the underlying causes which can be again, stomach them inflammation chronic stress.

Metal exposure to environmental exposures. The inability to interference with neurogenesis is the body’s ability to produce new brain cells. And we can do that up until the 1990s. I didn’t think that they thought that the brain cells that we were born with were the ones that we would die with.

The brain produces to produce new brain cells all through life until we die. And then a lot of nutrients, including ashwagandha and many others actually promote neurogenesis, new brain cells epigenetic. Epigenetics underlying is the thought that again, they thought that genetics, the way we were born, not only was the way we looked, but we were controlled the diseases we got later on, but, and they thanked the fact that epigenetics is environmentally also causes cells to turn on.

So that how well we were nurtured us children and fed and how well we take care of ourselves through our lives, actually prevent, can prevent not all time, but many of the times, certain cell genes that we don’t want turned on or turned on. mentioned some of the food sources for Coleen. The book talks about food source for different antioxidants as well.

I mentioned the culinary system is related to Alzheimer’s practices, hunting. And many other psychiatric disorders as well.

We did talk about mitochondria as being critical, to relate to all these diseases I missed. I looked this year and when beta amyloid builds up as associated with Alzheimer’s, it actually can create this function within mitochondria and quiz, a cycle effect. So the more mitochondrial dysfunction, the less energy is available for the cells to function properly in a more self-study.

As well as oxidative stress, we talked about the free radicals that need to be neutralized with with antioxidants essential antioxidants. I mentioned some of the nutrients in here that support mitochondria alpha-lipoic acid cocuten some of the B vitamins resveratrol, and this is all in the book, Shandra.

Magnesium by the way is also very important for managing and breaking down a beta amyloid plaque. So create division beta amyloid plaque. That’s another reason why you can get an increase in bid on what plaque as well. So I’m really talking about a whole body Prototron health story. That’s a whole body approach act function for doing that for 3000 years.

And in order to deal with Alzheimer’s and prevention, you have to take a step back, who is this person related to this disease and what are the underlying causes of it that may be related to that. And then dealing with that, because the drugs I mentioned Donepezil and another one Mateen which has to do with reducing GABA.

So that That it helps balance out the corner metric system and GABA can be increased through foods as well. So again, whole body approach, the body’s meant to be meant to heal is trying to heal. What can we do to help that along?

I mentioned the blood brain barrier critical it’s mentioned things here that, that caused a breakdown in the blood brain barrier. Astrocytes. Cells in the body that are cells in the brain in relative high amounts, the part of the glial system and the critical also for keeping the blood brain barrier healthier.

I mentioned aspartame and artificial sweetness. They also break down astrocytes it also prevents the excess glucose from reaching the. Some, I mentioned the vitamin, a vitamin C that help keep the blood-brain barrier already healthy. A B6 B12 baseline is in robot, obviously in resveratrol.

We already talked about this and we talk about a number of the nutrients. There’s quite a few of them that can help keep everything in balance. We talk about yin and yang. And part of it is really keeping everything in balance in the body. And a way to do that is through food diet, exercise, Chinese medicine, even I bet a medicine yolk, which Yukon gut-brain connection, very powerful. The gut represents 70% of our immune system. There’s a very strong connection in your gut, in the brain to the gut and actually produces on neurotransmitters and hormones. And communicates with the brain all the time through the Vegas nerve. It’s a big problem within society that there are gut imbalances that can lead to candidiasis and leaky gut syndrome.

And these can be caused tremendous inflammation can also cause a breakdown in the blood brain barrier and neurogenesis the diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s so walking causes. My microbiome microbiota break down, excess sugar, poor diet, excess dressed emotional balances medications obviously excess use of antibiotics.

So we really need to focus on that. If there’s a whole community of doctors right now called functional medicine doctors, that really start with the gut as being the basis of where disease starts from gut imbalances. Okay.

Central nutrients are making these already. That tend to be deficient. I also add here cookie 10, taurine, DHA. These all are critical for brain functioning for Alzheimer’s dementia and other, and Parkinson’s as well.

Chinese medicine practitioners out there pretty much. I understand that’s what the organization is. So the kidney Meridian overrules the the, our hormone production and endocrine system. So the home, we have a lot of hormones that reach the brain that are in the brain and act as essential.

Neuro-transmitters among. Function. So that’s willing to look at the hot Meridian. Obviously we know it has to do with spirit and Chen and all circulation, but also long-term memory. The spleen Meridian has to do with short-term memory, as well as analysis and concentration, the dual Meridian overalls, all neurological activity.

So we’re obviously looking at older meridians, but these are the four key ones. I just mentioned a couple of PA patent formulas, but there are many more out there. The Buena Juan brain tonic, or the GN now on oh, good ones to look at. But when you do your intake, we’ll figure out where you want to go with with which herbal formulas might be most helpful for your patients.

It’s different complimentary medicines. I didn’t talk much about essential oils, but they play a big role. In terms of helping support concentration reducing common symptoms of dementia and Alzheimer’s is poor sleep, anxiety, poor social skills pound community paranoia poor concentration, poor ability to make decisions, analytical functioning.

So essential. Either applied directly or in an ad, Mr. Fire can do a long way and really balancing out those imbalances associated with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

So stem cell research is still in progress. We don’t, I think it’s got a ways to go. If this account, my contact information, you can order the book from natural eye care.com, even from Amazon. If you want to reach me, have any questions, I’m here to answer those. You have my email address as well as my phone number.

And I thank everybody for the patients to listen to my rapid discussion today. But there’s a lot of material to cover. I want to give you a sense that we can do a lot to help people and the doctors are not doing it

and also join us next week. Bring that back up again for on Friday. Yair Maimon will be here giving a presentation as well. Thank you so much.

Acupuncture in the Treatment of Cognitive Impairment Outstanding Evidence in Cancer Patients

So today we’ll talk about a very interesting topic, which is the TCM ability to treat Cognition in Cancer.

Click here to download the transcript. Click here to download the slides.

Hello, everybody. Good to see you. I don’t see you, I always feel that I talked to people and first of all, I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council to putting up this show and providing this information. So today we’ll talk about a very interesting topic, which is the TCM ability to treat Cognition in Cancer.

So let’s start with the slideshow and it’s quite an eutopic and in the same time, it’s all topic. I would like to follow more the research, but also to speak about the TCM diagnosis of cognition and the specialty of cognition of treating cancer patient because cancer related cognitive impairment is.

Quite as specific topic, which is relate most to the cancer and very much of the different treatments starting from chemotherapy. Everyone now knows the chemo brain which people sometimes suffer for years or definitely months, the difficulty in concentrating differently in doing the cognitive things that they were able to do before they would feel.

Head is foggy. No, he’s like foggy and they find it really difficult to do the tasks that they were able to do before, even just read newspaper or to do mathematics, et cetera. So it’s a, quite the debilitating aspects of cancer and cancer care and cancer related cognitive impairment is huge topic in breast cancer.

Three out of four survivors was suffering for some degree. Of cognitive impairment. So we’re talking about quite a large numbers of cancer patients. So especially chemotherapy is the one that is effecting the cognition. And I would like to start with a recent research. Or a few research that has been coming up on that topic.

And I must say from an Chinese medicine point of view, cognition is very specific. It relates added to deficiencies, and we’ll talk about spleen and kidney deficiency, spleen more for the short term and kidney more for the longterm, but there is other, also other deficiencies like blood or cheat and chemotherapy can create this deficient.

There’s also access and access will usually relates to dampness and phlegm, but a lot of time to toxins. And that means that many of the drugs that are using captains are more related to the toxins part and they’re causing this kind of problems in cognition. So there are some more type of access. And the last things is more to consider the heart, the Shen and.

And I’ll come to this topic of the diagnosis and treatment. When we look at the research. So this is a research that looked at the effect of acupuncture in treating cognitive impairment in cancer patients. And what is interesting about this research? They actually monitored the effect of the research through some questionnaires about also BDNF, the Saron brain derived.

No Tropic factor. And so they evaluated both the cognition as you do, like in different tests, but they also look at biomarkers in the ceremony, this patient to see if there is a difference. So this study and gain, there were like 39 and 36 people in the real group and the treatment. And they look evaluated the difference between the two groups.

This is the point the use. And here we are coming back to the diagnosis. Some studies, especially research, we’ll go deeper into the Chinese medicine diagnosis and some research is more like symptomatic. I’ve I have a lot of interest in cancer care both in treating cancer, patient producing research.

Really teaching worldwide acupuncture and especially oncology acupuncture help in then I’ll talk a little bit more about teaching. So if you look at this research, what they, if you look at it poisoned, they choose. So they choose do 20. So this is more related to the. The city St. John, this is four points around two 20, so also relates to the Shen, relates to the mind, do 24 chanting.

This one, especially relate to the Shen, but also other points to strengthen the cheeky, like stomach that is six, the strengths and the kidney three, kidney four and gallbladder 39. Interesting point because it works on their domain, but more on them. Because it’s the viewpoint for marrow. So you sees a kind of interestingly designed combination that treats all the different facets and aspects of.

Cognitive impairment in patients. We are more focusing on the cancer patient that obviously some of these ideas are relevant to other people who have cognitive impairment. So in this research, they did the whole battery of questions, and this is like the different questions to. The cognition of the patients and they check the BDNF in the serum of this patients perceive the difference between the real droop grid group and the control group of this cancer patient BDNF by itself is very interesting factor because it’s it is secreted by the narrows and it is a significant component in the synaptic pluses.

So it’s secreted, eh, primarily in the brain, but also in other areas. And it’s been very, a recognized biomarker to show cognition and the higher the numbers. The more you can find in this. The better the condition is, and the whole idea of checking biomarkers, I’ll discuss also, it’s very interesting to monitor the effect of acupuncture.

And this is just to do as BDNF. It’s been evaluated in the huge range. Disease from depression, outsider, Parkinson, and think tone disease. And again, as they say, the higher, the BDNF level, it shows the better cognitive function, even in also bipolar disorders and others. So there’s a lot of reference to the relationship of the BDNF levels in the serum.

And. So in this study, they had this two groups, the control and the real group, and this were the results. Very interesting and promising cause they look both on the questionnaires and they show that they could commit cognitive functions were ameliorated in the acupuncture. They also showed that the serum BDNF level was elevated.

And if you compare it before and after treatment, and there was a very strong correlation between both. So people who scored more on the test also had a higher BDNF level. So you can see, again, the relationship between somebody is scoring well on tests and the BDNF. And this was compared to the control group.

The 10, no. Before treatment and after if you compare it to the acupuncture group. So the conclusion was that acupuncture is effective therapy in the treatment of cancer related cognitive impairment. And this was in breast cancer patient. And the mechanism may be related to this release of BDNF for activating neurons in the brain.

I was quite surprised to see more and more studies related. Yes, acupuncture studies related to biomarkers. And here’s specifically when we talk about cognition related to BDNF, this is like a hard core, very promising evidence. It’s not subjective, it’s not objective biomarker that you can also monitor it later on after even few months or a year.

Here is another study that was done with a bigger, eh, number of participants, 160 participants. It wasn’t just not just focused on cognition, but also on sleep problems. And it was a comparison between the insomnia comparison between as psychological intervention. And acupuncture and randomized trials.

So very good trial and again, published in cancer. And again, there was acupuncture was significantly increasing the BDNF level and had a positive effect on cognition. Recently, there’s going a big trial. Then you can see the clinical trial. Golf a registry on the effect of acupuncture and cancer related cognitive difficulties.

And so I believe in few years we will see a larger tries and focusing on different aspects, both biomarkers and other aspects to show the effect. And it’s a very promising effect of acupuncture on this very serious condition. And it goes far more than effecting cancer patient. It also talks to. People who have other disease, like Alzheimer’s et cetera, that have a commissioning permit and that is study.

And I’m just going through the studies, not just to talk about this topic, but to show also where research is going. And and I think this is what will happen in the next few years. We’ll see more and more stuff. On specific topics and at the studies will be very rounded with checking different aspects, including different biomarkers.

They chose the efficacy of acupuncture and also the sustainable efficacy from some studies, biomarkers I’ve been following followed for few months, half year and sometimes longer. And there’s a difference between groups not in cognitive and other studies in. This is a very small study to real pilot study of gynecological cancer survivors that demonstrated a lower neurocognitive performance and lower structure.

Also a connective compared to healthy controls. The reason I’m showing this study is just really to give the idea of where the breakthrough new acupuncture research is going. So this was a pilot study, but they look at more aspects, both on biomarkers. They looked at what people like different questionnaires, so like a subjective subjective objective measurement, but also even the structure in the brain.

