Have you ever wondered what’s up with acupuncture?
That is the title of a wonderful new book by my friend, Dr. Jannine Krause, an accupuncturist and functional medicine practitioner. It is so beneficial for all of us to learn more about medicine, specifically beyond Western medicine, and Dr. Jannine does an incredible job harmonizing the two as you will hear in this show.
You will learn all about this incredible treatment that has been around for thousands of years, how acupuncture affects anxiety, her thoughts on parasympathetic breathing, and much more! Dr. Jannine also shares some free, quick tidbits that you can use to learn how to effectively work with pressure points yourself at home.
Visit Dr. Jannine’s website and Instagram for more information.
TIMESTAMPS:
How does acupuncture work on the body? [02:41]
What are the most common conditions for which folks use acupuncture? [05:09]
Circulation is the number one problem in someone’s body. [08:11]
Anxiety is often treated with acupuncture. How does that work for mental health? [09:51]
Other than popping an ibuprofen, what can be done for headaches? [15:25]
What about stomach pain? [17:42]
How is acupuncture able to cause such deep relaxation? [20:11]
How does our mind get in the way of our healing? [26:27]
If a person believes acupuncture is going to work, it should work even after the first or second treatment. [30:44]
Parasympathetic breathing helps you come down off a workout and begin the recovery process. [35:20]
There is research in understanding how to manipulate the microbiome in the gut. [39:09]
Don’t guzzle water while you are eating. It damages your enzymes. [41:50]
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B.Rad Podcast
Brad (00:00):
I’m author and athlete, Brad Kearns. Welcome to the B.rad podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life. Visit bradkearns.com for great resources on healthy eating, exercise, and lifestyle. And here we go with the show.
Brad (01:24):
Dr. Jannine Krause, glad to connect with you again, although I see you all the time with your smiling face on Instagram and your brief, very powerful, impactful little, exercises and reminders to live a healthy, active lifestyle.
Jannine (01:40):
Well, thanks for checking in and, and checking up on me. I, I enjoy it. It’s, it’s, as we were talking earlier, it’s always entertaining to try to come up with something good for Instagram. And I always love seeing your stuff, too. Now I’m thinking I gotta get into this, this high jumping business and, and figuring out, you know, something different for, for me as I get older. So I think I’m gonna be watching on yours a little bit more.
Brad (02:01):
Okay. New challenges. Figure it out. Yeah.
Jannine (02:04):
Yeah.
Brad (02:05):
Uh, your functional medicine practice has so many different attributes. I think we talked through those on a recent, uh, uh, a previous show where you have the treatment area and then they go right over to the gym to see how things work. I love all that stuff. Uh, but acupuncture’s a, a central component. And the exciting news is, uh, you and your co-author have rereleased a book called What’s Up With Acupuncture. So I think we should let’s hit that subject and, um, see what, what is up with this new innovative medical treatment. Oh, wait, it’s several thousand years old, right? Okay. What’s up with acupuncture?
Jannine (02:41):
Yeah. We’re, you know, my, my co-author Beth Theodore and I were sitting around and we’re like, you know, what are the biggest questions we get when we do acupuncture with folks? And one of them’s like, how do I get this treatment to last longer? How do I, you know, get things to extend so I don’t have to come to you every single week or multiple times a week, week? And we’re like, well, there’s some things you can do. And so we decided to put it to paper versus reminding people every week when they come in, we’re like, well, let’s just give them a workbook style book, and they can go with it from there.
Brad (03:11):
So when they get the book, they’re still gonna need a practitioner to, to get treatment. There may, maybe they’re under care when they buy the book, but it’s also gonna, it’s gonna tell you kind of how this modality works, because maybe for Westerners it’s unfamiliar. We know when we swallow a pill we’re taking an antibiotic or we’ve got a headache and we’re taking something, but how, how does it, um, how does it, uh, work on the body, the meridians, all that stuff?
Jannine (03:39):
Sure, sure. So what we wanted to kinda help folks with is kinda an aside to getting acupuncture. This book definitely is meant to, to have alongside of your acupuncture treatments. Now, what does acupuncture do? Oh, yeah. We talk about that. And in particular, you put the needle in, right? And, and the body does what it needs to do. And, and I’ll kind of explain that here in a second. We’re not putting energy in, I wanna definitely make that clear to folks. I’m not doing anything. All I’m doing is literally putting a needle in and telling your body kind of the information it needs to help balance itself out. Because we have sodium and potassium and chloride within our body. All these ions and these stainless steel needles actually get all of those little ions moving. That’s kinda what chi is. It’s just movement, circulation of ions.
Jannine (04:24):
So when you put the needles in, you’re targeting specific channels that these Chinese warriors, as you mentioned thousands of years ago, figured out, oh, if I put a needle in my pinky finger here, I can relieve shoulder pain, or I can work on frozen shoulder. If I put a pink a needle in my pinky toe, I can turn a baby. I don’t know how the warriors figured that one up, but maybe they had wives <laugh>. Um, but there’s all these distal points and, and things of that nature that you can do. And, and we do talk about it in the book, how you can press on these points, how even you could work with your acupuncturists to get needles called needles where you could put ’em on yourself when you were having pain or when you were struggling with certain things. So that’s kinda what we get into in the book, is really what is happening when the acupuncturist puts needles into,
Brad (05:10):
Um, what are the most common conditions or the conditions where acupuncturist most effective?
