Understanding Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine with Dr. Jonathan Fields – Dr. Jonathan Fields

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another mindful Space episode. Today we have Dr. Jonathan Fields. How are you today? I’m excellent. Thank you for having me. Great to be here for coming. So today we are going to discuss integrative medicine, acupuncture, and herbal medicine. Okay, let me do that one again. Okay, today we’re going to discuss integrative medicine, including acupuncture and herbal medicine. Correct. I know that you have a lot of many specialties, but today, for the purpose of the length of the podcast, we’re going to focus on those looking forward to it. Yes. Do you mind introducing yourself for those who might not know who you are? Yeah, absolutely. My name is Dr. Jonathan Fields. My background, my master’s and my doctorate is actually in acupuncture and Eastern medicine. I’m also certified in functional medicine, IV therapy, different injection, therapies, stem cell therapies, and a few other random things. I got into the medicine through martial arts. I’ve been in martial arts my whole life. That drew me into acupuncture and Tai chi. I started learning that about 20 years ago. And about 1112 years ago, I got really, really sick. I spent about a year disabled. I saw maybe a dozen different specialists. I had a dozen different symptoms hot flashes, fatigue, depression, systemic joint pain, back pain, carpal tunnel, tendonitis, neck pain. And I was getting worse and worse and worse. And all the doctors kept telling me was, it’s all in your head. Go home. Here’s some muscle relaxers. Here’s some pain pills. You’re fine, which was not an acceptable answer for me. And finally, a friend of mine who’s a formulary by the name of Reed Eckert, he actually invents vitamins. He works with MDS to create vitamins. He got me better. He put me with a chiropractor, had me change my diet, and I made 100% recovery. And I had already been studying the Eastern medicine through my acupuncturist and my Qigong master, Dr. George Love. And after having lived through that experience myself, I decided I couldn’t go back to the same lifestyle. And two, I wanted to help other people in similar situations. I figured, I’m young, I’m healthy, I live in America, I have health insurance, I should be able to get help with these kinds of chronic health issues. And after the system failed me, I wanted to be able to give back to other people in the same shoes. Correct. And that’s what you’ve been doing. And amazingly so. Now you have two clinics, right? We have two clinics, one in Coral Springs Tamarack area, and we have another one in West Boca Raton. And we’re looking at expanding to more locations right now. Oh, my. To my next question was going to be, why did you decide to focus on this type of medicine? But I think you kind of already answered that, right? Life experience. Yeah, life experience. And it worked, right? It worked a lot of times. From the martial arts standpoint, whenever I was getting musculoskeletal injuries, the acupuncture was very effective for me. It worked tremendously well to relieve muscle aches, sprains, strains, those kinds of things. And then I had to go learn that herbal medicine is basically our internal medicine version, right? Which I didn’t know much at the beginning, as in my twenty s, I was healthy, luckily. And as I got older and learned more about it, even when I was in acupuncture school, I think a lot of it sounded like nonsense. But when you start seeing it work in the clinic, you’re like, oh my God, this is actually helping people. It works. And at first you don’t even believe the patients. They’re like, oh, feel so much better. And you’re like, really? And then eventually you see so many cases that get better and you experience it firsthand yourself and you’re like, this is amazing. People need to know about this kind of stuff. And we have the 2000 plus year history, written history of actual case studies and textbooks documenting this, which is the scientific method. This has been repeated for thousands of years on billions of people. Yes, and nobody can deny that unless you’re a pharmaceutical company. Well, the interesting thing is with the pharmaceuticals know, a lot of the molecules are actually extracts or concentrates from herbal remedies. That’s so interesting. Well, I know we’re going to get more into that, but let’s start from the beginning. What is considered integrative medicine? Michelle, switch legs. Okay. Told you I feel uncomfortable. Okay. I will never wear a dress again for this set. Okay, back to discussion. Okay, let’s start from the beginning. For those who might not be familiar with the subject, what is considered integrative medicine? It’s a great question. So integrative medicine is where you’re using a combination of holistic therapies, right? And you’re looking at the whole body of the person. We’re looking at every body system, not just we’re a specialist where we’re dealing with just gastro or just mental health or this, because in reality it is all related. So we’re looking at everything from lifestyle, we’re looking at diet, we’re looking at exercise. And then we’re going to look at your symptoms and we’re going to try to identify what the root cause of the condition is, rather than just trying to treat the symptoms and put a band aid on the problem, which is kind