So today we’ll talk about a very interesting topic, which is the TCM ability to treat Cognition in Cancer.
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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Hello, everybody. Good to see you. I don’t see you, I always feel that I talked to people and first of all, I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council to putting up this show and providing this information. So today we’ll talk about a very interesting topic, which is the TCM ability to treat Cognition in Cancer.
So let’s start with the slideshow and it’s quite an eutopic and in the same time, it’s all topic. I would like to follow more the research, but also to speak about the TCM diagnosis of cognition and the specialty of cognition of treating cancer patient because cancer related cognitive impairment is.
Quite as specific topic, which is relate most to the cancer and very much of the different treatments starting from chemotherapy. Everyone now knows the chemo brain which people sometimes suffer for years or definitely months, the difficulty in concentrating differently in doing the cognitive things that they were able to do before they would feel.
Head is foggy. No, he’s like foggy and they find it really difficult to do the tasks that they were able to do before, even just read newspaper or to do mathematics, et cetera. So it’s a, quite the debilitating aspects of cancer and cancer care and cancer related cognitive impairment is huge topic in breast cancer.
Three out of four survivors was suffering for some degree. Of cognitive impairment. So we’re talking about quite a large numbers of cancer patients. So especially chemotherapy is the one that is effecting the cognition. And I would like to start with a recent research. Or a few research that has been coming up on that topic.
And I must say from an Chinese medicine point of view, cognition is very specific. It relates added to deficiencies, and we’ll talk about spleen and kidney deficiency, spleen more for the short term and kidney more for the longterm, but there is other, also other deficiencies like blood or cheat and chemotherapy can create this deficient.
There’s also access and access will usually relates to dampness and phlegm, but a lot of time to toxins. And that means that many of the drugs that are using captains are more related to the toxins part and they’re causing this kind of problems in cognition. So there are some more type of access. And the last things is more to consider the heart, the Shen and.
And I’ll come to this topic of the diagnosis and treatment. When we look at the research. So this is a research that looked at the effect of acupuncture in treating cognitive impairment in cancer patients. And what is interesting about this research? They actually monitored the effect of the research through some questionnaires about also BDNF, the Saron brain derived.
No Tropic factor. And so they evaluated both the cognition as you do, like in different tests, but they also look at biomarkers in the ceremony, this patient to see if there is a difference. So this study and gain, there were like 39 and 36 people in the real group and the treatment. And they look evaluated the difference between the two groups.
This is the point the use. And here we are coming back to the diagnosis. Some studies, especially research, we’ll go deeper into the Chinese medicine diagnosis and some research is more like symptomatic. I’ve I have a lot of interest in cancer care both in treating cancer, patient producing research.
Really teaching worldwide acupuncture and especially oncology acupuncture help in then I’ll talk a little bit more about teaching. So if you look at this research, what they, if you look at it poisoned, they choose. So they choose do 20. So this is more related to the. The city St. John, this is four points around two 20, so also relates to the Shen, relates to the mind, do 24 chanting.
This one, especially relate to the Shen, but also other points to strengthen the cheeky, like stomach that is six, the strengths and the kidney three, kidney four and gallbladder 39. Interesting point because it works on their domain, but more on them. Because it’s the viewpoint for marrow. So you sees a kind of interestingly designed combination that treats all the different facets and aspects of.
Cognitive impairment in patients. We are more focusing on the cancer patient that obviously some of these ideas are relevant to other people who have cognitive impairment. So in this research, they did the whole battery of questions, and this is like the different questions to. The cognition of the patients and they check the BDNF in the serum of this patients perceive the difference between the real droop grid group and the control group of this cancer patient BDNF by itself is very interesting factor because it’s it is secreted by the narrows and it is a significant component in the synaptic pluses.
So it’s secreted, eh, primarily in the brain, but also in other areas. And it’s been very, a recognized biomarker to show cognition and the higher the numbers. The more you can find in this. The better the condition is, and the whole idea of checking biomarkers, I’ll discuss also, it’s very interesting to monitor the effect of acupuncture.
And this is just to do as BDNF. It’s been evaluated in the huge range. Disease from depression, outsider, Parkinson, and think tone disease. And again, as they say, the higher, the BDNF level, it shows the better cognitive function, even in also bipolar disorders and others. So there’s a lot of reference to the relationship of the BDNF levels in the serum.
And. So in this study, they had this two groups, the control and the real group, and this were the results. Very interesting and promising cause they look both on the questionnaires and they show that they could commit cognitive functions were ameliorated in the acupuncture. They also showed that the serum BDNF level was elevated.
And if you compare it before and after treatment, and there was a very strong correlation between both. So people who scored more on the test also had a higher BDNF level. So you can see, again, the relationship between somebody is scoring well on tests and the BDNF. And this was compared to the control group.
The 10, no. Before treatment and after if you compare it to the acupuncture group. So the conclusion was that acupuncture is effective therapy in the treatment of cancer related cognitive impairment. And this was in breast cancer patient. And the mechanism may be related to this release of BDNF for activating neurons in the brain.
I was quite surprised to see more and more studies related. Yes, acupuncture studies related to biomarkers. And here’s specifically when we talk about cognition related to BDNF, this is like a hard core, very promising evidence. It’s not subjective, it’s not objective biomarker that you can also monitor it later on after even few months or a year.
Here is another study that was done with a bigger, eh, number of participants, 160 participants. It wasn’t just not just focused on cognition, but also on sleep problems. And it was a comparison between the insomnia comparison between as psychological intervention. And acupuncture and randomized trials.
So very good trial and again, published in cancer. And again, there was acupuncture was significantly increasing the BDNF level and had a positive effect on cognition. Recently, there’s going a big trial. Then you can see the clinical trial. Golf a registry on the effect of acupuncture and cancer related cognitive difficulties.
And so I believe in few years we will see a larger tries and focusing on different aspects, both biomarkers and other aspects to show the effect. And it’s a very promising effect of acupuncture on this very serious condition. And it goes far more than effecting cancer patient. It also talks to. People who have other disease, like Alzheimer’s et cetera, that have a commissioning permit and that is study.
And I’m just going through the studies, not just to talk about this topic, but to show also where research is going. And and I think this is what will happen in the next few years. We’ll see more and more stuff. On specific topics and at the studies will be very rounded with checking different aspects, including different biomarkers.
They chose the efficacy of acupuncture and also the sustainable efficacy from some studies, biomarkers I’ve been following followed for few months, half year and sometimes longer. And there’s a difference between groups not in cognitive and other studies in. This is a very small study to real pilot study of gynecological cancer survivors that demonstrated a lower neurocognitive performance and lower structure.
Also a connective compared to healthy controls. The reason I’m showing this study is just really to give the idea of where the breakthrough new acupuncture research is going. So this was a pilot study, but they look at more aspects, both on biomarkers. They looked at what people like different questionnaires, so like a subjective subjective objective measurement, but also even the structure in the brain.
So in this respect, it’s a kind of very innovative study because they also look at the structure itself. If acupuncture can affect this. The led the occupant trees use different points, as you can see, all of them are in the head. In my opinion as an acupuncturist, we are missing the diagnose, the part, we don’t look anymore in the efficiency’s access.
We don’t look at the, do my, we don’t look at the way acupuncture can affect the marrow, the brain. We’re more looking at the points that potentially can increase cognition or brain function, but still the points are selected that are known. So again, we have cecinct and
like the four points around do 20 we have in tongue and young points on the head. We have a gallbladder eight, so we have gallbladder points too, that can have an effect and can increase. How would they like what to just go bloody nine personally? But gallbladder 15 gallbladder, 20 blood AGV, 20 stomach eight.
So they let the acupuncturist choose a point. According to their preferences, to the patient. As a it’s a pilot study, that’s very few people in each group. They did it twice a week for 30 days. And they followed that they did from four to six kind of cycles of treatments and then seconds per patient, 10 sessions per patients.
So as I said, very small group, eventually three in each group. So it’s a pilot of pilot, but the results are interesting because they also look at three different li. Parts of checking the difference in the patients between the treated one and the control group. So they look at the, again, neurocognitive tests and they look at the multimodal MRIs.
So it was more in MRI checking there, especially changes in the structure of the brain and they look here at the different BioMarin then. And they, the NAA, which is a game then kind of neural marker that have a correlation to a neuron density neuron function. And it’s a lot of the markers that can be checked also for cognition.
And when they looked alone in this very pilot study, they said that there is a different in the intimate, micro, structural, white matter in the brain. It was lower than in the healthy control group. When they look at the NAA, the, again, it’s specifically the left hyper Calamus. We won’t go into areas in the brain.
They compare and see that there is a again, results in difference between. Healthy controls. He was the controls were healthy to the cancer patients. This is what they’re looking at, the micro structure and really the reason I brought this very pilot studies to show that they’re trying to compare.
Acupuncture and the effect of acupuncture in disrespect on cancer patients compared to the healthy patient, also assessing cognitive function and looking at structural of the white matter in the brain and to look at different kinds of biomarkers and property. It was the NAA before the BDNF. So this is a very interesting way to assess acupuncture and I believe we will see more and more.
Future studies that have different aspects of checking the efficacy of acupuncture and. And I think this will be a great breakthrough, especially for the skeptics, because if you affect biomarkers or if you affect structure, it tends to an impact which is much greater than any subjective effect.
