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Transcript from Webinar:

Good afternoon.

This is John Nieters. Dr. Nieters here with another Q&A session on a Tuesday afternoon. And then just a reminder for someone who casually finds this, I take questions. Please send them in during the week. Or sometimes if we have enough time, we can get it while we’re on the air. But it’s always a little better if you send them in. Mostly, I don’t do any research on them unless it’s something really off the wall. I’m just going to talk off the top, which is what I do all day long.

Every day of my life is answer questions. And so this is what I love to do. So we’ve got a couple of very interesting questions that are interesting to me at least, and they should be interesting to you because I guarantee they fit you or someone that you know. And so the first one is actually a question that I’m not going to attribute to any one individual, because I hear it all the time and it goes something like this.

01:08:02

You know, I talk to my doctor about the labs and he thinks you’re a lunatic. Something like that. Because, you know, you don’t need to be worried about those labs. They’re within normal limits, etc.. And any of you that have been watching or listening to me any period of time at all know that I’m very clear with that. With very, very, very few exceptions, there are no standard ranges.

Every lab has different ranges. Now, some of them are similar. Some of them are totally dissimilar. There are labs that will have nine times higher level of triglycerides that they call normal than what I would call normal, and about seven times higher than what most other labs would call normal. So these are not normal things. But even within that, within the narrow, narrow or ranges that you will find with some labs, doctors are mostly missing the boat.

And so you must monitor your own labs. Now, Kathryn and I are working on a book. We’ll have it out by the summer so that you can have it. So you can just kind of see what our recommended ranges are. And then you can do a little research on your own and then see what you want to do about it. Go to another doctor, go back to your doctor, whatever you feel is appropriate. But I want you to be armed with the information.

I have done Functional Medicine University and I still get their information regularly. And with functional medicine, they’re very concerned with the things that I’m speaking of right now, and they’ll send some great information and I got one the other day. A piece of information from them, which was great because they don’t just give you the numbers. I don’t just come up with these numbers. It’s an art of Chinese medicine thing. It’s not some abstraction. Every number that I talk about in terms of the lab values is backed by the most solid of science.

So here they had a couple of things and all science daily. National Institutes of Health, Frontiers in Oregon. Yeah. So these are all very, very, very reputable organizations, very reputable repositories of information, etc.. And a couple of the things that they point out which this reminds me to talk to you about. One of them that I see a lot and I get concerned for my patients is white blood cells. So on your complete blood count, generally the first item mentioned is WBC, which are white blood cells.

04:10

Now, of course, white blood cells are the protectors of your body. Some of them fight viruses. Some of them are many different types of white cells. Some are activated by allergies. Some are activated by bacteria, etc. And they all then will go out and attack whatever that foreign invader is. Well, it’s really important to have enough of those. If you don’t, you’d have some form of blood cancer if it was too low. But if it’s too high, that’s a problem also.

Now, different labs will have an upper end of what they call normal of ten or 10.5. 11 one lab has 11.5. And so those are thousands of white blood cells per unit. And so let’s say at 11.5, well, any value over nine. So if you have a cold or you have an infection or two that’s infected or something and your white cells spike, that’s fine. But they should come back down under six. And if they’re over nine for any appreciable period of time, that increases your heart attack risk by four times. Now, anything that increases your cardiovascular risk by four times is not normal. In my book, and even lower values than that have been shown to more than double risk and in women.

So anything over about six for any period of time you want to have a second look taken at that blood count to see what’s really going on. But if it’s over nine, you need to do something right away because of the increased cardiovascular risk, which is so much higher. For example, you have to treat thousands of people for years. For high cholesterol to prevent one heart attack. And that’s according to the figures from the statin companies that are doing their own research.

So it’s many thousands needed to treat over a period of years to prevent one cardiovascular event. Well, here we’re looking at something that increases your risk by four times. So have someone that knows what they’re doing. Functional medical doctor, naturopath, acupuncture that’s trained in functional medicine, etc.. Review your labs for you to make sure. Because other things. There’s a lab called MCV almost never looked at by doctors.