So in this respect, it’s a kind of very innovative study because they also look at the structure itself. If acupuncture can affect this. The led the occupant trees use different points, as you can see, all of them are in the head. In my opinion as an acupuncturist, we are missing the diagnose, the part, we don’t look anymore in the efficiency’s access.

We don’t look at the, do my, we don’t look at the way acupuncture can affect the marrow, the brain. We’re more looking at the points that potentially can increase cognition or brain function, but still the points are selected that are known. So again, we have cecinct and

like the four points around do 20 we have in tongue and young points on the head. We have a gallbladder eight, so we have gallbladder points too, that can have an effect and can increase. How would they like what to just go bloody nine personally? But gallbladder 15 gallbladder, 20 blood AGV, 20 stomach eight.

So they let the acupuncturist choose a point. According to their preferences, to the patient. As a it’s a pilot study, that’s very few people in each group. They did it twice a week for 30 days. And they followed that they did from four to six kind of cycles of treatments and then seconds per patient, 10 sessions per patients.

So as I said, very small group, eventually three in each group. So it’s a pilot of pilot, but the results are interesting because they also look at three different li. Parts of checking the difference in the patients between the treated one and the control group. So they look at the, again, neurocognitive tests and they look at the multimodal MRIs.

So it was more in MRI checking there, especially changes in the structure of the brain and they look here at the different BioMarin then. And they, the NAA, which is a game then kind of neural marker that have a correlation to a neuron density neuron function. And it’s a lot of the markers that can be checked also for cognition.

And when they looked alone in this very pilot study, they said that there is a different in the intimate, micro, structural, white matter in the brain. It was lower than in the healthy control group. When they look at the NAA, the, again, it’s specifically the left hyper Calamus. We won’t go into areas in the brain.

They compare and see that there is a again, results in difference between. Healthy controls. He was the controls were healthy to the cancer patients. This is what they’re looking at, the micro structure and really the reason I brought this very pilot studies to show that they’re trying to compare.

Acupuncture and the effect of acupuncture in disrespect on cancer patients compared to the healthy patient, also assessing cognitive function and looking at structural of the white matter in the brain and to look at different kinds of biomarkers and property. It was the NAA before the BDNF. So this is a very interesting way to assess acupuncture and I believe we will see more and more.

Future studies that have different aspects of checking the efficacy of acupuncture and. And I think this will be a great breakthrough, especially for the skeptics, because if you affect biomarkers or if you affect structure, it tends to an impact which is much greater than any subjective effect.

And especially in areas where Western medicine is very little to offer. For cognitive factors, There’s merely nothing that Western medicine can offer. So it’s, I’ve seen really by now hundreds of constipation, and I know the effect and sometime the effect is almost immediate. People will come up after our acupuncture treatment, constipation was saying, oh my head is not fogging anymore.

I can concentrate. I can read. I came from the treatment and I started reading books, which I’ve read for the last few months. So it’s also very fulfilling for us as an acupuncturist. And I think research especially this type of kind of innovative research will be very Supportive and will strengthen the effect of sending people for acupuncture, especially cancer patients.

As I say before, I’ve been heavily involved over the last years in both treating cancer patients, doing a lot of research publishing more in herbal medicine but also teaching oncology acupuncture Luckily through the zoom I can sell around the world. It was also before, but I have to travel more.

Now we have really people from four continent graduating from this course and having a lot of huge international companies. More than 500 people who can just share their experience. And as we know for cancer, there’s no borders. And also for acupuncture and teaching, there is no bones. If you’ll be interested in the program like this, you’re welcome to check it out.

And and I hope any way that you will find this information in ideas, very useful, as I say, because they’re go beyond just treating constipation, but any other patient.

I would like to thank you very much for watching this show. I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for putting up this show. Next week there is a Sam Collins, so we are welcomed to watch it, and I wish you all the best of health and healing. Thank you very much

Astrology as a Branch of Chinese Medicine

I don’t know if you knew this as a practitioner, that astrology is a branch of Chinese medicine. Oftentimes we think about Chinese medicine as just being acupuncture…

Click here to download the transcript. Click here to learn your Chinese Zodiac!

Hello and welcome. My name is Tsao-Lin Moy. I am a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist with a brick and mortar office in Union Square in New York city. I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for putting these Facebook lives on for your education and for your. Today we will be talking about astrology as a form of Chinese medicine and I hope you’re going to find it very interesting.

I find it very interesting and it’s a great way to talk about Chinese medicine that people also get very interested in. And okay. So we’re going to go to the first spot. I don’t know if you knew this as a practitioner, that astrology is a branch of Chinese medicine. Oftentimes we think about Chinese medicine as just being acupuncture, herbs TuiNa or bodywork.

Food lifestyles, some cheat gong, meditation but also something like functions way is also the art and science of placement. And we look at cosmology. And so here we have a quote, heaven is covered with constellations earth, with waterways and man with channels. And this comes from the yellow emperors classic, the Suez nudging.

And we know that was somewhere 300. BC or older. And so please if you are interested in this, definitely make comments, ask some questions. Okay. And next, okay. So let’s do a movement of cheap. So for over 3000 years, the Chinese Zodiac calendar has been used to predict the future to influence businesses, marriages, wage wars.

Predict how good the crops were the health and the prosperity and the ancient times, right? Even older than probably 3000 years. And still today, it is a very popular looking at astrology, looking at the celestial movements. And this is because they offer insight. And another view of these forces from heaven, from.

Outside of the earth outside of us. And that actually influence us as we’re going through life. And w as a full moon can actually change the levels of the seas and also bring out intense emotions and transformation. We even have a full moon. There’s certain flowers that bloom only in the full moon.

So you also may know when this is going on, you might not feel like yourself. Sometimes I call this like werewolf people feel that way aggressive and Anxious. And we can forget also mercury retrograde, which is something that we’re actually in right now where it creates a lot of chaos with communication.

So if you’ve been finding, I don’t know, your Instagram got hacked like myself or a messages aren’t getting through, or all kinds of interruptions of this is in part to mercury in retrograde, at least that makes you feel better that, it’s going to pass. So it is the stars above us govern our conditions, this quote from Shakespeare from king Lear and we’re looking at the 16th century.

So even then in the west, there was this association of what is going on in the stars that is actually affecting us.

And this is actually a small video that has a chose moving. It might not be moving here. But it’s actually, as the earth is turning, we’re looking also outside in the cosmos Things are shifting all the time. And we love to look to the stars for all different kinds of answers. And, we’ve got the Hubble, we’ve got all of these huge telescopes looking for life on other planets.

And of course we are continuously moving through space as a galaxy.

There we go. Awesome. This is where we’re looking at a strong enemy versus astrology. So the definition of astronomy is the scientific learning of planets and other celestial objects to study their origins, interrelationships and future movements. Who knows why we’re doing, but why we want to know all this information, if it’s not going to affect us.

Astrology is also the astrology. Different is considered a pseudoscience that’s in the west, and that uses the scientific movement of the planets and stars to divine, meaning and significance in people’s lives. And the question that I have is does this mean that natural science. Has little meaning or significance in our life?

I don’t think so. I think we, we already know that we have issues with climate change. We’re concerned about solar flares what that is going to do for us and how that is going to affect us. We can say that it’s, I don’t think it’s superstition. I think that’s actually really called scientific.

And it affects us.

So a little bit about the Chinese. Okay. Great. So this is an intro. You might know some of this the Chinese Zodiac is part of Chinese medicine is composed of 12 animals, Zodiacs that are paired with one of five elements. That’s the earth metal water, fire, and wood. And these, we know in Chinese medicine as the five elements, as we’re looking at in terms of diagnostics, The 12 Zodiac animals, the rat, the ox, the tiger, which we’re in, we’re going into the tiger rabbit.

In some other Asian cultures might be considered a cat, the dragon, the snake, the horse, the sheep slash goat monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. So the Chinese Zodiac is based on a lunar calendar. Each lunar year, we’ll also have an elemental cycle that rotates. So the 12 year cycle actually follows Jupiter’s orbit around the sun, which takes about 11.8 years.

And this is why we’re always moving when the new year is. And this difference differs from the Western astrology, which follows a approximately four weeks. 4.2 week cycle. And most people, when they think of astrology or Zodiacs, they’re really thinking about, things like a Libra or a Scorpio or a Capricorn.

So there are also fixed elements in the five elements that are associated with the Zodiac sign and those represent in terms of meaning young character. And as we know in Chinese medicine or it’s really, or. Looking at the balance of union young, we always look for that dynamic force and how that plays out in terms of character and personality traits.

In addition, each year is going to have an element, one of the five elements that changes, therefore the year has a Zodiac sign and an elemental site. And there are 12 five cycles of 12, which means you go through 60 years before you returned back to the original Zodiac and elemental. Now Zodiac signs are an indication of the planetary energies you were born under, but not only born under, but also we’re influencing your development in the womb, right?

Because you’re floating in water. And this is considered that prenatal G not just what you were getting from your parents, but also as you were developing, there were actually a cosmic forces at play.

Okay. So this year is the lunar year also known as coming up as the spring fence festival in Chinese medicine. Over 2 billion people actually celebrate Chinese new year or this spring festival. And that’s 25% of the world population. Now the new year is going to be starting on February 1st. And for those that are born after February 1st, it will be the year of the tiger and the element is going to be.

So here are the two parts make up the Zodiac need to be, they need to find harmony and balance and understanding the nature that these forces help will help you navigate. For a prosperous new year. There will be, the year of this year is the year of the water tiger. So the water element will have a powerful influence on all of the Zodiacs and also then the year of the tiger characteristics.

Okay. Health and wellness and abundance and the tiger year. So here, we’re going to look at first the water element because of that is going to be in, in my opinion. And what I’m sensing also is that the water is going to have a huge impact more so than previous years. It is the element of. And the water properties allow it to be solid liquid and gas, meaning that it can transform, adapt and move.

It is a powerful force that can also be very destructive. As we’ve seen with floods and tidal waves. But it is also necessary for life. 71% of the earth surface is covered by water and the human body is over 60% water. So water is actually part of our physical and biological makeup. And water also, as it’s representing the yin, the dark, the cool and the feminine, the stillness water element in Chinese medicine is also related to the bladder and kidney.

In Oregon’s and meridians, I’m going to put like more Meridian, Oregon for the new year. The theme be like water, go with the flow. Don’t fight against the current because they can drain your energy and life force. Excuse me. And in this case, we’re talking about the GI and referring to the kidney essence.

And in Chinese medicine, draining that kidney essence, the DJing is really akin to the adrenals and those that those actually sit on top of the kidneys. So really we got to look at not burning ourselves out.

So the next is the next part of the Zodiac is the tiger Zodiac. And that is young and natures. So here we’ve got yang. The character is very courageous, very bold action-oriented they tigers are independent thinkers and can be very impatient waiting to leap in and to take control of a situation.

They have a straightforward nature and are able to really focus on a goal, very tenaciously once they sink their teeth in and claws, there’s really no turning back. And this will be important to really balance that impetuous nature. And the young energy of the tiger when making big decisions about life and career.

So you need to like, look before you leap into a turbulence. See, now we actually can see in some like a tiger mom, that’s always used a tiger mom. Really will fight for her children, push them for perfection. And on the one hand, That’s really good to, to have that support. And then on the other hand, if it’s too much, then it has a very destructive nature.

And then the tiger Zodiac, as I talked about earlier, has a fixed connection to an element. And that is actually the wood element and that embodies those characteristics of beyond that very strong, upward kind of movement that springtime movement.

So looking at the health forecast for 2022. So if we can look at the Zodiac as a. Ancient personality test, Chinese medicine. And here I’m going to is often met with skepticism and even called something like a pseudoscience, because it includes a lot of practices that might be considered spiritual.

We’re looking at the whole, we’re looking at the entirety of your health and also the forces that may be influencing it beyond what we can see in this more physical realm. As an aside, it’s our job to educate the public on how this can benefit them. And speaking to your patients or anybody who’s really interested this could be a very nice introduction into Chinese medicine.

And we also have to educate ourselves as practitioners to not think of just treating and helping people as a. Again earlier, oh, it’s acupuncture or to just herbs. And to not think that we’re separate from the environment or even the celestial movements that are at play. So we need to really check our own prejudices and superstitions around these practices that are considered outside a monotheistic idea.

And I actually, so this is something I created a quiz. And later on, if you want the transcript of, for this talk, there’s going to be a link to it. You just need to text needle 7 1 4 3 3 2 6 9 2 6. It’ll be later. And I’ll repeat that after too. So if you want to take the quiz that I made, there’s going to be a link to it.