And especially in areas where Western medicine is very little to offer. For cognitive factors, There’s merely nothing that Western medicine can offer. So it’s, I’ve seen really by now hundreds of constipation, and I know the effect and sometime the effect is almost immediate. People will come up after our acupuncture treatment, constipation was saying, oh my head is not fogging anymore.
I can concentrate. I can read. I came from the treatment and I started reading books, which I’ve read for the last few months. So it’s also very fulfilling for us as an acupuncturist. And I think research especially this type of kind of innovative research will be very Supportive and will strengthen the effect of sending people for acupuncture, especially cancer patients.
As I say before, I’ve been heavily involved over the last years in both treating cancer patients, doing a lot of research publishing more in herbal medicine but also teaching oncology acupuncture Luckily through the zoom I can sell around the world. It was also before, but I have to travel more.
Now we have really people from four continent graduating from this course and having a lot of huge international companies. More than 500 people who can just share their experience. And as we know for cancer, there’s no borders. And also for acupuncture and teaching, there is no bones. If you’ll be interested in the program like this, you’re welcome to check it out.
And and I hope any way that you will find this information in ideas, very useful, as I say, because they’re go beyond just treating constipation, but any other patient.
I would like to thank you very much for watching this show. I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for putting up this show. Next week there is a Sam Collins, so we are welcomed to watch it, and I wish you all the best of health and healing. Thank you very much
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.
So today what I want to do is I’d like to talk about the state of the union of dress for marketing your practice in 2020. But before I move on, I want to remind you all of something very important.
Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Hi there folks. Jeffrey Grossman from Acupuncture Media Works, Acudownloads and Acuperfect websites. I am thrilled to be here in a new year and supporting. The knowledge, the education around growing your practice and marketing and busy building up your business savvy. Thank you AAC. For once again, inviting me back to provide some insights and inspiration for marketing your acupuncture practice.
So today what I want to do is I’d like to talk about the state of the union of dress for marketing your practice in 2020. But before I move on, I want to remind you all of something very important. The world needs you now more than ever. I’ve talked about this before I talk about this. Every time I come on and do a presentation for the AAC, because you are an incredible resource.
You’re professionally trained. You can heal a person’s body, their mind, and their spirit. You are literally. The epitome of what a natural healer is, all about immunity, about natural remedies, you know how to transform illness into vitality. You preach good health through good free flowing, balanced G.
And this. Medicine and you, the work that you do, the work that you provide is powerful, and you do all of this by activating the vital force of every patient. You come into contact with, that’s all natural drug-free solutions. People need you, they need what you’re offering. They’re looking for advice for your help and they need your services.
Many people don’t even know that you exist, let alone, that you can help with just about every element under the sun. But I want to help you change that. You can start to position yourself as the go-to acupuncturist in your community, but you need to understand four fundamental things about what you do.
Fundamental thing. Number one. You wear the hat of a healer. Awesome. You are great at that fundamental thing. Number two, you also wear the hat of an entrepreneur that my friends might not be the best hat that you wear because you weren’t really given the tools that you need to grow your practice when you’re an acupuncture school, but you were given all the tools to be the incredible healer that.
Fundamental thing. Number three, is that you also wear the hat of a superhero in your community and fundamental thing. Number four is that you are. The CEO of your business. And I’m gonna talk about that and prove that to you in a second, you take all the duties, all the responsibilities that any CEO does and you wear all the hats that any CEO does.
So I’m going to ask you a couple of questions. Let’s see how many of these questions actually pertain to you. Mark them on a piece of paper with each one of these. You resonate with, are you responsible for leading your practice and making major decisions for it? Are you the figurehead of your practice when communicating with any type of government entities or any insurance entities or even the general public, do you lead the development of your practices long and short-term strategies?
Do you manage overall operations and make major decisions affecting your practice? Do you manage your practices? Resources? Do you negotiate or approve agreements and contracts for your practice? If you’re like most acupuncturists that I’ve worked with over the years, you’ve probably checked off most, if not all of these traits and these traits, my friends are the traits that CEOs incorporate into their business.
So by that nature alone, I know that you signed up to become an acupuncturist, but you also now are the CEO of your own practice. So congratulations for your. Round of applause. But here’s where you are, right. You own a business, you make money and you have responsibilities. So that’s why it’s really important for you to think about these CEO questions and not to just think about them once a year.
It’s important to reflect on them, monthly, weekly, and even daily. So my hope for you is that you become prepared after today’s talk and you start thinking like a CEO, because you’re so good at thinking and behaving like a healer and that you embrace a new marketing mindset. And of course, That you continue to change this world.
One person, one needle at a time. Okay. So now let’s get into this state of the union address for marketing your practice in 2022. Like I said, a couple minutes. People need you. But the unfortunate part is that many people may not even know what you do, how you can help and even what you actually offer.
Okay. So here’s a little exercise that you can do today. When you get back into your clinic and ask your patients, this one question, patient, this is what you ask them. So if you were at a party and someone asked you what your acupuncturist does for you or what they could help. What would you say? And then sit back and wait for the answer.
You might be very surprised about what kind of answers you get it. If you get something like, I don’t know. I lay on the table, they rub some alcohol on my skin and Pokemon some needles and I leave there feeling. If that’s the answer that you get, you may not be doing enough to properly educate and prepare your patients to send referrals your way.
And the reason I’m illustrating this point is that you’ll know how good your patient education process is. Or are not. And the goal would be to have your patients answer a question like this in a convincing and compelling manner that can stimulate the wow factor with who they’re talking to and ultimately drive referrals into your practice.
Most likely more, your patients will miss this ability to really share what you do and what you offer and how you can help other people. So the thing I want to get across here is that patient education is key to creating a stable and long-term practice. And this is the exact reason why I founded acupuncture.
Media works in 2002. 20 years ago is because patient education is a key and it’s important for creating a foundations of your practice. But today patient education comes in many forms. It comes in email, it comes in tele-health, it comes in brochures. It comes in handouts. It comes in social media, it comes in text messaging and so on.
So every time. You are with your patient every time they step into your clinic, or when they see your profile on Facebook or Instagram, each of those times should be about furthering their knowledge about who you are, what you can treat and what’s in it for them. And this brings me into my first point of this state of the union for marketing, for acupuncturist, which is crafting a clear and concise message for what you do.
Is one of the foundations for your marketing moving forward. And what I mean by this is who are you? What do you offer your community through your work? What benefits will your patients receive? How will their lives be different after seeing you? What is your unique selling position that makes your stand, you stand out from your competition and why should a prospect choose your.
Over another. And these are all important questions to answer. Even though times have drastically changed over the last 24 months. These are still part of the core marketing and business concepts that any successful practice or business needs to connect with. So one of the first things I want to get across to you is that your core message.
It’s going to be the center of all of your marketing activities. And let me ask you this. Do you have answers to the questions that I just rattled off? If not, I suggest that you start thinking about them and filling in the blanks, or you can join me in my upcoming, create your core message workshop, and you can do that by reaching out to me after this at Jeffrey J E F R E Y at acupuncture, media works.com.
If you’re interested in learning more about. Create your core message workshop. And I’ll send you some information about that. So becoming on-point with your message will be the foundation, or rather should be the foundation of all of your marketing strategies moving forward. And if I were wager to bet, I’d have to say that most of you.
I don’t have answers to the questions that I just talked about. And that’s the first thing that needs to happen in this new year is to get clear and concise with crafting your message. And I don’t mean, hello, my name’s Jeffrey M and I’m an acupuncturist and I can help. What you need is something like one of these examples that when you’re talking with you about here’s example, number one, too many people struggle with pain and injuries.
We provide effective treatment that allows you to perform well in the. Sports and work without pills, surgery, and high costs, or this one we offer unique and individualized evaluations to treat injuries with cupping and acupuncture. So they, our that our practice members can go out when their next race and feel great.
Or this one, which is the acupuncture media works one-liner, which is most acupuncturists don’t like marketing and have no idea how to bring in new patients. We offer a riot, a wide range of business marketing and website solutions. Connect with more customers grow their practice and make the world better.
That is, these are clear and concise messaging of four different businesses. And I encourage you to get this done because you need this. You need a core message and the state of your practice depends on. The next thing that I want to get across to you, that’s important to do this year is finding clarity on who your target audience is and who your patient avatar is.
Okay. And in marketing, focusing on defining your target audience and your patient avatar is essential for practice growth yet it’s often a fundamental step in branding that practitioners missed. Although many practitioners wish that they could just help everyone that walks in. And I totally understand that it’s essential to accept that you can’t help everyone.
There’s only so many hours in the day and you may already be on tight, a tie on tied up tight on time. And that’s why identifying your target audience as a practitioner is an incentive step in the development of a successful marketing strategy. Not knowing your target audience can end up costing you a lot of money and time and make, all of your marketing efforts seem really frustrating.
So here are three frequent marketing errors that are made as a result of. Just not having a clear idea on who your target audience is. So when you don’t have your target audience clearly defined, it can result in one of these following problems that you have a marketing plan that speaks to everyone’s linked.
But it really connects with nobody. You could be a practitioner who tries to appeal to everyone, but you end up appealing to nobody. Or you can be a practitioner who spends way over their budget in an attempt to reach everyone, but that you really reach your ideal customer. So getting clear on your target audience refers to a group of potential prospects that you want to provide products and services for.