of the conventional or the allopathic model. Right. You should take this medication for the rest of your life, which may or may not help, but ideally you’re not actually solving anything like that. We’re going to try to identify what the problem is and then treat it with a comprehensive approach. So we will work with the patient’s doctors, right? Obviously we’re not telling patients, hey, don’t take your meds, because that would be dangerous and irresponsible, but we will also see what else can be done. We’re basically going to try to leave no stone unturned to see what could be contributing to your problems. Whether it be environmental toxins or mold exposure or dietary or past trauma or all these things, they’re all going to have an impact on your total health and well being. What has been like, the Craziest patient or case that you’ve had where I don’t know. I don’t know if it was maybe mold exposure or just something super random that some unregular person might not think about. That’s just me out of curiosity. No, it’s a really good question. And we tend to get the weirdest cases right, because they usually end up on our doorstep after they’ve tried everything and everything has failed, and then they come to us, or we get the other side of it, where they’re like, I don’t trust the doctor, so I’m not taking any medications like I’m going to trust you. But I’ve seen all sorts of severe autoimmune cases go into remission, everything from rheumatoid arthritis to Crohn’s colitis, thyroid disease, where we’re able to turn all that kind of stuff around and all the symptoms magically disappear. One of the most interesting cases I had was a young girl in her early 20s with Ehlers Downloads syndrome, which is a mixed connective tissue disease that affects your gut health, your joints, kind of everything. It’s really sad. She came in in early 20s, walking on a cane, had a pick in her arm. She couldn’t eat or drink because everything would come right up. And she was probably about 90 something pounds at the time, disabled, ten plus medications, had seen 2030 different doctors, been to all the best health systems, not getting any help whatsoever. And right away, I took one look at her and I said, well, obviously you’re not getting any nutrients because you can’t eat, you can’t drink. Her skin tone was this color, right? So I’m thinking, okay, you’re probably anemic as well, or we got all sorts of issues here. And part of the thing with the mixed connective tissue disease, often they will have gut absorption issues. So even if they were eating, they’re not getting nutrient absorption. So I decided, you know what? Let’s start. We tried acupuncture, we tried herbs, and she was getting some temporary relief, but it wasn’t really lasting. So I said, okay, well, what can we do to go a step farther? How can we get this to the patient, actually get better and stay better? And I decided, well, I think the best thing we could do is try to administer vitamins for intramuscular injections. So we started taking B, vitamins C, different minerals that she was missing, glutathione, vitamin D, which even orally, she wasn’t absorbing. And her numbers were in the tank, but the doctors didn’t seem to be concerned about. And she had an electrical stimulator installed in her that wasn’t working either. She was having motility issues, all sorts of different problems. I mean, it’s crazy. Hundred different symptoms. Yeah. So I started treating her with these intramuscular vitamin injections, and within a month or two, she was back to normal. The pick was out. She was eating and drinking, no problem. Went from ten medications to three medications. Still had some pain. Isn’t perfect, but she was exercising again, back in school, working part time, and just went from somebody who looked like they weren’t going to make it more than a few more weeks to having a semi normal life. Right. Do they still have some medical issues? Sure. But it went from, this is the end of the road to now she’s got a full life ahead of her. No. And that’s so impressive. So only with vitamins, something that you would think is basic, you would think that all these doctors and specialists could look at, like, okay, what is the person missing? They can’t eat. And then are these ten different medications helping with absorption of nutrients? No, they’re actually probably doing more damage to the gut microbiome and actually further impeding her absorption of minerals and nutrients. At the end of the day, I’m not against any sort of type of medicine. Whatever is best for the patient. And if one thing doesn’t work, then let’s try something else. Correct. Or integrative. Right. Bingo. Let’s work together. Exactly. Why would you say integrative medicine is or would you say is better than traditional medicine? I would say words carefully. The question, what do you call traditional? Right. Because what I was initially trained on was what we would consider traditional Chinese medicine. So if you want to consider the conventional or the allopathic Western model, it’s very incomplete now. It’s not better. It depends on the patient, and it depends on the case. If I have an emergency, if I’m in a car accident, I don’t want acupuncture. I don’t want any herbs like, rush me to the hospital, please save my life. Right? Yes. But when it comes to managing chronic conditions, the conventional medicine system is horrible at doing that