And so today we’re going to be talking about the importance of evidence-based practice. Or evidence-informed practice, which means it’s coming out of a lot of the research, which the exciting part about that is that we’re getting from the other aspect, the more Western scientific model.

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 and welcome today’s episode of the American Acupuncture Council live stream. My name is Tsao-Lin Moy. I am a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist with a brick and mortar practice in union square in New York city. I’m very excited. Today to be welcoming Sandro Graca and very grateful to the American Acupuncture Council for putting these livestreams on now a quick Al Sandro is a licensed acupuncturist and lecture and research.

Is he’s done. He’s writing lots of papers about in particular women’s reproductive health, which is extremely important because not enough is done for women’s health. And he is also an avid speaker. And he is the director of evidence-based acupuncture and a fellow at the American board of Oriental reproductive medicine, and S and also the society for acupuncture research.

And so today we’re going to be talking about the importance of evidence-based practice. Or evidence informed practice, which means it’s coming out of a lot of the research, which the exciting part about that is that we’re getting from the other aspect, the more Western scientific model. Is now really recognizing, the benefits there’s like more concrete evidence and information.

And so we’re really looking at integrative medicine, or this is the, this is what we’ll be bridging that helps to bridge, understanding and better practice. So thank you so much, Sandra, for being. Thank you so much for asking me, inviting me to be here and asking me to do this talk. It’s always a pleasure to talk about.

I love research, but more so, it’s a pleasure because I get to contribute towards the future of our profession. Absolutely. We really need, we really and this is for the, for the public. Because we’re looking at what’s happening is, Medicare is going to be covering a lot of insurance companies are covering or not covering because there is, where’s the evidence.

And this is an area that it just benefits everyone. And if somebody is on the fence, About I don’t know if it works that here. We’ve got some great studies. And again, we were talking before the break about the one with carpal tunnel and I’m so very excited to see your presentation Sandro.

Yeah, thank you so much. I think that’s a really good point. And one of the things that I would mention is that there are actually different ways of using this information and different ways of using research. So one of them is, as you said, just having that you know the language to be able to talk to other people about what we do because not everyone knows what we know or loves acupuncture and Chinese medicine as much as we do.

So they might not have that language. But if we have another language to be able to communicate with them, then it just becomes a little bit easier to have that interaction and to get the ball rolling in terms of communication. And also, as you said, with the policymakers, obviously, But another aspect that I will bring up on my presentation as well is going to be that fact of the more you write about what you do in your clinic, because that’s research too, reporting, what do you do?

And the results you’re getting in your clinic. You’re contributing to the literature and you’re leaving something there for not just the people around us now, but also for the future for others to read what we’re doing in the clinic and taking that a step further. Absolutely mean, what would we be doing? What would we do without the sew-in aging or the link shoe, or, the golden cabinet or all of those things where this is very traditional practitioners, we’re recording all of their cases.

And then from that, tome of information gathered. That they were getting results that then ended up being prescriptions and points to use that they could pass down. This is thousands of years, so there’s no reason why, we shouldn’t be continuing to contribute. And then with modern science to take advantage of, that aspect of.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I’ll talk a little bit about those different aspects during my presentation. So if we’re okay to go and then I’ll obviously I’ll leave a little bit at the end as well for us to talk about it, but I’ll show you how I try to put those together. Hopefully what do you will take from this and thinking about my main role, in terms of research with evidence-based acupuncture and being that idea of ancient medicine, modern research, and the evolutionary thinking that hopefully for all of us to continue to carry our perfection forward, this is almost like a little bit of a disclosure as well.

So what I do, as you said, I’m on the board of directors of evidence-based acupuncture, I’m a fellow of the born. And on my, for full disclosure to pay jobs. I am a lecturer at the Northern college of acupuncture, and I’m also a researcher on the Cochrane review group for acupuncture, for IVF. My main work is and research and passion is on PCLs polycystic ovary syndrome.

And I am a member of the SRM of Astra and the androgen excess society for PCLs. So that’s really the. My passion lies. And I want to say big, thank you. And this is not just a, a token of gratitude. This is really a big, thank you for you inviting me to be here because I’m a doer. I like to put the M get my feet down and could do some work.

And this is a paper that came out only. Last month was the end of March that was finally published. And this is a survey of clinical practice. And this is really asking the practitioners what they’re doing, how they are doing. Really proud of this is my first author paper as well. And working with such a great, an amazing group of people that are, really motivates me and to do more.