06:51

MCV that is over 91, you should see someone about that. If it’s over 95, it dramatically increases cardiovascular risk. And typically, if it’s over about 91, you’re going to have either a defect in folate and or vitamin B12 metabolism, or for some reason you’re not absorbing B12 or folate or you’re using it at too high a rate. So these are really big deals.

And we’re looking at folate and B12, for example, are low. Folate is a major player in depression, blood clotting, excess blood clotting, anxiety, depression, autism, a whole range of problems. But dementia is one of the biggest. People with low B12 and low folate will have a higher homocysteine levels generally, and homocysteine is clearly linked to dementia. So, again, these are really important things.

Now. Just a quickie. You might want to write this down.

07:58

Checking B12 levels, vitamin B12 levels is rarely going to give you an accurate value. You can have very high levels of B12, but not be metabolizing it, not being, not utilizing it, etc. And so it’s actually could be doing more harm than good. Whenever you run a B12 lab, you should also run a lab called MMA. That’s methyl malonic acid. And that will give you a reading as to whether or not you’re actually utilizing the B12 properly in the cellular process and the Krebs cycle to make energy. So very, very important stuff.

Also high platelet counts. High already, that’s a measure of bandwidth. I’ve never had a doctor ever talk to one of my patients about bandwidth, but when you get over 14.5, which is how many patients are you dramatically increase cardiovascular risk again.

09:03

So I’m going to take just a moment and make a little drawing here, which I’m really bad at. I’m going to show you a couple of things on here. One, the top one is called the J-Shaped Curve. The bottom one is called a U shape curve, for pretty obvious reasons, I would think. Now, if you’re right here at the bottom of this curve, you would have the greatest chance of living a long and healthy life.

But as you go either way on the curve. So let’s say this is hemoglobin A1c, which is a better measure of a long term measure of blood sugars in your system. So if you’re down here, which is about 5.0 to 5.2, you’re in great shape. As you start creeping up to 5.5, 5.6, your mortality risk increases. However, as you go this way and you get down to 4.6, 4.5, 4.4, your mortality risk also changes.

And sometimes it’s a J-shaped curve. Being low, you don’t have as far to go as you do in being high. But it’s the same idea. You want to be right here in the sweet spot. And hopefully, well, not hopefully, but Kathryn and I will have a book out which will make it very easy for you to track these values and know what to look for so that you can do further inquiry with your medical providers. Okay, so those are questions I get every day, literally.

So I put those in there. Now, here’s one that I get a lot. And this came in from one of my patients, a patient who, by the way, was diagnosed with MS. but has actually kind of a variation of MS. I’m going to read this. It says.

11:02

Hello, John. I’m sending this to my PCP, neuro and to you to see if we can get a plan together for the coming week. Timeline. On 3/3 (March 3^rd), I tested positive for COVID after cold like symptoms starting a couple of days prior. Other than a light cold, I felt quite literally fine. On the fourth, however, I decided to do a stage running challenge…. So this fellow is doing a running challenge… running long distance from Friday night to Sunday night, vowing to cut it off if I felt bad at all. I never felt bad. I kept my heart rate under 145 and was quite proud of myself while I quarantined from work. My quarantine expired and I returned the following Friday, which was when I noticed the overwhelming fatigue after absolutely normal activities, and I wanted to sleep in the middle of the day. In the meantime, I added brain fog. My appetite is minimized. I’ve started bouts of fever and chills, but the fever never got very high.

The most notable thing for this Overthinker (and he is), is that my optimism has turned off. I’m just in survival mode. I move 40% slower than usual. My real question is, should I stay off work for some unknown period of time until I get better?

12:33

My response sounds awful and unfortunately I’ve treated a lot of this. So these symptoms while the biggest problem with post COVID and long COVID. Is the microbe blood clotting that it causes. I recommend, so then and I didn’t put it in here, but I also see that exact same thing with COVID vaccine injuries, which I see a lot of. They’re much more common than people are being told.