So both young and young are part of the Zodiac and are actually are divided into the yin and yang dominance. So I made the list. The young, the more young, predominantly young signs are the monkey, the tiger, the rat, the horse, the dragon, and the dog. They also have yen in them. The in signs are more rooster rabbit, pig, snake, ox, and go.

Acupuncture chow channels as celestial maps. So earlier in the first slide, there was that quote from the sew-in aging that was talking about, how the channels are there maps on humans and, We didn’t really touch on this. When I was in school, it was glazed over somehow missed the aspect of the the cosmology or the astrology aspect of Chinese medicine.

And so this is, part of what. Mentioning earlier that in our education, there’s all of this idea of like things being separate. And then we have to make those links. The links are already there. So the challenge, the channels, the Meridian channels are actually named according to their degree of yin and yang.

So we go back to yin and young we’re we’re back to the time claw. So as we know, there is the Ty young zone or the meridians called Thai young shall young Ming. And then we’re looking at tie in, shall she weigh in? And all of these terms actually describe phases and positions of the sun.

So we’ve been using these meridians and strategies with maybe not making a connection to, what the larger picture is, the universe picture of actually our health and this is also the clock describes our circadian biology, biological clock that relates to day and night and also seasonal.

So of like how we are in a different seasons, which has to do with the Earth’s orbit around the sun. And so we already know we, we treat preventatively in the summertime for, so that will be strong or it will have really strong lungs in the fall when that is going to be more of the time of the metal element and more susceptible to like cough and cold.

You’ve already been doing it and you didn’t even know it. So here I created a chart that like looks at what the Zodiac sign actually is correlated with the different meridians. So for instance, the tiger is associated with the law and that’s the metal element. And according to the time clock, this is the more yin, even though tiger is set itself is young, but in terms of it gets very confusing, right?

It can be, there’s always the yin and the yang aspect of it. So this chart is going to be available in the transcript. So I’m not going to read through. To read through it, but I think you’ll understand how this is how this works right. As a practitioner. And then you can look into it a little bit.

And then here is the chart of the five elements where we look at the wood, the fire, the earth, the metal and the water. And what is coordinated with the different planets. We’re looking at Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus, and mercury. When you, the points that are considered from the DJing points to the hussy points, they are also known as the antique points.

Those are all really correlated with different planets and planetary movement. This is an extremely in-depth. Study into, astrology the Zodiac and how you might use it with acupuncture points. As we know that some practices they’re going to treat the long at 3:00 AM, or, treating different times during the day or during the night and using certain points that’s not really so convenient in the way that we practice.

But and I don’t know if anybody still practices that way. But that is a thing. Maybe not so much used, but you never know, maybe we need to investigate it. Definitely. Okay. Hopefully you’re gonna be more interested. You can contact me. Maybe you want to do a study group. I find this is becoming more and more fascinating as how it relates to how we practice our medicine.

So here’s the question. Did you really know about these deep connections before? I really. I didn’t know as much as I know now, as I was studying and putting together something for mindbodygreen and writing about astrology and making it digestible. And how does it relate to Chinese medicine that we really need to make those connections?

So I want to learn much more and hopefully you do too.

So here’s a picture of the Milky way. And we are a thousand years ago, or 2000 years ago, the position of our galaxy was not the same. So we are always in a process of shifting and moving. If. One thing that I think about is like with science or astronomy, is the idea that we’re in a fixed point and the we’re looking at the stars from a fixed point.

And that is a really in a way, a very old way of thinking that during the middle ages was that they thought that the earth was at the center and the sun was rotating around. But the fact is that we are also at we’re constantly. In some orbit, a smaller orbit of a greater orbit, and we’re actually moving, moving through the universe.

And so there are so many more, forces at play. The only way we really. Can understand where we are is to look at our environment and observe the different changes that are happening and how does that relate to us? And so we’re always looking for something to be predictable. Which is not so easy, right.

But these ancient practices or really about observing and using them as a way for longevity, promoting health and wellness, and really being connected to more than just what was in front of us, but to our communities. So I hope you enjoyed the presentation and next week we’re going to have Virginia Doran.

She’s going to be hosting another interesting topic for you. And I’d like to thank again, the American acupuncture. If you’re interested in a transcript of this presentation, you just need to text needle. That’s N E D L E two, the number’s 7 1 4 3 3 2 6 9 2 6. And thank you for listening and please make comments and contact, and I hope that you’re going to go and take the quiz and give me some feedback how you liked the quiz.

Microneedling for Acupuncturists

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Click here to download the transcript.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to today’s program. Microneedling for Acupuncturists. My name is Michelle Gellis and I teach cosmetic and facial acupuncture classes internationally. The slides, please.

A little bit about me. I was on faculty for the Maryland university of integrative health from 2003 until very recently. And I travel around the world. Teaching facial and cosmetic acupuncture classes. And I’ve been doing that since around 2005. Here’s a list of some of the classes that I teach. I have a one year.

Facial acupuncture certification class. I teach facial cupping in gloss Shaw. I do a weekend certification class that I teach. I teach drama, rolling skincare, treating neuromuscular facial condition. And self care and some other classes, I don’t need to go through all of them right now, but all of my classes are available online as recorded webinars.

Some of them I do as live webinars. And then I do hands on practice sessions when I’m. I’ve been published in the journal of Chinese medicine several times. And there are links to all of my publications on my website, facial acupuncture, classes.com. So today we’re going to be talking about Micronesia. Y microneedle lane for acupuncturists.

If you’re already doing cosmetic acupuncture, ma why might you want to incorporate microneedling into your practice? What is some of the risks, the benefits, and how does. So Mike we’re noodling is an alternative for a lot of individuals to getting things such as injections for skin conditions like fine lines, acne scars, it helps with some loose skin.

It has been FDA approved. There’ve been studies done for. Acne scars. It can help with large pores. And it’s really wonderful for some of those areas that can’t be addressed or can’t be addressed easily with acupuncture. Like some of those lip lines around the eyes where you would have to use a lot of intradermal needles.

Microneedle lane is great for stretchmarks and it even helps with hair restoration. So some of the benefits to microneedling and in this previous picture, this is a microneedle pen and this is the device that is used to do microphone. There is very little downtime with micro-needling. And so when someone has a microneedling session, I know, years ago, you might’ve seen people had microneedle Lang and their faces were all bloody, but that’s, they have fans.

Through years of research that is not necessary. So the downtime is minimal. There’s very little risk and there is a natural production of collagen. So you don’t inject anything into the skin or take anything out it’s relatively safe, but you do have to get. There it, again, it’s used for stretch marks, acne scars, hair loss, and it’s also really good for neck wrinkles, which can be hard to treat with acupuncture.

And if you just put some numbing cream on the face, and in some instances, people don’t need the need. It can be very comfortable. And the results last a long. What are the two main benefits? The two main benefits are stimulating your body’s own natural production of collagen, and it also helps to increase serum absorption by up to a thousand percent.

So any products that you would use on the. Can be absorbed up to a thousand percent and it’s not just used on the face. Microneedling can be used on many different parts of the body, the chest, the neck, the hands, and you can even use it on stretch marks on the stomach, things of that nature. So how does it work?

Microneedling creates these little micro channels in the surface of this. In the upper layer of the skin. And once those micro wounds or microchannels are created, the body is stimulated to produce collagen and the more college and you have, the more youthful your skin will look, it becomes tighter, firmer, thicker, and less wrinkles.

So here’s a picture of a piece of skin and where we’re going to be working right here. So here’s the epidermis and we have the dermal layer and then the lower layers, the hypodermis and the subcutaneous. Fat, but the place where we doing microneedling is right here in the epidermis. So here is a cross section of the epidermis.

And when you’re microneedling the needles, go through the very top layer, which is a stratum corneum and down right here into this base layer. This is where the fibroblasts or. Produce. So you don’t have to even get into the dermal layer, which means you don’t have to have any bleeding. The skin should just be a little pink and these little micro wounds are created and new collagen fibers, new venous and arterial capillaries are formed and fibrosis.

Or created and create collagen. And this is what it looks like with the microneedling tool. The needles go up and down just like this. And they, for our purposes, they shouldn’t be going in much deeper than about. One millimeter into the skin. I had mentioned that the micro channels are great for absorption of skincare products, CRMs, things of that nature.

Normally, when we have product and we put it on our skin, it can’t be absorbed. But once these temporary micro channels are created the product. I can go down and do the work that they need to do can get through that outer layer of the skin. Here is a biopsy. It’s a cross section of a skin cell. And what they did was they died the collagen.

And so you can see here on the top slide, the college and with purple and then about six weeks after a microneedle in session, they did the same thing and you can see how much more collagen was in the skin.

So again, this is a microneedle pen and if you are familiar, The AccuLift company that is my company. And we’ve just come out in the past six months. We’ve just come out with the microneedle pen and the needles are here. The white cap is on the needles here, but this is the needle cartridge. And the there’s an led readout, which shows you the speed.

And then here you can adjust the. And microneedling only needs to be done once a month. And when we’re working on the face, we go typically between 0.2, five millimeters, and 1.0 millimeters. But this pen will go as deep as 2.5 millimeters, the cartridges. This is what the cartridge looks like. And. There are 16 little microneedle pins in here.

And as I mentioned, they go up and down and when you purchase a microneedle pen, the AccuLift micro pen comes with a four hour training course. Four CEOs that goes over how to use everything, how to do everything, but essentially the microneedle cartridge is used everywhere on the face. You can also use it on the neck and the chest pretty much everywhere, except you wouldn’t want to use it on the red part of your lips or inside the orbital rim and see.

The cartridge itself has three connector points. And so there’s three places where this bayonet cartridge connects inside. And this makes a good firm connection. You don’t have to worry about the cartridge popping off, and it also prevents any black back flow of fluids back into the.

Nano noodling is another type of noodling. And so we’re microneedling. You really can only do once a month. Nano noodling can be done as much as twice a week, sometimes even more. And the noodles are. Only go in about 0.1, five millimeters. So it really just the scrap stratum, corneum the very top layer of the skin, but this is great for areas where you can’t microneedle, or if you just want a little touch up, it’s a wonderful way to get through that stratum corneum so that when you’re using your products, they can get.

And this is what the nano needles look like. It does increase product absorption up to 97%. And these little nano needles are only 110 nanometers long, which is one, 100th of a millimeter. They’re very short. They’re like little cones, but. I have my microneedle pen on my, I have one that I have for my patients and I have one of my bathroom sink and I use it a couple of few times a week and it’s pretty great.

So the nice thing about microneedling is it’s a very quick procedure. So you get your patient on the table between the time they lay down. And the time they leave, if you’re just doing microneedling, you can get them in and out. And a half an hour. I put some body points in to address the underlying conditions and ground my patient.

And normally after four to six sessions, They are good to go and the results can last up to five years. So it is pretty wonderful. But what are the differences between microneedling and cosmetic acupuncture? Because for those of you who know me, I th cosmetic acupuncture and it I’m still doing cosmetic acupuncture very much, but I’m using the micro needle.

The way I do it is one of one of three ways, some people just want the microneedling and that’s fine. For a lot of my cosmetic acupuncture patients, I’ll treat them three times with cosmetic acupuncture and then I’ll do one micro-needling treatment. And for some patients, they may just have an area like their chin or around their lips, or maybe just their forehead where they really need.

My coordinator lane and I’ll do an area. Maybe they just want their hands done or their chest done. And I will charge accordingly for that. And then at the, so I can prep them for that. I can put the facial acupuncture needles everywhere else. And then I end the treatment off with the microneedle Lang and send them on their way.

So let’s look at some. The differences and similarities. So microneedling is very much a skin level issue procedure, and it’s great for fine lines. Acne scars, any depressed scars, you don’t want to use it on a Ray scar. And with the nano needling, you can go inside the orbital rim. It’s great for those lip lines, because normally when you’re doing cosmetic acupuncture, you’re working with lip lines.

You would have to put little intradermal needles in all the lip lines that can be very time consuming and microneedling. You just go right around their lip lips. And sometimes they can have very rapid results where especially with darks. The results can be quite amazing, very quick. And there is some downtime.

I tell my patients 24 hours, no going out in the sun, no exercise. And of course I go through all this and my, where our training. I’ve got a half an hour here, so I’m trying to get as much in, at lightening speed as I can, but there is some downtime. Like 24 hours, no sun, no exercise. You just want to take it easy.