Jannine (05:18):
Ooh, man, you know, my favorite, honestly, is anxiety or someone who comes in and is super stressed out. I love needling those kind of folks because you can see the change in the body as they get on the table. And you put the needles in. There’s one in particular, there’s one here between the eyebrows called Yong, that one and top of the hands. As soon as you put those, and the ones between the big toe and the second toe, folks think those are kind of like, Ooh, weird. But honestly, as soon as those go in, person’s like, oh, and you can see ’em kind of sink into the table. But besides anxiety, my favorite is stomach pain. My favorite is kind of IBS stuff. Also working with back pain, shoulder pain, any acute pain. Like if you just hurt yourself, acupuncture’s awesome, because now you can get blood flow moving and you can get the, the pain gone in days versus it dragging out like ankle sprains or one of my other favorites to have folks come in for.
Brad (06:11):
And so for the, uh, the, the scientifically minded skeptic or whatever that’s listening, um, we’re talking about blocked energy in the body, perhaps in the example of the ankle sprain, because there’s been some traumas of damage. And so the needles are kind of kickstarting your own healing mechanisms.
Jannine (06:33):
Yeah. I mean, literally. And, and guys who are listening, you know, I grew up in the middle of the Midwest, like where only hippies did acupuncture. And my dad called me a voodoo doctor for probably five or six years till he had acupuncture. And then he decided it was pretty cool. But it took a while, right? My family thought it was bizarre. And, and even in my mind, I still was like, this stuff works, but I don’t, I don’t get it. So when you put the needles into someone, what it’s doing is literally bringing blood flow there. And the best explanation I can give folks on this has to do with cars, because I grew up with my dad and working on cars. And if you’ve ever done a radiator flush, you’re literally pushing all the junk out of the radiator. And so when you injure yourself like a ankle sprain, your body’s gonna bring white blood cells there.
Jannine (07:17):
It’s gonna bring like all kinds of inflammatory, like molecules. Cause it’s like, we need to heal this fast. But what happens unfortunately in our bodies is that we all suck at circulation. Every single one of us, because of environment toxins, you know, you name it, stress. And so what happens is those molecules stay there too long and keep the pain going much longer than we need it to. So those needles are really triggering the body to flush out the inflammatory proteins and get new ones in on a regular basis. So it’s just really helping with circulation on a super simple level. That’s, that’s what it does.
Brad (07:50):
Oh, so if we all suck at circulation, that’s a little frustrating if we’re really trying to eat, exercise, manage stress. But you’re saying it’s a, um, it’s a difficult battle because pretty much hectic, high-stress modern life, even the most enlightened health enthusiasts are still going to be suboptimal.
Jannine (08:11):
Yeah. Yeah. It, it’s crazy. So, you know, I haven’t been practicing, you know, decades and decades, but int my 15 plus years, the number one thing, if I, if I boil it down to the simplicity of what’s going on in someone’s body, it’s circulation and it’s circulation of nutrients to a cell circulation of, you know, ions to an area or moving out inflammatory proteins. If we look at it, and when I say everybody sucks at it, it’s because we might be super mobile, there might be folks who aren’t, and that’s really why we decline if we’re not mobile. But those who are mobile, we still have some level of stress. And what stressed us to the body is it puts our blood in our arms and legs, but it doesn’t put it in the core. So if our gut isn’t able to absorb nutrients to get them to the, the cells to get the cells to heal, circulation isn’t so great.
Jannine (08:58):
Then we’ve got the lymphatic side of things, cleaning out the toxins. And this is where environment, we can’t control what’s being poured on us, you know, and in the air and in the dirt and in the water. Um, we can control what we have at home with filtration and whatnot, but we’re constantly detoxing and based on how much we’re able to detox, we can improve our circulation slowly but surely. And this is why I’m really a huge fan of, like, herbs to help promote circulation, eating things that promote nitric oxide boosting. So, you know, the spinach, the celery, the arugala, all that beets. And then the other biggest, sometimes I’ll add in lymphatic movement herbs to kind of help folks like cleavers and, and poke root. And gosh, there’s so many that I could go on and on, but those would be the things I, I really kinda help folks think about. And, and then acupuncture is kind of like your other booster of circulation for a side side gig,
Brad (09:51):
<laugh> <laugh>. Uh, so as it relates to anxiety, one of your popular treatment goals, how is the circulation affecting one’s mental state mental health?
Jannine (10:04):
That is a perfect question. I love this question. So anxiety often, more, more than anything is either self-created by self stress, or we’ve got a gut imbalance going on with serotonin levels in the gut. And as I mentioned before, if we’re stressed out, blood’s in the arms and legs, not in your gut.
Brad (10:20):
And that’s a fight or flight, so we can run away or fight the, the opponent. So it leaves the vital organs and goes to the extremities, uh, inappropriately in the case of everything. Except when you do have to run for your life or, or, run in a track meet.
