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Good morning or good afternoon or good evening. Depends on what time you’re listening to this. I am on Pacific Standard Time at three o’clock on Tuesdays. And as I mentioned last week, and I know Kathryn has sent out a couple of notices. This will be our standard time. We had so many questions. I realized that once a month was just not going to work, and I love to answer questions. I live basically to answer questions. That’s my job. And so we’re going to do this every week. You know, we may miss a week here or there, and we’ll let you know in advance, but we’ll be on it three o’clock on Tuesday afternoons,  Pacific Standard Time.

Now we are doing the spring forward idiocy, this weekend, so if you’re on the East Coast, you’ll need to adjust. And so I’m here to answer any questions, do a little Q&A. In the future, I will do some topical presentations. I used to do a topical presentation, a talk in my office every Saturday afternoon, and I have a bunch of things that I would love to share with you. One of my favorites is longevity and prevention of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Which, by the way, are going to skyrocket. Absolutely skyrocket because of the fires and the smoke damage.

And there are direct correlations between that size, particulate matter and Alzheimer’s disease. And also with all the issues around COVID vaccinations, COVID itself, isolation, et cetera. All of those things are going to dramatically drive up the risk of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, et cetera. So I would love to do a presentation on how to escape that or at least slow down the process if you are very interested.

And probably my favorite thing to do is breast health. My doctorate, my clinical doctorate, my doctor of acupuncture and oriental medicine was in gynecological endocrinology. So it’s a really long sounding thing that just means I studied a lot about your our glandular systems, about our hormone systems and in particular, how it relates to women and fertility, et cetera. But men and women have exactly the same hormones.

We just have different amounts of different ones at different times. So that was my area of specialization. The work I did toward a Ph.D., which, by the way, I did not finish because it was going to take too many trips back to China. Once I got well into it, I discovered that. But my research there, my Ph.D. research, was specifically on breast health and how to avoid breast damage, how to lower the risk of breast cancer.

And when I do that seminar, people are stunned. They completely absolutely do not understand what the real risks are around breast cancer. Very few breast cancers. I mean, literally, and I’ll go into numbers when I, if I do this, are really genetic. And the factors that play into it are shocking.

00:03:28:10 – 00:04:01:18

An article just came out this week, I’d known about this for quite some time, but there was a new article on bovine leukemia viruses and a huge increase in breast cancer problems. So anyway, there’s a lot that we can do. You can do to really remediate your risk, to lower your risk. And so any topics that you’re interested in, please send an email to Kathryn. Kathryn pretty much runs everything. And she will get everything together for you.

Now there are a couple of sites where you can replay these or go in and watch them if you haven’t. One is on the balancing point dot net. That’s our educational site. And I have hundreds of radio and video presentations on there on a variety of things, and these will be posted on there. You can also go to YouTube “Alameda Acupuncture,” and you can also find these on Facebook. Hey, look at that coming into the 19th century, I guess. So those are three places you can find these and in their entirety over time, we’ll break some of them down into little bite sized pieces to make it a little easier to grab on the run. Now, if you have questions, please send them to us and if you send them to us in advance, I can kind of screen the ones I think are most valuable to more people. If we have time I’ll talk about all of them. And also, you can send in questions during the presentation. Now I may not be able to get to them now.

Today is actually going to be a little bit shorter Q&A period. It’s my birthday and we’re going to go do something fun, so I won’t be on quite as long. And thank you, Susie, for Happy Birthday. I appreciate that. And there were a couple of others greatly appreciated. So let’s go ahead. And hey, long time No see! Great. Great. Great to see a lot of you on there. Many of you who I have not spoken to in a very long period of time, so it’s really wonderful to see you on there. Apparently, we had a really good turnout last time.

So I think most of you know who I am. I am 71 years old today, which is really awesome for you because I still have most of my faculties and I have massive amounts of experience. So I’ve been through 50 plus years of Western medical fads. 50 years of dietary fads. And believe me, I’ve seen it all. There isn’t, you know, it’s insane the number of fads that we’ve gone through around diets. Also, I’ve been through the alternative medicine fads and I’ve seen them come and go et cetera. And I’ve gone through a lots and lots of treatment options, lots of ways of treating people with acupuncture, electro acupuncture, pulsed electromagnetic fields, red light, infrared light biomass, tons of other things and gave herbs, supplements, et cetera. So ask me some questions today.