kind of thing when it comes to any sort of autoimmune condition, or they start slapping fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, labels on things, skin conditions, digestive complaints, the patients are not getting relief. They’re just, oh, take Miralax for the rest of your life, or take an antacid or a proton pump inhibitor for the rest of your life. And there are serious long term consequences to some of these things that doctors are recommending, and it’s not being taken into consideration. Also, if you look at the research specifically, let’s say for cancer patients, the patients that did both integrative medicine, so when they did their conventional treatments, let’s say the doctors recommended chemo, radiation, whatever it is, and surgeries. When they did that in combination with integrative treatments or Holistic, therapies the results clinically seemed to be better than doing either or. Right. It would be irresponsible to be like, don’t listen to your doctor, don’t do chemo. Right. Or him. Listen to him. At the same time, I believe it’s equally responsible for doctors, and this still happens to this day, to tell patients, oh, your diet doesn’t matter, right. As long as you do your chemo, you’re going to be fine. Come on. Yeah, we know better. I was going to say, I’m not a doctor, obviously, but I feel like I already know that diet does make a difference for everything mental health, medicine, just everything overall. So to hear that a professional would say that for me is just like, mind boggling. It is. And honestly, every day in the clinic, we hear a lot of horror stories, and sometimes it’s really disheartening and it’s frightening to realize you can be so misled, so misdiagnosed and just mistreated and abused, disrespected. These are just common things that people are used to in the medical profession. It’s much worse for women, and it’s much worse for people of color. The statistics are shocking. But even myself, I couldn’t get good care when I was going through all my problems. Yeah, or you weren’t aware of all the other options you had. I think education is a big part of it. Well, that’s what we’re trying to do here, right? Exactly. That’s exactly what we’re doing here. For Oriental medicine. Is that another specialty? Is that part of integrative? How does that fall under? So very often it will find I mean, I think the Eastern medicines were probably the original integrative medicines. Very often these days, whether it be a cancer center or a different integrative center, you will find Eastern medical stuff incorporated into that. They’re not always together, and they’re not mutually exclusive either. But very often, even from a functional medicine or a Western, now, a holistic dietetics approach, the way we kind of diagnose patients, looking at the root cause, a lot of that does come from the Eastern medicine traditions. They were the first traditions to really document the process of going through every single body system and saying, listen, diet first, and then let’s look at everything else. Yeah. Then let’s see the results and go from there. Exactly. That makes more sense. Part of that comes is how they used to treat the emperor. Right. Let’s say if you were in ancient China, if you were the emperor’s doctor, you didn’t want to put pins in the emperor if you didn’t have to, because if you hit a nerve and if they didn’t like it, it might be off with your head. Right. So first was the diet last thing. It’d be like herbs and acupuncture. If they took a formula that made them sick, might be off with the head. So they kind of looked at what was the most gentle, what was the most sustainable, what was the most natural way to do it. And the idea was to keep the patient from getting sick. Preventative care. Preventative medicine. Right. If you eat well and do some exercise and take care of yourself and have a healthy mental, emotional, spiritual life, you probably won’t be as sick as somebody else who is blundering all those things. Yes. And I feel like at least here in America, everybody’s more about the aftermath with a lot of many subjects, not just medical. It’s reactive care rather than preventative instead of preventative. That’s what we all pay for insurance. That’s another podcast. Yeah. When it comes to acupuncture, can you guide us or explain to us a little bit what a treatment with acupuncture will look like? Who is it for? What does it do? So, it’s very interesting. We treat almost everything with acupuncture, and there’s hundreds of different diseases. The who actually came out with a list in 1999 where they recognized acupuncture for almost 100 different conditions, for different levels of how much research they had, of how effective it is. So they had about 30 conditions. They said, we have the research to show it’s effective for these. There’s about 30 more conditions that are like, it may be effective for this. We don’t know exactly how it works, but it may help with this and another 30 or so that they’re like. We have very limited evidence. It seems to work, but not so well. But it may work with this. But we treat a lot of different things. Right. We mostly think of it for back pain and neck pain, right? Shoulder pain, knee pain. That’s what most people think of. But we treat everything from women’s health issues to mental health. The VA has a PTSD protocol that they use where it’s mostly just irregular