And in healthcare industry practitioners aim is to bring in more patients and grow their practice. So marketing efforts that simply. To reach anyone anywhere are pretty unlikely to produce repeatable success so carefully and precisely identifying your target audience is essential so quickly. How do you define your target audience?
There’s a couple of different ways to describe and hone in on the target audience. When it comes to defining this audience specifically for health and wellness marketing, there’s four primary categories that you should focus. Geography demographics, psychographics, and behavior, but to be successful and to stand out in an extremely competitive field, it’s essential that you take your marketing a step further than just defining your target audience.
From the areas that we mentioned, that you will also need to define who your patient avatar is. Okay. When it comes to your target audience for your practice, it’s time to come up with also your avatar. In other words, it’s time to imagine who your dream patient is. As I call it who’s your a patient, right?
And this patient avatar is a detailed profile of your dream patient. It focuses on one person and outlines everything about them and goes into great detail in depth. So think of your avatar as. A patient and not just your average patient, for example, your advertiser or someone that you want to be involved in their healing journey.
They’re high spending, they’re loyal, and they often give you great referrals to their friends and family members. Hopefully, some of you can imagine who your eight patients are and begin there with identifying your ideal patient because identifying your ideal patient and your target audience go hand in hand together.
So let me take this one step further and asked you, who do you work? If you specialize, maybe you offer fertility or sports medicine, for instance. Now these are two very different and distinct individuals in these groups. So if you’re dealing with somebody in fertility and dealing with somebody in sports medicine, you’re going to be communicating to them very differently.
Okay. These people are gonna be seeking different outcomes, and they’re going to need to be communicating about their care plan or what to expect or not to expect. And they’re gonna, you’re going to need to talk to them in a different way. So when you get. On how you want your community to perceive your clinic and your brand through your messaging.
You need to get clear on who your ideal patient is and who your ideal customer profile is. When I go through this exercise with my students and my coaching clients, we dig deep into this deep enough for them to actually visualize who their ideal patient is, and even come up with a name for them. But there’s no time for that.
Now I’ve got a bunch more that I want to share with you. So far you have to get your messaging right in this new. So you can attract the right patients and then you also need to come up with who your ideal customer profile is and who your ideal patient is. Okay. So moving on, the next thing is that you need to have an actual plan.
Yes. An actual mapped out real marketing plan and strategy, which is a roadmap to how you’re going to get from point a. To point B, how are you going to go about bringing in new patients? How will you be posting? Where will you be posting? What will you be posting? What will you be networking with? And at the end of today’s training, I’ve got a little special free gift for you that you’ll be able to download and use as part of your posting strategies.
So hang on a minute there. What is the patient process? When a patient comes in from visit one through visit 12 or through visit 20, what is your communication strategies? What do you messaging? Do you want to get across to your patients as they come through your treatment? How will you motivate and encourage your patients to continue care or even refer others?
So you can’t just assume that all of this is going to happen by itself because that’s called hope marketing, right? You’re going to hope that you’re going to get a referral. You’re going to hope that you’re going to get a new patient this week. You’re gonna hope that you’re going to make a bigger profit this year and you can’t spend four or six years learning about this amazing medicine and then opening up your clinic doors.
I hope that your schedule will fill up and that you hope that you’ll have enough money to retire on. So for this year, you need to map out your plan, come up with a strategy and actually implement it. Okay. So I want to get across to the fact that. Last thing once I get across to you is that your online presence is imperative for success.
And this should not be taken lightly as in yeah, I got a website. It’s great. I’m good. So let me ask you this. When someone gives you a referral to go see a doctor or a therapist, what’s the first thing you most likely do when someone refers a good restaurant to you? What’s the first thing you’re most likely to do?
You’re going to go online and Google it and check it out. You’re going to check out their website. You’re going to see how many reviews they got, how many testimonials they have in. Then from that, you’re going to make a judgment call as to whether or not you want to work with them or eat at one restaurant over another.
So having a compelling website that immediately lets that person know exactly what you can do, how you get help them and what their next steps should be. This is important to set up. Don’t do this now, but later on, look at your website and when you land on your website, can people immediately understand.
What you can help with what conditions you can treat. Do they understand how they can get in touch with you? Or is your website compelling enough to make people take action? Is there a clear path that they take when they get on your website? Is there a link to a free download to a report? Can they schedule a with you immediately or can they request a complimentary exam or do you want them to watch this video?
Not this video, but the video on your website, but when someone hits your site, you’ve got just a few questions for them to say, yeah, I don’t want to see Jeffrey. I understand that he could help me. So part of this is that your website needs to be mobile ready and filled with eat content, right?
So eat content stands for expertise or third nativeness and trustworthiness. And this is vital to establish yourself and your brand as a trustworthy, reliable authority in your field. So you’ve gone to create content that positions you in that way, because. Like this eat content provides you with the authority that Google loves, and it helps you with your rankings.
So you can just set up your Google, my business. You need to have testimonials on your site. You need to have several calls to action. You need to have a clear, unique selling proposition that quickly and clearly sets you apart from the competition. Okay? So you are in the perfect position to change lives and this world in order to do that, People need to know that you exist and what you can offer them.
So today I hope that I helped elevate your business savvy and your CEO mindset and help position you for the state of what you need to do this year in order to achieve some of the practice accesses that you want. Make a real. Come up with a strategy that taps into your superpowers, create your message.
And you’ll be able to change the world. One person, one needle at a time. People need you. So I hope that you received Andrews and inspiration that you needed today. And I want to encourage you to reevaluate your plans. And if you need a fresh perspective, let’s start with a free 15 minute mentoring and discovery call.
You can if you’re interested in one of these mentoring calls, just shoot me an email that says, yes, I’m interested in a mentoring and discovery call. 15 minutes. Absolutely no charge. I’m not going to sell you anything. Send me an email, a Jeffrey, J E F R E Y at acupuncturemediaworks.
Also. I’ve got this free gift that I want to share with you. I want to put it up on the screen. It’s in time for the Chinese new year. We’ve put together a token of our appreciation for all. Congratulations. Yes, it’s the crowds that’s cheering for everyone. So we’ve created a social media bundle that you can use to post on Facebook, Instagram, or email, or even uses text messages.
Just go to www.accumedia.us tiger 2022. Then you can grab the free graphics bundle right there. All right. You are awesome. Stay strong, change the world. One person, one needle at a time. We need you. All right. Stay beautiful. Next week, Virginia Doran is going to be here sharing some of her insights and wisdom through the AAC.
And thank you for showing up and being here. Talk to you soon.
And today we’re going to talk about the top marketing trends of this year and the, I think you’re going to be quite fascinated by some of the things I’m going to be sharing with you.
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.
I think the acupuncture profession that you need to know about and pay attention to so that you can apply it to your practice, to have things be most effective for you and not waste time on things that are already going in the other direction of. Likely you’re going to be working as well. So this is Chen Yen, 6 ADN 7 figure, practice, makeover mentor at introvertdivisionary.com your show host.
And today we’re going to talk about the top marketing trends of this year and the, I think you’re going to be quite fascinated by some of the things I’m in. I’m going to be sharing with you. And I would love for you to type in the chat. Where are you watching this from? What are you curious about with trends and that week I can look at this and help you the most.
So the number one trend that you’re going to see an upcoming years and including this year is AI and its effect on how Things will be easier to write things like content, blog articles and things like that. Where, for example, did you know that with AI? They have even the ability to pull the, a blog article topic on something that you may want to write about that they can pull from online, different articles and everything, and then reorganize it into a blog article and then pop it out on the other.
So things like that are going to become more prevalent and available, making it easier for you to share things that are educational and helpful for your potential patients and existing patients. Another thing is that there you’ll probably notice that the. Voice search will become more important as well.
So there are some statistics on this and in that voice search continues to grow and will be. And I, and what guests, what platform is and a platform for you to pay attention to? Because one place that if you are, or one thing that if you would like to be getting more patients in the door and getting the phone ring more one avenue to help support that online is by getting on the top of search engines through.
Google reviews and Yelp reviews and then sites like Healthgrades, for example, why is this it’s because then if you have a bunch of five-star reviews and more of them than your competitors in the area, then you start to pop up on top of the search engine. And there. Now I hear a lot of things from acupuncturist about how, oh, I don’t like Yelp and I, and stories about how, oh people take reviews.
Y’all takes reviews down if you don’t pay for the service. So this is the thing you don’t have to pay for. Yeah, hope to be getting lots of reviews. You just need to have a systematic way of attracting those reviews. In fact, there’s actually an automated software that helps support getting those reviews.
And if you would like that, you can message private message me or send me an email, go to our website@introvertedvisionary.com and then just contact us. And then I’ll, I’m happy to share that resource with you. And the, that our clients have been using, actually it’s introduced to it by a client of ours who, in terms of what software we’re recommending now.
And we checked it out. Cause she, she said, oh, this is really good. And then we checked it out and it’s very reasonable and it can help you with getting found more online. So it’s the key is being consistent with getting those reviews. But how does this tie into to voice search? So for example, There will be progressively more opportunities for voice search dish to be effecting things.
For example Yelp has voice search and then including Amazon Alexa, Google home, you can end up basically it has a major influence on voice search Yelp and You know what users can just ask Alexa for the kind of business in the local area or the best kind of acupuncture practice in the local area through voice search.
So if you don’t currently have that optimized, then consider having that optimized so that you are able to get potential patients that way without having to spend a dime. And the, as we look at the growth with. Things like AI and automation, one of the things that will become more and more important is your uniqueness factor, because when things are easier to share and get the word out, that means you have more competition.