00:06:49:23

I want to go into a couple that I didn’t finish last time.

We got a couple great questions here. One of them, let’s see where one of them, I think is really relevant to this week. And it was a really simple question. It says, when’s the best time to go to sleep at night? Well, as those of you who have known me for a while are aware, a simple question does absolutely not mean a simple answer.

Now in Chinese medicine, we have what are called “Statements of Facts.” Now in Western medicine, their research based in a particular way. And they each have their strengths and weaknesses. By the way, a phrase that drives me a little bit crazy is quote “follow the science.” You see, because science actually isn’t the thing. There is no thing science. There is the scientific method, which is a methodology for analyzing the natural world primarily and experimenting. And then once you have a result, the next thing is you challenge the result. And that process never stops. Ever, ever. So nothing is ever completely proven in science. You’re just working to find better and better and closer and closer approximations to apparent reality. So follow the science doesn’t make a lot of sense. And whenever I hear people say that, honestly, in my experience, they’re actually not following the science.

That’s just one of those terms that people throw around that have come to take on some meaning that it really doesn’t have. So anyway, don’t hit me with that one.

But I love science.

I love the process of the scientific method, which, by the way, the Chinese have been doing for over 2000 years. The fact that they didn’t call it the scientific method doesn’t mean they weren’t doing it. They were following the scientific method EXACTLY over 2000 years ago. The Persians who were brilliant physicians, were probably the first group that codified the scientific method the way we now codify it. And you have these brilliant, brilliant doctors, Persian doctors from around 1000/ 1100 A.D.

Ibn Saad or Abassana, who is credited with doing the first appendectomies about a thousand years ago and a brilliant man. But they use the scientific method also. So the difference what you’ll find with Chinese medicine, that sometimes will in the West they don’t like Chinese research, in some cases, is that traditionally it was considered unethical to have a control group. Right now to us, it’s like that’s that’s ridiculous, you have to have a control group. Well, in a way, it is unethical because someone’s coming to you with a condition.  They have a problem. Whatever it is, they have eczema, they have psoriasis, they have a brain tumor, whatever it is. And you’re saying, OK, 50 percent chance, you’re going to be in a placebo arm and we’re not going to do anything for your condition. Now, one can clearly see that as possibly unethical. And the Chinese, do. They feel if you come in with the condition, you should be treated for it. Now they have other ways of tracking efficacy, but they are not generally using the double blinded, randomized controlled trials that Archie Cochrane created was the Cochrane Collaborative was named after.

00:10:41:02

So let’s talk a little bit about sleep. The Chinese medicine is largely based on these Statements of Fact. And we go back to the seminal book that is still in existence called the Huang Di Nie Jing, “The Yellow Emperors Classic of Medicine”. And it probably wasn’t written by the Yellow Emperor in in Chinese law, going back into historical times and prehistoric times.

Any any famous personage that lived around a particular time was then credited with anything that happened. That was good around that time. And so the Yellow Emperor created massive changes in China in terms of language, in terms of travel, et cetera, monetary policy. And he is credited with the Yellow Emperors classic of medicine. And when people say, Hey, you know what? What should I read, you know about health and well-being? And they say, Well, my library, I’ll show you around here.

It’s several thousand volumes, and there’s something good in most of them. Couple of them, I think, are trash, but mostly there’s something good in all of them. However, if there’s only one book that you were going to read to maintain maximum health and potential longevity in my mind, it’s the Yellow Emperor’s classic because it touches on somewhat on everything, and it is basically a Daoist type document.

Now I’m not saying the Huang Di was a Daoist. But the idea is Dao, the path, the way. The idea is to follow what is natural. And the more we do that, the healthier we are. And indeed, if you look at studies in any area, sleep, diet, exercise, the more natural it is, the more it corresponds to the niche that we were created in as human beings, the healthier you’re going to be.

And I think I can find thousands of representative examples of that. Now one of those is the adherence to following the seasons. All plants follow the seasons, all animals follow the seasons, bears, skunks, bees, birds, they all change their lives. They change their habits in conjunction with seasonal changes. It’s only humans that think we can get away with outdoing that, and we pay a very heavy price for that.

And in the long been aging, it speaks about sleep and it doesn’t. It speaks a bit, you know, talking about yin and yang cycles and how the energy flows throughout the course of the day. It travels through the body 50 times per day. So which, by the way, I used to leave people, and this is an aside. I used to lead people on my table for about 45 minutes because they got maximum relaxation and they would leave my front office.