And they’re exactly the same. Or at least there’s a massive overlap with long COVID symptoms. And in fact I had a woman therapist and her 12 year old son. The son caught COVID was mildly ill, but then had long COVID and couldn’t function at school, couldn’t run, couldn’t think, is very bright kid and he just couldn’t get his thinking cap on. Mom didn’t get COVID but got vaccinated and ended up with exactly the same symptoms.

In fact, she is a therapist and as with most therapists right now, was working on Zoom, had to not work at all for two months and then the third month was barely able to see a couple of patients a day again because of the horrible fatigue and the brain fog, same symptoms in both of them. And I see these and lots and lots of patients. And the biggest problem, and this has been shown throughout the world with both COVID and COVID vaccination injuries is damage to the lining of the blood vessels.

14:16

Now, there are lots of things that go on, but this is the biggest, is damage to the lining of the blood vessels. The endothelium of the blood vessels gets damaged and clotting occurs at a much, much higher level, dramatically higher level. And when they compared the level of clotting from influenza versus COVID, it wasn’t even close. COVID is much worse. And influenza, the primary way that people die from influenza is from damage done by the virus to their blood vessels. Same type of damage. It’s just not nearly as severe. So with influenza, very few people other than the swine flu or bird flu’s, very few people die directly from influenza.

Quite a few may pass away, particularly older people, from pneumonia. That was brought about by the infection. But overwhelmingly, the big killer by far are heart attacks and strokes in the six months after influenza. Because the virus damages the endothelium of the blood vessels, they start forming plaques and or clots and then they die of stroke or heart attack. And this is the same thing with COVID. It’s the micro clotting that’s the biggest problem.

There are others. And so this is the rest of my answer. I recommend that you get a d – dimer test to check for the clotting so that the d – dimer to check for the clotting. Check with your M.D. about the d-dimer or let us know and we can order it for you. So D-Dimer is often used in the medical system when they suspect there may be a deep vein thrombosis or they suspect some other clotting mechanism and but they can’t find it or they’re not certain.

16:22

So they’ll test D-Dimer to see if there are blood clots. I am finding lots of elevated d-dimer tests. I highly recommend if you’ve had COVID or you know, a vaccine and don’t feel it, still don’t feel quite right that you get a d-dimer test. They’re not extremely expensive, between $30 and $40, which is, you know, more than my patients usually spend for tests, but well worth it.

While you’re at it, you get a CBC, which is about $5 and a chemistry panel which is about $5. So you put it all together and you’re going to get a pretty good picture of what’s occurring. But the d-dimer is very, very important if you have any of the symptoms that this person had.

17:16

Then I went on to say, I don’t remember if you’re taking magnesium threonate. If not, take it to help with the brain fog. Now it won’t. It’s not magical for the clotting, but we’ve found that it’s very, very effective for brain fog in general. So most forms of magnesium do not cross the blood brain barrier very effectively. But magnesium threonate does cross the blood brain barrier at a higher level and it can often help with the brain fog.

So I recommended that. As for work, this may be the most important part for most of you. I would recommend that you stay off until you feel somewhat better. If it’s not too much of a financial burden, the adrenals take a tremendous and measurable hit from COVID as they do from influenza and cause a lot of the fatigue symptoms.

One of the dangers of the low adrenal. Is low aldosterone, which leads to low sodium, which leads to low blood volume, which leads to orthostatic hypotension, which is when you get lightheaded, when you stand up, which can lead to fainting, which can lead to concussion and fractured skull. So in this adrenal fatigue world. Right, and I’m always hesitant to talk about things that are a current fad. But there’s a reason this is a current bad. We have a culture that’s just riddled with adrenal fatigue, people burning the candle at both ends, being exposed to toxic chemicals, etc.. And so with adrenal fatigue.

