If your baby is breech, give acupuncture a try. You come in once to my clinic, where I will instruct you on how to use moxibustion daily to help turn the baby. Moxibustion involves lighting herbs in the form of a moxa pole (it looks like a cigar) and heating an acupuncture point on your feet. You do this 20 minutes a day until the baby turns.

Moxa, by the way, is the Japanese word for mugwort, in Chinese, aicao. Mugwort burns at a high temperature and delivers penetrating infrared heat into the muscle layers.

We increased visit frequency to twice a week. The patient recorded her blood pressure readings every day and during the course of two weeks her blood pressure stabilized.

Her doctor was impressed and so was she. The power of acupuncture.

For more information on acupuncture and hypertension, you can check this article out.

People ask me how acupuncture works. Is it voodoo? Do I pray to the Buddha while the needles are in my patients and hope for a miracle? I don’t think so, as you will see.

One of the ways acupuncture works is through the immune system. Do you think I could put thin threads of stainless steel through your skin without your body’s immune defenses kicking in? This is why, sometimes,  a small patch of redness develops around the spot where I put the needle. This redness is caused by the release of cytokines and histamines from mast cells and basophils.

You know working out at the gym is a good way of exercising your heart. Doing Sudoko puzzles is good exercise for your brain. And acupuncture is GREAT exercise for your immune system, which is why people who get regular acupuncture lose their allergies and don’t get colds as often.

Sound good?

Before you come in for acupuncture, there are some things you can do to prevent your seasonal allergies from being so severe this season.

But first, let me ask you a question. Do you have central heating and air conditioning? Do you replace your air filters regularly? What happens if you don’t? If your cousin starts surreptitiously throwing old socks filled with feta cheese into your vents, do you think that might cause a problem with your home’s HVAC system?

Of course, you would have problems. And likewise, you WILL have problems with allergies if you are not keeping YOUR body’s HVAC system clean. For those who experience seasonal allergies, I recommend removing wheat, dairy, and excess sugar from your diet. What? You could never do that?

The question, then, is how badly do you want to get rid of your allergies? How about trying not eating these foods for 6 weeks and seeing what happens?

This means none of the following: pasta, bread, milk, yogurt, cookies, cakes, soft drinks, candy, etc. Some gluten-free foods are allowed, of course, but I would emphasize good quality proteins and lots of vegetables. Easy on the fruit, which contains sugar, albeit in its natural form. Can you say PALEO diet? More about the paleo diet can be found by Googling it or going to Amazon.com.

In addition to acupuncture and dietary changes, herbs help as well. A patient of mine who is allergic to cats told me she was going to spend a few days with friends who have cats. After taking the herbs (they are in pill form and all VERY safe, manufactured with high quality controls in Taiwan and the U.S.–not mainland China), she came back and told me she had NO reaction to the cats (except for maybe thinking they are cute).

Wishing everyone a happy Spring!

Personally, I feel that antidepressants, like antibiotics, are overprescribed. And like antibiotics, sometimes they are necessary–for the short term.

Our society is one that looks for quick fixes, from liposuction to ambien. But usually the taking the quick-fix route means we lose out on something. In the case of liposuction, we lose out on the exercise, the responsibility, the feeling of achievement, and the character-building that comes from working out.

In the case of Ambien, we might be losing out on something our soul wants to communicate to us. One patient I treated, after taking Ambien for over 10 years, started developing a phobia of driving in cars and had to start walking everywhere. She was sleeping well, though!

Likewise, I believe that the self-examination and the character-building we go through while dealing with normal life challenges might be missed out on when antidepressants are overprescribed. Please keep in mind, I am talking about cases when the med is overprescribed in cases of mild mood disturbances.

Obviously, in cases of severe depression, I believe that the temporary use of pharmaceutical may be called for (e.g., in a crisis situation when severe depression strikes and the patient needs to “hold it together” in his role in his company, family, etc.).

However, if our healthcare system were focused on prevention and education, people might not get to this point. Were people to learn about stress and relationship management (actually, we all need “thought management”), the prescribing of antidepressants would be far less prevalent. (And big pharma executives would be far less rich, but I digress).