Deborah calls it “Acu-stoned”. They basically had trouble getting to their car, but they loved it. But then I took some time, went back reading the classics, and they kept talking about 50 cycles and to stay in rhythm with those cycles. Well, if you break that down, it’s around twenty eight minutes. So I changed my treatments from forty five minutes to about half an hour, twenty eight to 30 minutes. And an interesting thing happened. My patients didn’t get that complete stoned feeling, I’m going to call it, but they got over their pathologies faster. They were relieved of their illnesses faster. They felt better, faster. And so I have now adhered more to that idea of 28 to 30 minutes for a treatment. Now some are shorter and some are longer, but typically it’s in that range. Well, that also goes for how the energy circulates through our body.

The Chinese had a body organ clock for a very long period of time. What’s very interesting when there’s a seminar that I do for UC Berkeley, for their integrated health department, and I go into this at a bit of detail. I show the western body clocks because they’ve now determined very clearly what injuries and illnesses are more likely to occur at different times of day. When are the muscles are strongest? When is your thinking the most clear? When are you most likely to have a gallbladder attack, when you most likely to have a heart attack? And not coincidentally, because the truth is the truth, no matter who comes up with it, it’s highly, highly corresponds to the Chinese health clock.

For example, if you were to call the hospital at 11 o’clock and say, Oh, you know, I have horrible pain on my back and maybe it’s a heart attack and they say which side you have pain on and you go, Well, it’s on the right side. It’s kind of this boring pain. Yeah, that’s probably a gallbladder attack. You should come into the E.R. anyway, but it’s less likely to be a heart attack. And so that is the most likely time that someone’s going to go into the hospital or the E.R. for a gallbladder attack.

And so each of those organs has a specific time that there’s a question I’ll probably get into about IBS in a few minutes. And the time of the large intestine is five to seven a.m. And this is really important if I have patients that are constipated, which, by the way, is horrific, horrific, very, very underappreciated as a source of misery in the long run. But if they have constipation, if I can have them drink something warm, massage their tummy a little bit and sit on the toilet between five and seven, we can reach retrain them pretty quickly to have normal bowel patterns because five to seven is when there’s the most energy in the large intestine. And then after that, that’s a the timing of the stomach and seven benign, which makes it a really good time to eat.

And again, I’m I’m fine with intermittent fasting, but that time of the stomach, particularly if you are working outside or agrarian in nature. And then from seven to nine is the time of the spleen, which has the digestive digestive period. And so all of this is laid out now for sleep.

It’s very clear in the long being aging and I find with my patients, it really makes a huge difference. So in spring and summer, the young tea is rising. It’s getting stronger. The end to the heat, the energetic forces at play in the universe and in your bodies. And those are the times when you want to start getting up earlier, OK, and then there in the classics, it says during the spring, you go to sleep at a reasonable hour, but you get up earlier in the summer, you can stay up late and get up early.

So you don’t need as much sleep. And the rule of thumb is generally, if you go to bed about two hours after sundown and get up about an hour before sunrise, that’s perfect. Now we just got through a couple of months ago, we were at 14 hours from sundown to sunrise, 14 hours. That meant that we should be spending 10 hours or more not working. We should either be in bed or asleep or at least and very, very quiet activities. And that helps us from wasting our young tea. But as you get into spring, then you can get up earlier and during the summer, as I said, you know, stay up fairly late and get up pretty early because it’s mostly sunny. So those are the general recommendations now for teenagers, things are a little bit different.

It’s been well proven that the body clock and teenagers from about the time they hit puberty and to late teens is needs adjusting. Or I’m sorry, we need to adjust to that clock. In fact, there was an attempt to pass laws in California that unfortunately was defeated that they could not start school. It’s such an early hour as they’re currently doing. So this is a little off for teenagers, right? They’re going to stay up a little later and get up a little later, and that’s actually can be still be healthy.

But anyway, about go to bed about two hours after sundown, get up an hour before sunrise. Now they are before sunrise is obvious because at about hour, about an hour before sunrise, healthy people experience what’s called the dawn effect. And what happens is the blood sugar gets activated through the release of several different hormones human growth hormone, cortisol, epinephrine, etc. are released, which mobilizes blood sugar and raises your blood sugar levels.