Jannine (10:38):
Yes, yes. When it, when it matters, you know, it’s there for you. It’s
Brad (10:42):
Great. Yeah,
Jannine (10:42):
It’s on too much of the time. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that’s the bummer. That is really bummer. And so anxiety, really, if we break it down Chinese-wise, which makes, I don’t know, it’s kind of weird, but I, I like the, the concept Chinese medicine believes that stress and anxiety comes through your liver. And so the liver is how we detox, right? It’s how we move our blood. And then we’ve got heart, right? That’s what is going to pump the blood. And the Chinese believe that if the liver’s not bringing blood flow in, we’re not managing stress properly. We push too much up to our heart. Our heart will cause us to have anxiety. So a lot of times with the acupuncture treatments, I’m working on moving things like grounding things. So moving the heart QI moving the liver QI and working on grounding someone because the kidneys, which people are like, okay, she’s lost her mind now, but guys, hear me, hear me out, I’ll, I’ll get, I’ll get some point.
Jannine (11:35):
So the kidneys actually ground you. So these are your batteries. They’re what help you create energy. The adrenal glands, if you’ve heard of those, sit on top of the kidneys. So those guys help. I know Brad knows all about the adrenal glands. And so what happens here is that you want the balance between your heart and your kidney to be balanced, and you want your liver to help move blood. So how do you do this? Well, stress management is a, is a biggie, but also you can do this through acupuncture. And so that helps with anxiety. And then also herbs. There’s a ton of Chinese herbs and essential oils that can help with this too.
Brad (12:07):
So if you were blabbing about this 30 years ago, we wouldn’t be on a podcast cuz there was no such thing. Um, but it would be seen as pretty woowoo radical voodoo doctor. And now in recent years, it seems like acupuncture is going more and more mainstream, including the research behind these crazy notions that you say that the kidneys ground us and that a clogged up liver can prompt mental health conditions and, and clogging up the heart. So where do we stand with all that? And, as far as like research and, and widespread integration into Western medicine.
Jannine (12:46):
So there’s actually quite a decent amount of research based on what is QI We still haven’t exactly identified the total like, encompassing point of it. But if you look at certain channels in the body, if you look at a map of the acupuncture channels, they follow very closely to blood flow and your circulation. So folks who are listening, if you, if you’re thinking about your circulation through your arm, where you can touch your pulse, the radial pulse that actually is right on either side of your lung and margin intesine points. And so it’s kinda interesting how the channels swallow the blood flow. And so what’s happened with research is they’re looking at different acupuncture points that elicit certain effects within the body. So for example, if we’re, if we’re wanting to call me anxiety and we’re, we’re considering someone who’s older, let’s say 35 plus, we’re gonna have some kidney QI that’s depleted.
Jannine (13:41):
Cause kidney energy is our batteries, like I mentioned before. And so there’ll always be some kidney points in there. There’s always gonna be some liver points. And so what will happen in research is they will work on different combinations of points and C versus sham points, meaning they just needle you anywhere randomly. And then they’ll, they’ll come up with their conclusions. So there’s quite a bit of research out there these days compared to like even 10 years ago. There’s a lot more. And they’re doing a lot in the Chinese hospitals. And in particular with, with the most recent pandemic and things of that nature, they’re also coming out with a ton of research showing how acupuncture can help with recovery of long haulers and things of that nature. So we’re starting to see total body systems, acupuncture research that we haven’t seen in, in the past other than, you know, diving into what is QI what does it mean, what does it actually, you know, is it, is it a substance, is it not?
Brad (14:33):
Uh, and I’m assuming the research is quite promising as I see the healthcare providers are now accepting acupuncture as a legitimate thing that they’ll reimburse and all those wonderful progressive steps.
Jannine (14:46):
Yes. Yeah, for sure. Acupuncture is definitely, there’s, most insurance companies will reimburse for it. I mean, I work out of Washington state for acupuncture mainly. And it’s pretty good, you know, reimbursement for us, it’s <laugh>, it’s, Hey, we need more acupuncturists. This haven’t put the shout out right now. And, and it’s a really decent reimbursement for, for us. What it doesn’t cover of course is, is the coaching kind of things like why we decided the book would be a good addition to things. But yeah, it’s becoming more and more mainstream even in the last 15 years that I’ve been practicing. I’ve seen a huge shift in in the acceptance and yeah. And the availability of it.
Brad (15:25):
So what would be some of your favorite areas to replace perhaps an ill-conceived traditional medical approach with acupuncture such as a headache, instead of popping the ibuprofen, which we know has downstream potentially adverse side effects and whatnot? And maybe some other examples.
Jannine (15:48):
Sure. Well we can start with headaches for sure. A lot of times with folks with headache, it’s just figuring out what’s causing the headache. So you can poke around.
