How did a St. Louis girl end up in a six-year Doctoral program studying Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine? That’s a very good question.
I was making a career change and wanted to choose something that fed my soul and not just my pocketbook. I dabbled in non-profit work and although I liked it, I knew it wasn’t my path. I was living in San Francisco and an advertisement for an overview class about a Master’s Degree in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine popped up. I took the class and never looked back.
This beautiful medicine has been healing patients for thousands of years. I love that I’m highly trained to find the root cause of health issues. Sometimes I call myself a health detective.
I take into account all aspects of the individual in front of me. I take into account their emotional challenges, physical challenges, living situation, stress levels, family situation, job – we treat individuals, not symptoms.
I could see 5 patients all wanting to be treated for low back pain and give five completely different treatments. That’s because the reasons for their low back pain are not the same. At each visit, I ask questions to get me to the root cause of the issue. And people are always surprised that the come to see me for back pain (for instance) and their sleep, energy, stress levels (or anxiety levels), digestion, etc. all improve.
That’s because I’m treating the whole body and not just the symptoms. This medicine developed over thousands of years of non-egoic observation of individuals and their patterns. It’s why we have to complete a four-year Master’s degree as a minimum to get our degree, the medicine is deep and wise and complicated.
This is why it’s difficult to do specific studies on the effectiveness of Acupuncture. Those studies were developed to test pharmaceutical drugs. Those are symptom based and every symptom has a specific drug that’s assigned for that study. It’s also important to note that most of those studies are also funded by the pharmaceutical companies who want to sell the drugs in that study.
When you go to your MD with a symptom they will offer you a prescription medication or surgery to help. I’m not saying we don’t need Western Medicine, we do. I simply think drugs are over-prescribed and have found over decades of seeing patients that unless someone needs a surgery or needs a drug for a short period of time, my medicine can be a very effective natural alternative. My medicine doesn’t have nasty side effects. I’ve always said that if someone tells you to take a pill for the rest of your life, it’s not healing anything. It’s masking symptoms.
Traditional Chinese Medicine doesn’t work that way. I change the treatment every time I see a patient – it’s very rare for me to do the exact treatment more than one time. That’s because after each visit, things will shift and change – as such, my treatments do the same.
I always tell people to consider the toolbox of the practitioner they’re seeing. We all have different tools we use for healing. If you’re tired of drug side effects and not feeling your best, make an appointment and see how I can help. My joy is getting my patients results - I tell people right away if I’m not the practitioner to help them. Seeing patients and not getting results is just a bummer for me. I don’t do it.
I completely understand that the idea of Acupuncture sounds bonkers. It's very strange that inserting tiny needles can heal your symptoms and completely relax you. But I've done thousands and thousands of acupuncture treatments on patients and it works incredibly well. The only way to believe it is to see it in action.
One last thing, please know I’m not knocking Western Medicine in any way. They’ve saved my life, literally. We need both medicines for true health.
I have decades of experience and look forward to helping you, too.