And as I mentioned, the results can last up to five years with cosmetic acupuncture. We’re really getting at the root cause of some of the issues that dark circles, the sagging a lot of different things that are apparent on the face. We’re going to address with body. Cosmetic acupuncture is wonderful for sagging.

It works on the muscle layer and the fascia and the blood and the cheek. So it’s much better for certain things like sagging eyelids that you really can’t do with microneedling the microneedling sessions. I don’t have it on this diagram, but microneedling noodling sessions. You’re going to charge anywhere from.

I’ve seen places charge as little as 2 75 to $300 on up to $600 for a half an hour treatment. It just depends on what your market will bear, where you are. And with cosmetic acupuncture, the results typically take a little longer and it’s going to take a few more treatments, but there’s no downtime and it is less painful.

Both are within our scope of practice and both increase collagen and elastin. Now you do need to check. Your local acupuncture board or with your insurance company, your malpractice insurance, to see if it is within your scope, where you are practicing. There are a lot of contraindications and by all means, this is not a comprehensive course on microneedle Lang, but just.

Give you a little information about that, but patients who are on blood thinners, maybe patients who are going through chemotherapy, radiation, if they have any moderate to severe skin conditions, key lives, if they’re pregnant. So there are contra-indications to microneedling that you need to know what.

And when you’re working with your patients, you have to set up realistic expectations based on a lot of different factors, their lifestyle, their genetics, their skin type, not everyone is going to have the same results. And as I mentioned, they’re going to come in about once a month. Usually sometimes. Quickest three sessions, but usually four to six sessions.

People have a chief of the results that they want. There can be some side effects. Typically the end point is just some pinkness on the skin, but they could have a redness, like a first degree sunburn some pinpoint pleadings and itching burning sensation. So your patients need to know what the side effects might be.

As far as what to look for in a device. There are a lot of devices out there. And as I mentioned, AccuLift skincare is my company and I have been selling. We’ve been selling Dermer wallers for close to 10 years now. And so when I went out looking for a manufacturer for micro-needling devices, I had the same high standards and there are a lot of things you need to look for things like the speed of the device.

And cause you want something that’s a minimum of 14,000 RPMs. You want safety, some sort of anti backflow technology something that works. And with the battery and something that comes with multiple batteries, you want to be able to see the speed. The AccuLift micro pen has this led readout. So you know what speed you’re at?

You want something that has a warranty if there is a problem and also what kind of support are you getting with? Are you getting trained? Does the company provide a referral service once they, once you’ve paid them to train you? Are they going to refer, have a referral service where when people are looking up the device that they will refer to you, does it come with brochures?

Does it come with marketing material? This is all the stuff that’s going to set you up for success. So you’re not just buying. So this is the AccuLift micro pen and it comes with the pen itself, two batteries, a charger five microneedles, five nano needles, a big instruction, booklet cord, just in case you need it.

Because maybe you’re seeing so many patients, you can’t keep those batteries charged. And then some people would just like using a cord It comes with a really nice storage case and down here and then products for your backbar come with it. So three different CRMs for different skin types. And a before and after spray and also a patient take home kit because when your patients leave, they have to be able to take care of their own skin.

So there’s aftercare Sprite for them for that night and then CRMs and lotions for the time following. So I’ve mentioned training and it is really important that you get trained, go on YouTube. You buy a pan, you’re going on YouTube, watching videos and think, okay, I’m good. It is important that you get trained because there are S there’s so much that goes into it.

Everything from setup to safety, to the prep, how do you set the needle speeds? How do you set the needle depths? What techniques are there out there? How do you properly use the pen? Had you cleaned the pen and what do you tell your patient when they leave? You can’t just say, okay, bye. You have to be able to give them some, take home instructions and really understand.

So just the setup alone, this is from my training, but there are a lot of things besides the pen that you would need to have in your. Treatment space. So really understanding what are did you need for setup? And then there were many different techniques that you use different ways that you hold the pen, use the pen and different speeds for different skin types, different conditions, different depths for different speed, for different conditions.

All of this right here is the. Protocol that I teach. And as you can see, it’s a lot of different steps. And really what can your patient expect? I let my patients know that they, their skin is going to be red for up to 12 hours, that they shouldn’t exercise. They need to stay out of the. They shouldn’t be putting makeup on or really even sunscreen because their skin is open.

And when they leave, if they put sunscreen on whatever’s in that sunscreen is going to get absorbed. Now I’m down in Florida. So this is really important that people know, if you live someplace sunny out west, down south, or even if it’s just summer that night until the outer layer of the skin kind of heals.

They can’t be putting sunscreen on their face anyway. There’s some other things that they need to know. And I review all of these in class. I had just enough time to show you a quick little demo. So I’m going to, this is just the four minutes of. Much longer demo that I show in my class, but I wanted you guys to see this.

Whoops, I lost. Hold on one second. Sorry. I lost my thing. Yeah.

So here I am. I’m putting I’ve a makeup remover, wife and some alcohol on taking the numbing cream off and cleaning her skin. Now I’m putting some serum on it’s vitamin C hyaluronic acid and collagen, and I’m setting an appropriate speed for first. And I’m going to start up. I’m just going to start off again.

So I just go up and down. I’ll have to ride a couple passes to get a little pink and then these little dark spots. Yeah. So he was a little. It doesn’t feel great, but it helps to break off the melanin, but your eyebrows just real quick passes on the end there. When you’re working around your eyes, you might want to turn it down to a 0.25, cause this scheme is too thin.

No analyze.

And I actually had this faded up a little bit. You a little bit more,

I’m going to go back on 0.5.

Like that,

I just gone back and forth. And make sure you get,

and afterwards I have a Allo. Arnica CBD spray, which is really cooling and feels wonderful on the skin. And here you can see, so this is a before this, another patient, and since before, and she was a facial patient. I worked on her neck and chest and I put some needles in her face and then she just rested it.

So you can see the, before here’s me during, and then after, I don’t know if you’re able to see on this slide, but she’s just a little pink, which is what you want. Here are some before and after pictures on acne scars and stuff. Fine lines around the eyes. And this is me. These are my eyebrows.

Believe it or not. It’s a funny story. I had been working on my own eyebrows and normally I used to use like eyebrow pencil. I’m 60 years old. And one of the things that happens when you get older is your, you lose the tails on your eyebrows and you can see in my, before. I didn’t have much eyebrows to begin with.

And one day I went to put my eyebrow pencil on and I looked at myself and I thought maybe I had some on from the day before. And I went to wipe it off and I didn’t. And as you can say, I don’t have anything on my eyebrows. It’s it was pretty miraculous. It was shocking actually. In fact, I had to go and get my eyebrows between us cause I started getting so crazy thick.

So as I mentioned for price pricing, you can charge like 3 25 for a half an hour session. I do some packages and it’s just been a really a wonderful add on, especially during the pandemic to my practice. And you can also do, different areas and charge just for that. And when you’re looking at products, there’s a lot of things you want to certainly look for the products that I include with my microneedle pen are organic vegan.

The very easily absorbed. They helped to brighten the skin. They nourish the skin. They won’t clog the pores. They help to reduce inflammation because they have CBD in them. And then I have an aftercare spray that helps protect the skin. And you want something that has really good slip. It’s a term that we use when you’re working with a microneedle.

If you’re interested in the pen itself, you can go to AccuLift skincare.com. You do have to open a wholesale account. It’s free because I do not sell these to the public only to health professionals. And I think that’s all I have time for right now. So this is just a little bit more about the products themselves.

Again. A couple of different serums for different skin types and the aftercare spray. So if you have any questions you can reach out to me either on social media, I’m on Facebook, under my name, Michelle Gellis. I also have a Facebook group called facial acupuncture. And you can go to my website, facial acupuncture, classes.com, and you can look at my classes and there’s links to some free videos and stuff.

And I want to thank the American acupuncture council. Next week is Lorne Brown. And thanks again for your time. And I hope to see all of you again soon. Bye-bye.

Michelle Gellis

The How and Why of Physical Examination for Acupuncturists

So in general, I think the physical examination is essential to all of us, no matter what style of acupuncture we practice, especially if you’re treating any kind of pain or injuries.

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi. Good afternoon. My name is Poney Chiang from neuro-meridian.net. I’m joining you today from Toronto Canada. Uh, welcome to this week’s show for the American Acupuncture Council. Uh, my guest for today is Jamie Chavez. Jaime Chavez has been a licensed acupuncturist in California since 2002, and he received his master’s in traditional Chinese medicine and 5, 4, 5 branches and has participated in internships in Beijing, China. He specialized in the treatment of a work-related injuries. He is currently the head acupuncturist in a prominent bay area. Workers’ compensation connects and works alongside medical doctors, physiotherapists and orthopedic surgeons. Jamie is passionate about the art of physical examination and integrates multidisciplinary approach in the assessment treatment of MSK pathologies. Jamie has been an instructor in several bay area acupuncture schools at both the master’s and doctoral level. It was during this time that he discovered his passion for teaching.

Jamie has had the honor of introducing acupuncture to medical residents who periodically shouted him for clinical rounds. He has been a guest lecture for Stanford physician assistant program, and it has been actively teaching physical examination skills to acupuncturist in hospital settings. Jamie continues to find joy in spreading the word about the effectiveness of acupuncture. Also, you may, in case you haven’t know, um, you don’t know, and you should, you, Jamie is also the admin and founder of the Dow, uh, Facebook group, which is discussion acupuncture, orthopedics. So it having waiting to interview, uh, Jamie for a long time. Now he’s a busy guy, our schedules just never coincided. So I’m very, very, very excited to finally be able to make that happen. And, um, and very much looking forward to this, uh, this interview. Thank you so much for joining us. Jamie,

Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure. Yeah.

So you are, um, the, um, the very passionate about physical examination and, uh, I know, you know, a lot of people don’t do that. And so for those of us that probably need a bit of, um, motivation or, um, what is it that you can tell us in terms of what makes physical examination so important to clinical practice?

So in general, I think the physical examination is essential to all of us, no matter what style of acupuncture we practice, especially if you’re treating any kind of pain or injuries. Um, it’s a way of holding yourself accountable so that you can prove or disprove your own thinking about what you are, you know, thinking is going wrong with patient. So someone comes in with the chief complaint and you gather the data and you think something’s going on, but you have to hold yourself accountable. You have to keep yourself in check and try to, um, eliminate your own bias and, uh, basically try to get better at gaining clinical experience because we’re all researchers in the clinic. And so this is our way to do research. So we want to find things that are reproducible, repeatable, and physical examinations, that bridge, you know, for me.

That’s great. Um, I have heard you talk about, um, uh, I’ve heard that you really enjoy teaching through acronyms and mnemonics and, uh, you know, it was just, we learned by association. So it’s good to have something to kind of associate things with, um, when it comes to, um, physical examinations, is there any, uh, not mnemonics that you think would be helpful for us to, to become more comprehensive in our, um, uh, intakes or in our assessments?

Yes, there’s a ton of them out there. I mean, I’ve, I’ve gathered and tried all these different ones over the years. Um, but none of them really, uh, crossed over and applied directly to an acupuncturist. So, you know, there was, there was missing pieces or the order was not right. So I came up with a mnemonic, um, a horse, uh, H O R S E. And I’ve been sticking with that one ever since. And, um, I can explain a little bit about what each of those letters means. Um, the H is the history of the patient. So that’s, you know, their past history, which is the things they fill out on the initial intake form, but then there’s the present history, which is, you know, regarding their chief complaint, what brought the patient into the clinic to be seen today, let’s get all the data regarding that specific topic.

And then, uh, the, oh, is the, uh, observation. So what do you see from the patient? And that’s now we’re getting into the physical exam skills. So what do you see when you look at the patient? And that usually begins the moment you lays up, you know, they eyes on them when they’re in the waiting room, when you walk them back to the treatment room and then, you know, there’s other, you know, key pieces that you’re going to look for, depending on what they’re coming in to be treated for. But observations really important. I’m very passionate about observation because it’s so fast and you can see so much if you know what you’re looking at. And a lot of times we see things, we just don’t know how to interpret it. So that’s something I’ve been really passionate about over the last couple of years and just really diving deep into it, just diagnosing by looking, um, the are for horses, range of motion, which is essential.

It’s one of the most important things that anybody can start using right away, because it’s so fast and you get so much data from the patient. There’s different types of range of motion. So there’s active range of motion. There’s passive range of motion. There’s resisted range of motion, resisted range of motion could be like your manual muscle tests, right? It’s all in that frame. You know, passive range of motion could be your muscle length tests. You know, there’s many different ways to look at that. And then the S is the special tests. Um, so that’s the orthopedic tests. Some people call those provocative tests because you’re trying to basically tease out where the problem’s coming from. And then the E is explored by palpation. You know, hands-on diagnosing by touching. So each of those, you know, contributes to the horse acronym, and that is the order of operation for me.