In a way. And so then if the market’s more saturated, then it is even more important for you to, the good side of it is that it’ll save time and, but in the but the downside of it is that. There’s just more saturation of people doing it. And so then how do you stand out from other acupuncturists in your area?
What really differentiates you? How are you communicating that effective? A lot of acupuncturists who reached out to us for help often struggle with that. And it is directly reflected in their patient numbers and income, even though they might not think it’s really that big of a deal. They’re like, oh, I know.
So the, that is really important as you look at the coming years and this year you’ve been to as far as how do you step more into your uniqueness factor and really own it and be able to share it in such a compelling way that, that people get it and appreciate your unique, what you uniquely bring to people aside from just, oh yeah.
I can help you through acupuncture or Chinese. So the other thing is that also online courses because of the whole I know how many of you would love to have a way of bringing in another stream of income and be able to reach more people at once through something like an automated online course go and have them try it.
Yes or no, if that’s, you let’s see. So yeah, so the Online courses and consuming things online have become more and more popular, especially because of what happened with COVID and people being more used to things virtually. And so people are more comfortable with it virtually, but But then it’s going to be even more important now than then prior to COVID because again, we talk about more people doing it, right?
Because back in the day, for example, we had clients back in the day where there was much a lot less competition because they got started on an early even before COVID and but now things are becoming more saturated. And so if that’s the case then you, if you want to be successful with offering an online course and bring in another stream of income through that, cause imagine, having something automated that could be, bring you an extra few hundred dollars a month or an extra few thousand dollars a month or an extra $10,000 a month.
Would you like that? How many of you liked that? It’s totally doable still, but it’s going to become more important at it being good quality and it’s solving a practical issue, that doubt a practical issue. So what’s less helpful is just overall about Like how Chinese herbs are great. And, or even the idea of someone was approaching me and saying that they wanted to do something around longevity and they tried to put it up an online course and it wasn’t really selling.
And so how, what have a practical issue right now does that, what he teaches about longevity help with the. The person’s whoever’s interested in it. They’re practical issue right now. How does what you teach really into longevity, help with someone’s likely practical issue right now.
Okay. So now let’s talk about what else to pay attention to so that you can apply this to your practice and be ahead of other acupuncturists who aren’t listening to this. One other thing, trend that you will start to see more and more is that people will Open their emails less than in the past.
So if you’re using email as an avenue to stay connected with your patients, then you might notice that habit, but does that mean, oh, you should go and start. Emailing people. No, because email is still one way that it’s like where you truly have that connection with that patient through one, one way. And you have their email.
Whereas if you were only communicating with potential patients or educating them through things like social media, like Instagram or Facebook or YouTube, you don’t have. There or even a Facebook group you might think, oh yeah, they’re in my Facebook group, but what happens if Facebook or Facebook decides to change what they allow you to.
Tomorrow or what happens for example, and this did happen where things were screwed up earlier this year in terms of Facebook for a day or something, it’s then you panic, you don’t have a way of being able to stay connected with your potential patient base or patients.
So it’s still really important for you to stay connected with your potential patients and patients through email for that reason. However, because you’ll also likely see that less people will be opening up their email and then consider going on to other platforms too, like other avenues of building community, whether it be reaching people, whether it’s, it is things like Instagram or other kinds of avenues as well.
And then there’s also, I’m going to talk a little bit about the writing on the wall for certain platforms and things. In every stage of, and by the way, if you like what I’m talking about right now, you can go to. Introverted visionary.com and get access to six and seven figure practice make-over tips.
And also we give out free templates and at training as well to, to those of us who are connected with. And you can also check it out, but just directly on, on the website with what applies to you, if you’re finding what I’m talking about today, helpful and wanting to stay in the loop with updates as well, with marketing trends and different things.
Cause you know, you possibly, you can’t possibly keep up with these things. You’re busy seeing patients. So let’s talk a little bit about the writing on the wall. So the. What is writing on the wall right now, as far as the platform, let’s talk about first about what are the three there, actually, I would say three and then four, four phases of any platform.
What are the three or four phases of any platform? And when I say platform, I need a way to get the word out. For example, whether it’s Twitter, whether it’s Instagram, whether it’s Facebook, whether it’s YouTube, it goes through a few key phases. Typically, number one is the new phase. That’s when it starts getting out there.
An example of that was tick-tock where that got started, and then people were hopping on it, trying to check it out. And that was like a big hype and everything. Then number two comes the adaptation phase and in adaptation phase, what happens there is then people start to that, the adopt to it more.
And then third phase. Is saturation. So that’s when there’s more saturation of people on that platform. And then number five, I’m not sorry. Number four, the fourth phase is dying down, or they might still be around. So if you look at platforms like Twitter, if you look at platforms like MySpace, I was just thinking about that, the other right.
That’s what exactly what happened. And so there’s writing on the wall with one platform that many of you are using and perhaps even using to watch this right now. And I’ve been calling this for years, even before, before this year I was bringing it up. I was bringing it up like a few years ago. I was saying, writing’s on the wall right now.
And it continues to be down that trajectory. My, I believe that the writing is on the wall in terms of the amount of Rachel get for the efforts you’re putting in. And, or even if you’re spending money on the platform, same thing, right on Facebook and the, where, first it was where it was newer.
And then everybody got on it. And then, Then the groups you used to be able to not groups, but the Facebook business pages, you were able to post on there and most people would see it. But then they started, it started becoming more of an ad platform. And so you would have need to pay for ads or a post on your personal page for it to be seen more.
But now even as are costs are skyrocketing because of things with IRS. And there’s also if you’d notice, even as you go through your Facebook feed, notice that how many different ads are through your feed compared to in the past, when you first started, like you can’t even sometimes see your own friend’s feed feeds as much as you.
So it’s it’s in the direction of, will this die down or will, will it stay around? And so what to do about something like this is that this is where it’s helpful to know the trends that I’m sharing with you right now. And then be on other big, be diversified on other platforms.
For example, Instagram is a better platform at the moment. If you want more organic reach ads platform, it can still be better on Facebook at the moment. But again, I say, I feel like the writing’s on the wall and continuing to be. But the important thing about this is not about just, I need to and by the way, like this, if you’re liking the things I’ve brought up so far today about the AI thing about the even marketing trends about the.
The platform thing and trends, right? So the idea is not to just jump onto a different platform and then start feeling really lost and feeling oh my gosh, do I always have to be getting to know another platform or to hire someone and have to pay more money on this thing? And the key.
Is to an any platform. How are you being clear about what is unique about you and your practice and Being able to convey that in a compelling way. And one of the things about so that it doesn’t matter which platform you end up being on. Cause that’s why people who are actually good at this.
It doesn’t matter what platform, it, they will still always be good at it. And then people who struggle with it, it’s like maybe they just think it’s a platform thing. And one thing that is, it has been a trend and is continued to be a trend is, and even Facebook some of their highest like in, in high positions and Facebook owns Instagram, right?
So they were talking about how video is going to be one of the most. Like it’s mainly going to be video platform and even Instagram, they, the, they had made an announcement about how they’re moving more towards having more video on the platform. And so what that means is that it’s you being able to get the word out in a way that allows people to resonate with you more than just a fleeting social media posts, if you’re going to do things on social media will become more important too.
And I know how it is because I used to be very self-conscious about being like doing a video or being on camera, things like that, but it’s, I could totally relate to that. And it doesn’t mean that you have to be super polished or anything because you could still be just being yourself and sharing what you know, and be endearing that way.
Even if you don’t feel like you have it all together, or even if you feel like you’re. The other thing that in terms of with trends is that another aspect of marketing trends to pay attention to is even just who you might want to focus on helping more or to talk about to help more.
And perhaps you have a general practice, but are there certain kinds of health issues that you could talk about more? In terms of wanting to help more people relate it to that. And so it’s helpful to follow trends of what is happening out there in the world related to that. One of the most impactful things that has happened?
I don’t know about it’s not, I don’t feel like it’s, I wouldn’t say it’s in a good way, necessarily impactful, but did you know that more than. A hundred thousand people died of drug overdoses in a 12 month period. This is ending in April, 2021, and it shattered a previous record for the most ever recorded one year period.
And if to put it in perspective, I, the number of COVID deaths, for example, in 2020, with 350, 2000, right? So that’s still like the drug overdose kill be killed being a doc, having died from that. Very high isn’t it. So this is in the U S the stats that I’m showing you, that I’m sharing with you from the U S so the question is, and, I follow Vedic astrology is sacred sciences of astrology, and they’re actually paid people like when president Reagan followed astrologers and a JP Morgan he often said that millionaires.
Don’t you need astrologers billionaires do. So in any case follow Vedic, astrology, and it’s talked about how, that drug issues in, in this country will likely. Be growing in upcoming years. And and so how can you play a role in really helping with that issue that is, is going to likely continue to grow.
And unfortunately, And the other thing is that mental health issues, and many of you may have seen this within your practice as far as the an increase in mental health issues. So think about how could you play a role in that, or maybe even differentiate your practice with bring up to people that’s an area of focus for you, because there are a lot of people who need that help right now and also coming up as well.
So one final thing that I would like to share in terms of. Trend wise, this is not so much a per se, a marketing trend, but I it’s there’ll be a global shift trend that will likely affect. Each one of us and which is this talk of there’s going to be, there’s like very likely going to be some shifts coming economically and even in financial currencies and things like that.
