Acupuncture for Health and Vitality

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The following is for informational purposes only. For medical advice, please see a medical professional.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Welcome to Staying Alive with Margaret and Susie. And Susie's not here, and but she'll be back next time, we believe. And in the meantime, we can welcome back Jennifer Aspie, who hopefully you saw in the last episode. And we're going to continue to talk about integrative medicine and in specific acupuncture. Because I was working with Jennifer on inflammation in my body, and three or four years in, I got a cancer diagnosis. And so I knew just who to go to. She could take care of me, and her co-colleagues could take care of me for all the things that she's mentioned in her previous episode. And my body loves acupuncture so much. It's I knew from working with her for years how relaxing it was for me. I literally slept sometimes. It had the most calming, relaxing, energizing effect. And so I wanted to start out, Jennifer, by asking you what exactly does acupuncture do physiologically in the body? Is it different for everyone? You know how my body responds. Maybe not everyone's body responds that way. What does it do?

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Well, I want to can I do can I preface a little bit about so that people understand that like the information that I'm giving is super valid. So in the state of California, we are primary care providers. Very few people know that. We have our pre-med to begin our education, then it's a four-year master's program after that, with like, I don't know, it's like 1,800, 2,000 hours of clinical work. And then we have to pass a state board exam. So we bill insurance for those of us who take it. I mean, we're we're primary care. So then on top of that, I have a clinical doctorate, which was another almost three years of study with a was I did my residency at Shanghai University in China and at um Marin General Hospital, actually. So acupuncturists in the state of California, at least I can speak. Whoever you see has a very basic, safe understanding. If you're going for something specific, there are a lot of people that specialize as well. So you can go in and find someone, whether it's pain, whether it's oncology, whether it's women's health. I'm part of the nephrology department at UCSF, where I am part of the polycystic kidney disease center of excellence. So there's lots of, there's lots of clinicians that specialize in lots of things. Um, so it used to be thought that acupuncture just stimulated some points, but they really had no idea what was going on. And and to study acupuncture is so silly to acupunctures because it's like one of 12 modalities in Chinese medicine. Like nobody walks in a room and like shoots darts of acupuncture into somebody and walks out. That's just not the way it's going. So um at places like UCSF where I don't have a full herbal pharmacy, I can still do, which is really the only thing I can't do there, right? There's the patient practitioner relationship, there's the acupuncture, I can do electrostimulation, I can do gua sha cupping, mock subbustion. Um, so there I still get to do a lot of the um oh and tuina, the our type of manual massage. There's a lot that we can still do there. But people study just acupuncture, it's literally like cutting a finger off a hand and studying to see if the finger works as a finger. So that any research shows efficacy in acupuncture treatment isolated alone is such a kudos to acupuncture itself. Yes. Never meant to be practiced by itself. So, so um, so this idea of how what acupuncture does has the research has shifted the ideas about it really dramatically, especially over the last 30 years. It no longer thinks of it as just stimulating certain points on the body, um, but instead it thinks of it in terms of neuromodulation. And and that it it that means it has a way of affecting the nervous system, the immune system, your endocrine system, and then local tissue um physiology.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

That's so interesting. Like I I could tell as a recipient of it that I I hope that it was affecting my endocrine system and such, but but the feedback of the nervous system, I could tell how much it was helping my nervous system. I mean, I could feel that immediate, immediate, immediate. I don't know if everyone does, but it it was really clear to me. Oh, this is great for my nervous system.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

You're one of those great responders. I mean, I think that even when people so it's interesting. So I'm actually the first author in a Western peer-reviewed journal article for a protocol that I work, I wrote with my team at the OSHA Center for reducing cancer-related pain for an inpatient population. And um one of the things that I've learned is that the effect on the nervous system is so great that whether the pain itself is actually measurably reduced or not, a person's experience of the pain when their nervous system is relaxed and not just in reaction to the pain triggered, being triggered, will uh give them pain relief. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 5:54

Yeah. Look, can we talk about that a little bit more? Because um I know people who've gone through cancer surgery who uh are experiencing pain and they're somewhat uh fearful to use uh acupuncture. Like somehow that's gonna maybe spread some cancer cells or some somewhere else or something. So um it it just helps so much with the pain. I would hate for anyone to deny themselves acupuncture because I find it so useful for pain.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