The adrenals, as my six year old told me at one time, who is now 19, but told me, “Daddy, adrenals, they’re just like two little caps that sit on top of the kidneys and control a lot of chemicals.” I was like, Yeah, that’s right. And so the Chinese, if you go to a Chinese doctor and acupuncturist and they say particularly if they’re from China, but even those trained here, if they say, oh, you’ve got weak kidney energy, you have kidney deficiency or kidney yang deficiency or kidney deficiency.

They aren’t really talking about your kidneys. Very few of the functions of the actual kidneys are in the kidney classification of traditional Chinese medicine. Most of those that we think of as being related to the kidneys are really in the bladder function. And so the kidney is almost exclusively are speaking about hormone levels. If you look up kidney inefficiency and you look up the symptoms of menopause, they’re going to be almost a 100% correlation.

If you look at the symptoms of getting old, urinary weakness, bladder weakness, fatigue, it’s going to be kidney qi deficiency. And that’s often related to adrenal fatigue. But also there’s some adrenal fatigue and kidney yin and kidney yang also. And so kidney yang, men in particular, they lose their heat, they lose their sex drive, etc.. And you’ll see when you look at kidney yang deficiency, a lot of those symptoms are in that. But also adrenal fatigue, is actually indicated by the kidney pulses on the left and the right wrist.

And so I’ll know people have kidney adrenal fatigue long before I tested for it. And there are in-office tests for adrenal fatigue that are relatively accurate. So we do the pulse and then we do a test called a Ragland’s test, which doctors call an orthostatic hypotension test, but they use it in kind of a gross way. Ours is much more specific than theirs. And so we’re looking at a variety of ways that the heart rate and the blood pressure change as people move from lying down to standing up. And one of the major things that should happen is that the blood pressure should go up about ten points. 5 to 10 points when you go from lying down to standing up, because you need more pressure to get the blood up into your brain, obviously. And so looking at how those correlate, we can get a very good picture of the adrenal patency.

21:43

Also, there’s a test called a paroxysmal pupillary reflex, a PPR, where we shine a light into the pupils from an angle not directly in, and we can time how long the pupil holds its contraction. That gives us a further idea. We take those two things, plus the pulses, and they’re always correct. Though I may run labs anyway for people just so that they can see them in black and white. But adrenal fatigue, which there are three levels, basically, level two is where most people are in my office.

They’re exhausted, they’re anxious, and they have insomnia frequently. They don’t want to get up in the morning and they can’t go to sleep at night. And that’s really based on how the adrenal function is occurring. And is that whole tired and wired or wired and tired, however, we want to put it where you’re so tired you can’t function, but you can’t really go to sleep either. So these are all symptoms of adrenal fatigue. Now the adrenals are basically divided into two major parts the cortex and the medulla, and they each give off different chemicals.

22:58

For example, your adrenals give off natural corticosteroids. So any of those you that have been on prednisone, basically that’s because your adrenal system was very weak and you could not produce enough of your own corticosteroids and you had to take an exogenous or externally given corticosteroids. But your body should do that on its own. And then you have the stress hormones. Most people are quite aware of cortisol and how it pumps up your blood sugar and so that you can wake up in the morning and function and the adrenals which pump hard, you know, when you when you need to get your blood pumping. And they’re familiar with noradrenaline often, which is the hormone that takes the blood out of the center of your body, your stomach, ovaries, uterus, etc., and routes it to your hands and feet so you can run away and fight and to your sensory functions so that you can see and know where the tiger is.

One that gets overlooked. And I talked about this many times, but it bears repeating is aldosterone. Aldosterone is produced at the very kind of outside part of the adrenal glands, and it’s one that gets depleted very easily. Aldosterone is the primary controller of potassium to sodium balance in the body. And if aldosterone is low, sodium will be low. If sodium is low in your serum, in your blood, you won’t attract as much water to balance the sodium, so you won’t have as much blood volume. And so it’s going to be easier to develop orthostatic hypotension and a variety of other conditions and then you can easily pass out when you stand up. So these are real significant problems. And I just looked up again to confirm some things influenza by itself, which is not as draining as COVID, but influenza causes tremendous amounts of adrenal fatigue. And this is in the in the scientific literature. And in fact, in the 1919/1920 influenza epidemic, they did autopsies on many people who had died.