So what this says, and this is why I’m really saying a big, thank you, is that practitioners that were in the survey actually said that they favored knowledge obtained from webinars and conferences. Ah, nice webinar talking about research. So I hope that this reaches as many people as possible and the message for our side, because as I was talking just before we started, I don’t spend as much time in the clinic anymore.

The message for academics and clinician researchers is to hear what the practitioners are saying and saying that they still want this dissemination of knowledge. They want to know about this, but beyond those traditional publications on the journals and stuff like. They do want to know more about research literacy and special interest groups, like for example, da Borum or the obstetrical acupuncture association that I’m connected with as well and the AAC as well.

Like it’s the associations needing to link with the practice. Just a quick acknowledgement, because again, we like doing this and TCM and here I am saying that I would not be here if it wasn’t for the passion for research from professor Ian McPherson, who unfortunately is no longer with us.

And he’s there with the person who was my supervisor for my MSC. That’s Dr. Lara McClair. And I just want to say that yeah, Lara was spot on when she wrote that for Hughes retirement. When she said that he inspired thousands of us to become researchers, that I’m really proud to be one of those and to continue that work.

And obviously Dr. Mike Armour, who we saw the name on that publication there, who’s really helping me. And in this new career, for as a researcher. So I’ll start this with a little story and. Because my granddad was a great storyteller and I always look at Dr. Leon hammer and think about the great stories that he always shares with us.

And this really connects and links for me in terms of research and why we’re doing this rather than just being in clinic and keep doing the same thing over and over again. So he wrote this paper in 2002. So that’s 20 years ago. And look at how relevant that is. He started with the paper could be some not, but a small story.

And he said a little girl once asked her mother why she cut off the end of the roast before putting in the oven. And the mom said because that’s the way that my mother, your grandmother used to do it. We’ll have to ask her. So off they go to grandma’s house and only to find out that grandma actually did it because her mother had.

So the three generations are to go over to great-grandma’s house. And I love his wording was there to seek the wisdom of the ages. And when they posed the question to the great grammar and the great grammar just said, why? Dear the pan was too small. So that story just continues and it’s a great article.

If you have the time to read it, it’s amazing. And he just talks about that. Chinese medicine needs a new pond for a roast that has grown since ancient times in size and in shape and what we can talk about now, he says then at the end there about the. Pulse is no longer a sign of internal cold in our time is a sign of overworking nervous system.

And I always think about this and going, this was written in 2002. How would this tide pools will be described in 20, 22 after all that has happened recently? So it’s really interesting to see that sometimes. And this is no disrespect to our practice, but some is there. More cases that we’re just doing things because that’s what we were told.

And then when we asked the people who told us they were doing it as well, because that’s what they were told. So that’s what really motivates me. And at the time when I was getting this information together, I would, as I was at a webinar, there you go with Elizabeth and she said this is word by word, what she said, Chinese classical medicine is not yet finished.

We have to continue to edit it. And I thought, huh, that’s really interesting. And bearing in mind like me. So I’m Portuguese. I speak English. I know a little bit of Chinese from learning. Elizabeth Tasha is French. So she’s speaking in English and she’s talking about Chinese medicine as well. So for me, the language is very important and she said that it’s not to invent, but to discover new ways to express, it’s not because it’s not in the classics that it’s not interest.

And then this was the sentence that really, I was talking to her, like emailing back and forth after this webinar, because I thought this was really interesting. There are a lot of things that we are yet to develop. If we want to continue to practice a living medicine and not a dead. And again, I really liked language and that really stayed with me.

And this is the work that I was already doing, and that I’m really passionate about doing now, because it depends on how we see things, order and chaos could be different in different ways that when they are in front of you, So I do love the classics. I read them when I was studying and I still do when I have the time, you always go back to them, but now I just do more work in research and I love research.

And I think that it’s really important for the continuity of our medicine. And just like Elizabeth Kasha said to continue to practice this Olivia. So you might be wondering, and if you’re one of those purists that would say that, no, this is, ancient medicine. We need to stick with the ancient medicine.

I thought that too, and I was able to see things from a different perspective and I always bring up this study because it, I came across this just by pure accident. And again, it’s just one of those things Dr. June mouse was involved in this, as you can see in the name. And it just really caught my eye because when considering barriers for occupants to use.