Another problem with antidepressants is their side effects, which include the following:

• nausea
• increased appetite and weight gain
• loss of sexual desire and other sexual problems, such as erectile dysfunction and decreased orgasm
• fatigue and drowsinessinsomnia
• dry mouth
• blurred vision
• constipation
• dizziness
• agitation
• irritability
• anxiety

So, what to do? Psychotherapy has long been considered a viable alternative that is side-effect free. In fact, in a landmark study published in 1979 (1), it was found that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was more effective at treating depression than pharmaceutical drugs.

Now, with the popularity and availability of acupuncture, another tool without side-effects is available to help alleviate depression. In this recent study, it was found that acupuncture can provide significant relief of depression, at rates similar to psychotherapy and antidepressant drugs.

In my practice, I often work with patients who are aware of the downsides of taking antidepressants and want to reduce their reliance on them. I work with the patient and their doctor (who has experience in giving a reduction schedules to patients to reduce the dosage of their antidepressants) to help make the transition to a drug-free life more smooth.

As we practitioners of holistic medicine say, “Your body doesn’t have a Prozac deficiency.” Bodies and minds that are working well naturally produce the right neurotransmitters and don’t need to rely on pharmaceutical drugs to do this. Acupuncture and herbal medicine both do this–so you can get on living the life you want to live.

I will give you the punch line first, as if you don’t already know: diet soft drinks are BAD for you. Yes, a very technical pronouncement.

The research shows that first of all, the artificial sweeteners (sucralose, aspartame, and saccharin) used in diet drinks are toxic. Here is a great article summarizing the toxicity of each. It’s unfortunate that well-meaning people who are trying to lose weight are imbibing poisons. If you know one of them, please let them know about this blog post.

It has also been discovered that because artificial sweeteners are low in caloric content, they promote hunger at later times after they have been consumed (see article). After the results of this research, I have seen articles suddenly proclaiming the opposite. Funny how that happens, and I would be wary of those studies.

If that is not enough reason for you to stop drinking diet drinks, recent research has shown that diet drinks are linked to increased risk of type-2 diabetes.

So, as I tell all my patients, you should only be drinking water and tea throughout the day. If you would like to sweeten your beverage, use stevia. And using honey, molasses, agave, brown rice syrup, or maple syrup, even though they contain sugar are all better alternatives to artificial sweeteners. Even refined sugar is better than the articificial sweeteners.

In Chinese medicine, the sweet taste soothes the Liver system, which in Western biomedicine corresponds to the part of the nervous system that controls the mood. Put simply, we crave sweets to manage stress.

So, if you are craving sweets, you might want to look at the stressors in your life and find solutions to help you deal with them. More about that in another blog post.

In the meantime, wishing you much natural sweetness in your life.

So, for these patients, I often prescribe reducing the time and intensity of their workouts. While overtraining feels good (especially when you don’t have any apparent injury after your workout) and reduces stress, it can lead to acute injuries and chronic health conditions.

Don’t get me wrong, some weight-bearing exercise and aerobic exercise are great. I can be seen in the local gym doing such exercises. I might even take a Zumba class one day. But since I am a practitioner of Chinese medicine, I follow the Golden Mean (中庸之道), which means I can be found every morning in Arlington practicing tai-chi outside. The local high-school students watch me practice on their way to school and I wonder if they say to each other: “If you aren’t nice to me, I am going to get that kung-fu master outside to beat you up.”

So, today I am going to recommend moderate exercise to everyone. If there is a studio where you can learn tai-chi, go and inquire about taking a trial class. Tai-chi has been proven to increase flexibility, reduce high blood pressure, help sleep, increase bone density, prevent stroke, and more. For more, you can read this article from Harvard.

Moderate exercise, such as tai-chi will help improve blood circulation and strengthen the muscles while keeping you flexible and will not tax your reserves so that if you are dealing with a chronic issue, it will heal more quickly. In contrast, overtraining will delay your healing.

Happy exercising to all, and remember, don’t overdo it.

In Chinese Medicine, we say that a miscarriage takes more out of the body than an actual live birth. The ancient doctors recommended waiting one year after the miscarriage to try to conceive again. In my practice, it is rarely this long, but varies based on the health of the mother. And so, I have the patient come in for several months, give her acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine, as well as counsel her on food and lifestyle choices. At a certain point, the patient is ready. She and her husband can go for it. And in my experience, the result is a beautiful baby (or sometimes “babies”, as in the case of twins).

Today, I would like to share two stories related to this topic. The first comes from China.

There once was a farmer. He wanted his shoots to grow faster really badly but didn’t know how to make that happen. One day he had an idea: “I’ll just pull them all up a little. This way I will help them grow faster!” So he pulled up the shoots.