And they found that their adrenal glands were swollen up to ten times normal size because the adrenals were trying so hard, working so hard to keep up with the demands of putting out the fire and keeping up the energy that the influenza was zapping. Well, COVID does that even more. And there are many cases that are now coming up of significant adrenal fatigue after COVID and in fact, many conditions that had been latent for many, many years.

25:57

There’s a condition called Sheahan syndrome that I catch not infrequently, where women have all of these bizarre symptoms, you know, just things that don’t go together. Their periods are erratic, they’ve got headaches, they’ve got lots of different things. And often we can trace it back to the delivery of a child where they lost too much blood. And when women are about to give birth, the anterior pituitary, the front part of the pituitary gland in the center of the brain controls many, many functions in the body and follicle stimulating hormone, thyroid, stimulating hormone, etc..

And one of the things that controls is the hormone that controls for lactation. And so the part of the brain or the pituitary that controls lactation swells because it’s getting ready for this baby. And the anterior pituitary has a fairly weak blood supply at best. And so if that blood is going at too high a ratio to the part of the pituitary, that wall is getting set up for lactation.

And the woman loses too much blood and too much can be even just a pint at that point. But if any more than that, it’s going to be a real problem. They can develop what’s called Sheehan syndrome. But I’m seeing with COVID many case reports of women that had Sheehan’s syndrome that was quiet, they didn’t know that they had it. They had maybe some minor issues, but then it went full blast after COVID. So if you’ve had COVID or if you’ve had symptoms of COVID like symptoms after vaccination, be very gentle with yourself.

Find someone that knows how to treat micro clotting. Chinese medicine is probably the best at that. We’ve been treating micro clotting for thousands of years. There are whole volumes on treating blood stasis, which that is. The blood gets clots and it doesn’t move. We’re really the experts at micro clots and micro circulation. In fact, some of our most popular herbs are so powerful because they work to treat microcirculation.

28:22

The herb that’s so commonly used in women’s formulas, Dong Gui, is a magical microcirculation herb. Probably the number one herb used for immune function, Astragalus. Those two herbs together are magical for microcirculation. And then you can add an herb called Dan Shen Shen to that. And then you’ve got a clot buster. Dr. Cohen, who I have tremendous respect for, really, really promotes the use of Dan Shen as a clot buster and as a circulation herb.

So those are right at the top of the list. And then find someone who knows how to treat adrenal fatigue because you do not want to get to stage three adrenal fatigue. That is chronic fatigue. I’ve had patients come to me, many from Stanford’s Chronic Fatigue Clinic, who were told, do not do anything for two years. Get a babysitter, have someone take care of your kids, hire a cook. You can’t do anything. For two years now, I have found that unnecessary.

And actually, I think it could be harmful. But these patients, it did take two years for them to recover and they couldn’t do a lot. So you don’t want to go there if you are suffering from the issues that I mentioned before, get help now. So, Kathryn, any questions on the chat?

Kathryn: We have that Gallbladder question.

29:57

John: Oh, gallbladder question. So as you know, we’re probably we’re starting a liver flush, detox cleanse, whatever you want, because we’re doing all three on Friday, this coming Friday, and we’re getting lots of questions about it. And one of the questions was, I am having pain. What was it? Someone is sick with gallbladder issues right now. That they can’t stop throwing up and doesn’t want to eat you.

So they’re vomiting and they can’t eat. And the answer to that question is, no, you cannot do the liver flush because you need to go to urgent care immediately. Once you get to the point where you can’t eat or you’re vomiting, you’re probably getting a lot of backflow of bile. You may have an obstruction. In fact, not unlikely that there’s an obstruction. And so bile is very caustic. It has to go in one direction only. And if it’s back flowing, that’s dangerous. But what’s even more dangerous is it’s the common bile duct so that the gallbladder empties into a duct that’s coming down. And then a little bit below that, pancreatic juices, primarily lipase and amylase and some baking soda a little earlier but they come in there also. Well, amylase and lipase, once they’re activated, will actually eat the pancreas. So once they’re activated, they have to get out into your digestive system.