And bearing in mind, this is a hot topic, right? Like it’s breast cancer survivors. So it’s really, it’s charged and it’s emotional. And I would always think that the main thing would be because I don’t use acupuncture because it interferes with the treatment that’s that was my perception would be, that would be the top thing.

So when I started reading the paper and realizing that lack of knowledge about acupuncture was actually the main reason why these people weren’t getting acupuncture was just mind blowing. And knowing that interfering with the treatment, not based on science, the side effects, painful, difficult time finding an acupuncturist.

I thought, I always thought those were going to be way up higher. I did not think that lack of knowledge was going to be an issue. And since it is, then we need to get this information and try to make sure that people know about acupuncture, but that they know about it from reliable sources. And if we can’t communicate with them in terms of the classics and old language that is harder for them to understand, let’s bring a language that it’s easier for them.

So that’s I want to like interrupt you just for a second about the cancer research, because I mean our the information okay. That is one of the very, if I remember correctly, the th the evidence and the efficacy of acupuncture for nausea. From chemotherapy, that was one of the burbs studies for nausea, for pregnancy and chemotherapy.

That was really validating okay, this is why acupuncture works. So the surprise that in the area among, breast cancer, that is still not this is a great thing to do that, it’s a, non-drug, it’s, easy to. Very it’s not going to injure you in any way.

That’s the surprising is that it can really help simple, very simple thing to be doing to help somebody. But so you can see how important it is that to language is, so this is going to be teamwork, right? So it’s going to be the patient needs to know the clinicians that are already looking after that patient.

They need to know as well. Practice. I think that we all have to be ambassadors for our medicine, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And we need to, and once we are called up to be on that team, we need to be able to talk to them because if they ask us, what did you just do? What treatment was that for that particular patient, we need to use a language that they can understand this.

Otherwise, they still won’t know what, when damn cheap Schwab, they won’t know what that means. So how would you want to work with someone that you can’t understand? So it’s being part of the team and what language you’re using to make sure that people can go actually allowed something here.

I always say this on my presentations in we do the. Practitioners graduated and they start going into their own practice. And what they do. I always say that do not ever let any patient leave your clinic without them knowing a little bit about what you did, because you don’t want them to go and talk to someone else and go, Hey, I went for acupuncture and it was brilliant.

And that person is going to ask him, oh, acupuncture, I’ve heard about that. What did they do? Oh, I don’t know. I was just lying there and they put in some needles. I don’t know what kind of advertising. It’s not really, that’s not really great word of mouth. Is it? I was lying there at then. It’s, people, patients that are informed make better decisions about their health, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So that’s really good. And thanks for bringing that up because that’s one of the aspects. So that was a little bit of about. How it relates to our practice and to the people around us. So more specifically now I’ll give you an example of B for me, how it’s start. Was I looking at points or IVF?

So I was getting people into the,

and Nick and they were going, and I remember clearly the very first time of looking at a re what’s, this thing, all about this, Paul, all those protocols. Points are to use this right? So it helped us. And it was interesting for me, need to go. It wasn’t available in the classics in this detailed way for this specific issue that is so recent.

And this kind of gotten me thinking and from then on, it was like, okay, so what else is actually been written and in research and what else can I, what other information can I get from these papers as well? And to take that con the continuous from the policy protocol and how things changed here we are.

Now, all these nipples protocol was published in 2002. Here we are now in 2019 with a systematic review and meta now. Telling us more about three or more treatments, the use of a modified protocol. We know the C MoPTA credenda migraine. The acupuncture protocol is even more used now and how we’d adjust to the changes on the IVF procedures as well, because the IVF procedures now are not the same as they were when the policy protocol was designed.

So again, it’s a living medicine, so we’re all learning from it. Yes, exactly. Am I just want to point out that, protocols are. So really a guide. They’re not because of course each we’re still practicing patient centered medicine. And, radically personalized. And so this two ideas about the idea of improving blood circulation, calming the nervous system down, right?

So those are these points elections, but they’re not the only thing. And then there are many practitioners that do, assist with reproductive, with the IVF protocols, et cetera, et cetera that are going to tail. To their patients and use some, maybe all maybe less. But yeah.

So with protocols, I like, okay, it’s not with everyone. It’s got it. We still have to personalize treatments. Absolutely. Yeah. And I’ll show you a good example of that then towards the end. Cause I have one again, because I have more experienced with the IVF side of things and how important it is to have, as you said, like that protocol, that set of ideas, but then how.