acupuncture, ear acupuncture. And there’s a system called Nada, which is for detoxification, that they use in detox houses, which is very similar to the VA’s PTSD protocol, which is also just a regular acupuncture. So there’s many different styles of acupuncture. There’s Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, there’s Korean acupuncture, and even within Chinese acupuncture, there’s many different styles. There’s a master tongue system, so there’s hundreds of different points that we use throughout the body and different practitioners. That’s one of the identifying features of the traditional Chinese medicine, is you could have three different doctors or three different people with the same symptoms, and we might all treat it completely differently, come up with a different diagnosis. Yet they may all work for you. Right. So the average treatment will probably be anywhere from five to 15 needles. The needles are very thin. They’re hair thin, they’re stainless steel. They’re disposable, so there’s no risk of infection. They go in a sharps container and they get picked up by a medical disposal company when they’re done. So you don’t need to worry about any of that. It’s mostly painless. Most of the points, you barely feel mostly keyword. Yeah, mostly. There’s certain areas like the feet are very sensitive, the hands are kind of sensitive. You have more nerve endings in those places. But a lot of times the back the head, the face and the chest and some of the other bodies are not very sensitive at all. You would think most people have this rational fear of needles because they’re used to getting injections and having their blood drawn. And when you’re looking at going into your vein, it’s a little scary. It’s a big needle. These are hair thin, tiny little needles. Usually you’ll be on the table for about 1520 minutes with the needles in. And there may be some other treatments involved. Maybe some cupping or some topical oils or creams. Sometimes we’ll use heat therapies, like infrared lamps with mineral plates. Sometimes we’ll use electroacupuncture, which is fascinating. It’s like a Tens unit that you have like PT or the chiropractor, but we hook the leads up directly to the needles so it’s more effective. It doesn’t have to be strong. It’s not like when you’re at the chiropractor and you’re like, give me as much as I can. It’s the opposite of that. It doesn’t need to be so strong because the needles are inside the muscles and they’re closer to the nerves. So the stimulation doesn’t have to be as strong, but it is more effective because of the proximity to the problem. You can actually be inside the fascia, inside the muscles, maybe in between discs, kind of closer to the area that’s damaged. It sounds scary. You’d be surprised. Probably half the patients fall asleep on the table. Even with the electric stimulation, you walk in 15 minutes later and they’re snoring. Yeah. Most people find it very relaxing. There is an occasional patient that’s a little jumpy or doesn’t go well, but I mean, maybe one out of 1000. It’s so rare that we get somebody who has a problem with it. I treat kids. I’ve treated everything from infants to toddlers to senior citizens. Yeah, I was going to ask who is acupuncture for? You said you can treat many different diseases or medical diagnosis, but is there an age range or you recommend it? Any age. You can treat just about anybody, I think. Patient by patient, case by case basis. Right. If it’s a young child and they’re too jumpy and they’re scared of the needles, you’re not going to hold them down and force them to do it. Right. You’d start off with a little acupressure massage and you’d kind of build a rapport with the patient and then later on see if you could start getting some needles in. Sometimes we’ll do different sound therapies and things on the acupuncture points, so there’s more we can do. Body work is a big part of the traditional Chinese medicine as well. What they call tuina is like a combination of massage and chiropractic and bone setting as well. So there’s people that specialize in that. But generally when you go to school, most acupuncture schools out here, like, you’ll learn mostly acupuncture and herbs and then sometimes you’ll learn a little bit of body work and a little bit of other modalities as well. So traditional Chinese medicine, the scraping and the cupping, you’re probably familiar with. I’ve seen the bruises, yes. So I think Michael Phelps really repopularized it again a few years ago when he was in the Olympics. And you see all the professional athletes kind of using it because they are in tune with their bodies and they understand the benefits, and they could feel the difference between their performance before and after. So it really varies on a patient. But I wouldn’t say that there’s anybody that’s contraindicated for acupuncture. I mean, if they have like an open wound or something or those are conditions where you might want to stay away from needling into a wound, depending what it is, or if it’s an infectious disease, like, maybe wait till you get better before you come to the clinic and spread it. But we work with those types of cases as well. Okay. Can somebody who just wants to relieve some stress do acupuncture? Yeah, I’m glad you asked that. Mental health is one of my specialties in the clinic, and we have a great deal of patients that come in just for