So that’s what that wakes you up. And so staying in rhythm with that is ideal. And there’s actually very, very good evidence that people that don’t listen to that, right, you wake up, say it four or five or six and you said, Now I’m going to go back to sleep and you sleep for two or three hours. Almost everybody feels much worse if they go back to sleep for a few hours because that’s throwing the entire rhythm off. And if you don’t, if you feel OK, then that’s fine. But anyway, that’s kind of my my hit on.

Oh, the other thing about sleep is, again, we’re seeing a lot of intermittent fasting, and that’s great because we don’t have extremely active lifestyles, many of us. However, you must leave four to five hours minimum before 11 o’clock by 11:00. The gallbladder, you don’t want the gallbladder to be overactive. It’ll keep you awake. And by one o’clock, you should have all of your digestive processes basically finished because the blood then needs the pool in the liver between one and three a.m.

And that’s from a Chinese standpoint. It’s also from a Western standpoint. So it needs to rest. It needs to be cleaned right. The liver puts up with huge amounts, enormous amounts of pressures, and so we need to let the liver rest between one and three. So you want to make sure that everything is out of your stomach and your small intestine by 11 o’clock. Now we all have different digestive processes, but you want to eat as early as you can. OK, if we get, you know, boundaries within short life or eat it between four and six or seven, etc. that gives you a longer fast, and it also takes the pressure off that.

00:22:04:04

Let’s see here, another question was, Oh, this is a great question. How do I get my kids to acknowledge and do something about their IBS irritable bowel syndrome? What steps would you take to help a child and teenager manage idea?

That’s a very good question for a lot of reasons.

Bowel habits in the United States tend to be very poor. The average number of bowel movements in a in an indigenous culture in rural China, three bowel movements a day, and there’s actually a reflex. As soon as you put something in your mouth, it will stimulate the large intestine. In fact, in hospitals, after having surgery on the large intestine, when they want you to start being able to digest again, they’ll have you chew gum. Because just that process of chewing and the salivation stimulates the nerves that stimulate the large intestine. And you should have a bowel movement. And so and that’s clearing out what was in that report. So there’s room for.

So very, very important in the U.S., the average number of ballots, which is one every three days versus three per day in other regions of the world and not coincidentally, we have 10 times the rate of bowel cancer that those other cultures have. Again, this remember, this is rotting, putrid material that we need to get out as soon as it’s available to get out and not have it sit there. And I find medical doctors generally tend not to put enough attention on this. I find that 30 percent or so, maybe 40 of the patients that come to see me have bowel issues that they don’t think it’s not on their intake. They didn’t say, Oh, look, this is a problem. And I’ll say, do you have a bowel movement every day? And I say, Oh, my goodness, no. And how often? Oh, maybe two or three a week? Well, that’s setting up a disease process. No two ways about it. It’s a disease process for increasing inflammation in the bowel, potential cancer, etc. But also, it’s like I have a mid-thirties patient. Young woman seems in great health, went in for some tests because she had having some bowel issues and basically her large intestine barely very work. She’d been constipated so long that her large intestine had pretty much fallen down so that she couldn’t have a proper bowel movement. I have many other patients in their thirties and certainly older who are suffering from hemorrhoids or anal fissures, et cetera. And this is horrible. We’re talking a pain here. No, it’s so very important to take care of that process.

00:25:04:20

Now back to the question, which was how do you get your kids to acknowledge? Well, good luck because they don’t want to talk about their bowel movements. When I when I talk to them, I see the other bowel movement every day, you know, a 15 year old. It’s like, Dude, how would I know? Well, you’re the one doing it. I would think you would know, right? But that’s usually they don’t know. They have no idea. So as parents, I know it’s uncomfortable. I have four kids. I understand it’s right and I see it a lot of times, a lot of teens and younger, and I know it’s not a comfortable topic for them.

However, we got to remember one important thing. You’re the adult and you need to have those conversations so that their everyday commonplace conversations right now. Often I find if you kick that off by going to a practitioner, someone that’s going to actually, you know, be interested, that’s maybe a natural rather than acupuncture, maybe a chiropractor that’s interested in a functional medical doctor. They can kind of pave the way in, you know, ask the questions and say, You know, George, you know, I know this is embarrassing, but I’m going to ask your mom to check in with you at least a couple of times a week, because this is really, really, really critical for your health.

Now you’re in here simply because you’ve got severe acne. Well, if you have a more regular bowel movements, your acting will probably get better or whatever it is. The key is you have to get leverage that affects the kid in sports, you know, then use sports as leverage.

