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East V. West
19 Plays3 days ago
Our good friend Alana Foeller joins us today to talk about the differences between Western and Chinese Medicine. Which route is better at treating what diseases? What is health? And what is the goal of medicine?
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Transcript
Alana Fuller's Journey in Medicine
00:00:00
Speaker
It did make me think of a great burn. What if someone got into western like mad Western medicine and then thought they were going in to help people and then they realized they just turned into profiteering for the last 10 years? Do you think they took the Hippocratic oak Oath? Oath.
00:00:16
Speaker
but
00:00:24
Speaker
right, welcome back to Voices on the Mountain. This week, we got a special guest, Alana Fuller, my clinic sister. Welcome. Hi, thanks for having me. Yeah, love to have you.
00:00:36
Speaker
Today, we're talking about East versus West and our different perspectives on medicine. I'm probably, i came to medicine late and only through the Eastern lens, so I don't really know anything about Western medicine.
00:00:48
Speaker
But Alana came through, i think first with Ayurvedic medicine and then Western medicine. Yeah. so full circle, i've been I've definitely been in the health and wellness industry for like two decades and took me a long time to get here where I landed, but it's it all all the pieces fit pretty nicely. In retrospect, I can see why i went the way I went. But i started out doing more of yoga and fitness. And then from yoga, I got really into Ayurvedic medicine and
00:01:21
Speaker
decided to do a year-long program in Boulder and really just fell in love with the simplicity of the medicine. Their their premise is very similar to Chinese medicine in that you take the opposite to balance things. If something's too warm, you cool it down. If something's too dry, you moisten. and to me, that just felt so intuitive and so easy to understand relative to what Western medicine you know, how they look at disease.
00:01:49
Speaker
And so i I incorporated Ayurveda for a few years with my personal training clients and my nutrition consultation clients and just really went down the rabbit hole with their nutrition and their herbs and But, you know, time went by and I realized like I was just kind of scraping to make ends meet. And all my friends that worked in healthcare and as nurses just seemed like they had it dialed. They worked three days on, four days off, had a super cush schedule, made good money, had benefits. So, you know, nothing super altruistic got me into nursing. It was really, I just wanted to be able to go ski on a Tuesday and have a lot of time off and travel And I already had the prereqs in the background for it. So went into nursing thinking that I would become a nurse practitioner someday and incorporate Ayurvedic medicine and treat people holistically.
00:02:42
Speaker
but then 10 years in the field of nursing, i kind of, I got a little bit, i I lost track of my goal and got swept into the Western medicine world. um But luckily for me, right before COVID hit, I realized it was time for me to make a change. And I really wanted to get back into Eastern medicine because that was my passion. And that was more aligned with what I believed healthcare care was supposed to be like, giving the power back to the patient.
00:03:08
Speaker
So yeah, I started going to acupuncture school with Asher. 2019, I believe that was. And then pandemic hit and I was never, a i was so grateful that i had ah I had an exit path because working through the pandemic in the hospital was pretty brutal. But yeah, now I'm here.
00:03:25
Speaker
Chinese medicine practitioner, acupuncturist, studied herbs under Stephen Wong. And yeah, ah i'm I'm really grateful to have the nursing background, although I don't currently practice as a nurse.
00:03:38
Speaker
it all It all really comes together. But yeah, my primary focus now is is Chinese medicine. Yeah, i think it's really interesting too that you... Because I think a lot of people, if they come from Western medicine into Chinese medicine, they were usually like full-blown Western first. But you kind of had this cyclical thing where you started with alternative medicine, went into Western, and then shot back out to another alternative medicine.
00:04:04
Speaker
Came back to my senses. Yeah. Well, like we were talking about, Western medicine can do some cool stuff. So, you know, we're going to give them some props, but ah they will be probably few and far between. Steven, you were, i mean, I think most people know you studied over in China for over a decade. Yes.
00:04:25
Speaker
With Chinese medicine. Did you have any interest in medicine, Western or otherwise, before yeah this? or yeah Actually, it was. it was based So, like, ah for my undergrad, I did a double major in Chinese language, it was technically East Asian studies, but what does that even mean? So Chinese language and biology.
00:04:43
Speaker
i was like, well, there's only one thing that I know that puts those two things together. Actually, i did that sounds way more strategic than I really was. I was just like, oh, bio is fun. and I'll take this bio class. Okay, new major now too. And then after that, it was basically Western or Eastern medicine.
00:05:02
Speaker
So I didn't know what else to do. So I just asked the people around me. I asked in like, ah One of my Kung Fu buddies, he was going to Western med school. And then there's an acupuncturist in Boulder named Ming. And I asked her because I thought she had had some pretty good skills with both herbs and acupuncture. And I just kind of picked their brains. And I realized that I don't think anybody, well, I take that back um because Alana did a pretty dope thing. Most people don't go from one back to the other.
Western vs. Eastern Medicine Approaches
00:05:32
Speaker
Um, and it very rarely ever goes Western back to like first Western, then the Chinese. I think that's very rare. Um, certainly to any depth, I should say, like, I know some Western docs, like even when I was growing up, my, um, my family doc, he was, uh,
00:05:48
Speaker
you know, normal MD. And then he was just really interested in alternative medicine. So yeah, I know he wrote some articles and stuff in magazines. but I don't think he ever went to, I definitely don't think he went to Chinese medicine school. Maybe he did like one of those like physicians programs where they, I don't know, do like a couple workshoppy things and maybe can put in a couple of basic needles or something. But that's, you know, that feels like just looking at what you could have done instead of actually doing it And so um i was like, well, since i I do think both sides have something to offer, I feel like if I went to Western and then never went back to Chinese, I'd be missing my calling.
00:06:22
Speaker
And so I went to Chinese and I was like, if I have extra gas in the tank, maybe I'll do that. and Then I realized I got stuck in China for way longer than I thought. So it's like, how many decades do I want to be in school? i think I'm about done. 1.1 decades is enough time in school. For sure.
00:06:42
Speaker
And I did know actually that one of the Shang Han Lun professors, one of the more notable ones in my, or famous, I guess, ones in my ah department, my my um alma mater in Beijing, he did that, do that. He studied Chinese medicine undergrad, which is a five-year program.
00:06:57
Speaker
They call it undergrad. We call it a master's, but theirs is five years theirs is three years. I don't know why they do it. Anyway, then he went to a Western med full doctorate and then went back to teaching Chinese medicine.
00:07:10
Speaker
That just felt feels like a little excessive to me. I mean, I i like curiosity and all that, but like that's just too many decades in school, in my opinion. Yeah. Certainly all at once. Anyway, so then I yeah i just decided that was that was the case. But i you know just like you guys mentioned, like when I was in China, I didn't plan to spend 11 years there. It's just like after the first major degree I did, which was the master's, then was like, oh, yeah, there's a lot more I should study here, especially because i don't know when I'll be making it back. And then that's when i stayed for that second PhD program.
00:07:43
Speaker
Well, just because you're out of school doesn't mean you're done learning. so No. Yeah. Never. I think, ah so someone who's not at all interested in in medicine before I got interested in medicine. It's like growing up, we weren't anti-alternative medicine.
00:08:01
Speaker
Wasn't that there was nothing to offer there. But there was an inherent faith in Western medicine that all the good bits have been gotten out and are understood and are now utilized in Western medicine. And Western medicine being as scientific and as unbiased as it is, is like doing this good faith effort to like kind of give you the best treatment options that are available. And boy, did that turn out to be naive. um But it's not just me too. like And then I was like, oh, is that just me being young? But like I talked to older people too and they kind of still have this this idea, this myth about Western medicine.
00:08:37
Speaker
um So that was one of the first kind of like glass things to break. Totally, kind of like a misconception or a preconception. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah It's so funny. I always remind people like there would be no need for the term evidence-based medicine if normal Western medicine was evidence-based.
00:08:58
Speaker
you're like, there doesn't need to be a category of EBM. And you're like, oh, wait, how many of these or, you know, like really big stuff like cardiac surgery procedures. And you're like, you just do it because you think so? Like, where's the stats and shit, man? That's what you're supposed to be good at.