stress, anxiety, depression, insomnia, PTSD, and it works very well. And they’ve actually done functional MRI studies where they’ve shown that acupuncture reduces cortisol and adrenaline. So it’s going to reduce your stress hormones, and it’s going to release endorphins, which are natural opioids that your body makes on its own, like dopamine serotonin oxytocin. Happy ones. Exactly. The happy hormones that kind of, to some extent, kind of get you high, right, and make you feel better. They’ll fall asleep on the table. Usually we encourage them to get off the phone for a few minutes. Okay. Sometimes it’s heated, depending on their preference, so it is very relaxing. And on top of that, if they come in for those kinds of issues, we will typically try to give offer lifestyle advice to we might teach them some breath work or some meditation, some kind of visualizations oh, I love it. And things that they can do to not only enhance the experience while they’re there, but I try to give them at least one or two tools that they could take home with them and incorporate into their daily life. And I’ve had hundreds of patients come off of psychiatric type of medications, guided through their physicians, of course. And I’ve had tons of patients that have been in and out of the Er for panic attacks and anxiety. Where we’ve got them to go from that. I had one yesterday, 17 year old girl was having panic attacks. Now she’s like within maybe a month or two treatment. Her mom brings her in every week, no problems. Now she’s running for, like, school vice president of the council or something, which for a kid with anxiety, you wouldn’t think that something. They’re going to be on stage in front of people and doing speeches and talking. So it’s amazing to see the results. I see so many people, so many kids now with panic attacks and anxiety, and I feel so bad. And everybody, when you talk to people, they’re like, well, that didn’t exist back in our days. It did. We just didn’t talk about it maybe as much. It does make the difference, right, when you can talk about it. But there is a big difference. It is, and it’s a combination. Obviously, it did exist, but the problem has been exacerbated, I think, partially through the diet, partially through social media, partially through the 24 hours news cycle, when you’re watching all this negative stuff all the time and all these other issues. But yes, when I was growing up, I had never heard of anxiety. I didn’t know any kids with anxiety. I don’t know that it was a condition that had an ICD ten code and a medication was invented yet to treat it. Right. As that became more popular, I have kids coming in left and right, anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. And I’m like, we had Add and Add drugs, and they still have those too. Right? But now there’s a whole new classification of ways to treat it, and it’s disingenuous, I think, and harmful to drug all these kids without first addressing their diet, without first addressing behavioral habits and other things. Environmental factors, considering everything. Bingo. Yeah. No, I agree completely, because I see it too, every day. Switching to herbal medicine. Sure. How do you integrate this part into the acupuncture? And just how do you put all of this together when you might use it or not use it? So herbal medicine is really cool. I’m glad you asked. It’s long, long history. The oral history goes back to 5000 plus years from ancient China. The ancient Egyptians were using herbal medicine, and the ancient, ayurvedic medicine tradition out of India, also had their own herbal medicine, as well as all the native tribes to the Americas as well. It is extremely effective for a lot of conditions. And there’s a lot of times, like we discussed, the acupuncture is not enough. The acupuncture may help with some circulation. It may help calm the brain a little bit. It helps with inflammation, help with pain. But if you have serious internal conditions, if you’re, let’s say, anemic or borderline, or if you have digestive issues, you might need more, right. Or sleep insomnia, mental health issues. There are herbs that ascribe different qualities. And the herbal medicine in the eastern realm is very interesting because the herbs are kind of ascribed by their flavor, their energy, what channels they enter. Right? And then they have like four or five functions on top of that, and then they have pairs of herbs that work well together and don’t work well together. Okay. The most interesting part, I think, about herbal medicine, and the way this differentiates the most from the conventional medicine system is it’s tailored to the person’s constitution and body type. So if you and I both had insomnia, right, and let’s say you are the type that is very cold all the time and thin and dry, and maybe I am large and wet and always full of mucus and phlegm and all these types of things, we would both get an herbal formula for insomnia. Completely different herbs, right? There may be some overlap, but we would be looking to treat either your deficiencies or excesses and balance out your body type. And if we balance out your body type, plus there are a few herbs in there that we know are going to calm your mind or spirit, then you will feel better if we balance out my body type. So in your case, it might be herbs that are more wet or encouraging body fluid production. And in my case, if I was, like I said, hot and wet