Also work with that and add more related to that person in front of you. So just to summarize, and I will talk a little bit more about these points, just more specifically, but research literacy. So knowing about research, why is it important if anyone was to ask you. Through the main points that I would say to someone best practice.

So we spoke about this just now, knowing what is being done, what has changed, what are other peoples in other parts of the world doing and how is it working for them? So in other words, is it informing my practices? Professional credibility. When you’re talking to someone, if you’re able to talk to them in a language that they understand, it’s easier to have a conversation.

So it’s not taking anything down from the classics or from Chinese medicine. Language is just adopting that if I was speaking Portuguese only because I was in Portugal, we wouldn’t be able to have this conversation. If the classics weren’t translated from Chinese into English. We wouldn’t be able to read them when we were in college and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

So it’s the credibility of, oh, I understand what you’re saying. And we’re having a conversation and then linked with that is engaging with other healthcare practitioners, because we want to be part of that team that is looking after the patients. And that is pretty much how evidence-based acupuncture was born.

By the way evidence-based acupuncture was something that was set up by a medical doctor who did acupuncture. And in his own words, it was just getting the same question all the time when he told people to in his office and they say, oh, I think you should get acupuncture. People who go but you’re a medical doctor and you’re telling me to go and get acupuncture.

Do you believe in that? I knew would always say the same thing. It’s nothing to do with belief. It’s to do with it works. So I’m telling you to go learn. Belief has nothing to do with this conversation. So the EBA has this one sentence thing that you see on the website and on our forum. It’s the goal is to construct a successful evidence-based explanation, and that will help us to communicate.

Acupuncturist evidence effectively and support the public clinicians and healthcare policy makers. And that’s really important because those people are the ones that will decide what type of medicine and who gets to work, where, and that is using the language of science. The healthcare policy makers was something that we added more recently in the last few years.

And it’s been really interesting for me to look at that group specifically because. They might not have any medical background at all. They might be coming from a law background or, anything else, not necessarily a medical background. So not only they wouldn’t know about what we would call biomedicine or Western medicine, they definitely would not know from Chinese medicine eater.

So really important to have a language that we can talk to them about. And that’s because the public. And these, everyone is reading stuff from all the way from, as you were saying, these great papers coming out in terms of acupuncture for cancer. But the other side of the spectrum has stuff that is not accurate at all.

And we just can’t change it because it is the way it is. So there’s a big wide spectrum of information that these people are accessing. And I would prefer them to get this information from us. I added a slide because he asked me to, because he wants to talk about this one. And I really liked this one and seeing the stuff that came out of acupuncture research that is so much part of our day-to-day life.

And that’s sometimes we might not even realize that it came about because of acupuncture, research, neuro imaging research, you were talking about the. The paper and talking about how MRIs have been used and gave us so much information about what’s happening inside our brain, when we’re getting acupuncture biomedical knowledge of connective tissue, Penn level Lily Helaine Lowe’s event, like a it’s all, acupuncture is definitely so fascinating that as it looking to see how it works, they find so much more and it actually does advance.

The Western medical model. It’s yeah. So you see it adds onto it. Yeah. Insights into therapeutic encounters. Again, professor you McPherson wrote a lot about this as well and how, and even, yeah, Vitaly not, but I’ll put this out there as well, how the encounter actually matters. And that should account for when you’re doing the research tens machines, the anti-nausea wristbands, all of this stuff is there because of this work that is being done.

Hooray to us, and the new thing that you seeing more and more the comparative effectiveness research in terms of really trying to get that pragmatic approach to what we do in clinic and trying to put that into what is happening in research as well, and the amount of stuff that is out there.

And again, I won’t go on too much about this because we all know about this. John puts this amazing stuff together, compiles all this information. There’s almost 16, probably. Now this was in February 16,000 of Cochran’s central register of controlled trials. We should not discard this information.

We should use it. And that information is of good quality. This is something that we hear every once in a while about there’s a lot of research, but is it of good quality? We now have information showing that it is it’s the last 20 years. Yeah. Twice to fold higher rate than biomedical research.

The quality of that research is better as well. It has improved on journals and we have the papers to prove it as well. So this is good information to have on your website and to have on under your belt when you’re talking to other people. If they say, oh, there is stuff written, but it’s not a good quality.