00:09:15
Speaker
Right, right. And then like, I won't beat the placebo. And it's like, well, why are you doing it? It's very, yeah, got tenuous there. Well, in two to three thousand years of Chinese medicine being effective, to me, sounds evidence based. Yeah.
00:09:31
Speaker
And in one of the most pragmatic cultures I know, yeah i get it. I'm biased. I am half Chinese, but like, there's such a pragmatic people. Like they don't care if you wear a duck hat and that somehow fixed your sunburn, but like, tell me about this duck hat that you're wearing. You know, like, it's just like, they don't care what the thing is, but they're so willing to do anything just to get the result that they want. That pragmatism to me comes through loud and clear in our medicine. It's like, okay, is your kidney working better? Let's see.
00:09:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I think ah it's a, I would say maybe more of a rural thing where if you're a country, you're more, you're less reliant on a feedback loop with some digital or expert analog, something to tell you that you're doing good. And you're more just like, well, do I feel better? Like that's evidence-based. If you're out in the boonies, like,
00:10:20
Speaker
That's how life is. You're just like, it's based on my own observational skills. They're way more like, you know, ah early Chinese person who's living with nature and kind of noticing all these things.
00:10:31
Speaker
Absolutely. And then add on early Chinese person living with nature probably spends a lot more time like with introspection, hence more sensitive about things. And they're like, Hey, I feel this like tingling over here.
00:10:42
Speaker
i mean, you have to be that level of sensitivity if you're going to like discover through meditation, the channels, which I think is how they were discovered. But Yeah, or seeing straight into the body, like Bantui.
00:10:53
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Or just like being like, oh, if I do take 10,000 pulses, eventually I'll master something and figure out how to read it, you know? Yeah. hey I don't know. Does someone want to take a crack at defining Western medicine's view of health?
00:11:10
Speaker
Oh, my dog does. Okay. Yeah, what does Appa have to say about this? I was thinking that was Asher's stomach. Oh. You know, having worked in Western medicine for over a decade, i it there's that the word health is everywhere, right? We call it health care. um But I feel like what Western medicine, they can call it health care all day. But what you actually see in practice is you're trying to.
00:11:41
Speaker
reduce or relieve someone's symptoms. It's not, to me, it never appeared like the focus was targeted on getting someone healthy, keeping them healthy, preventing disease from showing up in the first place.
00:11:56
Speaker
From what I saw, it's, it's really, it's reactive medicine, right? Like someone comes in with a problem or a symptom And the doctor's job is to diagnose and to treat the symptom. But what they don't do is they don't look at the underlying root cause. They don't look at the person. Like, for example, in nursing school, we talked about patient-centered care all the time. That was like, here's what sets nurses apart from doctors. Nurses focus on patient-centered care.
00:12:26
Speaker
And to me, I think Chinese medicine is way more patient-centered care because we actually look at the person as an individual. And, you know, if Steven comes in with high blood pressure, migraines, digestive issues, and Asher has the same symptoms,
00:12:41
Speaker
They're not going to get the same medication or the same formula from us as Chinese doctors. They're going to get a formula that treats their symptoms, but also gets to the root cause of the problem and takes their constitution into account. Whereas Western medicine, you know, you come in with high blood pressure and you have like three to five classes of drugs that the doc's going to choose from.
00:13:03
Speaker
based on your symptoms, not based on you as a person, but based on the symptoms that you showed up with. So to me, I see it a lot more. Let's, let's alleviate the symptoms and then send you out the door. It's not really about let's get you healthy, keep you healthy and prevent you from coming back in here with a similar problem.
00:13:24
Speaker
Hell yeah. would say that we, you know, we're focused on resilience. And the absence of the symptomology is a byproduct of their health rather than the health of their self. And in the West, like you were saying, they use the symptomology as the barometer.
00:13:42
Speaker
And so once that that's gone, no disease ah visibly present um or you're a woman complaining about pain, you're fine. Yeah. So we Chinese medicine has two branches and Western medicine just has the one.
00:13:58
Speaker
We treat disease as half of it. And when we try and strengthen or increase wellness or cultivate wellness on the other half, that doesn't really seem to be that in Western medicine. you know like I shouldn't say nothing like vaccines change your immune system. So I guess in a way you could say that is in in some ways enhancing your wellness or increasing your wellness.
00:14:18
Speaker
I remember um when, not trying to get political here, because I know everybody's got their own opinions, but when ah RFK was ah selected for the FDA, dude, that's the official term.
00:14:30
Speaker
And then people with ham on it, because he did some really radical ah shit, but I don't want to like alienate anybody wherever you stand on that spectrum. But but one thing that they I remember they talked about is like, well, this wellness industry is like, ah I don't even know what the number was. It was large, $10 billion dollar industry.
00:14:48
Speaker
And I think they were complaining about it, like we can't control it, we don't know what these things are. And they never asked the question, why does it exist? Because your Western medicine doesn't do it.
00:14:58
Speaker
Like to me, that's the biggest problem. Honestly, I think RFK is a good example too. People who don't like him, which I think there's a lot of us, but people who don't like him, and it's not like he did every, I don't think he's actually done everything wrong. You know you can like a policy or two and and still not agree with the majority of something that's happening. But the point is, is I think what they should do is not complain about what he is. They should complain about what built him up, what helped him come to the forefront.
00:15:25
Speaker
And distrust in Western medicine screams pretty freaking loud to me. ah When you talk about the wellness side though, yeah, there is a ton of problems with the wellness industry because it's totally like wild Westy and nobody knows what to do and who to trust and who are the authorities.
00:15:42
Speaker
Whereas in Chinese medicine, it's been like, really, i can't even think of a time when Chinese medicine didn't have that as a component. like You can go back certainly to the Neijing, which is 2000 years, right? But like you can go back as far as you want. And it really is about how do I increase the wellness, not just decrease the disease?
00:16:01
Speaker
Because i think a lot of times Western medicine just thinks absence of a disease is health. And you're like, nah, actually, you just basically got back to baseline. So then how do you do something else, right? How do you do anything preventative? How do you do anything that actually enhances where you feel better, more energetic? And fundamentally, how do you increase organ function?
00:16:19
Speaker
And you just can't get away from that. And i that's why I think Western medicine just doesn't do organ function because they've never focused on it unless it's replaced it with a machine. Yeah, yeah.
00:16:31
Speaker
ah You brought up an interesting point there too where you were saying about patients not really knowing like who to trust in the health and wellness field. And I'll just say that I think from the three of us, it's like you'll notice the difference now, tomorrow, and the next day. And if that's not the case, find something else.
00:16:49
Speaker
And i didn't... get that 100% in school. I got that you know acupuncture with the Dr. ton style. He would definitely say, you know put the needle in, see the effect on the body immediately. But that was not throughout our our school. And sometimes after a school treatment, like in a school clinic, if nothing happened right away, um someone would say, oh, don't worry, like it continues to work like over the next three days and you'll feel better.
00:17:15
Speaker
And i was always like, but they don't, are you sure? Like, cause it seems like you could have missed, like, you know, that's not outside the realm of possibility. And sometimes as practitioners, we do miss, we're not always like hitting the nail right on the head.
00:17:29
Speaker
But when that happens, I know, I know it immediately. Cause I didn't see the effect that I was looking for. Yeah. And I think to clarify too, for those listening, it's not that you always fix every problem immediately. like It's not like they come in diabetic and leave not diabetic, but you see the changes that you expect to see leading in the right direction.
Patient Empowerment and Independence
00:17:48
Speaker
like Let's say they come in diabetic and you give them a needle um session and they're less thirsty and their pulse changes. Those are directional changes that we can gauge that you're going in the right direction because we know it's a long-term thing and we're trying to build your fluids so you don't burn them up with internal heat, blah, blah, blah. There's lots of different things based on each case, right? But fundamentally, it's like, yeah, we're not saying that everything is an overnight fix, but just like Asher said, you should see effect, hopefully immediately of something into leading you in the direction that you know you're heading um towards the, you know, it rebalancing the body.