Brad (15:57):
It’s my neighbor, he’s a fairly pain in the butt. Oh no, I mean, uh, okay, yeah,
Jannine (16:01):
Well, you know, we could, we could do darts with acupuncture, needles, you know, across the, across <laugh>
Brad (16:07):
Treated with acupuncture. Once again,
Jannine (16:10):
Remote acupuncture healing, no, what, what you can do if it’s, if it’s your neighbor, we gotta go to the liberty, right? Cause that’s the stress factor of what’s going on. And so you can even find, like a lot of times I have people poke around on their own points. So between the and second finger, this is the most common headache point. Most folks know it, but I’ll often have those poke around in between. See, you can find a sore spot and sometimes you can, or you can find a divot that’s kind of sore, just massage that and start there. And then I’ll have folks come up to the jaw because when we’re stressed, more often than not, we’re gonna punch down on the jaw. And I like to like go down the muscles and find, you know, where there’s a spot. Cause right up here is like a main one.
Jannine (16:50):
But also down here in the meat you can find some good stuff. And behind the jaw do this only one side at a time. You do both of these, you might pass out, don’t do that. <Laugh> One side at a time. But right behind the jaw there’s a good spot here behind the ear. So that times that’ll work. We have another one up in the hairline. If you go from the front of your ear up towards kinda like an inch or so into your hair and kind of poke around and you can sometimes find a sore spot there. Oftentimes your scalp can be quite amazing area. Then the back of your back of your head, always go on that line where your hairline’s at, see if you can find a spot where those muscles attached to your skull. Those are great headache points. Now if you’re also feeling anxious with the headache, I often will rub the bottom of my foot right in the center of the ball of the foot. That sometimes can help too. Cause it’s a very grounding, just chilling kinda point. So those would be like my main headache ones.
Jannine (17:42):
You’re asking for more. Um, should we do stomach pain? Cause sometimes so will have like gas or bloating and a little, little stomach upset. So if you’re feeling like you just ate food and you got a food baby, one of my favorite points for food babies actually happens to be on the bottom of my knee.
Brad (17:59):
Did you make that up? I’ve never heard that before. <laugh>? No.
Jannine (18:02):
Oh my gosh. People come in and tell me they have a food baby and I’m going, you know, okay. And I hear it over and over again. Someone, someone must have come up with that along the way. Some social media influencer wasn’t me. You can’t take, can’t take credit for it. But there are two really cool points that you can press on. If you go to your ribcage, like where your ribcage comes in, like just below your breastbone there, kinda like your sterno war. It ends, it’s something called the Zi xiphoid process. If you guys are geeky and if you go out about two inches just on your ribcage inferior border there, that bottom border of the ribcage, there’s a spot called stomach 19, excuse me, stomach 19. And it’s sometimes a sore in there. If you go to the left side, of course, cause that’s where your stomach’s at, you can give yourself the nice little massage there.
Jannine (18:46):
And then the one I mentioned below the knee, the two of those together. And on the left side, because your stomach’s on the left side, you can get things moving if you’re still like, eh, I don’t really feel things a hundred percent moving, you can even move halfway down your leg. So ankle here, knee here, halfway down, just a little bit over from your shin bone. It’s a little lateral to your shin bone. Outside of your shin bone. You’ll find a sore spot or a divot there that’s stomach 40 that can help move things too. Sounds really good. If you had like a really greasy meal, <laugh> and like food baby can’t get this out, that’ll help move some things along.
Brad (19:21):
So this is kind of self acupuncture or accu pressure, right? And mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, are you gonna be teaching some of that stuff in the book where people can support their traditional therapy?
Jannine (19:34):
Yeah, we actually included a couple of the most popular things. Oddly enough, anxiety, headache is in there, um, stress and then also energy boosting because a lot of people will be sitting around and going, ah, I just can’t get energy. So we, we did a little tidbit in there, we didn’t do a ton. I want to do more. That’s probably gonna be our addition to this book because we wanted it to use it as an aside for folks to work with their, their practitioners. And sometimes their practitioners can give them another type of, of acupressure session. So I think our next book will be specific things to do. So yeah, it’s coming.
Brad (20:11):
<laugh> uh, I want to ask you about my experience with acupuncture. Very reliable over the years, but the big significant insight is when I go in there and get needled, I very quickly fall it to an incredibly restful sleep. And it’s fascinating cuz I can count on it every time and I wake up and I feel almost drugged. But it’s just such a wonderful treatment because obviously, the ability to come down from the basic level of stress that we face every day is a good, is a good tool to, to rebalance and recover. But I’m wondering, you know, if you can like describe why this is so effective on me, particularly if that’s my experience or if that’s a common experience for people, just get incredibly restful.
Jannine (21:02):
It’s, it’s incredibly common. And in fact I think most people, to be honest, nobody really loves the idea of needles being put into them unless they’re somewhat like me and a little bazaro. But they come in for the nap and love leaving stone. I call it stone. You walk out and you’re just like, I’m on the top of the world.
Jannine (21:23):
And, and I think a lot of people do come back for that after, you know, after they don’t have pain anymore, they’ll be like, can I just come in as like daily maintenance? I’m like, or weekly maintenance or monthly maintenance. I’m like, yeah, so what’s happening? So the endorphins that are being released, number one will hit the body and just kind of flood the body. And so what happens is it puts you into a huge parasympathetic state. And so for a lot of people, because we don’t live in parasympathetic land, we live in sympathetic land, it’s like this switch happens and it just shuts us down. And it’s beautiful because when we’re not interfering with our head in what the body needs to do, that’s the deepest healing that can happen because we’re not messing with the process because we have no idea. A lot of us have no idea how powerful we are to inhibit healing processes and promote them. And that acupuncture of reaction you get where you go out deep, that is so profoundly huge. It’s, it’s a good thing that you do that. And then when you feel stoned afterwards, that’s the endorphins just kind of still flooding through the system.