So just stay tuned for what might happen with that and be on top of things like that, because it can affect you. And it’s good to. Be updated and your patients too. So now everyone and including me. These are just things to pay attention to as you practice this year and continue to.
If you would like six and seven figure, practice and make over tips and free templates that can help support growth in your practice, then you can go to introvertedvisionary.com or if you feel like you’re at a plateau in your practice and are wanting help with growing. Because you can go there to, and request to chat with us.
One of the benefits that we have is being able to see the insights of practices that are working and in terms of what’s working for them and what’s not working for them. And then bring that to you in your practice. So to shortcut things so that you’re not having to. Try to figure this out and what will work best and and then feel bogged down by having to do all this stuff and not having enough time to do it.
And still just really would like to be focused on seeing patients. And go to introvertedvisionary.com and get the free templates or training on our page or reach out to us and having it help now next week, stay tuned for Jeffrey Grossman and for next week show. And until next time.
Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Hi. I’m Sharon Weizenbaum and I’m so happy to be there in this first episode of a year long series of short talks. And I want to heartily thank the American Acupuncture Council for hosting me to do this lecture. And let’s go to the slides and I’ll tell you more about myself when we get there.
Okay. So why classic formulas is the title of this lecture. And then we’ll go deeper throughout the whole year. And I personally have a dedication to and fascination with classic formulas, and I hope to inspire practitioners to delve into this more. So why classic formula. So what we’re going to do in this short lecture is first a little bit about me and then answer the question.
What does classical mean in terms of Chinese medicine and what doesn’t it mean? And what’s special about being a classical herbalists. And we’ll look at it as a way of seeing and also the formulas. So first a little bit about me. I live on a farm in Western, Massachusetts with a bunch of horses and dogs and goats and chickens and sheep.
And and I am also the director of the White Pine Institute, which is an educational organization through which I teach the graduate mentorship program a two year herbal training program that has a focus on classical herbal medicine. And I’m also the founder of, and on the advisory board of an organization called the White Pine Circle, which is an educational, a membership organization that develops a lot of community around Chinese medicine, east Asian medicine.
So I’ve been practicing for about 40 years now. I was in my early twenties when I graduated from acupuncture school, which was the New England School of Acupuncture in Massachusetts, long time ago. Okay. And here’s just a, some of my. Influences. And I lived in mainland China for a little while and studied with Joe show me and her main disciple of Dr.
And then these other doctors. All classic formula doctors, there’s a puncture line and all of these I’ve invited to teach here at the white pine Institute. In fact Dr. Foo young laying there with a couple of our dogs is in front of our clinic and Institute. , Dr. Hong Kong has come so.
Study with him. And I’m below some of my other deep influences. Andy Ellis, Eric brand, your onside men. So that’s a little bit of background about my training, my teachers it’s very broad. Okay, so this idea of the classics, I’m going to look at this character DJing a little bit, and that’s the character for.
The word classical. And so let’s look at this character and get an idea of what does classical. Actually mean, what does this character Jim mean? We know there’s the nature being the Nanjing, the eating the Shannon Bonzo soldiering, and it’s all this character that we translate usually as classical.
So this character is made up of the silk radicle and the silk radicle has to do with. Threads. And we have here, these silkworms that are exuding these threads. And so here are some characters below that all have to do with thread, like things. So whenever you see the silk radical, which is in the character DJing, it has to do with lines and threads of things.
And just to mention that the character Jane is also the character for. Channel like in the channels, in our bodies, the meridians. And so these, lines, these threads like patternings. So this character has the silk radicle in it. And the other part of the character is this character Jean and. Jim, he refers to the water rivers that flow beneath the earth.
It is the water that flows in the dark underworld. So that’s a quote from the show in Janesville, which is a hun dynasty dictionary. So you have this idea of these threads that are flowing underground, like the meridians of our body, that that are invisible to us. And yet they also give rise to the life that is visible, so we can think of the channels as under neath the skin, but also invisible.
But the channel, the health of the channels has everything to do. What goes on the surface of the body that we can see, we’ll bring this back to these classical texts here. This gene also has to do with the longitudal longitudinal, which is these vertical lines on the planet. So we have some sense of these lines being vertical.
So we have, the human body and the channels run off. Exclusively vertically, not totally because we have the channel of the diversity, but so we have some sense of this idea of vertical. Also the character DJing, it refers to the warp of a weaving. We want to understand that the war of the weaving is these lines that are there.
That then when we go back and forth, the weft, that’s where again, the visible is and the warp ends up being invisible. So we could say the name aging is this DJing, this war. This invisible, these invisible lines that these, this gene, this classic is connected to this tapestry of Chinese medicine that we understand today.
There’s so much that comes out of the classics and the classics are this underlying wisdom. That perhaps was even received vertically from heaven and this underlying visit, intelligence that is, that informs everything we know about Chinese medicine, so we talk about all kinds of acupuncture techniques and things like that, but it all goes back to the classics.
So everything that I’ve studied, it was connected to the classics, everything we’ve, all studies is connected to the closet. Some way. So there this uniting thread, so we could say that this character Jane is an information pathway that’s coming vertically back and forth from, and back to heaven.
It’s invisible, but it’s the foundation for all that’s visible. So I think that’s very beautiful and here are some other. Uses of the word, like the nature thing, the Tanya eating the, my DJing, the pulse classic, and some other meanings of words that include the character. Jane. We even have the six confirmations, the Leo Jean, the warp of a weaving and.
So I’m going to go on. We don’t have a lot of time, so I’m going to just run through. So here’s some of these classics, what I consider classics. So the is the classic that tells us all about the individual herbs, the mythical Tanya. Is about the formulas potentially that’s booked that doesn’t exist.
So we don’t really know, but it’s the decoction classic, the emerging and the nation are talking about the principles, underlying the message. The principles that underlie the method of acupuncture and the method of acupuncture is expressed in the Nanjing. The method relating to herbs is in the Shanghai sobbing.
And so the being one of course is made up of the and the . And these are all from. Around the Han dynasty or earlier, all of these books are, 1800 years old or more. These, I consider classical texts. And so in general, when we’re talking about classics, we’re talking about things that came from about 2000 years ago as the foundation for what doing.
What is not classical are things that came much later. And, I know when I went to school that the idea of classics, it was very vague. And so you could consider anyone else. School of the spleen and stomach that’s classical, but actually that was so much later the, when being texts weren’t until the 15 hundreds, John Janua is modern compared to the classics and so all of that.
Things came much later and they’re all built off of the classics and all of these texts when being texts that are written by a variety of people judging you age, you done, she leaned on you and they all they all knew the classics very well and they extrapolated from them and even things, that.
That we think of as like using the master a couple points for the teaching, the extraordinary channels of the eight vessels. Even those are, the master couple points weren’t associated with the Bama until about the 15 hundreds, so a lot of these things are talked about as classical and it’s important, I think to recognize.
That a lot of these are not classical, so for me, I don’t consider the wending texts as classical texts. They’re rooted in the classical texts, but they really were not written about until much, much later. So what is it about the classics that I love so much? For me the nature itself, wasn’t very accessible until I started to realize that it’s about being right with sick with time, that the whole idea of the honky nature.
The whole book is telling us how to be right with time, and there’s getting up in the morning and going to sleep, following the movement of the road, the apparent movement of the sun around the earth know this, that it’s talking about, these various expressions of time in relation to space and that health is being right with that.
And what happens when you’re not right with it? You know what happens if. The sun comes up it’s seven in the morning, but I wake up at three o’clock. In other words, my body is going too fast for time, or, I am meant to poop every day, but it takes me three days to book like my body’s going too slow for time.
So health is always seen as what is our relationship to these rhythms in time, everything from the pulse to the breath, to the digestion to waking and sleeping are all. About being right with time. Illness is about not being right with time. So this is a view of the body and unhealth of illness and also of what to do about illness.
And so when you start looking through things from the classical perspective, this is what I really love so much is looking at my patients, looking at the world through this perspective of being right with time. And Here’s a nice picture of this like rotation of union, which is about all of the ways that time is moving inside of our bodies.
And we have this relationship with nature and that health is about being right with those rhythms and that our healing gestures are about helping people align with the natural world around them. If you ha, if you start with this perspective, then you look at the Hong Dean aging, which is our foundational, theoretical texts, all kinds of things.
Start to make sense about that text. What it’s actually talking about. That sounds jibberish, if you don’t have this perspective. So once you have this perspective, it starts to be like, wow, what they’re talking about is so profound. And so time is something we attuned to and aligned with.
It’s always cycling and managing everything. How do we attune to it first by orienting ourselves with time and space within the center of our own bodies, our own beings, all we then can we feel this great turning, how it’s working in our bodies and we can start to see it in other people. This is the perspective that working from the class.
Offers us for me. And here’s a picture of this is the yellow emperor in the middle, and you can see that the yellow emperor is facing south as cheapo, instructs us. He says the siege faces south. And what that means is that if you want to be a C. You should pay self and once you face self, you can see here’s.
How long do you facing south? And that means he’s facing the red Phoenix here. And look at what’s on Hong D’s right? Is the white time. And so if you’re facing south, you might notice that the white tiger is going to be the west direction. And the green dragon is going to be in the Eastern direction. And what is going to be behind you is the north, which is the black turtle.