00:18:23
Speaker
Yeah. There's like usually like some key symptomology things, right? And if I'm doing herbs with the patients, I'll try to teach them about those symptoms symptoms and then about which herbs I'm giving them to kind of fit which of these is kind of deeper patterns so that they can kind of start to learn and dose themselves and be their own doctor. Because honestly, if you're talking about preventative medicine, like it means that I'm i'm obsolete to a certain degree and that they can do a lot of this on their own.
00:18:51
Speaker
Definitely. i think i think what you just said is one of the biggest differences that I see comparing Eastern and Western is that the Western model is very much like the doctor is the expert.
00:19:03
Speaker
You come in you're the patient. They're going to tell you what to do, which pills to take. They're going to explain, maybe they'll explain some complex pathophysiology process to you.
00:19:14
Speaker
And then in my experience as a nurse, most patients were deer in the headlights and did not understand what was going on. But there were some really good docs that would, you know, get out the dry erase board and draw things and explain things well.
00:19:27
Speaker
But for the most part, Western medicine really puts the patient, you know, last. think They're the expert, they're the doctor, and the patient's just this person that's being worked on and is going to do what they're told. Whereas Chinese medicine is so much more empowering.
00:19:41
Speaker
I think all of us are the types of practitioners that send our patients home. with some sort of homework, whether that's a meditation practice or movement or herbs or, or food. And we, you know, we teach as we go and we, we give the power back to them. Like I, so maybe I'll see you once a week.
00:20:00
Speaker
You're going to see yourself every single second of the day. So here's what you're going to do to help yourself. And I just feel like the Western model is, is pretty disempowering from the moment you walk in, you know, you're,
00:20:12
Speaker
you have to give up your clothes and wear this gown and be put in a bed with a bed alarm. And you can't get out of bed when you want to get out of bed without calling for help. And, you know, you, you know, you can't pronounce the names of the things you're taking, which isn't different than Chinese herb. Let's be real about that. it's kind in your aunt yeah and yeah And I just, I just had so many patients that would come in and i would ask about, okay, let's go over your history. What meds are you taking? And they would tell me,
00:20:39
Speaker
what they were, but they couldn't explain why they were taking them. I'd say, okay, why are you taking that? Even though I knew what the medication was for, I wanted to test and see if they knew. And especially with seniors, probably like 75% of the time they'd say, I don't, I don't really know what that's for. i don't remember what that's for, but my doctor said I have to keep taking it. So yeah, it's just, it's just not that empowering and it doesn't put the patient at the helm of being responsible for their, their own healthcare outcomes.
00:21:09
Speaker
Yeah, I've noticed some stuff where like people in the hospital will like regress. Like people I've known. and it's like Oh, for sure. Yeah. And I'm wondering, because now that you describe it, I'm like seeing it as like this whole process where they're being like trained to be reliant on others.
00:21:26
Speaker
But I've just come in like two, three days later, I'm like, are you a child? Like, what? like was whatever you went through to get here that traumatizing. But then, you know, I'm like, oh, maybe it's just like this, this kind of learned helplessness that's being kind of taught in there.
00:21:42
Speaker
It's really interesting. So yeah, Chinese medicine like appreciates the scrappy and then Western medicine is trying to beat us, beat it out of us, you know? Yeah. You get out of bed without calling the nurse and the alarm goes off. Now you're one strike, you're out. Yeah.
00:21:56
Speaker
Yeah. It's, it's, I mean, it's, it's not, not everyone, but people that came in, like, especially elderly people, I feel, I feel the worst for them because they can come in being, you know, pretty, pretty independent as elderly people, but, and I'm guilty of doing this too, as a nurse, but someone comes in, that's 93 and you're like, Oh, I got to put this person on the bed alarm. I don't want them to fall. You know, I won't let them go to the bathroom by themselves. Whereas, you know, maybe they walked into the hospital with pneumonia, but they were walking around their house just fine. And they weren't having all these issues, but we, we kind of treat them as like, you're in this box, you're in this demographic. And so to your point, they get out of the hospital and they just assume like, I've been bedridden for a week because I was told to be. And we know in Chinese medicine how important movement is. And, you know, we're not really doing anybody any favors except for that Medicare and Medicaid don't reimburse for a hospital stay if someone falls. So there's good reason for it.
00:22:53
Speaker
Right. was thinking liability stuff too. Yeah. Yeah. All key points. Can you imagine how excited we'd be as a Chinese doctor if there was like ah a stay in hospital for Chinese medicine, if we like walk in and they're doing Qi Gong on the side? You're like, yes. Oh my God. Yes.
00:23:12
Speaker
We were so stoked. Yeah. It's a totally different world. I mean, jumping to your third point, Asher, what was the the way you phrased your third question? What's the goal of medicine? Yeah.
00:23:23
Speaker
And ah man, Alana just said it 100%. I mean, I think i think a lot of people certainly getting into medicine or from the outside think that the goal medicine is to cure a disease or to fix you know a disease or issue.
00:23:36
Speaker
But I think Alana said it, bigger than that is empowering the patient again. And I think that was important. And in the modern era of modern medicine, it's even more important. It's just because like we're fighting the disempowering that they're doing to their patients and we're trying to kind of give it back to them.
00:23:53
Speaker
And yeah, treating the disease is a fundamental component of that. People can't live well if they're in constant shingles pain or whatever else we're dealing with, right? But um I do think the empowerment is the long-term thing. And then the disease, fixing the disease or the issue or working on or however we're doing that with them, that's almost just a cog in the larger wheel there.
00:24:15
Speaker
Yeah, I wonder if part of it's like this cultural phenomenon that is like a bigger version of the hospital where we've become in the West more reliant on Western medicine to do all the things and not do it ourselves. So it's like food or dietary like medicine stuff. It's like don't really use that until someone tells you. But over in China, it's like there's there's more baseline knowledge for that. Same thing with like gua sha or cupping. It's like um if I have to treat plantar fasciitis, I'll just teach them to gua sha their own foot and then they're, they're good for life or so far. i feel Culturally, culturally, we lack that household medicine. You know, if if you are, it depends, you know, you, maybe you came from a family that had a culture of practicing homeopathic things or herbal things, but I would say overall, most Americans lack that kind of upbringing culturally and they're taught to take NyQuil or, you know, whatever, whatever farmers do to go over the counter. Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:12
Speaker
So a very common thing I heard before getting to school and once I was in school was this idea that Western medicine is good at treating acute things. Chinese medicine is good for prevention.
00:25:24
Speaker
Sometimes they'd say, i know i know, right? ah But here's the other one that i would hear a lot, Stephen, is Western medicine is good for acute things. Chinese medicine good for chronic things. I'm like, don't know.
00:25:38
Speaker
So the logical fallacy, so we'll put aside like the things that we, like we do treat better acutely. Uh-huh. Like, although or, and just look at the logic and say, if you're saying we're good at, or if Chinese can't do acute things,
00:25:53
Speaker
but we're good at proven prevention and chronic stuff. To prevent a chronic illness, you treat it in the acute phase, though. It's just that it didn't even... As I got older and like thought about it more, I'm like, this doesn't even make sense in its own like small little logic circle. um Never mind the fact that there are you know exceptions to this rule or you know we break it down a little bit. So where do you think...
00:26:18
Speaker
Or do you want to go over your your buzzers, Steve? Yeah. oh yeah I was just going to keep buzzing for fun. should get a big red nose and just press it each time. um Operation. Yeah, exactly.
00:26:31
Speaker
ah Yeah. The two biggest ones that I would say exactly that you said, one is, and you hear that so often in China, by the way, this is not unique to America. They'll be like, oh, well, um Western medicine is good at acute things and, um,
00:26:43
Speaker
Chinese medicine, you get at chronic things. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. what The real phrase there is that acute things heal quickly and ah chronic things heal slowly. That's the correct way to see that. That's the nature of the disease. It's not the nature of the treatment method.
00:27:00
Speaker
So if you're getting an acute thing that's coming in, let's say cold and flu, if you've taken Chinese herbs for cold and flu that were diagnosed correctly, it feels like magic. it you're Everything is... like i got COVID for the second time.
00:27:16
Speaker
First time was in the end of 2020, I believe, or 2021. Gosh, I suck at chronology. Anyways, kind of in the beginning of things, it was in the Omicron time. And then the second time was like three years later or something.