Actually let me show you. And this is, I always go back to this amazing sentence that John said when we had our conference about the research is out there, but who’s reading it. And I guess that this is why I’m here doing this with you. And this is why we have our goal with EBA to get people, to talk with different languages and understand different languages and ultimately whatever floats your boat acupuncture.

So I’m asking you to be the change, you all listening to this, you and I say this, that you spend more time in clinic than I do. So you matter. And here’s the example that I was saying to you about the IVF work. So we’re looking at this from 2012, the Delfi consensus put together. So this is asking practitioners about information, about what you’re doing in the clinic for your IVF treat.

That information is, can even see that Shane Littleton was involved in this professor. Carline Smith’s name is Derek says on grant. Anyway, the names you’ll recognize the names anyway, but this was asking to practitioners, tell us what you do in the clinic. All that information goes towards an RCT. It doesn’t always have to be an RCT, this group is really reliable and really good at putting this research together.

They were able to put it in RCT together. That goes into a secondary outcomes of that RCT. So more information from that in terms of anxiety and quality of life for women undergoing IVF. And sometimes the clinics are really interested in this quality of life, anxiety for those people going through IVF.

Then all that information that started with the clinic remember goes into a systematic review and meta analysts. That gives us a lot of information. All of that goes into information for the Cochrane review, which is more likely to be something that, again, healthcare policymakers and medical people will be reading about that.

Remember how it started with that email in your inbox. Hey, do you have five minutes? Do you have 10 minutes to help us out with this? So what I want to say is that, if acupuncture is helping with anxiety over IVF, then. It’s obviously going to also help with anxiety over climate change, anxiety, over whatever anxiety.

And we see, move that there is this opioid crisis for pain. Acupuncture is great for pain. It’s great for helping people get off of addiction. But also if it’s great for anxiety, then we’re also gonna be looking at the future where so many people are on anxiety medication. Which are also very addictive.

And so just by, I’m just like adding into this. Just because one research area is about they’re a little more granular. The information then, gets applied in other areas as well, which is a very easy bridge, especially when it’s addressing those biomed those Mo biological mechanisms, that are showing up for things like anxiety, depression, and all of that. So this is a really big. And a good add on to that would be also to say that if you are, which I’m going to go into now auditing your clinic and showing and putting out there what’s happening in your clinic, you might actually be finding new trends you are now seeing in clinic a lot more patients complaining with X condition compared to what you were before.

And once you write about that, maybe someone in. Austria is going to go. Oh, actually it’s funny. You mentioned that because I’ve been noticing that too. And then someone in New Zealand is going to go, oh wow. It’s not just me. These guys also noticed that, right? Oh, there’s definitely, I’ll tell you in my practice over the last couple of years, anxiety and sleep problems.

And then looking at other research, there was, increase in writing of prescriptions for anxiety medication. Like even looking outside of. Who’s coming in your office, you start to see other, trends that are in the media and being reported, you start to look at, oh, cause I look at it when a patient comes in, I’m having a sleep pro and I’m like, wow, it’s all happening.

And then all of a sudden you see so many people. Are experiencing having these things. And once it that’s what I was saying. Once you start, if you keep this in your clinic only no one will know. Then you’re going to beat the best, kept secret. If you find a prescription that is really good for that particular condition, and you don’t tell anyone again, let’s go back to the beginning and think, is this a living medicine?

Is that going to, is that going to be the secret from your practice? And no one will ever know. So I know I’m exaggerating, but I’m just giving the example of why it’s important to audit your clinic. Just show what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. And then when you look at the outcomes, you might be helping practitioners all over the world to access.

Improve the type of treatment that they’re giving to their patients. So on-screen now there’s just a few examples of how you can do it. My mom, a lot of people know about it and a lot of people use it, which is great. There’s one which is online now in the U S you might’ve heard about it because I can track are actually involved in the study going on in the Northwest as well.

So yeah, you will hear more. About them because they’re online. So it’s just a little bit easier to collect this information from the patients as well. So that would be my thing. And for those who are interested in getting to know more about how to collect that information, then write it down in a case report.

And here’s what you have to do. Basically just look up. Care, which is case reports and then start collecting the data from your clinic. There’s actually more specific into Chinese medicine. It’s called Karch. And a lot of people will know about it even for N of one trial. So when you have just a one person this information is out there, but I would go back to what John Weeks would always say, it’s out there, but who’s reading this right.