If it’s a dating thing, then use dating as leverage. If it’s acne, that’s big time leverage. And I will start out by it by doing an exchange. I want you to give up one. Let’s start with ice cream. Get up. Let’s give up ice cream and add one food.

Let’s do broccoli. And it’s like, Oh, really, you want to get rid of your acne? Okay, good. Let’s add some broccoli. Get rid of the ice cream. You’ll have more regular bowel movements. It’ll balance your hormones and it’ll give you more fiber. So right down the line, way ahead there. So anyway, I know it’s not easy, but you’re going to actually have to wait for split parents and and start looking at it. And so part of that is for you as a parent to realize this is really a significant issue.

Irritable bowel syndrome has been used as a catch. All right. They do tests. There’s no cancer. There’s no Crohn’s disease. There’s no ulcerative colitis. They don’t know what it is. So they call that IBS. OK, well, IBS is a real thing. The bowel actually is irritated and that can they now find microscopic changes are often present in the tissue? However, largely or frequently, at least, it’s a neurological issue. Sometimes the nerves structure. Some kids are more sensitive than others, and when they get stressed, they have more nerves that are firing.

00:28:11:02

Sometimes it’s that when they get stressed, they get a large epinephrine release, which most of us do right for them.

We know cortisol is a hormone that pumps up our blood sugar, gives us energy to run away from the tiger. Epinephrine is the hormone that gets our heart pumping really fast so we can run away from the tiger. Nor epinephrine is the hormone that pulls the blood out of the organs out of our stomach. The ovaries, the bowels, etc. and moves the blood to our extremities and our brain so that we’re more capable of running away from and dealing with the emergency, the body says.

You know, we can poop later, or we can ovulate later, or we can digest our food later. But right now we have to run away from the tiger. And that’s OK. Once a month, once a year, it’s not OK many times per day. And that’s what happens. Kids are under so much stress. For those of you over 30, we can’t even imagine the amount of stress that they’re dealing with on so many levels. And so the stress I find is the biggest factor.

Again, there are lots of problems that can be a microbiome problem where their bacteria is out of balance. It can be a yeast overgrowth problem. It can be a histamine problem where they’re releasing too much histamine and they have a problem. But I’m finding no one is stress. And so we need to find a way for them to deal with that stress. Also, if they get into having normal regular bowel patterns again, one of the problems is a lot of kids get up at the last minute.

They don’t take time to poop. They go to brush off to school. They get to school. They’re afraid to raise their hands or, you know, they’re busy at recess so they don’t go to the bathroom. And over time, they lose that urge and, you know, to know when they have to have a bowel movement. And that just gets worse over time. I often have to retrain teens in how to have regular bowel movements, so it’s potentially a very severe problem. Severe constipation? Oh, excuse me.

This can lead to a ton of problems, including diverticulitis, where you get out portions in the large intestine from that constant or regular pressure, from straining at the bowels to have a bowel movement and or the stool building up and creating pressure. And it’s like a blowout in an inner tube. The tissue gets thin and it out pouches. Then you can get infections in there. And those are excruciating, just horrifically painful.

00:30:59:29

So just to have two bowel movements a day and you’re going to be fine. Now back to your kids.

So again, the clauses.

Cramping, abdominal pain, bloating, gas, diarrhea or constipation and diarrhea, says the patient. And if.

On some things that caused it again stresses that even if they’re not particularly stressed at the moment, early life stress changes how the body senses the neurology changes of gut microbes infection, a severe infection that causes a lot of diarrhea, can cause it and muscle contraction in the intestines. And so those muscles can contract so strongly under stress that it’s particularly painful at these. Those symptoms are often relieved when they have no cause, then they start getting those intense spasms of our food intolerances are a problem, usually not true food allergies where you eat a peanut diet, but sensitivities that develop over time and the appropriate tests for that sometimes poor enzyme output from the pancreas that can be tested for also sometimes microbial imbalance that’s very easy to test for. So lots of things that can be done in that area.

But again, oh, 30 percent, 30 out of 80 people, and the latest study that I saw done on fructose, 30 out of 80. Right. So that’s a very high percentage. It’s over 40 percent had fructose intolerance. So fruit sugar intolerances in older adults, you might find that with alcohol, which is very fructose stance and kids, you can get it in fruit, but it’s usually not that big a problem. There’s not that much fructose, but high fructose corn syrup is in everything.