all the time might be cooler herbs that are going to be more drying, right? And then there’s herbs that have some function as opposed to the allopathic model where we’re just prescribing. If all of us have the same condition, you all get the same prescription. And as we know, that doesn’t work. A lot of the time it doesn’t work. Or we do the opposite where we just prescribed and try this one, try this one, and that didn’t work. Okay, now or double the dose. Yeah. And then all the side effects are way worse than a herbal tea. 100% very few side effects with the herbal medications. Sometimes if you do, I mean, you might have a little digestive discomfort, but you’re not going to end up hospitalized or have some kind of crazy reactions like you do with some of the medications. Usually the safety profile is much higher. I love the commercial. No hallucinations, no. Well, depending on the herbal tea, right? Correct. Not the ones that we use in the clinic. Exactly. What are some of the best herbs to take, for example, on a daily basis to maintain our immune system? Excellent question. And then once again, you’d have to be careful because you’d want to make sure it kind of fits for you. So I’m going to go super general, but the most well studied herb that has probably the most benefits and the most amount of research back now, but it’s probably turmeric, right? So turmeric curcumin, anti inflammatory. Good for modulating the immune system, right. Whether it’s overactive or underactive, it is good for circulation, blood flow, and it is considered neutral for the most part. So it’s not too hot or too cold or too wet or too drying. Everybody can kind of take for the most part. Yes, most people are safe to take. That. Ginger is another fantastic one. I love how ginger is the best. I don’t know if the shots are the best format. You’d probably be better off making. So what will. Be the best way for me to eat my ginger? A ginger tea or eating it, right. So you could take some ginger and just pour some boiling water on it, let it sit there for a few minutes and then sip that. Right. So ginger shots are not good. It’s not that they’re not good. Once again, your body type. Right. So if you were somebody who’s, let’s say, too hot all the time, and you’re drinking this herb that ginger is spicy, right. We consider it warm. Dry ginger is considered hot within the Eastern medicine tradition. So there’s different preparations that will determine how hot or how warm it is. But if you’re the hot type and you’re drinking a hot herb all the time in large amounts, you might end up with acid reflux, you might end up with other problems. You might end up sweating profusely. For somebody who might have poor digestion because they’re too cold and maybe they’re under producing stomach acids or other things, ginger might be a lifesaver for them. Right. So I think we have to pay attention to our body more and not just be like, I heard this is good for me, and I’m going to just keep taking it no matter yeah. Regardless of how I feel. Okay. But you know what? If you like it and you feel good, then it’s probably fine for you. If you don’t feel good after, I wouldn’t drink it. You’d be surprised. Right. There’s a lot of people that they go on these extreme diets, whether it be keto or vegan, which can be very beneficial for some people, but very damaging can be very damaging for other people. So we see a lot of that. If you have, let’s say, a cold, deficient body type, and you’re living on a diet of raw foods and cold juice, you’re going to be more and more and more deficient, and you’re probably going to get less and less and less healthy. Right. But if you’re somebody who’s hot and heavy and high cholesterol and high blood pressure and you have kind of excess all this stuff in your body, a raw diet or a juicy diet might save your life. That’s crazy how diet alone can do so much to your body. It’s crazy to think that we’ve been taught that it’s not opposite. Yeah. It should be very common sense. Like when you are what you eat, right. Yeah. Sometimes a lot of people say it, but they don’t really understand it. Or it’s easier to just keep following the old diet or the harmful diet. We’re creatures of habit, so we kind of like our routine, and we don’t like people to shake it up for us. We’re like, this is my thing. Like, I decided to follow this diet or do this. And you really have to be willing to take responsibility and to make changes. And it’s not always easy. It’s hard to get off some of these addictive substances that are in the foods or break away from the addiction to sugars or these other things. The education helps, but you have to want to do it. And one of the first questions I ask patients is, do you want to get better? And sometimes they start looking away, and then sometimes I’ll tell them, listen, I don’t think this is going to work for you. Save your money. Come back when you’re ready. If your wife wants you to get better or Mommy wants you to get better, it’s not going to work. You have to take some responsibility for your health. There’s no magic pill or magic needle that’s going to fix all your problems. You have to put in the effort because you want to right, exactly. For yourself. Like, I’m not going to waste your time. You’re not like, Save your money. Don’t waste my time. I have a high success rate. I’d like to keep it that way. Oh, I love it. I love it. That’s a