I’m always in there. I’m in there. Yeah. Yeah, jumping in and I go if this herb is doing that, I’m going to look in the other categories. And I also look at the foods, what’s in the food medicine, there’s so much there. So this is really, I’m really excited about, you talking about.

Big point of interest for me, because it’s important that, a lot of practitioners may not do continuing education or, they may get a little bit I don’t know, stale with their treatments. And so I think this is important, very important to be up to date on what’s out there and also really again, to be in back.

For our medicine to be able to talk about it intelligently. Now, when I was in school, we didn’t have as much, I was in school, graduated 20 2002. So over 20 years ago there wasn’t a lot that was out there. There was the IVF study coming out of Germany. There was the study for the nausea and I think there were still working on the.

Down at NIH, right? So there wasn’t really a lot. And then you’d have to have things well, actually coming out of Japan, there were things, but they’d have to be translated. So what we have now, and also the internet was, very much in its infancy. This is, it’s so accessible for practitioners to do that and good good clinical practice.

To double check. Yeah. And this is we didn’t, people are going to be watching this and thinking that we arrange this, but we didn’t, and this is a great segue into this because what’s on screen now. It’s only part of the slide and I, this is actually a sentence from the paper itself that I’m going to show you.

And it’s something that adds on to exactly what you’re saying and what still to this day. And I hope that this will help to change that. Turns people against acupuncture research a little bit while clinical trials provide valuable data about if efficacy of interventions, findings often do not translate into clinical.

That’s something that you see and you hear, I would say that too, like maybe 10, 15 years ago, but then after learning and after doing my MSC and getting more into research, I don’t anymore. And talking about the timescale that you are giving this sentence is out of this paper that has just been published recently by a good friend of mine.

Beverly Devela. She collected information over 15 years. 15 years of information. Now, anyone can come from anywhere saying that, oh, there’s not enough evidence about acupuncture, or there’s not enough for us to base our decisions. That’s 15 years of information right there and published for everyone to see.

So in looking at this and saying these are sentences from the paper itself and that key punchline on, in day-to-day clinical. Practice not appears to be a safe, effective intervention for breast cancer survivor. This is really important for us to know and to have this, to be able to say straight away.

Actually, and what I’m going to emphasize too, is the beauty of doing the research is we also have thousands of years of, knowledge about the, how it was used. So we’re not, it’s not just being made on. We’ve got these, it’s not made up something it’s really based on, okay, this is what they say, this is what was going on.

And this is why they continued to do these practices. Now we can take that and look at it. So this is the point. So it’s the only 15 years ago, 15 years. Thousands of years of evidence that’s in, in these records and then really looking at them. So it is actually like we’re doing like a little bit of a retrospective, right?

Look at everything that’s been done and then designing. Different kinds of research based on what’s showing up in, in health for us and how, and like how we can actually use this and integrated with what I consider like the traditional model, right? Like where that fails.

There are these other things, and there’s no reason why we can’t do both. It’s not an either or and it’s and again, as you, we see that a lot of the acupuncture then informs better practices in a Western medicine model, like areas for growth. Yeah. Yeah. And this is again very timely for you to say this because I’m going to give you the two examples, just because we spoke about a discount at the end of the presentation.

This is just out in the last couple of weeks. Good friend of mine. Good colleague, Dr. Mathias, zoom or Martinez works. Mathias is a medical doctor who was also trained in TCM. He works in oncology and. And he wrote this case report about what are the patients? So this is like debunking a bunch of stuff against occupants in one paper right there, right?

Is a medical doctor trained in TCM who uses it in the oncology setting. And as now published a case report, which I’m asking you to do more and more showing the difference in one patient between getting acupuncture. This is one treatment, just one treatment. The difference between getting one treatment of acupuncture and the oncologist.

Like amazing stuff. And I just put another one because again, to link it back to the states as well and see, cause people would be familiar with this they’re obscene and Valerie, Valerie actually sent me a message before this. So if she’s watching hi and yeah, just publishing a case report and showing what’s happening in your own setting.

Again, hospital setting, acupuncture being used and how it’s helping the patients, but it needs to come from you. It doesn’t have to be a big, huge RCT a case report will do with. So here’s my plea and my punchline and my please. And then you can stop and you don’t have to listen to me anymore begging you to write research.