So we talked to the patient first, and then when it comes to physical exam, we look at them, we have them go through a movement assessment and that could be active, passive, or resisted, or all of them at the same time, you know, check each one individually and you would want to do it in that order. So active range of motion is first because you want to see how willing the patient is to even move right away. You’re already, you know, gauging where they’re at when you want to do other tests down the road, and then you would do passive next. And then you would do resisted last because resistive could be provocative. It could cause pain in a patient. You always save painful tests for last, because if you cause your patient discomfort, you know, they may say, okay, I don’t want to do this anymore.

Right? Like, let’s stop the exam here. So you’d, and if they’re, if you provoke their pain, you know, it also skews your results for everything else you check, because now that, you know, they feel a little discomfort. Now, everything you check is you don’t know how valid it is. And then for us, you know, we’re acupuncturist. So what are we going to do before we stick a needle? Now we’re going to palpate. So why not do that last? Um, and that in itself, how patient is provocative, it causes pain and patients. So definitely we want to save that towards the end and then go right into our needle. Hm.

Okay. I like that. It’s like from the, from the, uh, assessment, the palpation diagnostics, and it goes transition smoothly into the actual needling component. So it’s, it’s very seamless. Um, I’ve heard of, you mentioned something called the ABCs before. Is that also a type of, uh, assessment or is that something different?

That’s another acronym. So like, you’re mentioning, I love, I love mnemonics and acronyms. Right? Um, what, what you see a lot of, and, you know, I, you know, with social media and things, you kind of get a sense for how well people are able to extract data from their patient. Um, but the ancient horse is the history. And I have an entire course just on how to do, you know, a history. You know, we could talk about that all day, but to keep it really simple, there’s key components that you have to get from your patient when they come in. And there’s tons of acronyms for this. But the one that sticks with me the most is just knowing your alphabet. Cause who doesn’t know their alphabet. Right. That’s like the basics. So it’s, but this part of the alphabet is old. P Q R S T.

If you can remember OPQ Q R S T, you can get all the data very quickly from your patient. So for example, like if you like pony, if you’re on my patient and let’s say you shoulder pain, I would ask you the O, which is, you know, when did this happen? The onset, the O is for onset. When did this happen? And how often do you feel this complaint? Is it 24 hours a day? Or does it come and go if it comes and goes, how long does it hang around before you know, those kinds of things? So that’s the O the P is palliative and provocative palliative means, you know, uh, soothing to the pallet. So something that makes you feel better. So pony, what makes your shoulder feel better? What makes it feel worse? The other part of the P is provocative. Like these are essential questions, because if you tell me it feels worse at night when you’re sleeping, I already know there’s something wrong with your sleeping position.

That needs to be correct. You know, those kinds of things. Can you tell me he feels good, then obviously you’re going to feel good when you leave. When I use infrared heat, moxa, hot pack, you know, we already know what it’s going to help. Um, so the next thing is the quality and the quantity. So, um, you know, the quality of your pain tells us a lot. Is it sharp, dull, achy, burning, throbbing, et cetera. You know, the nature of pain gives us some clues. And then we can go to the quantity, which is like zero to 10. How is your pain right now in this moment that you’re talking to me, you know? And then how is it at its worst in the last 24 hours? How is it at its best then the last 24 hours? So that’s how we could use that pain scale a little more accurately.

And then the RSM LPQ. So O P Q R the R is radiate. Does it radiate anywhere? Is your, is your discomfort localized or does it go to a different area of your body? And this is important not to lead the patient. So if someone comes in with sciatica, I don’t say, does the, does the pain radiate from your back down to the bottom of your foot? Like you wouldn’t ask, you wouldn’t lead the patient, you gotta leave the questions open. Like, does your pink go anywhere else? If so, where and how often, you know, and then T is time, is your symptoms worse during a certain time of the day, morning, afternoon, or night? If you say you keep waking up in pain, I know something’s going on with your sleeping position, or maybe you have some arthritic changes, you know, and they get better as you warm up.

So it already gives you a lot of clues, but what you see as a lot of people don’t gather that data when they present case studies and things, and in the subjective information is key. Like you already have a clue, like a very good clue of what the problem is before you ever laid hands on the patient. If you do that old PQRST. And now when you get into the rest, the physical exam, you’re again, just trying to prove or disprove your hypothesis. So if I tell you, Hey, pony, I think you have a rotator cuff tear, and this is the reason why you have these symptoms, but then you have these data points and, you know, it’s like proving a case to yourself, holding yourself accountable versus like, well, I just heard that pain there means you could have this, you know, like, or I, when I press here at Hertz, like that’s not enough data we need to, we need to be more, um, we need to, to raise the bar on our level of a practice, you know?

That’s great. Yeah. Um, I definitely think that if you, if one does a very good history, um, oftentimes, you know, with some, with enough clinical experience, you already have you already kind of starting to find out in New York, you almost, you’re just doing one or two orthopedic tests to confirm, you know? Um, so, uh, a good history taking can actually, in a way, it seems like time-consuming, people might not want to do it, but it’s actually the opposite. I think that if you did a good history taking, you end up having to hone in faster and you’re going to be, uh, maybe it’d be more, more efficient in your practice. Actually. It’s not, it’s actually the, counter-intuitive not the other way around. Um, um, like for example, um, uh, I like the accountability discussion, you know? Um, because here’s the thing, obviously, as a practitioner, we, we, we always, we sometimes deal with practitioner at patients that are more difficult to say, oh, the pain is still there.

The pain is still there. Yeah. But it’s like 10% of what it used to be. Right. So, you know, it’s, you can’t make a yes or no. You have to, you know, many ways the quantitative or qualify it. Right. It does not refer. So this is how, you know, as meditation is working, but also sometimes the patient needs help knowing that too, because to them it’s like yes or no. Right. And yeah, and now the weird thing is that, um, the opposite can happen. Sometimes they can not be getting better, but they have so much trust in you. They say, say they are better, you know, that happens too. So, so these tests go both ways. It actually helps you, you know, if is actually better than not even though the patient might say it’s better, but it actually may not be. Right. So that’s

A good point.

Yeah. I know. So like,

They don’t want to hurt your feelings. They want to say, oh yeah, you’re doing a good job, you know,

But, uh, but you know, some sometimes, you know, I mean, of course there’s the, the, this, the report is the placebo effect. You know, the attention being heard, you know, uh, you know, maybe we just, I keep putting in needles, we help them to sleep in their, you know, their stress level is better. So indirectly things have gone better, but right. But you know, maybe the range of motion didn’t get better, that sort of things. But, you know, it is, if you didn’t take the time to do these assessments, then you’d be, you know, you’re not really truly helping the patient. Right. So I, I, I’m such a big fan of, um, of, um, these, um, more objective measures and does, so I hope I have a chance to, uh, to take one of your classes in near future.

Thank you. Yeah. Likewise. Yeah. There’s, I mean, the, the objective things is amazing. Cause it’s really the whole story. Like if you just, if you don’t go, if you don’t do that, you’re missing half the story. It’s like going to the movies and walking out halfway through, you’d never even found out what the ending was. You know, like by doing these things, like you said, you hold yourself accountable, you can see the, you know, the full presentation and something that I’ve been really like, just kind of blown away is that the more you do this, you start to understand your patient, the person in front of you better, you understand how they hurt themselves. And then you, you know, as you treat them and they start to get better, you’re able to have a better picture on Tet, you know, how to teach them how to prevent themselves from getting hurt.

Again, you know, it’s like the back pain I’ve been seeing so much ridiculous at the, in the last few months, I think from all the people working at home, sitting too much and things, but it’s always like, you know, their sleeping position, their sitting position or their standing position, how they stoop and twist and things. And then if you can identify the activities for them and show them how to move a little better, it’s like, wow, these patients that have had pain for 11 months over a year, nothing’s helping them after a couple of visits, all of a sudden they just shift, you know, it’s like, wow, okay. Those are the patients that are listening to your advice, you know, and then, you know, your acupuncture treatment and or whatever treatment you’re doing is going to hold better. It’s going to have a better, uh, um, lasting effect because they don’t just go home and immediately do the thing that w was causing their injury to begin with.

You know, so those are, it’s just, it’s so it’s so vital. And before I forget too, one of the things that I think is really important as clinical experience. So I know we always talk about, you know, okay. People like to talk about how many patients they’ve seen, but I look at it as like, how many pushups can you do? You can probably do a hundred really lousy pushups, but could you do like 10 really good ones? And I think that’s the same with treating patients. Can you treat 10 patients really good? And if you can, I think your clinical experience is going to be so much more profound than treating a hundred or a thousand patients very quickly without getting all that data, getting that feedback and seeing what your, you know, your input, what your needles are actually doing. So the more you go deeper, you know, you get a richer, more fulfilling experience that, you know, it’s going to help other people more down the road, you know,

[inaudible], you know, I actually, I find, um, um, you know, a lot of times the patients that come to our practice, um, have gone through the conventional healthcare system, which is not known for spending time with their patients. Right. So how do you know you remember how many times patients say to you? Oh, you know, you, they, they say that, oh, you know, more than my neurologist or, you know, more than my surgeon. It’s not that we know more than them. It’s just that we actually take the time to ask questions and do the assessments. So, but, but for whatever it’s worth that time, that the demonstration of your knowledge and doing the testing, listen carefully, it’s actually building rapport and confidence. So they’re already ready to be needled and treat it right by you. Right. You know, that’s a, that’s a big part of, um, the efficacy. I think that, you know, yeah. Like, you know, you explain what’s going on. Why is the referring for example, right. And this is why I’m going to show you here, even though you, your, your pain is there, but I’m going to need a, you hear that, that you lay out in race, a logical progression, and th they put them put some at and comfortable with you. Right. And I think that goes a long way to, you know, that rapport building is huge.

Yeah. I think that’s it.

Yeah. And, and I think that’s one, um, value of a good history or assessment taking that is, you know, it’s not just a, you know, a left brain diagnostic thing is actually can become a right brain emotional and relationship building kind of thing.

Absolutely. I had a, um, a patient yesterday and she was telling me that she went to another acupuncturist and she had a bad treatment. And then I saw I’m naturally gathering data all the time. So I said, well, what defines a bad treatment to you? You know, I want to know, cause I don’t want to repeat those mistakes. And so, you know, basically she went in for back pain, the patient, the practitioner said, so what’s going on? You have back pain. Okay. Let’s have you lay on your stomach needles in needles out after she gets off the table. Okay. Have a nice day. Never once anything else. And I don’t, I don’t want to, I’m not saying that that’s bad. I mean, I’ve treated, been shaded by amazing practitioners that that can do that. But what I’m saying for us, you know, for the majority of people, you know, taking the time to actually figure out what’s going on with the person and letting them know that you, you know, what you’re doing is profound versus the shotgun approach where I just do protocols or recipes for every person.

And then you depend on that. So when it works great, you’re the hero. You feel so good about the experience, but when it doesn’t work, you have no idea what to do next, you know? And then it goes back to what you’re saying, like, you know, that, that rapport, but what I see as it comes down to trust, like your patients need to trust you. And if you know what you’re talking about, and you can explain it to the patient on their level, you can see that trust right away. I mean, I had a new patient yesterday. I didn’t even put needles in yet and he’s already trying to refer me people. I haven’t even treated him yet. It’s because he had four different complaints and we were able to like, okay, here’s, what’s at this. And he’s like, Hey, you know, you know where my problem’s coming from. He’s like, you know, can I send people to you? And I haven’t even treated him yet, you know? But the trust, the trust is already there.

So the take home message is that do good assessment through good history and it’ll lead to more referrals,

More trust. And not only tomorrow,

That’s talk about common mistakes that we make in our, in our, um, clinical examination, history, taking process. Uh, you know, as an instructor, you, um, must see this a lot. Can you help give us some ideas of what are some things that we can do better? Where some common examination mistakes. I thought you mentioned, for example, don’t say, does your pain start from here? Refer there. I don’t don’t coach them. That’s one. Right? Anything else that you can, you can let us know? Yeah.