Brad (22:29):
Uh, the endorphins from the pain of the needles. Cuz it’s not that painful. So how are we getting endorphins?
Jannine (22:36):
Good question. Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned it’s not that painful folks.
Brad (22:40):
<laugh>, it’s not at all painful. I mean, uh, unless you, uh, psych yourself out before you go to your first appointment. I guess same with cold plunging. Like, you know, people will get all worked up before jumping into the water and then of course it’s gonna be cold, uncomfortable, and quite a shock. But it’s like, how about you tell yourself it’s not gonna be shocking, it’s gonna be therapeutic. And then you, you line that with your experience.
Jannine (23:06):
Yep. Yep. I mean, back to how powerful our minds are back to, I mean, it’s, it’s incredible. And so the endorphins, you know, even though it’s not painful, and, and by the way folks, if the needles do hurt and, and a lot of people joke and even in my school that I went to, they were like, if we, if you don’t feel the QI, you’re not doing it right to bs the needles. You know, as long as your practitioner knows where to put the needles, it’s fine. And everyone does what’s gone through school, you, you can’t get outta it without knowing what the heck you’re doing. So point being is that it’s when you get those needles in, you might feel them for a second and then after that it’s, it’s good, you’re good to go. But what’s happening is anytime a needle’s inserted into the body, the body responds to it.
Jannine (23:50):
Cause it’s like, whoa, what’s that must bring, you know, must bring ions, must bring different things. But at the same time it also kicks up endorphins. Cause we have multiple needles going in the body and often ask like, how many needles do you put in? And I, I have a statement of as many as it takes to get the job done. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Now do I put hundreds of needles in people? No. I’m, I’m a little different than my, my co-author. She’s around 10, 12 needles per session. I’m more in the 20 to 30. If we’re dealing with pain, it’s 30 ish, sometimes up to 40, but it’s not all at the same time. They’ll be in first sequence, 15 minutes, then I take them out and switch needles. So if we’re doing a session where someone falls deeply asleep, usually that’s about 10, 15 needles, 20 needles at the most where you leave them. And then after 15 minutes we switch ’em out. Or, or 30 depending on the, the goal of the treatment.
Brad (24:40):
Do you like, uh, the burning the cigarette butts onto people?
Jannine (24:45):
You know what, I might be the only person in the world that has like a serious, I have an asthma attack every time I use moxa. I don’t know what it is about the moxa, but when I could tolerate it, I liked using the sticks but not touching the skin with it. I like just putting the, the sticks close to the points and moving it along the channels. So folks, this is compressed moxa, it looks like a cigar. Um, they actually call it cigar moxa. And then you light it and then you, you know, go over the channels. I don’t do like the Stephen Seigal movies where you put little pieces of moxa on the needles and light ’em all on fire. That’s dangerous. I mean, it, it is tricky. You have to have a major skill and, and I didn’t develop that so I didn’t wanna play with it. Plus this weird asthma like reaction I get with Moxa. I’m not sure what’s going on there.
Brad (25:33):
<laugh>. Um, I, I found it to be effective too. It’s just the person has to be skilled to take it off before it really burns the skin. But it, it’s like a burning, something’s burning on your skin, you can feel it, it’s quite strong and then it goes away before it doesn’t need damage. Right?
Jannine (25:49):
Yes. Yes. I’m wondering if you had the little sticky moxas; Yeah. Something like that I’ve had. Yeah, yeah,
Jannine (25:55):
Yeah. Yeah. I actually, those I can tolerate a little bit more when I’ve done those in practice. And they’re great for arthritis, they’re great for, like, if someone has been eating like a bunch of ice cream and has just been eating cold, raw foods in their stomach, just feels just off and having a lot of diarrhea. Amazing for that. Absolutely amazing for that. And I do like those cause they don’t smoke as much. But the truth is, is your person has to be right there paying attention. Cause they do heat up and they heat up fast, but they, they’re extremely effective.
Brad (26:28):
,Uh, how does our mind get in the way of our healing? And I guess how does it support it as well? You made that comment.
Jannine (26:34):
Sure, sure. So getting in the way, what happens is we tend to have our opinions about things, right? And we tend to have a preconceived notions. And a lot of times when we’ve gone down one particular downward spiral we won’t let it go. Like, ah, this isn’t gonna work for me, nothing works for me. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, kinda like when someone goes into a doc or into, you know, weight loss treatment, you know, things of that nature where they’re like, it’s never gonna work with for me, nothing’s worked for me. Whatever you say out loud is going to be in your cells. In your body. Your body believes exactly what you say. So what I find with a lot of folks is they go into acupuncture going, pocus, this stuff’s bizarre. It’s not gonna work. Well, if you believe that, then of course it’s not.