00:27:27
Speaker
And it was so funny because like i I have a third of my pharmacy in in my house. The other two thirds are in Nettleton and my pharmacist's place. But um like so like i'd get I was like, ah, shit. I know what this is. Took the test, positive. And then anytime something was coming, you get like a hint of that ah you know symptom or you can feel it in your pulse coming.
00:27:48
Speaker
You just take the herbs for it and you're like, oh, okay. Well, I guess I'll just sit here because I'm probably still contagious. But- maybe I'll go trim the hedges or something. yeah like It's like you're just it's like almost ridiculous. You're like, is this really what COVID is like with herbs?
00:28:03
Speaker
And that's just one example, right? Obviously, COVID has gotten a little easier anyway as time goes on. But like you know you look at Chai Gojiejitan is a good example. Because a lot of, well, a lot of COVIDs were that later on anyway. But if you take that and you're like, oh man, my splitting eyeball headache just went away. My fever came down real fast. Chills, pretty much non-existent. My muscle pain is just like such like so like withering out of me. you know I guess withering is not the right verb there. It's just like draining right out of me. and you're like, oh well,
00:28:35
Speaker
This is convenience and it works incredibly fast. So we treat fast things quickly. And then if anyone says they can treat diabetes that quickly, they are totally blowing smoke up everybody's because that's a chronic thing. So chronic things treat slowly. Another thing that I think people get confused on is allopathy versus homeopathy.
00:28:53
Speaker
So they're like, oh, well, homeopathy, you treat like versus like. So if you see heat, you treat it with heat. We don't do that. I know some people think Chinese medicine does, but we don't do that. And then they're like, oh, well, that means we're allopathic just like Western is.
00:29:06
Speaker
Not really. Yes, maybe Western medicine is kind of allopathic, but we're the true allopaths, I think. Meaning we treat hot with cold and cold with hot. They just treat... life with death. and And I'm not saying that in a negative way, actually, but I'm like i'm using antibiotics here. So like if they can kill the thing, they love to kill the thing, just kill it, right? So they want to just exterminate the the thing.
00:29:29
Speaker
Now, that's usually mess case of bacteria because they're not very good at viruses and other stuff. But it's more about how do I excise the thing with a knife? How do I shoot it with ah you know some sort of antibiotic or something like that? Carpet vomit. Yeah.
00:29:44
Speaker
The antibiotics are a carpet bomb over the whole system. It's not targeted. That's right. continue No, it's true. Yeah. And then, you know, fundamentally, the reason why I say this is so clearly different is I don't think Western medicine has this idea of getting people back to a balance point.
00:29:59
Speaker
um And we do. And so if that's really what they, if they considered them true allopathic doctors, that's what they would do is they would treat someone's overheating, you nourish the water, right? Like why that's true allopathy from Chinese medicine to Chinese culture and every aspect to Chinese martial arts. You know, they used to teach Chinese martial arts. There's a a branch of Chinese martial arts called Chinna, which is like to season, to grab. It's all the wrist locks and joint locks and stuff. It's pretty dope.
00:30:26
Speaker
um Anyway, they used to teach it The old way to teach that was five elements. If someone's twisting you towards fire, you step towards them because that's the direction of water. And you're like, what? You even encoded your martial arts this way? This is incredible. It's deep, as Stephen was saying. Deep. That's when you go from contemplating these things to just bro again. Yeah.
00:30:54
Speaker
That's good, man. um I was going to bring up the antibiotics later, but ah because we're on it now, this is going a little bit deeper for ah patients. But ah one of the formulas that we use that's kind of like this is long done check on town. Yeah.
00:31:11
Speaker
Where it's so cold for the system that we know we're going to hurt things and then we have to build them back to health. Basically, that the idea of being like the antibiotic is once it's done is is not actually done. We have to, there's extra steps to do on the backside because we push so far in this one direction, we have to build you back um to health. 100%. Is it similar idea? Like if someone was treated with antibiotics for the thing, would you build them back in the same way as...
00:31:40
Speaker
Longdan chagantang Very similar. Yep. And longdan is an interesting one because it is targeting liver, but it's so hard on the digestion. You can also target digestion, which most antibiotics do, but either one really. um And yes, we do know that they're both hard on specifically the spleen warmth. And so we would regenerate and rebuild the spleen as we go forward.
00:32:00
Speaker
Stomach maybe, but you'd have to be really harsh to harm the stomach fluids. And since stomach doesn't need heat really much anyway, you don't need to worry about that. Just stomach likes cool and damp and spleen likes dry and warm. But yes, cold herbs, cold antibiotics, pretty much all antibiotics are cold.
00:32:18
Speaker
They require that rebuilding phase. And I do think, funny enough, this is where the wellness has come in. So then they're like, oh, well, post or with antibiotics, i'm going to take a probiotic at the same time. It's a step in the right direction.
00:32:30
Speaker
Now the problem is people don't know which probiotic to use and when to use it because they've almost got the Western mindset. And they're like, well, probiotic just means good. Shouldn't I just take as much as often as I can? No, that is not true. Same with fermented food. People like, i'm just going to eat this giant bowl of kimchi. That's not how anybody does that. That's not how the Koreans do it. Why would you not do kimchi like the Koreans?
00:32:53
Speaker
I mean, it's I do sushi like the Japanese. Why wouldn't you do kimchi? That's like... the the masters welcome back to america we like to supersize things yeah that's right i'm super size my probiotics why do i have SIBO now yeah yeah Well, and there's no guidance either. Like after you get out of the hospital and you've been on probiotics or antibiotics for a long time, you know, I've, I heard patients always say, should i take a probiotic? And the doctor's like, Oh, you can, if you want to, but there's, there's not really like, there's no guidance around it. And then the person's left to going to King Soopers or their grocery store and they just pick out what's ever on the shelf. And, you know, there's, there's not this like, okay, like you guys are describing, we, we,
00:33:36
Speaker
we we break things down to get rid of the disease, but then there's no building back up of the host. And that's, to me, that's such a huge benefit of Chinese medicine is, of course, we want to get rid of the pathogen and the problem, but we also want to protect or rebuild and nourish whatever we've disrupted along the way. And I feel like Western medicine is just, yeah, like Asher said, with with chemo and with antibiotics, it's just like, carpet bomb, got rid of the problem, see you later.
00:34:04
Speaker
And you're on like, figure it out from here. And yeah, we don't really give people a good roadmap for how to get back into balance. So right.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Western Medicine
00:34:14
Speaker
Like I wish that Western docs and Western practitioners would step in there more. Honestly, even ah you even see some of this, it's better in the functional medicine world, but even then they're just like, take a probiotic, which one? There's a million ones for so many different reasons. Like if we translate that into Chinese medicine, it's like, it's not just give them ganjiang to warm their spleen.
00:34:34
Speaker
Most of the time, their fluids are damaged. Is it in the stomach? Maybe. That would be like a yujuu, sha shen mai dong tang direction, right? Or is it specifically in the liver? Well, that does make sense because it was long dan xie gan tang. targeting the liver.
00:34:46
Speaker
And so if we drained liver fluids, well then is it more blood? Is it more ying nutritive? That's our job to figure that out and get them into a resilient space. Like another good example is shingles. So many times people have shingles and then they have remnant nerve pain.
00:35:00
Speaker
and Western medicine is like, well, do you just want more steroids? No, that's not the answer. And so then they come to us and yes, acupuncture is phenomenal for this. So if you you have that, go seek out an acupuncturist in your neighborhood. But usually i think it does require some herbs to help too, because most of the time ah the the shingles is really flaring primarily because the immune system is so low. Well, how are you going to fix their immune system? You can do it with acupuncture. It's just a little bit slower, but it works. And then um herbs speed it up of so fast. So there's so many different ways to do that. um You can also get people off of, say, the gabapentin or whatever other things they were put on for nerve pain and shingles pain and stuff like that. That's just one of many examples, of course. But this is where we have to not just encourage them to do the rebuilding, but actually guide them through it.