Now you might notice. These white tiger and green dragon are the names of herbal formulas. And so if you take this perspective and start reading the Shanghai lawn through this perspective, you start seeing that these formulas are designed to establish right relationship with the directions, so I’ll give you an example.
We have this blue, green dragon decoction, shouting long term. And what is the direction of the east? The direction of the east is too. It’s Ty young, the great young it’s supposed to bring the young up and out. So what if you don’t have a good relationship with the Eastern direction? You’re not going to go up and out and bring all this warmth up and out in your mind.
So your relationship would be Eastern direction is your body is actually going to slow. And what do you get? You get cold because that young isn’t rising in you. So what do you do about it? You bring in the punch in heart. Ingredients of the minor blue-green dragon decoction and that pungent warmth. It’s not just that it expels cold from your body, which it does, but it also reestablishes your right relationship with the movement of the east.
So that’s just an example then you can, for me, when I discovered this cyclical relationship, With the Shanghai online, it was like a domino effect. Like all of the ideas about the confirmation started to fall into place like boom. Now I understand what these formulas are doing.
I want to really offer this beautiful perspective and that when we start seeing in this way, we’re using formulas to reestablish the person’s right relationship with nature. So this is the world view of the classics. Later texts do not have this worldview very much at all. What happened was we started to be very separate from the university.
We started to have the inside and the outside, like where pathogens are outside of me and they can get in me and I have to get them out of me. That view took much more precedence over time. So from a classical perspective, we don’t exactly get rid of pathogens. It’s our body’s job to get rid of pathogens and what we do with.
Herbs and the classical formulas express this beautifully is we re-establish the person’s body function. So when I give shouting tongue I’m reestablishing a function, and the result of that is that the cold pathogen is resolved. So from a classical perspective, we’re never going around and trying to.
Get rid of, or kill any pathogens. We’re reestablishing the body’s function to do that for itself. And it’s very powerful. So another aspect, I’m not sure where we are in time. I think we’re just coming towards the end and I’m open to any questions, but the other reason for why classical formulas, I hope I’ve inspired you a little bit with my enthusiasm for it.
But another Another reason for it is that all of the formulas, the architecture of the formulas are designed to reestablish this body function. And there they work in a sort of lock and key kind of way. So what you find when you start looking at the body through this perspective and seeing the formulas is when you get it right.
When you see it correctly and you reestablish the function with the formula, that all kinds of things start to resolve automatically, and I’m going to stop my sharing here. And so rather than just going into build G or. Move cheesy or supplement the kidney. Your. Going a step deeper into this invisible realm and reestablishing the function so that those organs started functioning well on their own.
So there’s often a rather miraculous untiring or resolving of issues beyond just going directly for the organ or directly going through. What I hope to do in this series is go into some of these formulas and how they work. And and each time discussing this particular worldview and how the formulas fit in with that.
And this is also, I want to mention the White Pine Circle or membership organization, because there are many practitioners there that are teaching. Once you’re a member, you so many wonderful. Little resources and workshops that also elaborate on some of these ideas. So I want to invite you guys to check that out.
All so that’s it for my talk. And if there’s anybody who would like to ask a question, I’m really happy to answer.
Okay. I don’t see any questions, but I will be back in a month and we’ll probably be looking at that one of my favorite formulas, which is great. Your tongue in that. Okay, thank you.
So I want to just introduce this topic of what you may be missing that can literally transform your practice in a relatively short period of time to be a busy practice.
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 to AAC To The Point. My name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. I’m a CPA. So a certified or charter professional accountant as well. Fellow of the American board of Oriental reproductive medicine. And I’m also an author. I’ve written a book called the acupuncture fertility diet, and a practice management book for acupuncture is called missing the point why acupuncturists fail and what they need to know to succeed the topic today is about the difference between a busy practice and not a busy practice, a successful practitioner and not a successful practitioner.
And it’s quite interesting because I’m doing my research for my book. It was my experience in talking to other calls. That it wasn’t always the ones that did best in school or the ones that were incredibly gifted, quite skilled at their craft that had busy practices. And it became very apparent to me that to have a successful practice did not always mean that you were talented.
We obviously want that right. Integrity. We want you to be clinicians that are helping patients helping your community. But we also want to know about some of the practice management sides and I’m very aware of being part of our profession. That some of us have an aversion even to talk about money or business.
So I want to just introduce this topic of what you may be missing that can literally transform your practice in a relatively short period of time to be a busy practice. The part that I just want to share with you just to help remove any aversion. So you’re open to receiving what I have to say is.
We can look at our practices from a yin-yang perspective and we have our clinical knowledge and we have our practice management or business knowledge, and to be successful you, and to be healthy, you have to have yin and yang and relationship. And when union yang fall out of relationship, we have illness and we need y’all separate.
We have death. And so same thing with your clinical practice. If you only focus on the clinical side, And never focus on the practice management side. You could have your uni young out of relationship and be so talented, but yet not seeing very many patients. Or the worst case scenario is uni yang separate, and you actually have to close your practice and find a different career in order to eat, live in and pay your bills.
And so my goal is to have union young in relationship. So you are actually have the talent to help your community, and you have the practice management skills to attract them into your practice because it’s become very evident that. Patients can’t tell the difference between a good acupuncture prescription or a good herbal prescription, why they didn’t go to Chinese medicine school.
So how would they know that the points you’re using are correct or not? And to say that well, it’s all about results. I know for those of you that have been practicing for many years, know that some of your patients that are the best referrals are the ones that you weren’t able to do. Resolve their problem, but yet they refer a ton of people to you.
And then there’s some that you had miracle cures with. Even you are surprised that they got well so quickly based on their history and what they were presenting with. And yet within one or two, maybe three treatments, you resolved it and they don’t refer anybody to you. So there’s something also.
So when I do these lectures to the point with the AC, I want to get to the point and that’s what I’m going to do now. And I like to share what I hopeful hopefully are short and impactful ideas or concepts for you. And so the concept today is going to be around specialization or focusing and. What successful entrepreneurs do.
And an entrepreneur can be an acupuncturist because basically somebody who is accepting money for their service or product. So by definition, you are a business. So you could be an entrepreneur. If. You behave and know the principles of it being in business does not make you an entrepreneur. They’re all entrepreneurs are in business, but if you’re in business, that doesn’t mean you’re considered an entrepreneur, somebody successful like that. And so one of the key principles is to be able to fill a need, see a need, and then fill that need for the public. And that’s what becomes valuable, attractive to the.
What we call patients, what businesses would call customers, our patients, to be valuable to them. We have to fill their need. And I want to share with you a blog post. I did a couple of weeks ago, and I ensure I’m happy if you’re online to answer, or even after in the chat app, you can ask some questions.
But I want to talk about specialization focus in particular. I want to talk about. Two conditions that I think if you got competent and confident to treat it well and learn how to communicate to the public, that you are treating this, that you would be lined up in a heartbeat pretty quickly, where you would need associates or you need to find a new solution for yourself to handle the volume of patients.
One of the pushbacks around focusing in a certain era of specialization is they say, it’s, it’s we should be generalist. We should treat everybody. And I agree you should treat a lot of people, different types of people, but when you specialize, it makes you very quickly an expert in that area.
When you still see them in your clinic, you’re still treating them holistically. So for me, I. Famously known for treating for treating infertility. But my patients that come in have headaches, they get sore knees, they hurt their backs. They may have diarrhea. They may feel cold. They may have psoriasis.
So I’m not just focusing on their ovaries or for the men on their sperm. However when they look me up on the website, They are looking for somebody that can solve their problem. And so most people, when they’re looking for somebody, they don’t want somebody that lists a hundred things. They treat that’s a generalist, which makes you a master of nothing from the public’s perception.
And if they go to your site and they see that you’re treating one to three things that starts to give them confidence that you’re the right person, because you’re treating that. And it’s like in the old days, I’m old enough to have yellow, the phone book when there were yellow pages. And if you’re looking for something in the yellow pages and you’re looking for a therapist, cause you have a phobia and you had a phobia of lad.
And somebody had an ad. Same. I treat fear of snakes, fear of ladders, fear of flying fear pencils, and the list goes on and on. And somebody else had an ad on that yellow page book. And it says, I specialize in fear of ladder. Most people would choose the fear of ladders. They’re just wanting somebody to be an expert.
You don’t go in Western medicine because that’s the framework they’re coming from. If you have cancer, you don’t go to a GP. You go to the oncologist. If you have hurricane candy, heart disease, you go to the cardiologist or the dermatologist for. And so I know in the clinic, how we treat is very holistic, but we have to be patient centered to care and get into the shoes of the patients and how they think, because the key is, can you get them in the door so you can treat them because if you know how to treat many things very well, but you can’t get patients into your clinic, you’re not really helping your community very much.
You’re not seeing these patients. So we need to make sure they come in to see you. And this is the in young. You want to be competent and skilled at treating them? Obviously we don’t want to be charlatans. We really do want to be able to help our community. So I want to share with you a blog, I’m going to read it a bit and then I may pause and ponder elaborate a bit, but I just thought I’ll be to the point.
And so I don’t miss anything. I’m going to read this. So I’m talking about viruses in particular. You might’ve heard of the COVID variant the code, the COVID disease. And basically I say, you must be aware. We are currently in another surge in COVID as a result. We not only have both restrictions in place, but also more people are getting vaccinated or getting the virus or both.