If your kids are eating candy at all, if they’re getting anything that’s processed, if they’re going to Starbucks for a coffee, et cetera, they are imbibing high fructose corn syrup. And again, that’s behind stress. That’s the number two thing that I’m seeing causing. Yes.

Oh, sorry.

00:33:44:15

So get rid of the fructose.

Do some enzymes. There are lots of good quality enzymes on the market. I suggest that you talk to a practitioner, a probiotic is always in order for this and then some essential fatty acids, a fish oil, et cetera. Now your kids may not want to take these. Oh well, have them take them. That’s just part of life, right? And explain to them that it’ll help their irritable bowel syndrome and that the irritable, irritable bowel syndrome can cause lots of problems long term.

There is a formula that I think is still available, and there was a lot of research done on this, and it’s called a Ibrdogest IBRD o GST. It’s by a German company. It was taken off the market for a while because there were some they thought some potential liver issues, but it’s back on the market, I believe, and that was effective in 88 to 96 percent of. IBS patients, so again, I would I wouldn’t. You can get that online, but I wouldn’t do it.

I’d go to a practitioner first, get their opinion about it, see if it fits the pathology that you or your child might have. But keep that in mind, it is incredibly effective. It’s massively effective. OK, let’s see. Oh, salicylate can be a problem again. You know, I don’t have time to go into all of those, but look up salicylate. Salicylate and histamine histamine is a huge problem.

And check those out and again, their test for all of these things. If you if you want to try it and see if there are any questions, any more questions on here. I think.

I think we covered those.

Then I got a question that was interesting.

00:35:49:16

One of those questions that I’m not wild about answering because when I answer something, I like to be clear if there’s a lot of science for it. If there’s traditional Chinese medicine, East Asian medicine, proof for it, if it’s just my opinion, et cetera. And so the question I got here from a patient was, what are your thoughts on muscle testing? Now that’s a simple yet very complex question, because muscle testing can be different, people will talk about muscle taste testing totally differently. I do manual muscle testing. My wife does a lot of manual muscle testing. I went to my podiatrist and she did manual muscle testing on my feet and in manual muscle testing. You’re actually testing the physical strength of the muscles and loading them in particular ways to see what the strength or weakness is of those muscles.

Now the evidence for that is as strong as any scientific evidence I’ve ever seen and remember keeping that in mind. It still may not be true, but it’s used by orthopedist. Every orthopedist you see will do manual muscle testing. Most chiropractors do it, sports medicine acupuncturist do it, etc. So there’s great evidence for that. However, what I’m thinking this person may be asking is about some of the other technologies that people use as testing for allergies, for example, and for other issues.

And there are a variety of those. There’s one called the number of pad allergy elimination technique, and in that people hold a vial with a material in it, right? It might be corn, wheat, rye, whatever. And then the practitioner. There are different ways that this can be done might push down on a an arm or a leg, or they might do what’s called the ManOK O-ring where you do this and pull OK, no. A allergy elimination technique has been very popular.

A lot of people have used it. There’s a newer technique. It’s very similar called bio set Bio said. There’s a guy named Freddy Uilleann who teaches a whole protocol and program of nutritional testing. So in the bio setting, as I understand them, they’re more to find the problem. And with Freddy Human, it’s looking for the problem really is more in my limited understanding as more of a nutritional deficiency. And then he gives herbs, supplements, et cetera. And then there’s applied kinesiology, which was really kind of at the beginning of this, but they’re all basically very similar. So you’re introducing theoretically into the energy field of the individual some.

Energy field, That’s all we are is energy fields, we’re ninety nine point nine, four, nine percent empty space, right? You and I, both of us, I mean, you look at me and I don’t look like I’m ninety nine point nine percent empty space, but I am and everything else would fit in a thimble. All the material substance of my body actually would fit in a thimble. The rest of it’s just the open space that the electrons are flashing around. So anything that could effectively either measure or change that electromagnetic field could potentially work like I use pulsed electromagnetic fields, which I’m quite convinced are very powerful. I use red light therapy, which is very well-proven infrared therapy.

00:39:50:27

These are all things that there’s good science for. I mean, you still get disagreement about the effect of this, but there’s good science for them. And for these other things that I’ve mentioned. I cannot find good science. I’m not saying they’re wrong. I’m not saying they’re right. I know practitioners that I really have a lot of respect for that. Swear by them. But I can’t find any science and I can’t really find anything in traditional Chinese medicine, so I don’t use them. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong. It doesn’t mean they’re bad.