00:35:49
Speaker
Yeah, I'm glad you brought this story too. I feel like it's one of the beautiful things of our medicine that I didn't know about and wasn't expecting and didn't have this kind of idea of of Western meds actually being fairly untargeted and being like the this blanket or this carpet bomb.
00:36:05
Speaker
And the symptoms go down, but they don't, oftentimes they don't even disappear completely. So it's like, you didn't even hit what you were going for. Like there's still smoldering embers in here and you give it long enough and they eat lamb or some you know something else kind of sets them off and they're going to be right back where they're at ah versus our stuff, which is like, oh yeah, maybe it'll take a little bit longer than the steroids to like kind of cool down the system.
00:36:28
Speaker
But that's because it's only cooling down where the fire is at. And it's not just like being a wet blanket. Yeah, exactly. Wet blanket medicine. Allergies is another great example too. If you're treating someone and they're compliant and you're you're really after it and This is usually the ones that are really struggling with the allergies that are that that willing to to put the effort in. But year after year, their allergies should get better and better, like less and less severe until at a certain point, they're like, oh yeah, i guess maybe I don't need anything anymore. I'll just keep this around if I need a maintenance st dose or something like that. That's when you know you're getting at the root. you know And it can take three or four years to get there.
00:37:06
Speaker
um As an early you know practitioner or new practitioner, you wouldn't know the prognosis for that, but you just keep following the pattern and you'll build it up and they're on the right trajectory. And then you start accruing enough experience where you actually start being like, oh yeah, I can see where this is going. I see what the severity looks like. I'm thinking this is a probably a two or three year thing. We'll try and get it right before your allergy season comes in, blah, blah, blah.
00:37:28
Speaker
Lots of little things, but it's just so satisfying where like I think the best... you know You can say like there's a lot of different ways of judging how you've gotten healthier or like gotten over something, but the best is when you don't remember that you even had that problem.
00:37:44
Speaker
yeah like When you burn yourself and you're like, which hand was it? That's fully healed now. like you're You're like, oh yeah, I haven't had allergies for two years. That's incredible. You don't even think about how you didn't don't have that anymore.
00:37:56
Speaker
That's pretty next level. I will say just to add on to add on one more thing from the very beginning of that question where we started, um is that when you when you talked about acute versus chronic or the other misconceptions,
00:38:13
Speaker
I will give Western medicine this. I feel like when something is traumatic or life and limb threatening, that's where I've seen Western medicine shine. Like i I worked as a surgical trauma nurse for seven of my years in healthcare. care And, you know, when someone comes in with a collapsed lung, they can fix that. When someone comes in and needs an amputation, they can handle that. You know, gunshot wounds,
00:38:34
Speaker
Ski accidents, motor vehicle accidents, all these things that are very traumatic in nature and life or limb threatening. That's where Western medicine shines. And thank God we have that medicine.
00:38:46
Speaker
But I think when people it's, it's, it would be good for people to know, okay this is where I go for this. This is where I go for this. And I think the general population is just like, this is where I go for everything yeah and everything isn't treated well through that system.
00:39:01
Speaker
you know, and if that's the only system you have, then you just don't know any better. But it it it is good for many things. I will say, I think, I think working in surgical trauma is what kept me as a nurse for so long, because I actually did get to see people get better. yeah But when I worked in more of like an internal medicine context, diabetes, heart disease, things like that, it was just so disheartening. And that's that treating chronic illness in the hospital is really what made me rethink like, I cannot do this. This is not aligned with with how I view medicine. But the trauma piece, they've they've got that dialed.
00:39:37
Speaker
Dude, nephrology. Don't sign me up for nephrology, man. Just watch people wither away until dialysis. and then Totally. You're like, oh, that's such's a rough way to go. And then dialysis for life. Oh, yeah.
00:39:50
Speaker
There's no other way around it until you get a kidney transplant. And enormous cost to their own life and lifestyle, energy, everything they're active in those days. But the way that they've been monetizing that is – just There was a book that just came out recently um about that. The guy was on Trevor Noah's podcast, What Now?, the author.
00:40:13
Speaker
And God, it's I haven't read it yet, um but it's on my it's on my list right now. And it's basically just trying to encapsulate what the Western medicine system has become through looking primarily at the dialysis branch of it and how they can literally hold your life in their hand and like, well, how much are you willing to pay for this dialysis session? That's insanity, yo. yeah I didn't really realize it too, because we all know that yes, there's been a lot of verticalization. It's all been clumped up into hospitals where it used to be more individual family practices and stuff.
00:40:46
Speaker
And I didn't really think of the next level, which is now those hospitals are all owned by shareholders. And you're like, oh, that got a lot darker. Just one little capitalistic switch at the top there. And you're like, oh man, I don't want my clinic to be owned by shareholders. Are you kidding?
00:41:02
Speaker
Right. Yeah. It's, it's, it's incentivized. And I mean, another, another thing Western medicine does, i'm going to put well in air quotes is because I, I think this isn't very ethical, but we keep people alive that, you know, maybe without, without dialysis, without equipment in the ICU, without all this technology, you know people would not be alive. And some people think that's a good thing. Like, look, my dad's still alive. He's living in long-term care with a trach and a tube. And you know he hasn't he hasn't communicated verbally or with gestures or anything in a year, but he's still alive. He's in there. you know this is This can go on forever if you don't have...
00:41:48
Speaker
ah Like a family member or an advocate saying like, it's, it's time to let this person go. But with the technology we've developed in Western medicine, we could keep someone alive for years.
00:42:00
Speaker
So real that's another piece of it that it's like, there's a lot of ethical stuff that comes up in the hospital and you really do see you really do see the good, bad, and the ugly. Because there are times we keep people alive in the hospital and they do pull through and you're like, wow, awesome. Didn't think that person was going to walk again. Didn't think they were going to open their eyes. Didn't think they would come out of this. And they do. But then the other, the uglier side of that coin is that you, you know, I remember at Denver Health,
00:42:27
Speaker
we We would have patients that lived on our floor for like a year in the same in the same vegetative state because they were waiting for placement at a long-term care facility or they didn't qualify for some reason. And you just see this person day in and day out. like Gosh, what what a way to live. Like this is to me, yeah that would not be a choice I would want for myself. But it yeah, that's that's one of the, i would I would call that both a pro and a con of our technology.
00:42:57
Speaker
yeah it's like being in health jail. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, I love what Alana said about the, i almost think we should rename Western medicine. First of all, i don't like Western and Eastern because I realized when I was in China for so long, it's like, why do we keep using the word East?
00:43:13
Speaker
What are we East of? And then I was like, someone was, think I looked it up or something, it was all based on Rome. And you're like, wait a second, Europe is West of Rome and Asia's East of Rome. Why do I care where Rome is? Yeah.
00:43:26
Speaker
yeah So it screw Western. I'm not going to call it that
Preventative Medicine and Historical Insights
00:43:30
Speaker
anymore. I would call it, I think one of, there's two other words. I wouldn't even call it emergency medicine, even though I do think they're excellent at emergency. I think they're almost better at just what Alana was saying, almost like catastrophic medicine.
00:43:42
Speaker
Like that's what they're good at. Like if I got in a car accident, I would go to the hospital. I am a my own practitioner, but I'm not going to needle my broken bones, you know? um i want I want to see that in the next ray. And if it's a simple break, maybe I will reset it myself. But the point is, is i you know I want those tools. I want those things. I don't want to accidentally pinch like one of my arteries when i'm trying to even reset my bone, even if I'm using a traditional method. right So it's not to say we can't use those methods, but we should use all the tools around this as much as we can. But um yeah, so catastrophic or sometimes I've heard it called heroic medicine, which also I think Western medicine would really like kind of pump up their chest with a little bit and be like, yeah, we're heroic medicine. But at least you know when to use it, you know?
00:44:21
Speaker
And it's not like, am I going to go to my heroic medicine practitioner for diabetes? I don't think they're going to do anything heroic for me there. They're going to let you eat all the carbs you want, Steven. Exactly.
00:44:33
Speaker
That is heroic. Yeah. It's real. ah Do you guys know this B'in Chui myth that basically kind of illuminates the heroic medicine part Okay. um All right. So for people who don't know, Bian Chui is like the godfather Chinese medicine.