This means that more people are going to experience post-inflammatory conditions. Triggered by the virus. And these are known as long haulers are triggered by the vaccines. Yes. There are some people who are experiencing long holler symptoms. Following the vaccine. Please note that this talk I’m doing is not about the marriage to vaccinate or not to vaccinate.
That is not what this talk is about. This is about being your time to shine and to be of service and great value to your community. The opportunity is presented as. And the question is, are you going to act on it? The definition of luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
And actually the opportunity now has presented itself, and I hope you are prepared or willing to become prepared now. So back in back a few months ago, I was out for dinner with some friends and I used to be a chartered accountant. And so a lot of my friends are professionals, lawyers, doctors. Scientists and I’ve kept these friendships and we like to get together and meet.
And it was quite interesting. We were up for dinner and one of them being a medical doctor said before Christ shut most of our social life down. So this was when I was out with my friends. So we were still able to go out for dinner right now. We’re locked down. And he said, you alternative doctors. Yes.
I know I should. I, when I, when they said that and I wrote it in my blog, I thought, should these be my friends anymore? The fact they refer to me that way, but they do care about me and they didn’t mean it as an insult. And I and I took it with a grain of salt. Anyways, you alternative doctors should be so busy now because there are so many long haulers that look like fibromyalgia.
And that is what you are really good at. And we don’t really have a solution for these people. And I know again based on their common columns, alternative doctors and how they, don’t understand these are my friends and they still don’t understand really what I do. I treat fibromyalgia in their mind, but let’s just talk about what is the reality is more and more people understanding what we do, but there’s so many more people that don’t.
And so education is really important and communication is really important. And if you can educate to the public that you can. Support or treat these long haulers because there’s nobody else is treating it. You will become the go-to person, but you have to become the early adopters. Somebody’s going to figure this out.
And if you haven’t figured this out yet, and you haven’t gotten the momentum, you’re going to be left behind us as acupunctures. So I want to focus on what good came out of that. It is a Jew. It is Chinese medicine docs that are trained and experienced to treat complex syndromes. We are now seeing and conventional medicine are still trying to figure this out.
Eventually they likely will, but now is your time to. Actually some hospitals have already set up long hollered clinics and have hired acupuncturist as part of the team. Another reason to buy you, to make this area of focusing your practice. And I’m going to share at the end of this, what I’ve been doing with my long haulers, some of the early stages of what I’ve been doing and some of the results I’m seeing, it’s quite promising and exciting.
I want to let you know that I recorded an interview with Christine Kaiser and she’s a licensed acupuncturist. She has her DOL. And she’s a fellow of the American board of Oriental reproductive medicine as well. And she serves as the clinical manager of acupuncture and quality at the university of hospital, hospitals corner, whole health in Cleveland, Ohio.
And she shared that her hospital has established an integrative team to treat long haulers, which includes seven acupuncturists. And they currently have a three month wait list. Let’s pause on that. So a hospital has set up an integrated. PR to treat long haulers. The sum of the team members are acupuncturist.
They have seven, acupunctures dedicated to treating long haulers and they already have a three month wait list. The concept is already proven. If you have a slow practice and you become a proficient at treating long haulers. And part of that means the confident to communicate clearly to your patients, how and why you can have.
Then you could become very busy and we’re going to talk about that communication in a minute. I’m often asked by colleagues, what areas should they focus or specialize? And I usually respond with first find what you were passionate. And then I list three to four areas that are attractive to patients.
That’s the key. You have to be passionate about it. So that’s your part. You got to love what you do otherwise. You’re not going to put the work in needed to become confident and competent, and it has to be attracted to the patients. So patients have to care about it, right? And so certain areas are more attractive to patients than other I’m in long haulers is my new number one condition right now.
Fertility is another one. And there’s some other areas I can tell you, but I’m actually wanting to, oh, so in my blog, I talk about, I’m looking to hire somebody in Vancouver to take over a long holler area in our practice. I currently know of six people who develop symptoms following either the vaccine or the virus.
So I’m motivated to make sure someone on my acupuncturist team is passionate about helping them as I’m aware that more people are going to be. Are going to develop these post-inflammatory conditions, the common symptoms that I’m seeing of the six people only at this stage that I know of. And I’ve seen my, my third and my practice.
We’ll talk about this. They have fatigue, not all, but this is the group of symptoms. I’m seeing fatigue, peripheral neuropathy body pain, severe brain fog, skin rashes, anxiety, headaches. And so I just want to talk about the focus of specialization in what’s important here. So I’ve been talking about a few of the patients.
I’ve seen the first one they came in. I wasn’t confident I wasn’t prepared yet, so I didn’t confident, confidently establish the treatment regimen, what to expect and she’s come in ad hoc. I haven’t seen. Very regularly may be three or four visits, but over quite a long period of time. And so the last time I saw it was a couple of months ago and she saw some improvements in some areas, but not in others.
And to be honest, I don’t know if it’s having any effect what I’ve done, because she could be having those kinds of improvements just based on the time right now. But I was more prepared when patient number two came in and she was interesting because her post-inflammatory condition, her long hauler symptoms came after her vaccine.
So she got the vaccine and it triggered a post-inflammatory condition. Now I know this is a heated debate, so I’m just going to pause a bit about vaccine to not vaccinate. Because this is not what it’s about, what I want to bring to you. I’m just going to bring a factual thing, talking to that, the group at the IO clinic and talking to other people, majority of the people that are long haulers are people that have had COVID.
There is a very small percentage of people who get vaccinated that also develop those simple. Compared to the long haul or the percentage is a big minority, but it still happens. And because so many people are going to get COVID, there’s a higher chance just by numbers. No matter what the percentage is that some will get post-inflammatory conditions because they got COVID.
And because so many people are getting vaccine. There are going to be some people that get post-inflammatory conditions. And this theory, how we treat Chinese medicine, who cares, whether you call it a vaccine or you call it COVID we already know this has been around for eons. We’ve seen this with other viruses Epstein-Barr virus and in Chinese medicine, we’ve seen these latent pathogens in the body wreak havoc.
So this is not new to us. It is a new virus in the west. But the thinking from Chinese medicine perspective, this is not new. This is very old. And we do have an approach for this, my second patient, a young woman, healthcare provider herself. So she got triggered from when she had her second vaccine and she had peripheral neuropathy down her legs, insomnia and anxiety, and extreme fatigue and extreme brain fog.
And I used herbal medicine for her. I use acupuncture for her and laser acupuncture for her and within seven to eight visits she’s 99% better where it was a little bit different is I was familiar because of some of the courses we offer our healthy seminars for treating long haul. I was just a little bit more familiar and I was more diligent at telling her, this is how I want to see you.
We’re going to do this and you need to do it this way. Like the herbs, et cetera. My first patient, I just treat her like any patient. But I didn’t give her direction on how often to come. I wasn’t, I didn’t strongly recommend the herbal stuff and I just didn’t do my job well enough to communicate. How to get the best results patient.
Number two, I did. And and she seen right benefit patient number three came in yesterday and he is 46. He is a highly functioning individual, used to be a credibly. Professional and which requires concentration and being sharp. And his he’s had it since 20, 20. He’s been a long holler after he got the virus.
And so it’s been a while and he has incredible or severe brain fog. He has shortness of breath and some malaise, mostly related to the brain fog. I only saw him yesterday by the way. And, but I was able to clearly see. How to come in. So I’m going to be seeing him two to three times a week in the early stages.
We planned out an eight week treatment plan and then recess he’s on verbal. And he’s going to be having laser acupuncture because there’s so much that we already learned how photo biomodulation. Late low-level laser therapy can help with the lymphatic system mitochondria inflammation. So it’s just a, it’s just a marriage when it’s treating long haulers or any type of inflammatory condition, having skills in needles that skills and low-level laser therapy.
It is a marriage made in heaven. And so I’m very excited to use both what I did though yesterday. And can we share do a share screen, please? I just trying to share with you what I did yesterday. So yes. I went through my healthy seminars courses and I went and searched our COVID long holler courses.
And I just went through cause we have a series of. And I went particularly to David jewelers acupuncture in treating post viral inflammatory conditions. We have a few on, here we go. One by CT, we got our herbal one from Heiner. We got a scalp acupuncture by Darrell Wallace and David jeweler. I went to this one and I had to review.
For the following. So I was the moderator for the lecture, but as a moderator, I hear, but I’m not as focused as you guys, as if you’re attending. I got other things going on in the back end. So I hear something things. So I was aware of what I could do, but I wasn’t aware enough. So in between patients.
Late until the evening. I reviewed a lot of the material and I have a good fortune because I know now David, I contacted him as well about my case. How can I do it a little bit better for the next gentleman? I’m happy with what happened with my first, but I think I can do it even better and quicker. And so I reviewed this.
I also. Purchased a functional medicine course, because I wanted to understand how it’s being treated and understood from the Western perspective, because that gives me the language to talk to my patients because they’re Googling and they’re part of these massive Facebook. There are massive groups now for these long haul.
That’s why I view become the known to treat it. If you treat one person really well, and they’re part of this group and they tell people in the group, you could have several hundred people contacting your clinic in a short period of time because they don’t know how to get well, they can’t find anything because for that tangent they’re Googling.
And the Googling is talking about Western medicine and they don’t have an answer. There’s not a lot about Chinese medicine or functional medicine. So I went to understand the functional medicine because they do a very good job explaining what’s happening from the west. So I can understand what they’re seeing from the west and why, and talk the terminology.