Jannine (27:17):
And the same thing goes with any type of your healing. If you believe that you’re not gonna get better or if you’re holding onto it, cause it benefits you in some way, maybe it gives you attention. Mm. Maybe it gives you something to talk about. You know, these are all sad to admit things. I mean, I’ve been in victim land in my life before, you know, and if you get attention and you’re like, Ooh, I’m getting attention cuz my back hurts and my leg hurts, I’m gonna keep this going. And we don’t intend to. But this is ways, these are ways that we can block our healing, but we can also open up our healing if we’re like, you know what? I really want to get better. I don’t wanna live like,
Brad (27:53):
I don’t deserve this anymore. I need to heal. Yeah.
Jannine (27:56):
Right. There’s ma many things you can say. And so the more you say these things yourselves, hear ’em. And it sounds bizarre, but the more I tr I’ve tried this in my life and worked with it and had patients work with it, the more we get results. So it works. I, I have no other explanation other than, you know, what folks are talking about with quantum, you know, and, and cellular healing and, and that yourselves can hear you. I I truly believe in it now. I didn’t when I first graduated school, I’ll be honest, but now, right.
Brad (28:25):
Yeah. You’re, you’re, um, you’re trained not to delve into the WOOWOO stuff when you’re getting technically trained, but, um, how has it worked in your life and how do you address it with patients?
Jannine (28:38):
You know, it’s, it’s worked in terms of telling folks, Hey, I, I didn’t believe in this, but I tried this out. Let me tell you my story and then I’ll tell stories of other folks who who’ve given me permission to tell their stories too. And you know, I think the biggest thing is, is try out, just try thinking about letting go of your pain. And then also, you know, for a lot of people thinking about what, why, why am I holding onto this pain? What does it serve me? What is, you know, what is the benefit? And if you can’t come up with anything, that’s fine, but thinking about like, okay, can I move it? Can I get it out of my body? And once you know, the acupuncture channels and where they’re at, you can actually vision like, almost like a light of the pain kind of moving out. I like to think of it much like someone pulling, pulling it on a string out of the body and out my feet. But that’s kind of how I work when I have certain pain issues. And, you know, caution knows we all have our aches and pains as we get older.
Brad (29:35):
Um, and then where does that, where, when do you hit that line where you’re like, oh crap, this broken finger’s not getting any better. It’s still swollen. You know, like how do you blend the sure. Belief systems and even the um, uh, the, the eastern treatments or whatever you want to call them with. Okay. You’re, you’re kind of host and, um, part of this question is me going to physical therapy, uh, over the past several months and getting great exercises and drills for my injured heel. And then finally in the last time the guy goes, dude, you need an x-ray. You got a gnarly bone spur, something going on in there. And so now I’ve like crossed that line myself where I believe I can heal, I can get my foot stronger, um, I can stretch and do all the mobility every single day. I’m gonna be the most devoted, you know, subject on the land. And now it’s like, this thing really sucks and now I need to go, um, you know, look for knives and lasers.
Jannine (30:27):
Yeah, yeah. You know, that’s a great, that’s a great point there. And, and typically I’m, I’m one of those folks that’s super impatient with, with patients and, and myself, you know, I’m right,
Brad (30:38):
Janine. Yeah. Yeah.
Jannine (30:40):
I’m looking for trigger punk.
Brad (30:41):
That horn. Yeah. <laugh>.
Jannine (30:44):
No, I, if I’m not getting things changed within four to six weeks, we’re not messing around after that. You know, acupuncture should work by, literally, acupuncture should work with results the first time you do it. It should. Now that also is, there’s a lot that has to be said with someone’s belief system, things of that nature. If you believe it’s gonna work. Sure. If you, if you’re absolutely like, oh my God, my wife made me go, this, this scrap isn’t gonna work. Well of course it’s not gonna, but you should get some change. Like 10%, 20%, even 25. Now, by the time you do the second, third treatment, you’re gonna know, is this gonna work for you or not? And usually for people, I’m, I’m cutting people loose after about four sessions and I’ll do two sessions a week when something is acute and new to me just to see like, can I get some traction here?
Jannine (31:32):
And so after those two weeks, if we have no improvement or like minimal improvement, I’m like, all right, we gotta try something else. Injections, I’ll move on to, to higher level things that I, I can offer p r p, you know, or, or even BPC 1 57, which is a peptide, which I’ll use often put for folks too. But if those aren’t doing the trick and now we are, now we’re four to six weeks in, I’m like, that’s it. We’re getting imaging, we’re doing this, we’re doing that. Oh, the wow. We’re working on the emotional side of things, trying to figure, you know, is there something like that? Cause I feel like it’s worth it to explore it and not let it go. Just like think about it. Is there something that you’re holding onto? Is there some, you know, is there something in that? So yeah,
Brad (32:12):
So in the course of your appointment you will be actually processing the patient in, in that way in in addition to doing hands-on treatments.
Jannine (32:24):
Yeah. Yeah.
Brad (32:25):
That’s pretty wild.
Jannine (32:26):
Yeah. I tend to do, folks joke with me about it all the time and, and the insurance. It doesn’t work well for insurance cuz I can’t go,
Brad (32:34):
Doctor, what did you do for an hour? Well, 47 minutes we were talking about the neighbor that keeps annoying a patient and then we put some needles in and then there was an X Yeah.