00:44:53
Speaker
Yeah. park bird Yeah. yeah Yeah. That was my bird call. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Please correct me too. Cause this history stuff is a little sketchy. So he kind of brought brings Chinese medicine out of shamanism and kind of basically is the first guy to maybe make a science of it.
00:45:11
Speaker
Yeah, I can see that. I don't know if I would have attributed that to him, but I think he definitely is at that turning point for sure. Yeah, yeah. There's another myth that we won't get into where basically he refuses to treat someone who thinks that, who like believes in ghosts and stuff. And he's like, well, I'm not going to treat you. I was like, oh, hardcore.
00:45:31
Speaker
As Steven mentioned, Banchoe is sometimes ah like mythologicalized as part bird. And so, yeah, he's ah he's a badass. Maybe he could see into the body. He was kind of given some mythical powers.
00:45:42
Speaker
There's a myth though that I found when I was in school that I immediately liked and then since then i I've grown to like even more ah because I feel like it kind of talks about this really nicely. So ah the other character in the story is the Jedi Emperor who's basically like a Zeus of the Pantheon.
00:45:59
Speaker
Good way to think about it. Yeah, I like He's like a patriarchal what dude. True. Top top dude. hu So someone tells the Jade Emperor, B'an Chui's in town and he's like, ah, bring him to my court. And B'an Chui ends up coming to his court and and the Jade Emperor's like, oh my God, like of all the places you could be, you're in my court. Like how, I'm so honored to have you here and you're honored to meet me and like all this stuff. And B'an Chui's like, whatever, man, like, what's up?
00:46:26
Speaker
And the Jade Emperor goes, I hear you have a couple of brothers um who also practice. ah Based off of our last conversation, I now realize that brother's probably not blood brother, but probably lineage brother. interesting point.
00:46:38
Speaker
from From the lineages. um So that was something that Steven kind of illuminated for me at one point because he's like, oh, yeah, brother, we call each other their brother, like older brother and younger brother. who So he's like, you got a couple of brothers. it's Like, who's who's the best? It's you, right, BNJ? Come on. Tell us it's you. Yeah.
00:46:55
Speaker
you're You're making the J-Demper a real bro-ian story. Just easier for me to remember. i dig it. um so but So he starts off and he goes, my middle brother has some good renown in his region, right? And people from all over that province or whatever, like come to him when they're sick and he fixes them.
00:47:16
Speaker
And he's he's really good. ah But he's he's only second best out of the three of us. And goes, my oldest brother works way up in the mountains and no one knows who he is.
00:47:27
Speaker
And no one in that town, like he treats the people in the town, but like no one else. And people in the town just don't get sick. He treats disease before it arises. He's so good. They don't even know how good he is.
00:47:42
Speaker
blows my brain. So we have treat disease after it arise, you get some like local femininity, treat disease before it arise, you're a nobody, um although you're doing it really well. And he says, me, I'm the youngest and I'm the worst.
00:47:58
Speaker
And I'm famous because I basically I bring people back from the dead. I treat people at this end of life care. And it's like really fun for like the ego and like it feels cool and it's empowering or whatever it is. It's it's kind of like it's sexy for some reason, like it brings a lot of notoriety with it.
00:48:15
Speaker
But he's like, that's the worst way to treat. And it's the lowest form of medicine And I'm just like, oh my God, it's like this whole, he's laying it out. Like, what's the goal of medicine? To treat it before it arises. And it's not going to feed your ego.
00:48:28
Speaker
So bummer for you. or great, because then don't have to struggle with that later too. True, true, true. But if you're struggling with it now, it probably seems less appealing, which is why I feel like it's doesn't fit. I don't know, it's a beautiful story about it.
00:48:43
Speaker
It is. the Western medicine is is the baby brother of the story. Or, is i mean, he's Bian Chui in his story. Yeah. they're good at something. Right. yeah Oh, it's amazing, right? But then he's also like, this, you ain't shit. Like, this is the lowest form of medicine.
00:48:57
Speaker
And I'm just like, whoa, like, to say that. And also, because I think they say that he does open heart surgery. I haven't, like, looked into, like, the Chinese stuff. But that's how I've seen it translated multiple times. So it's like, he was, you know, like, hitting up there with Western medicine, and like, abilities to, like, do this kind of stuff.
00:49:17
Speaker
and he was doing it without all the high tech stuff, like just like a couple of needles and whatever herbs are. um And he's like, still, this is not like the best of the best. Yeah.
00:49:29
Speaker
Depending on what your goal is. Yeah. Right. Right. right Ego boosting. Yeah.
00:49:38
Speaker
It's true. It's true. Yeah, we even have a phrase for treating the future disease. It's called 治胃病. 胃 means like 未来. It means like the future. So you're treating a future illness.
00:49:49
Speaker
And it's so hard to calculate. you know I think people are like, oh, yeah, well, are you how are you doing that? you can see trajectories so far away, so far away. I mean, I just brought up that that example of the diabetics. If you see people with internal heat that's already starting to burn up their fluids, you don't even need to look at their A1C. You know it's going in the wrong direction. you know So it's like, I think people don't realize like, it's not just like, oh, I treated that future disease. So see, they don't have a future disease.
00:50:18
Speaker
Like they, I think they think it's like unprovable. um But there's lots of different ways to do this. And interestingly, you can technically even make Western medicine scientific studies based on this.
00:50:30
Speaker
So there's one kind of... um I think the most common ah full Chinese medicine standard anti-cancerous formula, um just shout out, it's not targeted for all different kinds of cancer. It was originally designed for colon cancer, I believe, but it was called Protectival.
00:50:48
Speaker
And it was interesting because the way that it was, they did the study in a hospital in Israel. And the way they had to do the study is they wanted to give this formula to patients and then see that they didn't get colon cancer.
00:51:01
Speaker
But there's no way to do that in Western medicine because if they don't get colon cancer, how do you know they just wouldn't have gotten colon cancer? So the way they made their scientific study, which was actually pretty brilliant, this is a pretty pretty sneaky way to do it, is they gave it to colon cancer patients who had already gone through the surgeries and the and the chemo, and they watched watched for how like how many of them it returned in.
00:51:25
Speaker
And so they knew the standard amount, like let's say it was, I forget the number exactly, it was like, let's say 40% of them normally it would return and the cancer would return. And then if, ah you know, their cohort that was on the actual, um, non placebo herbs, if they only got it at a 10% rate, then that's 30% better than the
Integrating Eastern and Western Medicine
00:51:43
Speaker
average. So that's a way that they were like, oh, well, we're going to treat the future disease by stopping it from happening again.
00:51:49
Speaker
Pretty brilliant way to start to make a study because otherwise I don't use this. Um, but just shout out if you need that, you should have your qualified herbal practitioner in target that formula for you specifically.
00:52:03
Speaker
Because it's not there is no generic anti-cancer formula. Sure, sure. And then i feel like too, that's also, i mean, even the one with like the diabetic, like the disease is already there and you're kind of treating it and seeing where it's going and stopping it from going further. That's right. But like, I feel like the treating before it arises, that's kind of like the, your constitution, the season and whatever's going on in your body and just nailing it to a degree that, I mean, I'm, I'm still, I'm hopeful to get to at some point in my life, but also no, it's, it's a ways away. Yeah.
00:52:38
Speaker
Just know that you'll never get credit. but I'm going to have to enjoy it.
00:52:47
Speaker
it It brings up that word that Ashley loves so much resilience. It's like, if you really build resilient soil, are you going to be able to treat the fungus that's growing there? Hopefully not because you didn't have the fungus problem in the first place. yeah So it's like, if you really build up that strength and resilience in the organ systems um and the channels, let's not forget channels. They're very networky key too. But then yes, then they wouldn't develop them in the first place.
00:53:15
Speaker
Yeah, subtleties, I think the key is like the subtlest diagnostic methods you can use give you the farthest sight. So they're hard, right? Like the pulse example.
00:53:28
Speaker
like yeah You can see way further in a pulse than you can in a tongue. Tongue, very important. But I see you're spleen deficient right now, right? I see you've got damp heat in your digestive tract right now.