Yeah. For sure. There’s a ton, obviously, you know, I’m making mistakes all the time and learn from them. But I say the number one mistake is to assume anything. Um, so if you start assuming things, you know, you don’t leave room for air and there, and as you, you know, get experience in this profession, you become very aware that nothing is always right. So you always see people say, oh, that treatment works like a charm. That treatment works every time that no, it doesn’t, you know, like there’s no, there’s no perfect of anything. So I wouldn’t jump on the thing and say, you have a rotator cuff tear based, you know, I’m certain of this for me. I like to say, well, these things suggest the possibility that this might be going on, but I could be wrong. And, but we’re going to treat it like that.

And we’re going to keep reassessing as we go. And if what we’re doing is working great, let’s keep doing it. If it’s not working, we’re probably missing something. Leave the door open for mistakes, because you’re going to make mistakes every single day. And if you’re at this level where you don’t make mistakes and you, you feel like everything works like a charm, um, you have to check yourself, you have to hold yourself accountable and get back to this understanding that, you know, there is no two people that are exactly the same. And you could be very wrong about this person in front of you. I mean, I had a person with supposedly a rotator cuff tear who had cancer in his shoulder. And it took, it took the doctors a while to figure out that there was a tumor in there, you know, but if I, I learned a valuable lesson from that experience, because if I was in private practice, he was getting better with acupuncture.

He was a swimming teacher and he was getting his range of motion, was getting better. He was getting stronger, less pain. He was doing good. Unfortunately, there was cancer in there and I did not, there was no way I would have known it. I would have thought that, Hey, okay, you’re doing good discharge you. So, I mean, never, never assume anything in this business. Um, so that’s a big mistake. I think another big mistake is to, uh, jump on a bandwagon. So you learn a couple of assessments tools, and you think that’s all there is you need to continue to go deeper. You know, it’s not one thing, you know, if you do manual muscle testing, for example, that’s a great tool, but that’s not your entire picture of that horse acronym. That’s a one little sliver and you need to incorporate as many of those pieces as you can, to develop an educational guests that support your hypothesis.

So if you only have one little sliver of information and you go, okay, you, your problem is this because you know, this muscle is weak or whatever you are missing, the bigger picture, you know? So I would say, you know, keep learning like never, never, you know, get satisfied. You got to go deep. And if you want to try to get better at something, what I found helpful for me is just pick a body part. So like, for example, I keep saying shoulder, cause it’s on my mind. But you know, if you go to the say, I want to learn shoulders, you can learn shoulders really easily. I mean, the technology is in your hand, the anatomy is in your, in your phone, just take some notes, right. But then what you need to do is just, you know, fill in the blanks of that horse.

So what kind of questions should I ask someone who has a shoulder problem? There are some specific questions that can help guide your, if you’ve got pain at nighttime, that’s a very common symptom of rotator cuff tears. When, you know, wakes you up from your sleep. It doesn’t mean you have a rotator cuff tear if you wake up from sleep. But it’s just one more data point or one more clue. You know, if you, you know, what do you see when you look at a patient who has a rotator cuff issue, what is their range of motion going to be like actively passively resisted? And then what special tests can help differentiate two competing diagnosis? So maybe there’s like, I think it’s this or this. Well, there’s going to be some tests that can be used that differentiate that. And then when it comes to palpation, that’s our, that’s our expertise.

But just know what’s underneath your finger. You got to get in there and know how to differentiate. If I pop a [inaudible] with the arm, you know, resting on some, like my hands on my belly and I press on July 15, I’m touching the supraspinatus tendon. But if my hand is out to the side on the table with my Palm to the ceiling and our press, I 15, I’m more likely pressing the biceps tendon now. So it’s just like little subtle things like that. Can, you know, they’re so basic, but when you apply them, it seems like it’s advanced, but it’s really not. Um, so those, those are some common things off the top of my head, but there are a lot of things that we do wrong and there’s still a lot of things that I do wrong, but I think maybe the, the worst thing you could do is stop learning, you know, keep being motivated because we’re helping people.

And we’re in this profession that is bridging this gap between surgery and everybody else that’s not helping these patients like we are on the frontline and acupuncture is that effective. It blows my mind every day, but we have to have a way to test how effective it is to get that experience that I was talking about that helps us to be better. And then share that information freely, freely with your colleagues. So everybody’s better. I think that is one of the best things we can do as a profession. And I hope we can get there.

Certainly I think if, um, we all up our own game by becoming better at doing assessments, it would transform the prestige and the, you know, the, uh, the reputation of our, our profession for sure. Right? Like, uh, the it’s, um, now I will run out of time, but I, I, I have to pick your brain. Okay. Um, I want you, can you share like a clinical Pearl with us? I always like to do this, something that you pay, perhaps you really good at treating, you know, you’re talking about shoulders today, anything about shoulders or something like that, that, uh, you know, some, some assessment or diagnostic advice you can give us so that we can maybe try it out, or maybe it’s something that we’re not, not thinking in that way and give us a different thinking cap to help us look at the body or assess, um, the patient, any advice for our fellow listeners and viewers today.

Sure. Um, my lead-in will be that, you know, there are, there is this like, you know, movement where people are saying, you know, special tests, orthopedic tests are not good. Those people unfortunately have not done the research. And it’s much easier to say it’s not good then to dive deep and learn it because it takes a long time to really understand all these things. And I know because I’ve been going through it. But one thing that I’ve been doing in the last year is digging in and picking apart all the research and starting to pick out, you know, tests that have been proven time after time to be effective and how effective those tests are like, uh, you know, changing your post-test probability of someone having a problem. So no orthopedic tests are not bad. Yes, they’re great. But you have to understand how to utilize them.

So a really simple clinical Pearl for shoulders is if somebody tries to raise their arm over their head, but they can’t. And they ended up shrugging their shoulder into their ear. Based on the research, they are 15% more likely to, if they, if they can do this without shrinking their shoulder, they’re 15% less likely I should say, to not have a rotator cuff problem. So people who can raise their arm easily and freely, you know, that’s, they could still have a rotator cuff issue because people are asymptomatic and so forth. But when you see somebody shrug their shoulder into their ear to try to raise their arm, what that tells you right away, is there something wrong with their shoulder? It doesn’t tell you what it is, but it’s what they’ve narrowed it down to. It’s either the rotator cuff it’s frozen shoulder, or they have arthritis in the joint so that there is a sh there’s a high probability that somebody has a shoulder issue.

If they put their shoulder in their ear to try to raise their arm over their head and they can raise it all the way. And then as a side note, let’s say, you’re that person that can raise your arm easily, but you can’t bring it down very easily. Like you have to bend your elbow to, to shorten the moment arm so that it’s not as heavy. You end up bending the arm or you support it to bring it down. That starts showing you like, okay, this person is more likely to have a rotator cuff issue. And that sign alone changes the post-test probability by 15%. So what does that mean? Wow, that’s a lot of information, but what they’ve shown is the number one risk factor for rotator cuff injuries is age. And if you’re 60 years old, you’re 25% more likely to have a rotator cuff tear.

If you come in saying my shoulder hurts. So 25% of those people have rotator cuff tears. If that person has a hard time lowering their arm, now you add to that 25%, an extra 15, and you go, oh, this person is 40% likely to have a rotator cuff tear going on. Just with that information alone. I didn’t even ask them any questions and they do it at intake. I didn’t do the other tests. Just those two pieces of information alone. He’s 40% more likely to have a rotator cuff tear. He’s 60 years old and he can’t lower his arm without bending his elbow and supporting it. So these tests, when you use them like that, they can give you some good clues to support your hypothesis.

Thank you so much. I would love that because a lot of times people look at things like under, you know, on the way up or, or, uh, doing the activation part, but they don’t look at the entire process. There’s another 50% of it is when they put themselves back into neutral position. And that, that part you mentioned where they with shortening their arm. Like if you just turn around to do your charting, you would miss that complete, right? Yeah. That’s exactly right. Yeah. So I really, I really, really watched the entire process. You know, I really read a lot, so I thank you very much. I’d love, I learned so much from you in this short amount of time that we have for today. Where can the rest of us go? If we want to find out more information about your courses, do you have any contact information, you know, website, social media, uh, work. When you go to, if you want to study more with you in the future,

Um, you can check out the Facebook group discussions on acupuncture, orthopedics, uh, Dao, D a O is the acronym to make it easy to remember. Cause I love that. There you go. So, and then I have my website it’s www.orthopedic-acupuncture.org, orthopedic-acupuncture.org.

Thank you so much, Jamie. It’s been a pleasure. It’s been an honor to finally meet you virtually face-to-face. Thank you very much. They are that. Yeah. Thank you for most of our fellow viewers. And don’t forget to join us next week, where we’re going to have my fellow host, Virginia Doran. Uh, gimme another excellent show.

The Stomach Sinew Channel and Low Back Pain

We want to discuss the, uh, low back pain and the significance of the stomach channel. So let’s take a look at that first slide. Our discussion, very short discussion about this topic is going to be looking at the stomach sinew channel from above the knee and into the rib cage region and its influence on low back pain.

Click here to download the transcript.

Hello everyone. My name is Matt Callison. I’m here with my colleague Brian Lau and everyone. Uh, thank you to the American Acupuncture Council so much for having us. We want to discuss the, uh, low back pain and the significance of the stomach channel. So let’s take a look at that first slide. Our discussion, very short discussion about this topic is going to be looking at the stomach sinew channel from above the knee and into the rib cage region and its influence on low back pain. Um, the techniques that we’re going to be presenting here today is just something that you can routinely check for low back pain patients to see if the stomach Sr channel is a contributing factor to this person that’s coming in with chronic low back pain. It could actually even be acute low back pain to go ahead and check that as well.

So I think we should probably get going. We’ve got plenty of, of information here. Um, the first slide or this next slide that we’re going to be getting into is going to be specifically about the lateral Rapha. Now the lateral Rapha is a very significant tissue along the stomach sinew channel. That can be a contributor to low back pain. Let’s discuss this very strong fascial connection to the lateral Rafat. Um, you can see there on that lower left-hand corner of that. Call-out if you can circle that there for us. Yeah, there we go. It’s a continuation of tissue from the abdominals, the fascia from the abdominals and the thoracolumbar fascia. Uh, for those of you that know about the thoracolumbar fascia, it’s gained a lot of popularity over this last 20 years, significantly over the last decade about its importance functionally, but also in low back pain.

So the thoracolumbar fascia, it has got three layers. You have a posterior layer that covers the erector spinae. Okay. You’ve got a middle layer that’s underneath erector spinae and above the quadratus lumborum and then you have a deep layer that’s between the quadratus lumborum and the LDO. So as each one of these layers connect laterally, it becomes the lateral Rafa, the thoracolumbar fascia specifically between the poster and the middle layers. However, if you also look at cadavers, you’ll see that that poster layer also has some contributions to the lateral Rafa. It’s a communication link. It’s a segway between the abdominal fascia and the thoracolumbar fascia, and it sits right on top of the quadratus lumborum and we can be able to pal that palpate that for Osher point. So, uh, the reason why we’re talking about the latter fr right now, before we go into an overview, just such an important tissue for us to be able to consider and then farther into this presentation and we’ll get into the assessment and the treatment of it. So let’s go into the overview of the stomach channel and Brian, do you want,

Yeah, yeah, sure. So next slide. Yeah, we have, um, just a real quick introduction or re-introduction of the stomach sinew channel, if you haven’t, uh, looked at it recently. Um, the secondary channel that includes the myofascial planes, uh, of the stomach channel, there’s really two main branches. Uh, we have one that travels up the anterior lateral leg and thigh goes around the genitalia and spreads out into the abdomen. Then from there, it travels up the chest neck and face to the lower eyelid. So this is the main channel that you’re seeing in this image and this kind of, um, 3d model image here. Um, you can see primarily that main channel coming up, the midline of the thigh are a little bit, uh, lateral on the thigh. And then up into the abdominal layers up through the chest, up into the neck and up into the face, um, that kind of follows the, the primary channel for the most part.

Uh, the second channel is another branch of this that you don’t really see from this image, but we’ll have plenty of opportunities to see it in the next few slides. Um, this other branch is on the lateral kind of starts from the lateral knee, goes to the region of gallbladder 30. Sometimes it’s in that translations, they might say it and it connects the shower young. That might be another way that it’s worded, but it kind of becomes a little bit more lateral as a sort of a segue between it and the stomach channel from there. It runs to the 12th rib and ends at the spinal column. This is kind of adapted from a Vanguard translation at the link shoe, which is a particular source that I really like. Um, but, uh, all of the sources say relatively about the same thing when you look at translations. So let’s go through each of those branches a little bit more clearly and to the next line.