If there’s a blockage in the common bile duct and that backs up into the pancreas. You’ll end up with pancreatitis, which can be fatal. And even if it’s not fatal, short term greatly increases the risk of pancreatic cancer. If the flow goes back up into the liver, you can get ascending cholangitis, which again is a medical emergency that requires immediate action. So if you’re to the point where you’re vomiting and having excruciating pain and no appetite, no, you cannot do a liver flush.

You need to go to the doctor immediately and get a get film study done, etc.. Now, if you’ve just had some gall bladder discomfort over the years, or if you’ve had gallstones that you may be passed before, that’s fine. We can work with you with that. But when it’s to the point of vomiting, now you’re out of here and you’re at the hospital.

32:41

Oh, that’s a great question.

As we advance in age, most seniors become intolerant of certain foods, have regurgitation, bloating, sometimes loss of appetite. And then eventually they’re often diagnosed with hiatal hernias that they were not aware of. Yeah, this is really, really, really, really common. Hiatal hernias. A hernia is where some tissue is protruding through a hole, someplace where it’s not supposed to go. In this case, a hiatal hernia.

When you swallow food, it goes down to the stomach. But in order to get to the stomach, the tube is fairly long and it has to pass through the diaphragm. So the diaphragm, which in large measure controls your breathing, has a hole in it. And that’s good. You need the hole so that your esophagus can go through there so you can get the food down. However, as we age, often that hole will get stretched out and through different stressors, different things that we do in moving our body and maybe straining different ways.

Some of the stomach can rise up through the hole and often it can get stuck. And if the stomach actually gets stuck above the diaphragm, then food either can’t get through or it’s very difficult to get through. And so you’ll get a lot of regurgitation, a lot of stomach acid issues. Your food won’t feel like it’s digesting properly, all of those symptoms. So I listen for this very carefully when I talk to my patients.

And if they’re having a lot of these digestive issues, I will recommend that they go back to their medical doctor and get some imaging done, either an endoscopy where they’re putting a tube down there or you can do ultrasound, etc., and see if there is a hiatal hernia, because this is way more common than people think. And often doctors aren’t looking for it. Often it’s found kind of as a side thing. When they’re doing an endoscopy, they think maybe you have an ulcer and they’ll do the endoscopy, and lo and behold, there’s a hiatal hernia again.

35:02

So the food gets stuck above the stomach so it can’t really get down and through the stomach. So this is a big deal. Now there are fixed hernias and what are called sliding hernias. So in some people that tissue of the stomach gets stuck above the diaphragm and it just stays there. In some people it will slide up and down, so it’ll get stuck for a while and then it comes loose. If it’s a sliding hernia, there are many people that can help you with a couple of techniques.

Chiropractors do this, some acupuncturists do it. Your medical doctor may do it, but you can be trained in how to actually work with the stomach to get it back down in place. But if it’s permanent, that might be a surgical fix to get that. So they’d have to pull the stomach down and then stitch the hole to make it smaller so the stomach doesn’t come back up and through again. So again, this is really, really, really, really, really common. So if you have digestive issues that just can’t be explained otherwise or you know, whatever you’re doing isn’t getting rid of it, then go see your doctor and have them do further tests.

Now, if you if you look at the package inserts on proton pump inhibitors, the little yellow I mean, the little purple pills, they all say do not use for more than say two weeks. I don’t know if it’s two or two weeks, but if they don’t use for more than a certain amount of time and yet many people are put them on them for 10 to 20 years. So if you if two weeks of using those doesn’t work, then you need to go back and get checked out because those antacids are not treating the problem, they’re treating the symptom.

And you need to get the problem treated because it could be serious.

Kathryn: So is it the proton pump that’s causing the hernia?