00:53:40
Speaker
Pulse, you're like, why why is this thinner and whirier at this level? That's something you can see very, very far away. It's just a lot harder to get there, I think. I mean, so everybody in their right mind knows that pulses are way harder to learn than tongues.
00:53:54
Speaker
um yeah Every student knows that 100%. Even the couple of years out, people are like, it was one it was funny, I was talking to one of my students who graduated a couple of years ago and then moved back to Montana. And she was asking me to give one of her patients herbs.
00:54:09
Speaker
And I was like, well, what's the pulse? And she's like, well, it's this, but that might be fake news.
00:54:18
Speaker
It is. Yeah. We're just looking for whatever information we can get. Yeah. It's super hard. And not and I see why why that's the case, right? Because one, you have the um would the wind diseases show up in the pulse right right when they happen, but not in the tongue.
00:54:33
Speaker
um And so maybe this like more young, more ethereal, less formed piece of information has more ah or is less time constrained to now.
00:54:46
Speaker
Yeah, Asher brought up a totally fundamental part of what we think is if you can get it in a time when it's not even physically formed yet, and right? You sense counterflow of qi and qi eventually will cause counterflow of actual tangible things like fluids and blood, which then eventually might build up into a blockage of fibroid or a tumor or something like that.
00:55:03
Speaker
What you're looking for is to stop it at the ethereal level before it gets to a tangible level. Now, gosh, Western medicine would hate this sentence that I just said, but if if if if it doesn't exist, how come we can feel the changes in the pulse?
00:55:18
Speaker
Or even like the, and we've talked about this before too, you had a great example with the ulcers and stress. It's like, how does stress affect your ulcers? Like if there's no etherical intangible force in the body.
00:55:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great point. And then they're like, it doesn't do anything, but don't get stressed. Same thing with blood pressure. Emotions don't matter, but don't get angry. But it it just kind of does matter then.
00:55:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They just throw off a blanket word, inflammation. Yeah. I think i think like when when you don't know the answer in Western medicine, you just say, oh, that's inflammation. That's inflammation. And we take it so much further by breaking it down. Like this is damp heat. This is...
00:56:00
Speaker
you know, deficient heat, we, we break it down to where it's a lot more specific versus just this blanket word that means nothing really like telling somebody they have fibromyalgia or chronic pain. Well, there you have a diagnosis, but what does that actually tell us about you and what you're experiencing?
00:56:18
Speaker
Yeah. yeah I love breaking down the Latin for my patients because they'll they'll tell me what the symptoms are. Like they'll be like, the bottom of my foot hurts or whatever. And then they'll be like, oh, they they called it something interesting. I think it was like plantar fasciitis. And i're like, i don't know what that means. I'm like, means the bottom of your foot hurts. They just put it in Latin. So you couldn't understand it. Like what?
00:56:39
Speaker
it Not a useful diagnosis, but. It helps in Chinese because all these Latin words, the Western medicine words are all translated into Chinese words that all Chinese people know.
00:56:49
Speaker
So the word for hepatitis is just liver inflammation. Like, oh, that makes it much much more doable. It can work with liver inflammation. Yeah. Much more useful.
00:57:01
Speaker
That's about it for what I got. Yeah. I feel like we hit all three. Did we hit all three? What was your second question? The second one was, what are they good for? oh yeah. And Alana came in with what Western medicine is good for, which is great because before that, I don't think we had anything positive to say. So thank you. I was here. I was here to contribute the one the gold star.
00:57:23
Speaker
and in other ways. And i will say I will say some of the diagnostic testing is is helpful. i you know I feel like it maybe sounded like we were shitting on Western medicine for an hour straight, but I do feel like there's a lot of value to it. It would just be so much better if it were an integrated system to where we could actually use our medicine with what they know and really bring people the best of all outcomes. But...
00:57:49
Speaker
For sure. He might a ways out from that. Absolutely. And Alana is totally right. like there are There are things that they are just better at. So it's not just orthopedic stuff, because also we're better at some orthopedic stuff than they are, but like early emergency stuff, bone breaks, all that stuff. We know that they're great at that, and they really are better than what we have available. They might not have been better than Chinese medicine at every point in our history, but they're certainly better than where we are now with that. um Because like for those of you who don't know, we have the fundamental book that we rely on pretty much for everything we do as the basis.
00:58:23
Speaker
yeah It doesn't have the details for everything, although it just some of the details for a ton of it anyway, is the Neijing, the internal classic. There was an external classic which treated external diseases. It's just not extant anymore. So they they there's references to it in other books, but no one it's been it's been lost unfortunately.
00:58:40
Speaker
So that's the one that had a lot of the surgical stuff, which is fascinating because the second half of the Nejing is acupuncture, which isn't even considered surgical then, even though they had the nine needles, which some of those needles are pretty knifey looking.
00:58:54
Speaker
For sure. I've heard described way more as ah tissue surgery than... Oh, yeah. Scalpily. I mean, look at those nine needle dents. You're like, ooh, spicy business in there. But like another great one that Western medicine really does shine at, and I love that they're so good at this because it just saves everybody time and money, is um a lot of parasites.
00:59:14
Speaker
Not all of them, but certainly the three biggies, right? Hookworm, roundworm, and... penworm Um, like, so I was treating a pinworm patient in New York. Her, her daughter brought back pinworm from a sleepover.
00:59:27
Speaker
Talk about like, man, I know kids are like little germ buckets, but if you're coming back with worms, man, think you gotta have like a confab or something. Um, yeah.
00:59:38
Speaker
But anyway, so she brought it back and the entire family got worms. Oh, that's exciting. Also, like, wash your hands or something. what What's going on here? Don't like pooping the guacamole.
00:59:50
Speaker
I don't know how it's happening. But anyway, so they all get it. And then I think there's four of them. And the whole family takes the Western meds and three of them are better in two weeks. That's what most people do. 90% of people, that's my rough estimation because just what I've seen in the clinic, 90% of people just get better.
01:00:07
Speaker
no side effects, no spleen damage. I've checked pulses, no spleen damage. Because Koreans take um an antiparasitic every like three months because they eat so many fresh greens. um It's just something they've learned to do. And I've never seen damage to their spleen. I've never seen any side effects. It doesn't change their pooping.
01:00:25
Speaker
They just don't have worms, um which is incredible. And then, so 90% of people, it works so much better than we do it. Now, if you've treated with Chinese medicine or you know practitioners or you yourself a practitioner, you know that we have so many methods. It's not just Wu Mei Wan, though that is a useful one. It's not just Chuan Lanza and Kuxian. It's not just Bing Long. We have so many different ways of treating it. um But especially that 10% where it doesn't work for the Western meds don't work, they really need the Chinese medicine way because there's no other way to to fix them. And so the the mother was the one who sought me out
01:00:59
Speaker
for um distant herbs treatment and stuff. And ah she sent me the tongue picture and it was like full on apple pie crust. you know like You're like, oh your spleen doesn't do anything. No wonder it's it's just, law you can't you have no more function in there. you know yeah um And it didn't take more than a month or two to get her worm free.
01:01:22
Speaker
And she knew it because ah they were they would constantly they would generally have regular sightings of worms. Anyway, we'll save the gruesome stuff for later. We'll we'll do worm podcast for those really...
01:01:35
Speaker
One of the nitty and gritty. i treated a ah one, a salmonella like last year. And that was one that I was like, oh, for sure. You're just going to go with the Western medicine stuff. When she found out it was salmonella, I'd already given her, i think I just gave her a single herb Huanglan to like get rid of Cause she was bleeding in the soul too. And the next day she stopped bleeding and then she ended up not taking the antibiotics because the doctor was stoked that she stopped bleeding. Cause apparently the antibiotics will make her shed more.
01:02:05
Speaker
We're making believe one. And I was like, oh, wow. You can't even. i was like, oh, well then yeah, definitely take our herbs then. Yeah. Yep. GI stuff too. There's just so much.
01:02:16
Speaker
um But yeah, like, like a good, yeah. Crohn's diverticulitis and stuff. Same thing. There's so much that could be done to change medicine there. Food poisoning. like, why do they not know about Hoshang and like food poisoning? Because it stops the thing immediately. Like that should be in every pharmacy over the counter accessible there is. Like should we do this together? Should we? Yeah. Yeah.