So I I think that that is a very common experience and misconception. It's total misconception, right? Yeah, and I also believe that um working with someone with experience is really important. So this there's a what they're worried about, and I think what you're describing is something called seeding. So if you needle toward the area of cancer, you then help spread, you disrupt whatever is encapsulating the cancer cells where they currently are and you help spread it throughout the body. Um, I think that people worry about their lymphatic system also being potentially stimulated and that also spreading cancer. And is there any evidence of that? Not really. I mean, if I were to go in, people fall on either sides of the coin because it's not binary, right? Like if I go in close to a tumor and I'm needling around the tumor, which is actually an ancient Chinese method that nobody uses here in the state of California, that would be illegal. Um, yes, you could stand, you could stand the chance of of seeding. Um, but nobody does that. So, so for example, with the protocol that I wrote, um, most of the points are on the limbs because it was mostly thoracic, um, like the your trunk cancers, brain or trunk. Um, and when you are working with a clinician that understands the nature of cancer and their treatments, you are working with someone that is there mostly to support your own innate immune system, to support the efficacy of the treatment itself. We're not trying to like detoxify while someone's in chemotherapy. That would be antithetical to the treatment itself. We're not reducing efficacy, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

We're supporting what a person has chosen to do. So I I do think it's a misnomer when you're working with a clinician that has experience in oncology. And seeding, we don't, we don't, we don't need all areas of cancer. We need all, we have so many roads to Rome in East Asian medicine. We don't need to.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

Right. So so when you're working with an oncology patient, what are you focusing on? Primarily pain, nausea, what what else?

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Like I mean, I'm working on whatever's needed. I mean, what insurance covers is pain, nausea, and vomiting.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

So what we call neuromusculoskeletal pain. So neuropathies, you know, pain in the limb if somebody's got like a sarcoma in a bone. Um, I mean, there's so many different pains that come with cancer in its treatments, whether it's caused by the cancer or the treatment itself. Right. So I am mostly boosting a person's qi, their their energy inside their body. Um, I help with um trouble with when if people have like um their appetite is so low that they can't eat. We're trying to stimulate appetite. If they have diarrhea from treatments, we're trying to reduce the diarrhea so that they don't become too dehydrated, the nausea, vomiting, and pain, of course. I mean, I'm there for the anxiety, the sadness, the anger, whatever they're facing. I have an approach for. We all have an approach for. Yeah. So we treat the all person.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

Let's let's hear a little bit more about the qi, like, because that is so critical. We haven't really talked about that yet. So you're boosting the qi. Or explain to people what that is and what that does for health.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

So qi itself has no interpretation in in English. So we use the word energy because we don't have another word, but energy by nature can be measured and qi cannot. Qi can be assessed, but not actually truly measured. If you think about a yin and yang symbol, that is about the qi or the energy of yin and yang that are interdependent, codependent, they're constantly transitioning into each other. And that is the balance in the nature of our bodies. It reflects kind of how nature balances itself as well. Not all good is bad, not all light is the, you know, all light has some dark, like the everything has components of itself within it. It is the balance of the universe. It all came from the concept of the Tao, which is the way, which is actually existence, and that the inherent nature of everything is balance. So when you're working with an East Asian medicine practitioner, I think the best way to understand what we do is we have this very unique set of skills to diagnose where your imbalances lie, and we've all got them, right? Um, and then through that, try to recreate homeostasis or balanced physiology. So if we can all agree that a person's body will return to a state of homeostasis or balance if it can, given the opportunity, then you understand the complete foundational theory of East Asian medicine in its entirety. So that's all we're trying to do, figure out where the where you got wacky and do our best to get you back to center. Um, and in oncology, just to completely answer your question, we have to recognize the constitution of the person, the effects of the drugs, and then take into account the symptoms that they're experiencing. Again, understanding the nature of the cancer and the cancer treatment. So we have to be able to basically um translate the effects of both the disease and the treatment into East Asian medicine terms. Then we listen to you really in depth about what you're going through and we're coming to our own conclusions. Then we feel nine pulses on each wrist that correlate to all your internal organs. And we look at the tongue.