37:00

John: No, I don’t believe so. I’ve never I’ve never put it together that way, at least not directly. So what the proton pump inhibitors do is they turn off the proton pumps and the proton pumps are necessary to produce stomach acid, hydrochloric acid. Well, you need hydrogen, amongst other things. Once you shut that off, you’re going to be deficient in several banks. Studies going back many years, showing that women that are on proton pump inhibitors long term have 240% or more higher risk of osteoporosis because you don’t absorb calcium well, you also don’t absorb iron well without a high acidic environment.

And so you can become iron deficiency, anemic, but also you need intrinsic factor in order to bind vitamin B12 so that you can absorb it. And so you’ll also become B12 anemia, possibly anemic possibly. And so you can be actually what’s called micro-cidic and macro-cidic. At the same time, micro-cidic, too small, which is what low iron does, macro-cidic to big, the red blood cells, which is what B12 deficiency will do.

And it can be kind of tricky because it can kinda balance out, so it looks like your cell size is okay. And so then you have to look at some secondary measures like the RDW that I talked about to see if you really are anemic. And often if you’ve been on proton pump inhibitors for any period of time, you’ll be one or two have one or two different types of anemia and often a calcium deficiency. So those are the dangers. I haven’t actually seen it cause the hiatal hernia, but I’ll go check out the literature. I haven’t really looked for that.

Kathryn Anything else?

Kathryn: I think we’re you’re good. Instagram?

39:06

John: Okay, so again, a reminder, we’re going to be starting the liver cleanse flush detox, which is critical for everyone to do that regularly. I want to draw your attention. We are now on Instagram and apparently we’re having a giveaway. And if you do certain things on Instagram and I’ll let you check it out for yourself. And Kathryn may be putting it down there. There, we’re giving away a couple of free liver cleanses if you go on there and do whatever it is you do.

We are also on Facebook and on YouTube. You’d look for Alameda Acupuncture. And of course, we’re on TheBalancingPoint dot net, The Balancing Point dot net, which is our home place for all of our trainings and all of our seminars, webinars, videos, etc.. Final question.

40:07

Kathryn: Any thoughts on the most accurate abdominal scan CT with dye’s versus ultrasound for liver, gallbladder, pancreas issues? I’ve been so irritated after an accident resulting in two prosthesis two years ago and know that’s not healthy.

John: Okay. Each of the different imaging techniques. Is better for certain things. So MRI’s are better for soft tissue. X-rays, for gross hard tissue bones, etc.. CAT scans were a much better look at hard tissues, etc. and ultrasound for shapes for objects. And so depending on what they’re looking for and who’s doing the looking, they’ll do different technologies.

41:02

For example, for the ovaries, they will usually start with ultrasound. For the breast, they usually start with a mammogram, which is a form of X-ray. And then if they find something suspicious with the mammogram, depending on the doctor, they’ll either go to an ultrasound or an MRI. Because they’re going to show a much finer picture. And so it really depends on what’s being looked for. Now, if it’ll work, for example, for the liver size and for fatty liver, you can usually get a pretty good idea.

And for ovarian issues, etc., with an ultrasound. And I prefer ultrasound if possible because it is not invasive at all. I mean, you could do a transvaginal, in which case they put the wand in the vagina, which is not fun. But it’s not the same as doing a CAT scan. For example, where you’re getting 200 X-ray pictures, basically, so you’re getting some x ray exposure and then the MRI’s are just more of a pain.

You know, you’ve got to lay still in that chamber for quite a while. A lot of people are too claustrophobic, and then they may want to do a contrast agent with the MRI or the CAT scan. And some people have problems with the contrast agents. So it gets a little tricky there. So anything that can be done with an ultrasound, I would recommend that you start there and then kind of work up the ladder from there. All right. That’s it. This is going to be a shorter one today.

And I want to thank you all for tuning in and send us some questions. I only had a couple of questions today, and I would love to get about a dozen every week. So and I’ll have my answers a little bit shorter then. So until next Tuesday. Be well. Be happy. Thank you for tuning in. Bye bye.

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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.