great motto. I’m going to keep my high success rate. Thank you for coming, though. What is the most powerful herbal that you have seen in a case or the one that I don’t know? The most impactful one? Is there one? Because I know there’s so many. No, there is. I mean, there’s thousands of substances. So just to get my board certification, we had to learn over 200 plus individual herbs and 200 plus formulas with different herbs, and we had to know everything about them. And those are just the most common ones that we use. There’s actually thousands of different substances you could think of. Things like ginseng is pretty known to be pretty strong. Do not take ginseng just because oh, I heard it gives me energy because it can actually it’s contraindicated for a lot of people. So that’s one of those herbs that’s very powerful, very effective, but can also cause damage. Ashwagandha might be a little safer. Right. It’s very popular. A lot of good benefits. Everything from testosterone to sperm production for men, to helps with sleep, helps with stress, helps nourish the body. It’s an adaptogen. It’s a little bit more forgiving than, like a red or like a Korean ginseng or something like that. It’s considered very hot. And there are certain herbs that shouldn’t be used without expert, expert guidance because they are toxic, just as we would use toxic medications like, let’s say, chemo or radiation. Right. Any prescribed medicine. Exactly. So I think if you’re experimenting with some of these stronger herbs, it’s better to have a professional work with you, whether it be somebody like myself or somebody who’s it’s one of those things that you don’t want to just be like, hey, I read this online. I mean, there may be some common ones that are okay, stick with the ginger. Yeah. Turmeric, stuff like that. Yeah. Mint leaves, even citrus peels are common herbs that we use but the stronger ones, you do want to have some guidance. We tend to not take them long term. You want to make sure you’re taking the right dosages. And like I mentioned, with the Eastern medicine, we often don’t use high dosages of individual herbs. We create a formula where it’s only a little bit of this, a little bit of this, so they work synergistically. So rather than taking a super high dosage of this herb and hey, let’s see what happens, which is kind of like the conventional model, which is why you have a lot of side effects. It’s a lot safer for the patient, their gut and everything else to take a formula that’s been tested for 1000 years and you’re taking very small amounts of it and you’re just kind of gently pushing the body in the right direction and completely makes sense. Again, overall, for someone that might be considering trying herbs or going into this journey of looking for somebody, what is your advice to them? What would you say to them? So, once again, this is not medical advice, this is for educational purposes. But I would say be open minded. Right. Because I’ve seen miracles. Just the herbs alone. I mean, everything from endometriosis to PCOS, women’s health issues like that, menopausal stuff, digestive problems, pain, neuropathy. I’ve seen all these things with just herbs, without acupuncture, without nutrients. Sometimes herbs is enough. So if it is a serious condition and if you’ve tried some basic remedies or things that you found online, definitely find a professional. Find an acupuncture, an herbalist dietitian, somebody who can kind of guide you through that process. And if you don’t feel comfortable with the first person you find, try somebody else. Do not get discouraged because you didn’t like this doctor or that doctor. It happens. Right. And don’t give up on yourself, really. And the best part is, I think, to journal how you feel after taking a substance or a food, keep a log of it. That way, when you go to your practitioner, or if you don’t feel well from something, let’s say you take something and then you’ll write down if you had a negative reaction. You don’t got to write down everything you eat. But if I ate or took a new herb and the next day I feel terrible, write that down, repeat it, maybe give it a few days, try it again. And if you get that same reaction, okay, that doesn’t sit well with you, don’t take it anymore. Yeah, again, makes complete sense. But it’s easier said than done, right. Sometimes even us as practitioners, we need a third party to step in and be right. Just like people who are in mental health. Right? You seek a therapist as well. And you need somebody to be like, look what you’re doing. Oh, yeah, I tell my clients to do that, yet I fail to do it right. Doctors are often their own worst patients as well. I always say, if you do surgery, you can’t do surgery yourself. Bingo. Bingo. Right. It’s for every kind of profession. Depends on the kind of surgery. But you shouldn’t. Well, now you’re getting too technical. Well, I love this conversation. I can keep talking about this for hours, but we’re going to go ahead and close it out. Beautiful. Thank you so much for having me. This has been a pleasure. And look forward to coming back in the future. Yeah, I definitely need to try all of this. Acupuncture, herbals, all that. But I’m going to stick with the ginger. Maybe I’m going to see if the shots or eating the ginger fantastic. Great. Thank you for watching. Don’t forget to leave us a comment and subscribe. We have a new episode every weekend.