So here’s a time I’m V I’m more visual. So I like this and this makes sense to me. So I hope it makes sense to you as well. We started with the classics. All of this was written. Back in the day we read them. We learned about them in school. The first book that I read about Chinese medicine when I started studying in Portugal was Giovanni’s book translated from Chinese, some Chinese terminology there as well.

It all starts to make sense. Then you go into what brought me into research occupants or research the book. And again, the names they’re amazing. Rosa Schneider just, really inspirational for everyone. That’s how I started. And that’s what I read about. And it becomes the classical book now in terms of where it all started.

Now we have all this information going into Cochrane reviews and going into research and starting to be part of the research literature. My question then is who is writing tomorrow’s classics because yesterday’s classics have been. But in 200 years, in 2000 years, when they look back, what are they going to say?

That those guys in 2022, what were they writing about? What were they doing in their clinics? So this is why I’m asking you. To do it and to please make it your turn now of writing the stuff that you’re doing in the clinic and telling more and more people so that we can adjust and adapt the trials as well into being more like what you do in your own.

So that’s the end of my presentation and my begging for you to write what you’re doing. Oh yeah. I, and I have to say, I love that book. I actually have four different copies of Sue and aging and link shoe because each translation is slightly different. And I also had the pleasure of studying some with Elizabeth shot, the LA she’s amazing sense of humor.

And what I would say is that it’s also important to reread the classics, especially after you’ve been practicing, because then when you read it again, you go, oh, so a lot of this is you need to read over and over because and research and read papers because you’re at one level as a practitioner and then you get some experience and then you go back and then you can catch the deeper meaning and then also apply it.

So it’s always, so this is not, it’s like review, do that retrospect review again. Go back and you’re like, oh, wow. I didn’t know this before. And our information comes from many different places. I find my patients are fantastic for reporting stuff back to me which is also important.

So what I want to ask you Sandra, how what can we do to help you? Can we where can we find you? How can we follow you? Listen to more of the stuff that I have to say. Ah, yeah, I wasn’t expecting that. Yeah. Okay. So look as an individual, obviously it’s my pleasure. And it’s my passion to to the research side of things.

It’s just how I get to write. So some people would write books for example, which are very valuable. I, that my passion is that, writing these papers and putting it out. Sharing this information with people. So on a personal level I’m working in research. I’m I love lecturing. I love teaching.

I love learning from the students as well. So people can find me, Sandra grass online that they will be able to find more information about me. And the main work that I would do that would be more visible than for people would be through evidence-based occupants. And. Thankfully, we have a lot of people helping and supporting it’s a nonprofit organization.

So evidence-based acupuncture.org is where people can go and check it out. We have a forum as well, so we don’t do discussions on social media anymore. And we just take that to a private place where we can all talk as practitioners and as colleagues and outside of the eyes. Are there any. Censorship of social media type thing.

And without any distracting voices, either from the outside, so just for us to talk on the farm and share ideas and yeah, EBA connect is the way that people help and support the work that we do with EBA. Awesome. Awesome. Fantastic. Thank you so much. For coming on and sharing all this great information and also really helping people to really keep their practice from going stale.

And then also, be better practitioners, better, clinical practice. And then, this is how we bridge to other professions and become part of the team. And keep keep us professional, right? Yeah. Share what you’re doing in the clinic. Like it’s amazing.

I really appreciate the opportunity of coming here and being able to talk about this. I know I speak a bit too fast when I get excited about it. But it is really I’m learning so much every time. To find out from other people in their clinics, what they are doing and how can that influence? You said it yourself.

The study was from Germany and then you were reading it and then someone else, the paper I showed you, the survey of practice was actually in Australia and New Zealand, and now it’s everybody else in the world is reading it. Mathias wrote that paper from the hospital, the oncology. In Austria and now everyone is reading it.

So I think that it’s really important for us to stand proud of what we do and, have it on our websites. Haven’t, especially have it published and be able to talk about it in terms that other people can understand. And as I said, like the case reports would be, as you can see, the example would be the best way to put it out there and publish it for everyone.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Okay, so here we go. Hopefully you will join us next week. We are going to be having Jeffrey Grossman will be coming on and presenting for the American acupuncture council. And all right. And again, thank you for the American Acupuncture Council for putting this production on.

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So all right, we’ll go to the next.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’ll go to the new.

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

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

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

So we’ll go to the next.

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

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

We’ll go to the next.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So we’ll go to the next excellent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So hopefully you can join us next week.

 

 

 

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!

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 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.