When he came home that day, he told his son and wife about his smart idea. “Listen to the good news”, he said, “I helped the shoots grow today!” His son got excited and ran over to the field to see for himself. But when he arrived there, he found all the shoots dead.

So now the Chinese say “pull the shoots up to help them grow” when someone is damaging something by applying too much pressure.

If you would like, watch the YouTube video showing this story (in Chinese).

The second story comes from the famous Brazilian author, Paul Coelho:

A man spent hours watching a butterfly struggling to emerge from its cocoon. It managed to make a small hole, but its body was too large to get through it. After a long struggle, it appeared to be exhausted and remained absolutely still.

The man decided to help the butterfly and, with a pair of scissors, he cut open the cocoon, thus releasing the butterfly. However, the butterfly’s body was very small and wrinkled and its wings were all crumpled.

The man continued to watch, hoping that, at any moment, the butterfly would open its wings and fly away. Nothing happened; in fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its brief life dragging around its shrunken body and shriveled wings, incapable of flight.

What the man – out of kindness and his eagerness to help – had failed to understand was that the tight cocoon and the efforts that the butterfly had to make in order to squeeze out of that tiny hole were Nature’s way of training the butterfly and of strengthening its wings.

Sometimes, a little extra effort is precisely what prepares us for the next obstacle to be faced. Anyone who refuses to make that effort, or gets the wrong sort of help, is left unprepared to fight the next battle and never manages to fly off to their destiny.

Hope you enjoyed these stories. Whether you are preparing to have a baby or not, hope they are of benefit to you. Wishing you all patience, perseverance, strength, and prosperity.

Despite these successes, people, who generally haven’t been exposed to these kinds of results (especially on the East Coast), ask me, “Isn’t acupuncture just the placebo effect?”

I could go into the various biomedical theories about how acupuncture works, talking about the immune, endocrine, and nervous systems. I could talk about trigger points and blood/lymphatic circulation.

But today, I will mention J.B. Mosely’s study of 180 patients set to receive arthroscopic surgery for knee pain.  One-third of the patient received three incisions, scopes were inserted, cartilage removed, soft tissue corrected, and saline wash was administered. One-third had the same procedure, except no cartilage was removed. And in the third group, anesthesia was administered, incisions were made, and surgery lasted the same amount of time, but no scopes were inserted and no cartilage was removed. The researchers found that the placebo group had the same rate of improvement in walking as the other two groups.

So, instead of answer the question about acupuncture and the placebo effect, maybe this time I should respond by asking, “Does Western surgery work through the placebo effect?”

A few bonus questions I might ask: “How many billions of dollars are we spending on these types of surgeries every year?” and “Could that money be better spent?”

Can acupuncture help you? As many of my patients have discovered… absolutely YES! But isn’t is voodoo? Don’t the needles hurt?Isn’t only a temporary fix?

To answer your questions, acupuncture is not voodoo. It stimulates blood flow to the area and promotes healing and in this way fixes your problem permanently. Are the needles painless? I am an honest guy, so I will say no, they are not painless (although some patients would say so). Sometimes, especially when feet are involved, you will feel them going in, a slight pinch. But after a few weeks, you will find that your foot pain is gone.

How does that sound?

A patient, a long distance runner, was suffering from foot pain. Even though she was running 10-15 miles a day while I was treating her, she notice a significant improvement in her foot pain. Another patient, suffering from Morton’s neuroma says acupuncture significantly reduces her pain. This is over a year after she had surgery to remove the neuroma. The pain returned and only acupuncture helped.

Come in for six treatments. Give it a shot. Your feet will thank you.

Fortunately, acupuncture is helpful at regulating the endocrine system and eliminating hot flashes. Sometimes hot flashes respond to acupuncture alone. Often, I add Chinese herbal medicine.

My recent patient is a typical example of a woman who is successful, generally healthy, but also driven and very successful. The hot flashes were getting in the way of work and making her life miserable. After two sessions, she could see results, and after a few weeks, her hot flashes were half as intense, and only half as many. She was elated. We are continuing treatment and she is continuing to get better.

Initially, by the way, my patient was scared of needles, but then found that this fear was all in her head. She could barely feel them going in.

If you are experiencing hot flashes and ready to get better, please consider acupuncture and Chinese medicine. It has helped many patients in my clinic and it can help you, too!