So if we wanted to start at the distal part, um, from the lower extremities, we can look at the stomach DJing, Jen, how it travels along the anterolateral leg and thigh. I think actually these two branches actually, uh, start in this, uh, leg region below the knee. And you can kind of look on this image for the tibialis. Anterior tibialis. Anterior is just lateral to the tibia. This is where really the primary channel of the stomach, the stomach primary channel runs along this area. Stomach 36 would be noodling directly into the tibialis, anterior and happens to be the motor point, uh, for tibialis anterior. So that’s an actual primary channel point. That’s going right through that region. From there, we could kind of follow that up, uh, lateral to the knee, into the rectus femoris, continuing to follow that stomach primary channel. But if you look at this image, we also have the extensor digitorum, longest muscles.

Um, you know, there’s several slips of those. The two, um, create a poll extension for toes two through five and especially toes two and three are part of the stomach channel. So this in some ways is sort of the beginning of that lateral branch. It’s kind of a, between the stomach primary channel and the gallbladder primary channel. It’s part of the stomach sinew channel. You have those toe two and three slips that kind of drive up toes four and five would be gallbladder send new channel, but we’re on the stomachs in your channel. That’s going to connect into the vastus lateralis and start to become that a secondary sort of a branch that more lateral branch.

All right. So let’s go back to the main branch main branch is going to run up the rectus from Morris. You can see the rectus for Morris, this image that kind of dark line on the thigh is the kind of the fascial separation between rectus Morris and vastus lateralis. So that’s in my opinion where the stomach channel runs, but that rectus for Morris that more medial muscle in that picture is going to be the sort of primary channel branch of the stomach sinew channel that then connects to the a, I S it actually connects to the a S I S or it’s fascia. And then it runs up through the inguinal ligament up the abdominal layers up the chest, et cetera, kind of following the primary channel of the stomach. Um, so in this case, what we want to focus on for today’s lecture is the abdominal fascia in particular, because we’re going to look at how that connects and wraps around to the, um, to the thoracolumbar fascia and the lateral Rafa in the stomach channel. It’s all the fascia that lives in is found on top anterior to the M rectus for Morris. I mean, excuse me to the rectus abdominis. So it’s all the fascial layers that are on top of, or superficial to the rectus abdominis. Um, part of those fascial layers in wrap around the body, following the fascia of the abdominals into the thoracolumbar fascia, into the lateral Rapha, and then connecting all the way to the spine. So next slide.

So the lateral branch on the other hand is going to be a little bit more lateral on the thigh. It’s covering the vastus lateralis, which is a pretty big muscle. That’s the fastest part, I guess, but the vastus lateralis actually covers really a lot of real estate on the lateral thigh, really going into attaching all the way to the back of the femur. Um, so it really covers the territory of both the stomach primary channel to some degree. And the, also the gallbladder, um, primary channel, the iliotibial band would be running down on top of this structure. Um, so it would be a kind of in a pretty big area, but this is the link through that lateral branch. If you follow that fastest ladder up, you can see where it communicates the chair’s fascia. It attaches to the same region as the anterior portion of gluteus medius and minimus, especially minimis. So, uh, just that, that hip joint region, you can see where those two muscles are communicating. Then from there, it’s going to continue into the thoracolumbar fascia meeting with a lateral Rafa about anything you want to add on these are,

Yeah, that tissue with Cal patient is pretty significant when somebody has a posterior tilt or an N tilt of the anonymous bone, versus when it’s a neutral pelvis, you can really tell the difference in palpation of that fibers of the anterior fibers of the minimus and the medias, like I said, with quite a change in inclination with that.

Yep. And it’s an often, we actually had a discussion on our, uh, Facebook group on sports act, a sports, um, acupuncture group. And, um, we were talking about how often this fastest ladder Alice is ropey and rigid and dense. And I think if you palpated the thigh quite a bit, you can probably notice that you do know, you do find a lot of patients that have a ton of tension in this area. Right. So let’s move on to the next slide. All right. So we have a few, uh, three, I think, cadaver images. So just the general warning. Um, this was in the beginning, we have the warning on the bottom of the screen. We’ve already had one small image, but these are a little bit closer, a little bit, um, more obvious they fill up the screen. They’re a more obvious cadaver images. So just be aware of your surroundings, you know, if you’re at a Starbucks and there’s people looking at your screen, maybe, you know, get it into a position where they can’t see it, it’s better not to view these in public, don’t share these images, um, you know, keep, uh, it’s it’s, we have to be very respectful to the donors and make sure that we don’t do anything inappropriate.

So this is an educational settings. So we have these images, but, um, but don’t share them with the general public or be mindful where you’re watching this ad. All right. So next, uh, next slide, let’s start looking at this connection. So there’s two lines on this, uh, cadaver drawn over this cadaver, and it’s just the dissection image. And then the top one, uh, which is the shorter of the two lines that’s showing the upper border of the glute Maximus and sports medicine acupuncture. We’ve referred to this as the gluteal app and erotic line. So that’s going to be more superficial than the glute medius and minimus, but I just wanted to show that demarcation, the bottom line is traveling up from the vastus lateralis. Then as it kind of makes a curve, you see it connecting into the glute medius and minimus, and then it follows right up into that, uh, lateral border of the erector spinae, which is that top portion of the line, um, that is kind of that whole trajectory of that lateral branch of the stomach, uh, send you a channel going all the way through the lateral Rapha and a moment we’ll actually see the erector spinae lifted, um, so that we can, um, get a clear view of the lateral Rafa.

One other thing to highlight from this image, you can get your bearings straight is if you go to the very top of that, um, that line, the longer line that’s, um, from there, if you go to the midline of the spine. Yep. Right in that region, we actually have the erector spinae cut. So everything above that, you’re seeing deep to the erector spinae. That’s going to allow us to lift up that little flap of the erector spinae to see the lateral Rafa a little closer. So let’s go to the next image then. And, um, this is just the lines removed, right? So see if you can find that same territory we just discussed kind of look at that trajectory of the sort of channel, like portion going from the thigh all the way up the glute medius and minimus up into the lateral Rafa. Okay.

And now let’s look at with the rector SPI and a lifted. So that would be on the next slide. So there is that little portion of the erector spinae lifted. Then you can see deep to that, to the next fascial layer and that boundary of the lateral RFA. That’s just that little, um, band that runs just lateral to the erector spinae. So again, you can follow that line down from the thigh, from the lateral thigh, going through glute medius and minimus into that lateral Rafa all part of the stomach sinew channel, that lateral branch of the stomachs, a new channel and a pretty juicy area when you’re working with a lot of chronic back problems. Right. That’s pretty sick.

Yeah. It’s pretty significant, uh, continuation from the lower extremity into that latter Rafa, you can see that line with the erector spinae lift up and the thickness of that ladder Raffa as well.

Interesting. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Get that image in your mind though, because you’ll see some palpation coming up in a bit. Um, and this is where actually, can we go back to the previous image with the erector spinae down? Imagine you are pressing not on a cadaver specimen necessarily, but on a person, if you were pressing and you could kind of see through the skin and, um, and see that your, your pressure is going right to that lateral edge of the erector spinae diving, just deep to it, to that, uh, that boundary of the lateral rafting, that’s going to be where we’re going to be palpating. Um, so this is a, a lot of the types of things we tried to get across. Like these images come from our, um, uh, uh, anatomy, cadaver dissection lab that is on, uh, LASA right now. So these are part of, uh, you know, we have a bunch of videos and I’m really a little more thorough presentation on this, but even just looking at these images, you can kind of get an idea of, okay, if I were to press into that tissue and try to reach the next image, go to that, the next slide and reach that tissue that’s on that boundary, just deep to the erector spinae and know that, okay, that’s the lateral Rafay, I’m palpating for tension at that region.

And knowing that that’s part of the stomachs and new channels. So we have a lot of information right there that you want to take it and kind of go over that. It kind of kind of started the process a little bit, but I wanted to highlight it on the cadaver portion. So when we see it, we know what we’re looking at.

No, that’s great. This is going to be the cadaver dissections in module two anatomy, politician, palpation cadaver lab on Los OMS. But what you said, bright for the person to really understand where that lateral Rafa is, which is going to help significantly when they’re looking for Osher points in this tissue. And also when they’re palpating for, so the lateral Rapha attention test, which is going to be coming up here in just a couple minutes. So am I next? Yep. Okay. Let’s go to the next slide please. All right, here it is Latta Rafiq tension test. So you guys hear it for your notes. Um, you have this a step-by-step, you’re going to ask the patient to designate the pain level with palpation of this tissue on a scale of one to 10. Um, many people are gonna be thinking, well, you’re just palpating. The quadratus lumborum is actually the depth of the palpation.

That is significant here. When you look at the video that’s coming up next, you’ll show it it’ll show that Brian is palpating within the first quarter inch of the superficial tissue. Just touching that lateral Rapha that covers the quadratus lumborum. If we’re looking for the quadratus lumborum trigger points or motor entry point ratchet pop hitting more from deeper into that tissue. So there’s a difference in the palpation of it. A practitioner is going to attempt to decrease the tension and the pain of the lateral Raphi by using the following acupuncture, motor points, stomach 41 works great. 43 can be used on 36 being the motor point, as Brian said of the tibialis, anterior, the vastus lateralis motor points work really, really well for reducing the tension and the latter Rafiq. Um, same with the rectus abdominis points. We’re going to be covering that because there’s four different segments of the rectus abdominis motor points.

And it’s usually going to be the lower aspect that is going to be changing significantly, the tenderness of that lateral Rafa. So let’s look at this image here. You can see how Brian was talking about the, uh, channel going all the way up the vastus lateralis, going to the anterior fibers. I’m talking about the lateral image here of the patient. So you can see going up the vastus lateralis, going up the anterior fibers of the minimus, the media’s going across that iliac crest, which you just saw on the cadaver going right into that lateral Rafa right now from that tissue, the lateral Rapha is going to be following along on the poster and the anterior aspect of the abdominal wall, going to the rectus abdominis. So there’s your connection, your significant connection of the stomach Sr channel for low back pain into the latter Rafa.

And also the abdominal aspect is contribution to low back pain as well. There’s something that we’ve been talking about for a few years now, it’s called acupuncture as an assessment. Um, this is something where you can use a couple of acupuncture points just to be able to see if they will decrease the tension of a particular orthopedic examination. In this case, what you’re going to see in this next video is Brian’s going to be using a couple of points to reduce tension in the lateral Rapha. So let’s check out the ladder off a tension test and acupuncture as an assessment, let’s go to the, into the video

[inaudible].

So we’re looking at the lateral branch of the strong stomach send new channel. So the lateral branch of the stomachs and new channel from the thigh comes up through the vastus lateralis, connects with the gluteus medius and minimus, and then to the thoracolumbar fascia. So one of the key areas we look for in this lateral branch that connects them to the lumbar spine from the stomach channel is the lateral Rafa. The lateral Rapha is the meeting point is the fascial wall. That is the boundary between the iliacus Dallas’ lumborum the erector spinning and the quadratus lumborum. So those fascial planes come together in a seam at the lateral Rafa, and we’re going to go right into that lateral Rapha at a Rambo level of L three. Doesn’t have to be exact, but L three is a good landmark, and we’re going to start to palpation following the angle. So here’s the erector spinae falling off following the angle of the erector spinae down into that valley of the lateral Rapha. And we’re just looking for tension, but also palpatory pain to that. So we can ask the patient on a scale of one to 10, how that, what that pain level is with palpation. So what does that pain level there? Three by three? Yeah, it feels denser. Doesn’t feel, it feels like it’s healthy tissue. Most likely go to a different area. How about right there?

Three. All right. So can you stop bad? But if this was a big pain producer for the patient, then we would look at reducing that with distal points for this assessment and come back and how pain and see if that changes it. So primarily we’re going to be looking down with stomach channel and we can include things like vastus, lateralis, vastus, lateralis Motorpoint would be a good one to consider. We could look at, even though it’s on the gallbladder channel, the most, uh, pasture and edge of the vastus lateralis would be a possibility. So that would be in the region of gallbladder 31, and then we could follow it down also into the stomach channel, just by palpating. It feels like tip anterior has a certain amount of tension. So I’m going to use Tim anterior. I don’t know if it’ll change much based on the fact that you didn’t have a high pain aspect with the additional palpation, but let’s go ahead and work on it anyways. So we’ll use stomach 36, 1 of the motor points for tibial anterior.

Now we’ll come back to the area. So there’s two things I can look for what my palpation tells me. Does it feel like that tissue softened? And then what does the patient report in terms of pain, quality back at the same area and scale the one from one to 10? Yeah. And it feels softer to me. She says the one now, and from a three to a one, I’m having a hard time finding the exact location where I felt that tension before. Cause it feels like it’s been reduced. So other points to consider the distal stomach channel points down towards the feet, stomach 41 would be a possibility stomach, 40 stomach, 36, just based on palpation, felt like a good starting point for me. And then also looking at points along the thigh.