SPEAKER_02 12:31

And the tongue of the I had to get that out in an episode. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

The tongue is a map of all your organs. Um, and so we take all of this into consideration to come up with a treatment and a treatment plan. In terms of the evidence base of all of this and studying acupuncture MRIs that that study that show activity and the thalamus, the hypothalamus, the insula, the anterior cingulate cortex, the amygdala, and the free prefrontal cortex. And these are the areas that we attribute to pain perception, emotion stress, and autonomic regulation. And those were studied while people are receiving acupuncture.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

And scientifically proven to make a difference.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

That's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Um, it also does this this acupuncture stimulates the release of endorphins, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

And so this endogenous kind of opioid effect for acute and chronic pain is also a really popular um, it's a it's a popular reason why people come and seek acupuncture. And the studies have shown that blocking the opioid receptors like acupuncture do reduces um um some of the effects that they see that acupuncture does. So if you block it, acupuncture is not as effective in research studies. Wait, say that again. So it triggers endogenous opioids on its own. So when you're doing research and you block those and you do the same points, the acupuncture is not as effective. Oh, in that it triggers endogenous opioids, yeah. That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

It's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

But it also affects like neurotransmitters, right? So in East Asian medicine, we have the school of the spleen and stomach, which you can translate like the gut microbiome. And we know now that like I think it's 90% of your serotonin, which is your happy hormone, is produced in your gut. So acupuncture itself affects serotonin because we do a lot through just balancing digestion as a means of keeping someone strong. It affects dopamine, norepinephrine, and GABA. So that we think that that's the explanation as to why acupuncture is so good in helping treat anxiety and depression, insomnia, chronic stress and chronic pain. So it changes, it changes the experience of pain by influencing all of these neurotransmitters as well, not just because it's affecting with these endogenous opioids, but also because it affects neurotransmitters.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

That's great. No wonder I'm such a healthy, happy, well, getting good sleep aging person because my gut is good, you know, much more so than a lot of people after a certain age. So how how idea in the an ideal world, like um acupuncture would be covered by medical insurance and Medicare in this country. Like I'm like living for the day. Like I'm I'm I'm that's gonna happen in my lifetime.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

So Medicare is separate for one thing. Oh, tell us back pain if the acupuncture is done by an MD.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

And and and many, many, many insurances have acupuncture coverage now.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Oh, that's great.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

There is a problem, and that there is one third-party company that has taken over for all the uh many of the major medical insurances saying, like, we'll take acupuncture off your hands, we'll deal with it. It's called American Specialty Health. And the problem is that it runs like the worst HMO ever, and the reimbursement rates are so suboptimal that acupunctures can't afford to take it and live.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

And it's killing our profession, actually.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Oh, I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

It's really sad. I feel sad both for acupunctures and patients whose companies have signed up to provide them with acupuncture coverage, and yet nobody can take it because they can't afford to take it.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Yeah. I mean, I know for me, when I had when I was in the throes of cancer treatment, I prioritize my finances over coming to you every two weeks. But now that I'm healthy, I I'm like, oh, it's it's expensive, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Listen, as long as you're practicing all the things that you and I spoke of all those years.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

Well, yes, but but I know I know I'm always better with you, always better with you. So in the best of all possible worlds, how often would you suggest that uh a fairly healthy but aged person um receive acupuncture?

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Every two to four weeks.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Depending. I mean, if you're going out to the season, um, if you know that you're going to travel in a place where you might get sick, you might like boost up a little bit before you go. Yeah. Um, if you're going through a more challenging time in life, that was another time. Uh I mean, based on all those um um those scientifically proven components of what acupuncture does, right? So it lowers heart rate. It it takes people out of fight flight freeze. That's one of the reasons it's really good for early cancer journeys, too, is it helps people kind of re-embody themselves by seeing that parasympathetic rest and digest response. That's what it did. Yeah. Physiological changes, especially for stress that lowers heart rate, it improves heart rate variability, right? Because your your ability to manage the stress that's there is better. Um, it reduces stress hormone output. So you're not dealing with the cortisol, the excessive cortisol, epinephrine, nore, epinephrine output, and it improves your digestion, which boosts every system in your body, and it helps you maintain better sleep more regularly, which also boosts every system in your body.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

Oh, yeah. I love acupuncture.

unknown 18:43

I do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:44

I think that that's a good place to to leave it. Uh everything else. I yeah, I I I think that that's good. And um, please like and subscribe. And thank you so much, Jennifer. Thanks for having me. So good to see you. Thank you so much, and Susie appreciates it too. I'm sure she's gonna love this. So, so night until next time, we are staying alive.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

You've been listening to Staying Alive with Margaret and Susie. This show is hosted by Margaret Cooley and Susie Hymas. To subscribe to our show, leave a comment, or ask a question, please visit staying alive with margaretandsuzy.com. Our podcast is available on all major podcast platforms. If you've enjoyed our program, please feel free to leave us a five star review. Thanks for listening.