Doesn’t mean they don’t work. It’s just it doesn’t satisfy my personal criteria for proven effectiveness. The only one I’ve actually seen, and I get asked this question not infrequently in about once a year, I’ll do kind of a deep dive into trying to find some science that I just looked at as a study a couple of weeks ago that said, yeah, they couldn’t find any evidence. This was at an CVI. The one that did stand up to some scrutiny was the o-ring technique, the Monaca O-ring technique, where you’re trying to pull the fingers apart.

00:41:02:25

And that was done in Japan and many years ago, decades they had some positive findings. Now again, I’m not saying this doesn’t work at all. I’m just saying it doesn’t work for me. If any of you have any solid science, not just people’s conjecture or opinions, but if any of you has any solid science for any of those techniques, I would love to see it because I might change my opinion. But at this point, I just I don’t find enough relevant science, and it doesn’t fit my natural skepticism.

OK. And then I got a question.

00:41:43:15

Love to hear more about the symptoms of mold exposure. And the answer is yes. You pick a symptom and it can pretty much be caused by mold exposure. Mold exposure is grossly grossly under-treated, underdiagnosed under everything in our culture. I mean, I’ve seen people when they moved out of a moldy environment right where their blood tests changed so much. You honestly would not think it was the same person.

Now there are mycotoxins tests for mold exposure. There are other ways that you can look at mold exposure, and you don’t have to be able to smell the mold. If you can smell the mold, that’s bad. You’re in a bad situation. If you can’t smell the mold, but you have the symptoms, fatigue, foggy headed, you need this sleep too much now. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of other things that can cause those symptoms, but keep mold.

In your awareness, because it’s a significant problem. But that’s all I’m going to say, because it’s such a broad topic, huge topic. In fact, Katherine is doing a three day mold symposium, three full days of experts talking about mold symptoms, mold treatments, mold diagnoses. OK, that’s how big a topic it is, but absolutely keep it on your radar. So, Kathryn, any new questions that I should take a look at? What’s the Q&A down here?

00:43:21:15

Yeah, there’s a question about primary care doctors. Any bill that ah, my patient, I keep very long lists of practitioners that I like. Every patient that comes to see me, I ask about their practitioner. Western medical doctors, specialists, chiropractors, massage therapists, everybody. And I want to get their opinion. And then with medical doctors, I will see the labs that they run. I see how they evaluate them, and I have my list of people that I really, really like.

00:43:55:12

so there’s a question here about their life, their primary care doctor retired. They’re looking for someone else. Send me a email to our office and indicate. Basically, your health plan, like if you’re doing Kaiser, it’s different than if you’re in Sutter. And I will know people probably in both of those systems. And if I don’t, I will ask you to send me a list of practitioners and I’ll see if there’s anybody that’s on my most favored nation list. But I’m happy to do that for my patients to help them look for things.

00:44:32:08

Oh, here’s another one from my dear, dear, dear friend, Eloise says I recently read an article that said being outdoors can aid your gut biome. I understand it can lower your stress and shift your consciousness. But I was curious how it could affect the biome without direct digestion via the GI tract. What a great question.

We are, we have. There’s probably been more discovered about the GI tract from Western medical perspective in the last 10 years than in the 2000 years before that. I remember when I started teaching, Leakey got a little over 20 years ago looking at the microbiome, and of course, everybody thought I was nuts, particularly medical doctors, and I would. I gave some number, like four to five hundred species of bacteria and 10 trillion. Well, they’re now up to four to five thousand species of bacteria and 100 trillion bacteria in your gut.

And everything affects them. Everything your thoughts affect them, your diet affects them. Your what you breathe affects them and equally as important, they affect everything else. For example, you have more serotonin receptors in your gut than you have in your brain. And so a lot of the problems that I talked about with IBS and early childhood trauma is really related to the serotonin receptor system.

We’re also finding that melatonin, which you know, people know is good for sleep. We’ve known the pineal gland will excrete a small amount of part of melatonin to help us go to sleep. And the early studies were done on usually one to three milligrams. Sometimes a little more are really helping sleep well. They’re now finding or have found that there is 40 times more melatonin released in the gut mid-day than is released by the pineal gland at night.