All right. So let’s just talk logistically about what we just saw here. So if you’re going to be treating the patient in a lateral recumbent position like that, using acupuncture’s assessments going to be really quite simple, um, you can also check the lateral Rafiq, the tension tests when the patient’s going to be standing, which is nice because you’ll be bearing and load bearing. So therefore the tissues are going to be a little bit different. Um, in that case you can check for Osher points while the person is standing. You could still go ahead and needle stomach 36, or you can use some distal points to, to see if that was start to change the tissue. You can also do the, do the lateral Rafa tension tests when the patient’s Lang prom. Now that makes it a little bit more difficult when you’re trying to be able to needle the vastus lateralis points, but we will have more access to the distal stomach channel points using stomach 45 stomach 44 stomach 43.

Those points are going to be a lot more accessible when the patient’s link prone and they will also change the tension within the lateral Rafa. And that way you can be able to plug in those points and then continue with your treatment. Um, this is going to be, um, just kneeling some Osher points within that lateral rafting. And you could see with Brian’s angle that he is angling it more toward the belly itself. Not necessarily parallel with the table, like how you would be needling the quadratus lumborum so pressing into that ladder, I Fe looking for Osher points and just tapping on that tissue. Remember that lateral Rapha is going to be a thin tissue on top of the quadratus lumborum and you might have two or three different Oscher points within that lateral Rafa. That’s going to span the region from the 12th rib all the way to the iliac crest. So let’s remember the depth of where that lateral Rafiq is. I’m trying to be able get disperse Oscher points within that region. Bride. You wanna add anything to that before we jump into the next slide?

Yeah, just that it’s um, I think I have that needle in about L three. Um, I do find that that region of L three and the lateral Rafa tends to be, um, pretty responsive and, um, you know, it’s a, it’s a good, I, I often find that is kind of the greatest tension, but for those who followed, uh, Luigi Stecco his work, um, you know, he has these really involved system where he talks about these different points, that parallel acupuncture points to some degree, but he calls them the centers of coordination. Um, and they’re like fascial unions between certain, certain regions of Paul on the muscle. Like this would probably be, I’d have to go back and look, but it’d probably be the, uh, include like the quadratus lumborum the erectors and coordinating movement between those. Um, but it’s in the fascia itself of the lateral Rafa. So this is one of his points, one of his centers of coordination, um, is that, that, uh, L three lateral Rapha mark. So kind of interesting. And I do find that that’s, I don’t know if this works super well, but I know a little bit of it, but I do find that that L three region is usually pretty predictable predictably. Um, more of the center of, of, of tension of that lateral or FFA. Sometimes when I need a lead, I have a slight inferior angle though. Like you said that 45, but, but slightly inferior.

Yeah. So predictable Osher point within that. [inaudible] so that’s great. That’s good. All right. Let’s see what the next slide is, please. All right, let’s go over the best slash motor entry points. There’s two primary for the vastus lateralis. One of them will be extra points, team food two, which is located just one to two soon, lateral from stomach 32, which would be food too. We know that stomach 32 is located six soon up from the lateral border of the superior lateral border of the patella. Uh, so following that up, make sure that you are going to be in the vastus lateralis, not in the rectus femoris. You’re going to slide over then one to two soon, um, into sheen futu, if you cross fiber, the vastus lateralis, it will often facilitate, uh, which would also be at the definition of a trigger point. Uh, if shin futu is going to be referring somewhere, then that would end up being also location of point.

Um, so this is going to be a branch off the femoral nerve going into that vastus lateralis extra point sheen food to a pretty powerful point. So it makes sure when you are kneeling it pretty slow and methodical needling, otherwise it can be a strong cheese sensation can come up really quite quickly. Now the upper fibers of the vastus lateralis, which oftentimes, um, can atrophy on many patients where it’s not really quite used, if they’re having some mechanical problems with the extension or knee flection, those upper fibers, if you divide stomach 31 and the superior border of the patella divided by thirds, it’s the meeting point between the middle and the upper thirds. Uh, you’ll definitely find an off SharePoint within that meeting point. That’s going to be another motor entry point from the femoral nerve going into those upper fibers. Um, the needle technique, that being that should actually be a little bit deeper than that, uh, should be more like, uh, 0.75 to 1.25 inches because the innervation is actually going to be more to the medial side from that femoral nerve.

So you have to go a little bit deeper into that mass lateral, so you guys would be able to make that correction. That would be great. All right. So let’s now I believe let’s go to the next slide, our rectus abdominis motor entry points here. You can see four needles on the left and four needles on the right. It’s an old bleak angle going into the rectus abdominis. The needle is starting at the spleen channel and then directing it toward the wrench channel going. Uh, th the objective here is to try to be able to get the needle to go to the poster aspect of the rectus abdominis. That’s where the innovation side is more on the poster aspect and not necessarily on the Antar aspect. We have to be very mindful to make sure that we know where the tip of the needle is going, and it’s not going past the rectus abdominis, therefore into the peritoneal cavity.

So be very, very mindful of where that needle is going, but your goal is to cross fiber, the rectus abdominis, and angle it. So it is going to be affecting more of that poster aspect. Um, there’s a great video. That’s going to be in the motor entry-point protocol. This will be in module two part of the online recordings that we have thankfully have finished. We’re coming really close to getting them all aligned. Um, it’s been over a year endeavor and what an adventure that has been I’m sure Brian can agree to that. Um, so those are available on Lassa OMS, um, the research for the rectus abdominis motor, point’s the largest diameter of these intercostal nerves. That’s going into the rectus abdominis or the ones that’s going to be located in the lower half. So that means number three, and number four, that’s on this particular slide.

So you want to locate stomach 23, which we know is going to be too soon above stomach, 25 and needle towards stomach three from the spleen channel, right? So the rectus sheets you’ll be connecting the spleen with the stomach then. So the needle is going to be going from the spleen channel toward the stomach channel, going into the motor entry point for that particular muscular segment of the rectus abdominis. I believe that particular one is innervated by the T 10 intercostal nerve. I could be wrong. It could be T 11. Um, again, but those, the research was showing that’s more of the larger diameter, um, um, uh, nerves coming across into that motor entry point. The next one to choose here would be also just below stomach 27, which we know is going to be located to super low stomach 25. That was nice about this too, is you look at it’s pretty much at the same level as the lateral Rafa as well.

So with low back pain, many times practitioners are not needling into the abdominals. And boy, you can really great get really good results by combining treatment on the back and also treatment on the front. So if you’re not treating the abdomen with low back pain and maybe your results haven’t been as good as you want to please make sure that you are going ahead and needling into these, these points, you’ll see that it actually will help significantly. And just as a side note also, um, I’ve had many patients have actually had constipation and I’ve used this needle technique and it works really quite well, more for the excess type of constipation, not necessarily for the blood deficiency type of constipation, but it’ll change Paris dialysis pretty well. All right, Brian, I think we’ve got a myofascial release technique that you’re going to be showing that’s really a great for spreading here. So do you want to introduce that?

Sure. Uh, so Matt mentioned getting better results by including the abdominal layers, especially if you’re doing these assessments and you find that, you know, somebody reports a seven out of a scale of 10 on the palpation of the lateral Rafa on a pain scale, and you need all the rectus abdominis, uh, as a, um, assessment or the vastus lateralis. And you find that when you go back and pal plate that maybe it’s gone down to a four or a three, so that’s telling you that that’s a component, you know, part of their low back pain. Maybe it’s not the primary source, maybe it is, but a component of their low back pain has to do with that tension in the thoracolumbar fascia. So sure if that, if that assessment showing improvement and why not put those needles back again as part of the comprehensive treatment and, or, and I say, and or maybe the person doesn’t have enough, cheetah include that many more noodles, or for whatever reason, maybe you don’t do the needles that you can do the myofascial, or maybe you do the acupuncture and the myofascial.

But speaking to this tension in the abdomen and possibly on the lateral quadriceps is going to be important for these patients. So this is a technique on the rectus of the dominance and it’s working, you know, the rectus abdominis has the six-pack six-pack muscle, it’s actually an APAC, but each of those little packs are there because there’s a tendonous transcription that separates one of the four segments of the rectus abdominis. Um, you know, so that, that’s what creates the six pack, but actually there’s a, uh, pack on each rib cage that doesn’t show up when people have really developed at abdominals. So it’s a, technically, it’s an APAC, but we’re going to be working in those tendonous transcriptions to free tension in the fascia. And this would not be uncommon to refer to the back, especially in the 20, uh, stomach 25 region. But let’s go ahead and look at the video for that.

So we’ll be working now with the rectus abdominis, but specifically the tendonous inscriptions of the rectus abdominis. This would be really relevant for when there’s pain at the thoracolumbar fascia, or especially at the lateral Rafa because those abdominal layers wrap around and become part of the thoracolumbar fascia and can add tension into the lateral Rafa. So in your assessment with the thoracolumbar fascia test, if you find that it reduces palpatory pain by doing acupuncture assessment at the rec fem, these would be techniques you could do after the needling. So we’re going to start at stomach 25. I’m going to use my fingers, pads and my fingers to sort of find that tenderness inscription, I’m going to sink perpendicular. Usually I find that a little bit inferior, like I’m kind of dropping in perpendicular and a little bit inferior helps to hook into that tendonous tissue, that fascial tissue, you don’t have a bone to push again. So I can’t just go straight in and resist against the bone. So I need to find a way to hook into that tissue. And this is a good, that little kind of curving motion seems to get a good hook, a good investment on that tissue. And then I’m spreading my fingers apart. So you can’t see it much. It’s a small movement, but it’s just like you’re unzipping a zipper hook in and spread.

Sometimes patients actually will feel this refer towards the back or even into the lumbar region.

You can work up to the next one, well, into the tenderness inscription sink in and spread

You can notice that as we’re working here, she’s starting to be able to take a little bit deeper of a breath, cause it’s freeing that tissue that can clamp down and resist the breath. And we’ll be at the cost of margin. I can continue to do spreading apart, or I can go up or down. If the person has a very hold in, compressed lower rib cage, I might want to bring the tissue out if they don’t have good tone in the abdominal muscles and it’s over flared, I might want to move the tissue up or I could just bread. And either way, I’m working along that costal margin,

Mindful that I don’t want to go all the way to the xiphoid. I’m just going up towards the xiphoid

One last pass. I can be at the attachment and again, spreading at that rectus abdominis attachment where the fascia starts to meet the pec major

And then I can work at the final attachment site at the pubic bone. I want to start above the pubic bone. So there’s the pubic bone I started above so that my pressure can get deep to where the rectus abdominis dives deep today, a posterior border of the pubic bone tendon, a tender area. Is that okay? And I can do a slight minuscule across fiber, or I can try to lift the pubic bone and decompress. This is another region that might refer into the lumbar region.

Right. So you don’t need to do all of those areas. You might pick and choose one or two regions. Stomach 25 is often very frequently involved. Costa margin’s frequently involved. All of it’s going to free the breathing take tension off the thoracolumbar fascia. And you can consider this technique when there’s a stomach, send you channel relationship to pain, such as facet, joint problems,

Especially a great technique to be able to use after kneeling, because it also takes pain away or soreness away from the needles as well. Um, there’s a lot more great Mahvash release techniques that we’re showing. And that’s from the assessment and treatment of the channel, send you module two, available a loss of OMS, um, really great techniques to be able to use right after the needling that can reinforce what you’re trying to accomplish with the acupuncture.

All right. It’s a slow treatment. Yeah. Yeah. It just, it’s kind of a slow, you know, you don’t want to rush through those treatments at the same time I was talking and I was teaching. So it seems like it would take a long time, but you can actually get through those, those, uh, even if you do all passes, all four passes, you can do that pretty much quicker than I was doing it there, you know, there was teaching and discussion and where and what I was doing and all that. So it seemed like it would be a long, long time spent, but not, not so much in practice.

Hi, Brian, it’s always a pleasure to be able to hang out with you and to be able to share knowledge. Thank you very much. Thanks very much at the American Acupuncture Council. Also next we’ve got, uh, Lorne Brown is going to be coming in and discussing some great things. I’m sure Lorne has been in the field for a long, long time and a great pioneer in himself. So check out Lorne next week. Thanks again to the American Acupuncture Council. Thank you very much. You guys for attending and we’ll see you again. All right. Yep. Bye-bye.