Jannine (32:42):
<laugh>. Yeah, it’s, it’s exactly like that. But I, you know, yeah, I, I typically in a session will do all those things because, you know, iit takes a lot of time out of your day to come into an appointment. You might as well get it all done in one session versus having a, like do the evaluation, then come back and do the treatment and then do this, do it all at once. And I like that. I like it that way. That’s why when I am back in Tacoma, I will take in the new folks. We get ’em dialed in that way and then they’re off to my assistant who, who is basically my, she used to be my assistant, I shouldn’t even say that anymore. She’s an acupuncturist now. So she takes over from there while I’m not in town with the protocols.
Brad (33:21):
Uh, but you can, uh, care for patients remotely because that’s heavily weighted on just the relationship interaction and, and trying to pull out insights and so forth.
Jannine (33:31):
Yep, yep. Yeah. So the combination of things is my patients will be getting their acupuncture from a gal named Melinda is, is my, my go-to gal. And then with me, we’re talking the, the health side of things. You know, where are we at on progress? What’s happening? What else can we do? We need to change diet, do we need to work with supplements? Do we need, you know, to work on some mental, emotional spiritual stuff where, where we at?
Brad (33:52):
So nothing’s off the table with Dr. Jannine.
Jannine (33:54):
Nope. Nope. We go into all different realms these days.
Brad (33:58):
Yeah. And you’re, you’re supplement protocol was really helpful for my son who was struggling after his bout with medication. And, um, this is the kind of thing I think probably not a lot of people are familiar with and how effective it can be to look beyond the options with, uh, mainstream medicine. Mm-hmm.
Jannine (34:18):
<affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I mean I, I think unfortunately there’s this idea of us versus them when it comes to alternative, you know, compared to conventional medicine. But really the two of them work lovely together. And I want those, I mean, if, if it gets bad enough, yeah. We better figure out like, do we need lasers for that? You know, bone spur, do we need antibiotics for the gut? Do we need, you know, different things, sinus infections, whatever. But it works lovely to clean up from, you know, what might happen when someone takes an antibiotic or what might happen, you know, after a surgery we can speed up your healing process. That’s the cool way to blend these things together. Acupuncture’s awesome for speeding up.
Brad (34:59):
Right? Um, and then, and believing, believing the surgery will be successful. Believing the acupuncture will speed the healing. All these things. You’re just, you’re just rocking on all cylinders.
Jannine (35:09):
Yep. Yep. Gotta gotta work with all of it. All of it. Cause we’re not just, you know, waist down. There’s a lot up here that has to do with our total health.
Brad (35:20):
Um, so you were talking about how the needles put you reliably into that parasympathetic state. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, I’ve also become a huge fan of your positional parasympathetic breathing. I talk about all the time. It’s in the primal fitness coach coursework, Dr. Jeanine’s parasympathetic breathing. But, describe that protocol and how athletes or fitness enthusiasts can use it to kind of come down off the workout, uh, optimally and, and kickstart the recovery process, I guess is what we’re doing.
Jannine (35:52):
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, any, you don’t even have to be an athlete, but anyone who’s gets a stress, you know, like a stressful moment or you end up, you know, post workout, you’ve got cortisol pumping. If you don’t shut that pump off, you don’t initiate that recovery because we want that cortisol down to a level where it’s minimal. The body knows that the stressful event is over. You’re giving it that message that we’re good, we’re in the cave, we made it to safety, we’re good and we don’t need to to do this anymore. And so by laying down and putting your legs up or five minutes, you know, literally laying on the floor, knees up, legs on a chair, whatever you can. It’s stopping those messages to your brain that you’re under attack, that something’s chasing you, that it needs to keep pumping cortisol. And the reason we have to do this, it seems silly, but the reason we have to do this is most of us go right from a workout or right from a training session into life mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And we may be hit with, you know, traffic on the way outta there and, you know, get grumpy about that. Or phone call from a significant other or a child, you know, that just sets you off. Anything is possible. So being able to give your body that switch, and that’s what positional parasympathetic breathing’s all about. Just that switch outta sympathetic land and into parasympathetic, it’s incredible. And I probably do it like four or five times a day depending on what happens in my world.
Brad (37:09):
Oh my gosh. I was just gonna mention how I take these brief breaks nowadays. Um, I could be attributing it to age, but maybe I’m getting smarter, but it has such tremendous value to step away for five to 10 minutes. And sometimes it will be for activity, right? So I’m doing a micro workout and I go outside and I get some fresh air and I exert my body after typing on the computer, but sometimes I’ll just need some downtime from everything. And I’ve noticed when I’m cheating the process by like holding my phone and looking through the Instagram feed instead of just sitting there and staring off into space, it’s not nearly as effective. So I, I think it’s really opened a gateway for me to realize that a few minutes of downtime here and there can help get you through your day with much more productivity and a, a better mood and stress management overall. I think.