Cause they’re familiar with it. They’ve become experts in their condition. So to give them the. I do want to understand from the Western perspective of what’s happening. And it just makes me an informed practitioner to understand what else can help them. So I can be a resource and let them know what else besides what I’m doing can help them.
And I find for myself when I hear and understand things well from the Western, I’m able to reframe. Into Chinese medicine, for example, in the west, they’re talking a lot about the inflammation in the lymphatic system, and I’m able to understand how I can use my low level laser therapy on certain lymph nodes to improve lymphatic flow, to help detoxify.
And when you want to think about that from a Chinese medicine, for me, a lot of the reframe, how they’re presenting and how I had read some of these research papers. It sounds like a lot dampness Denton is leading to inflammation. And I’m understanding that more low-level laser therapy is increasing blood flow and lymphatic flow, and basically it’s helping resolve Daphnis and drain down.
This is what I’m seeing in my clinical practice. You can stop the sheriff. Thank you on that morning. And I went in started doing David’s course. I’m a busy guy. I have a busy practice. I read healthy seminars, but it’s one thing to say, oh, I want to treat something. I want to get good at it.
And I, and put on your website, I’m treating long haulers, but you do, this is the young interrelationship. So just like. People in our field get upset. If you talk about money or business, I also questioned people that put things on their website. I treat long haulers, but they don’t do anything to become competent or confident or become experts in that.
So you do want to get behind what you say. You don’t just want to put that on your website. And patients are too educated today, 20 years ago less access to the website over 20 years ago at the time of this. Not a lot of people had web pages 22 years ago. It was just come around. But now the patients are educated and so in a visit, they can talk about their condition and know if they understand it much better than you do.
And that’s not good for the patient’s perspective that hurts their confidence. And so the key here is to get really good at something. I was up for crazy hours yesterday. Cause I wanted to learn, I want to help these people. I have friends that are long haulers, so I want to be able to help them. And I now have I said my third patient, I’m going to call back the first one now.
Cause I feel like I can do differently and better for her. So I want her back and I’m excited to treat this gentlemen because I already saw what I did with patient number two and it worked really well. And then reviewing David’s mature. I know I can even do it better, I believe. And so therefore, hopefully quicker see them re see this person recover and I will update my website.
I’m going to start to blog about this. And I’ve already found out, I didn’t know that there’s a long hall or clinic in my city. I didn’t know this fan. There’s a Facebook group full of thousands of long haulers. And the patient I’ve seen is very educated and his wife is helping him because it’s hard for him to get.
On Facebook, he doesn’t have the brain fog. The focus is just too difficult for him. So she’s been his advocate. She found us through Googling that low-level laser therapy is helping people with COVID and long holler syndrome. And she found out that we’re very well versed and experienced in using low levels, laser therapy, and they contacted us.
And that’s how he came to my. Preparation plus opportunity. There’s your luck? I got lucky. And I am fully confident that if we help this gentlemen, more of the people from his group will come in to our clinic. I will reach out to the long haul or clinic and see what they’re doing. So I have resources for my patients, and I imagine if I have good results and I can communicate to them how I can help their patients, then I’ll become a resource for them to refer to because currently.
They don’t have an answer in the west and they will figure this out. We just do. We figure these things out and somebody is going to figure this out, whether it’s naturopathic physicians or Chinese medicine doctors. And the question is, do you get seen as the expert for this year? And we circle back to the beginning of this talk where I said, my colleagues, when I was out for dinner with them said, man, if you guys aren’t busy now, you’re never going to be busy.
Cause these long haulers look like fibromyalgia and isn’t that what you guys are experts at. And so they want to refer people, these patients because they got nothing for them. And so if you can stand up and become good at this, then you can become that expert in that go to person in personally. I’m focusing on fertility historically, I’m going to be, I’m very interested in long haulers.
So I’m going to learn how to treat this better. But I get asked all the time, Hey, I’m in the Vancouver area. Can you recommend somebody in San Diego, in Australia, in Toronto, in New York for fertility? And because I know people who take our courses on healthy seminars and I’m I’m a member of the, I’m a fellow of the, a BRM, the American board or into reproductive medicine.
I’m easy. I can refer him and I will soon be needing long holler referrals because I know quickly I will become known for it. Cause I’m going to communicate it well. And I’m getting myself up to speed pretty damn quick. That I’m going to want to be able to refer people. I do recommend we can go back to share screen.
I want to show something and then we’ll close off. So there’s some courses here. SU Suzy Hayes did a great course. I really like David jewelers cause he explains how you get this post-viral inflammatory conditions from the west. And then he goes into the classical Chinese medicine. He also explains how it can happen with the vaccine as well.
So it was. Enlightening. So I can use that language with my patients. This was great by sea, by Ross Rosen. I think I said CT earlier. It was Ross Rosen who did a talk on the orthostatic tachycardia. A lot of people get that. Rapid heartbeat. Heiner did one on herbs and then David and Darrell did one on Wyness EY on the post-inflammatory conditions.
And we’re about to add another one from Daryl on divergent and extraordinary meridians for post-inflammatory conditions. So multifaceted approach. On my website for specialization. You don’t recommend you list a thousand things. I recommend you list three things. Even on my website, there’s too many here.
We’ve got six things, right? It starts to dilute you being an expert. It’s okay to treat many things, but how you communicate on your website, you really want to let people know you’re an expert in a few areas because that will give them confidence. And then in your clinic, you can have information on other things and obviously treat other things.
It’s one way to, to do it. I will be moving this or playing around with this and we’ll be adding a COVID long holler section to year as well. So when patients come they’ll know that we can help them. Okay. You can stop the shares as well. So if you’re looking to balance your yin and yang, your clinical practice management skills, I recommend my book and there’s a couple other practice management books out there called missing the.
The website is missing the point book.com or you can email me and ask me for the link. I also suggest looking at other resources out there, there is lots of content out there on using acupuncture, herbal, and even laser therapy. For long haulers, I’m not talking about treating active COVID by the way, I want to make sure nobody’s making that assumption.
Not that Chinese medicine is not a great resource or could be great resource for people that active infection in my clinic. We are not. Based on our health health professionals act regulation, we’re not equipped to treat active COVID. So we do not treat active. COVID active COVID does not come into our clinic at this time because we don’t have the safety equipment.
We don’t have the procedures or regulated to treat active. COVID however we can treat long haulers and no matter what, whether it’s from mono Epstein-Barr virus COVID. Vaccines or line, whatever it is, this is something that our medicine can treat well. And I would invite you to look at a good course of star with is David Mueller’s, palpation based course, and then branch out from there.
And then there’s other courses available on the web, not just from healthy seminars, but get educated because your confidence is key. And if we want the union balance, it’s not just to say, I want to and put on your website, I’m treating long haulers. You want to be competent. And so you do want to do. Increase your knowledge.
You have the Chinese medicine skills. And if this is just to refine it, you’re not going back to school. It’s not a big step. I’ll tell you that right now. It wasn’t a big leap. If you are a a competent acupuncturist herbalists then it’s not a big. To fine tune it so you can help treat people that have been diagnosed as a long hauler.
And again, you want to be communicate that the other specialty is fertility. My goodness, the IVF. Are more busy now than they ever been ever since they got shut down back in 2020, if you guys remember that back then they got shut down for two to three months since then they’re having record number months of IVF cycles and women and men, but women in particular are looking for things to conceive naturally and to help decrease their IVF success.
And so that’s the secondary to still specialize in and unhealthy seminars. We have the largest life. Of courses for acupuncturists and functional medicine for re reproductive health for fertility. And we have many courses and we have to help you prepare for the American board oriented reproductive medicine exam.
We have many prep courses, so long haulers or fertility I’m known for fertility and you’re watching it in real time. My success is because I’ve been an early adopter. So in closing. Back in 2002, I started treating fertility by 2004. That was my focus. Sometimes you may not be able to say specialize where you live.
So you can say that your focus, your practice focus by 2004. That was my focus in my country in Canada. Nobody else was really doing it. I was told I was a fool. You’ll never be busy cause nobody was seeking us out then for fertility, they weren’t right. It’s the miscellaneous disease in Chinese medicine.
And you may see one. If you’re lucky now, patients look for acupuncture for fertility. Every acupuncturist says they do fertility, but were you an early adopter? That’s key. Then I did online learning for acupuncture. So I told them I was told that it was going to fail. That started in 2008. Now it’s everywhere.
But healthy seminars back then was called pro D seminars. We were the early adopter before people were. I’m one of the early adopters in my country for acupuncture is using low-level laser therapy, chiros and physios been doing it a lot longer, but as an acupuncturist, I’m one of the early adopters.
And I am the pioneer, I believe for laser, for fertility outside of Japan, we’re one of the and our clinics definitely early adopter there. And so we have people traveling to our clinic for that. And now I’m going to be an early adopter as for tree long haulers. And you can wait a year and then join the group.
Or you can become an early adopter. Take some courses, get knowledgeable, join some groups because your communities need you entrepreneurs find a need and fill it. That’s what makes them successful. They find out what people need and they feel it and that’s attractive to the public, your patients. All right.
Thank you for listening. I want to let you know that next week we’ll have up Chen Yen on the AAC to the points. So tune in next week to listen to Chen and thank you very much.
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