Now we’ve known that melatonin, as well as a sleep aid, is maybe the primary and as at least one of the primary antioxidants for the brain. It gets in there and cleans everything up. So even if melatonin doesn’t help people sleep, it’s kind of all the more reason to take it because it’s going to clean up the damage from the sleep deprivation. But we’re finding that in the gut this enormous release, and we will often treat inflammation by having patients do 200 or 400 mg suppositories, and we see a huge decrease in inflammation.

Now, when we in in Japan, one very common, very common, this is done by mainstream medical doctors. They will have their patients do what’s called forest bathing. The big deal over there, they literally send them out into particular types of forests for a certain number of hours, and it doubles their immune system. Now, if you double your immune system, it will shift the microbiome. Right? The immune system gets stronger. It selects differently. And so absolutely, we’ll do it. Also, stress is a huge moderator of microbiome and microbiome function every few inches along these small and large intestine. You get different species of bacteria, and they are only able to live in particular areas based on the the acid base balance. And when you relax, when you are relaxed, that changes your acid base balance along with your serotonin levels, your dopamine levels, et cetera.

So it actually does affect the digestion directly know it also affects that indirectly, but it really does affect it directly. So in Chinese medicine, they talk about a lot about color. So the color of the liver gallbladder is green. And the more time you spend in greenery and around greenery, the better your gallbladder and liver and the gallbladder and liver could not. Nothing could be more intimately involved with your microbiome than the liver and gallbladder.

So the secretion of bile acids, et cetera, will change tremendously from exposure to green. Just get out in the forest. So that is a great, great question. Thank you.

00:49:11:11

OK, any questions, Kathryn, before I tune out here?

We do, but I think you might take a while. OK. It’s how MCAS and it’s relationship between that and low blood pressure of COPD and autoimmune?

00:49:33:27 – 00:49:39:11

That one would take us about three days. Mass cell activation syndrome.

I mean, I’ve heard doctors speak lecturing, you know, 15, 20 years ago, but it was rarely rarely spoken of this problem of mass cell activation. It’s now become a very hot topic, and I will take some time and go into that in a bit of detail, but not now, because it really it really deserves some attention. It’s a huge issue. So when I’m talking about the histamine problems that’s really related to mast cell activation problems where I’m seeing it lately in my practice and you know, I never know if it’s because it’s happening more or because I’m looking for it more, but I’m seeing a lot of migraine headaches that people could not find any triggers for.

And it turns out to be histamine and mass cell activation problems. And once we get them, there are supplements dose supplements that can help mop up the the histamine, and there are a variety of diets which will lower histamine levels and some other activities. And we find that as patients do, the supplements lower their histamine levels, their migraines mysteriously and wonderfully disappear.

So it’s a huge, huge topic. I’m glad that you brought that up, and I will speak about that at a future, a future time.

OK. I think.

I think that’s good for now. What do we have three fifty one, yeah. Went a little longer than I was planning, but you guys are so fun, you’re so attentive and you have such great questions. This is kind of a high point for me. I love doing this. So please join me every Tuesday at three o’clock. Invite your friends. I mean, you know, you can say, Yeah, there’s this whack a doodle 70 year old guy. It looks kind of weird about, but it’s kind of fun, right? And get them on to listen with you. We’ll have a good time. So I want to thank you for tuning in, and I’ll be back next Tuesday at three o’clock.

Be well and be happy. Thank you.

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Dr. John Nieters L.Ac, DAOM, is an acupuncturist, Chinese herbalist, functional medicine, writer, teacher, and leader in the community. In this episode, John talks about his experience with the importance of finding your vision and purpose in life, in order to create the right goals for you.

Disclaimer: Dr. John Nieters received his Doctor of Oriental Medicine and Acupuncture degree from Five Branches. His use of “doctor” or “Dr.” in relation to himself solely refers to that degree. Dr. Nieters is a licensed acupuncturist in California. This video is for general informational purposes only. It should not be used to self-diagnose and it is not a substitute for a medical exam, cure, treatment, diagnosis, and prescription or recommendation. It does not create a doctor-patient relationship between Dr. Nieters and you. You should not make any change in your health regimen or diet before first consulting a physician and obtaining a medical exam, diagnosis, and recommendation. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. TheBalancingPoint.net, Alameda Acupuncture, and Dr. John Nieters L.Ac, DAOM are not liable or responsible for any advice, course of treatment, diagnosis or any other information, services or product you obtain through this video or site.