Jannine (38:06):
Absolutely. Uh, I mean, hands down and, and another fun tidbit that we’ve discovered, and I don’t know if I told you in the last time we chatted, but a friend of mine was like, did you know if you put your thumbs in your ear while you’re, you’re doing that, your heart rate will go down quite a bit. So we started playing with that. Cause this is 0.0 by the way, folks. Acupuncture point, middle of your ear kinda where that like curve comes across in the center. And if you press in and backwards and you do moose ears with it, you have to do the moose ears just cause cause it makes you laugh. Um, and you lay there like this, you can bring your heart rate down even faster. So if you, something really gets your heart rate up, I’ve been playing with it to, for intervals to try to see if I can bring my heart rate down a faster in between. But it’s, it’s a good thing with the positional parasympathetic breathings gone
Brad (38:52):
Wild times. Okay, so What’s Up with Acupuncture? We can find this on Amazon and so forth. And, tell us also about the online courses that you offer on your website.
Jannine (39:09):
Yeah, so I do offer courses based on gut healing, so fixing up the gut. I also have rest and recovery, so I have, It’s free. My, my rest and recovery course is reset and recovery fully is, is a free course. And then I also have managed stress naturally, also a free course where you can see more of the positional parasympathetic breathing. And then coming soon I will have a, a hormones balancing course to help those who are getting over 35, 40 starting to notice those hormones. Getting a little wonky. I’ve got some stuff for you there. And I’m working with H IV and positional parasympathetic breathing in there and some other heart rate variability stuff. Um, in addition to, I already said that heart rate stuff too, so that’s over at dr j krause nd com where I’ve got all those.
Brad (39:54):
Um, so with gut health we’re starting to hear more and more about it. People are touting it as like the holy grail of emerging medicine. And then, uh, other times you hear where the research is really in its infancy and we don’t know what we’re doing. And some of the testing could be shooting in the dark with this super complex, uh, issue of learning about how the gut microbiome affects all aspects of health. Like where do you stand these days with it and what kind of practical experience and research are you relying on and what’s still in its infancy that’s, uh, you know, um, that that’s a challenge to try to rely on.
Jannine (40:33):
Sure. I think what’s in its infancy is really knowing how to manipulate the microbiome, how to get certain gut bugs to grow and how to weed out others. I’ve been down the spectrum of using antibiotics. I’ve been down the spectrum of cycling through herbs and things of that nature. And at the end of the day, what I’ve found, probably 90, 80, 90% of the time folks don’t get better. But what helps is going back to the really dumb that we would think dumb down basics where it’s chew. your food, have a good ambience while you’re eating Mm. Don’t guzzle water, you know, super simple things. Taking the stress out of when you eat, don’t eat on the run, those kind of things. It seems to do a lot better than working on these complicated protocols and also working gut lining health. I’ve found, you know, nine times outta 10 working, just the straight gut lining, whether we’re working on collagen, whether we’re using BPC 1 57 like I mentioned before for tendons and ligaments that seems to do the trip when you go back to basics and just really work on the fundamental process of healing the gut. Because I think what’s happening and what’s intervening and we’re not doing enough research on is how badly stress really will negate most of the, the good things you’re doing for the gut.
Brad (41:50):
D’on’t guzzle water around mealtimes, don’t ever guzzle water. Where do we, where do we do with our hydration to get it right?
Jannine (41:58):
You can guzzle water just not while you’re trying to eat. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Here’s the thing, cause what’ll happen is if you have too much liquid, it’s gonna dilute all your enzyme and then you’re gonna struggle. And most of 40 already have enzymes just of h in the pancreas not putting out what we could and the stomach not putting out what it could on a younger body. So guzzling, it’s more like sipping. Look at the, look at the Japanese and Chinese restaurants. They give you tiny little cups to sip tea versus the big mugs that us Americans are used to. It’s, it’s their concept. And that’s kind where I got that from.
Brad (42:34):
Good tip. Okay, we’ll we’ll save that for after workouts or whatever before it not around meals.
Jannine (42:40):
Right, right.
Brad (42:42):
Okay. People go follow Dr. Jannine on Instagram. She’s got her great short videos, won’t take much of your time. And then the website with all those free resources. Fantastic. And now we can pick up the book. What’s Up with Acupuncture?
Jannine (42:56):
You got it. You got it. Oh Brad, thanks for having me on again. I really appreciate it. It’s always fun chatting
Brad (43:02):
Great stuff. Thank you very much. Thanks everybody. Da da da. Thank you for listening to the show. I love sharing the experience with you and greatly appreciate your support. Please email podcast brad ventures.com with feedback, suggestions, and questions for the Q and A shows. Subscribe to our email list at bradkearns.com for a weekly blast about the published episodes and a wonderful bimonthly newsletter edition with informative articles and practical tips for all aspects of healthy living. You can also download several awesome free eBooks when you subscribe to the email list. And if you could go to the trouble to leave a five or five star review with Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen to the shows, that would be super incredibly awesome. It helps raise the profile of the B.rad podcast and attract new listeners. And did you know that you can share a show with a friend or loved one by just hitting a few buttons in your player and firing off a text message? My awesome podcast player called Overcast allows you to actually record a sound bite excerpt from the episode you’re listening to, and fire it off with a quick text message. Thank you so much for spreading the word and remember, B.rad.