01:02:41
Speaker
ah Yes, we should. Because Western medicine doesn't have, they don't have anything to offer for food poisoning other than you've been vomiting and diarrhea, we're going to give you IV fluids and some Zofran for nausea, but there's nothing that treats the root of the problem. It's like, here, let's treat your symptoms, which again, it's super important, right? You don't want people to especially kiddos or really weak, deficient people to end up dehydrated but yeah there's not there's not a treatment that i know of in western medicine other than symptom management yeah i ah by the way i love the iv fluids um i had them once after i got lepto and it was just like oh i feel like my body like becoming right like as it's going through and nourishing you know why all my dry places freeing nutritive yeah and it's a really cool
01:03:33
Speaker
Immediately, yeah. That's what i think is a really cool trick is that because sometimes part of the background of some of this conversation has been like, oh, your spleen doesn't work or don't have fluids. And it's like to do in Chinese medicine, you have to build up the organ function first and then give you the thing and then watch as it slowly you know gives you your fluids throughout your whole body. Well, that can take months and the IV fluid happens in minutes. It's like that is cool.
01:03:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's a therapy that's actually extremely popular in western medicined in China, the Western medicine side of China, is just fluids. And so a lot of people like that actually when most, I'd say this is why, yeah, I probably had a funny view of China because of my my surrounding demographics. But the vast majority of Chinese people I knew, what they would do is if they got sick, it doesn't matter, cold, flu, whatever, they'd take Chinese herbs and they'd go to the hospital and get some fluids.
01:04:24
Speaker
So they that was like the two things they would do. so they basically used urgent care and emergency places as like IV bars. Yeah. Yeah. It was probably much cheaper. It's not $200 to $500. Wow. Really? What? Some of these bougie IV bars, it's you can pay anywhere from probably the cheapest one being like $125 up to shnikes.
01:04:50
Speaker
Like glutathione and all these fancy add-ons. Wow. I've had that done. I've had the, I had a friend who started her own business as a nurse doing mobile IV and she came and treated my husband and I, and we had actually gone mountain biking before that. So we're like, Oh, this will be great. We're probably dehydrated. We need this.
Herbal Treatments for Pets
01:05:09
Speaker
Um,
01:05:11
Speaker
neither of us felt any different. And it's probably because baseline, we're not dehydrated, we have enough fluids, we, there was no reason that we couldn't drink water, with the electrolytes, like it's, so if you're someone that can hydrate yourself, and that can keep nutrients in you probably don't need them. But if you're someone with food poisoning, or, you know, some other, some other condition where you're nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, all that stuff, then great. But otherwise I, I do kind of feel like the whole, like everyone needs it is a little bit of a racket because you you can, if you can keep down food and fluid and you can digest your nutrients, you're probably just going to pee out expensive urine, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. Just have a Dodd-Zow and ginger, right? The red egg and $2. How much does that cost? Yeah.
01:06:04
Speaker
Oh, severe? We'll give you buy show in there too then. Yeah, yeah. $3.
01:06:11
Speaker
It's funny. One of my um patients in Denver, her her and her husband were redoing their own carport and they just chose a really hot day to do it. Probably not the best choice there. But same thing. like She was really like basically dehydrated and she was prone to that um kind of woody thin. You know what I'm talking about? That kind of constitution. Me? Are you talking about me again? Maybe. There was no virtual finger pointing. ah But just took Xiaoyao Gansatang, like literally four scoops. was like oh That's what it feels to not be dehydrated in 20 minutes.
01:06:44
Speaker
So it's like, honestly, if you really need IVs, just take more Shia Yolganza Toh. And it tastes delicious. Yeah, it's just two herbs. It's just Jurgansaw and Baishow. you You know, usually equal parts. Sometimes you can double the Baishow, but it tastes great.
01:07:00
Speaker
So I don't think anybody minds that part of it, but it's so fast. Like if you're actually dehydrated, you'll feel it in minutes, 20 minutes max. And that's as long as you can process your own fluids. they Yeah. Or, oh, cause you're moving it with the Gwaijir. Are you saying you're probably good anyways?
01:07:16
Speaker
Oh, if you do full Guizhou tongue, but Xiao Yiu Gancao tongue just has the two. yep Oh, just Gancao, not Guizhou. But it's true. If they can't move it for themselves, you're absolutely right. That's when we use a version of Guizhou tongue, we just double the Bai Shao.
01:07:31
Speaker
And if you want to add sugar, then you add Yi tongue. I don't add the sugar. That's called Xiao Jin Zhong tongue. Surprise, surprise. I know, I know. It doesn't like a bar. sugar.
01:07:43
Speaker
That was one of the few things I like that RFK has ever said. He's like, this is a war on sugar. I was like, all right, all right. Keep talking there, big guy. Why are you drinking whole milk in your jeans and a cold plunge? What are you doing?
01:07:57
Speaker
That negates everything. No one can use that cold plunge now. Oh.
01:08:05
Speaker
oh I heard it from Nikki too when they flipped the food pyramid and they put like grains on the bottom and she's like, oh my God, this is what you've been saying. I didn't know you were Maha. And I was like, okay.
01:08:17
Speaker
i didn't put B-fun. Yeah. Like this just is the example of that Western medicine's lost its way a little bit. Not that these guys are right on everything. It's like there's true.
01:08:28
Speaker
Yeah. And they couldn't get it across. it So first of all, beef should not be on the top. you can put Protein should not be on the top. Fiber should be on the top. Why are people not eating vegetables? Put fiber where it needs to be.
01:08:39
Speaker
There's reason these people aren't pooping. Yeah. But it's not to say that protein's not key, but yeah. it's Anyway, it's like they got a few key things in there and then didn't know how to translate it or didn't – maybe they didn't know what they were actually doing, but like – Yeah. yeah <unk>s it So have you been treating a lot of constipation? Is that something we're going to see in this fire horse here more, Stephen?
01:09:03
Speaker
Oh yeah. To see, because there's going to be more fire on both ends. Uh, Yeah, yeah. The spectrum there. I was doing not GI tract, but more on the spectrum, yes. um Yeah, you usually, i think, would see more activity, more or heat.
01:09:17
Speaker
um So it could be constipation or it could be damped diarrhea, which is no fun. Sure. If you guys have ever had a ah dog with summer poop, you know damped diarrhea is not fun. Oh my God. but we We fixed my dogs, by the way. Yes. who to Two doses, two doses of herbs. And my little guy is pooping like a champ. Yeah. Nice. Yeah.
01:09:39
Speaker
ah To me, that's so fun too, because it's like dogs can't have placebos. No. They just react to what you do to them. Yeah. he's He's one of my best patients. I have like instant feedback. i When I scoop up his is his business from our walks, I'm like, things are looking better. Nice. Can't lie. Kidget is so fast. she gets She's been getting a little bit of bloody nose every once in a while. um And one of the few herbs that she'll eat in her food is shenzhen. And it's like, boom, it's just gone.
01:10:11
Speaker
You're like, oh, I can't tell if she, she goes, she goes pretty hard when she goes for, she'll, she'll play ball forever and like take, she, she does. It sounds like ah a catcher's mitt. If she, if it's coming right at her, she'll just like mouth face it, you know? And you're like, that's probably not the way to catch a ball. But, um so I'm not sure if she gets bonked in the nose or if she just, it's just bloody, but either way, she just knocks it out.
01:10:33
Speaker
Nice. I was going to we've just been giving, i had to give ah our our greyhound Dandan Ching and D-Lung. I think I told you guys this. And we just put it in our food. i was like, you eat gross stuff all the time. And D-Lung for people is... um is earthworms and Dandan Ching is bladder or bile-soaked, whatever, heavenly star.
01:10:56
Speaker
Tiananqing. Yes. oh Very a good translation of Tiananqing. Is it southern? Yes. Heavenly southern star.
Cultural Expansion and Podcast Closing
01:11:06
Speaker
Which, by the way, yeah so just to do the Chinese stuff, um this is why, of course, you don't like east versus west because you're like, bro, I'm in the Middle Kingdom.
01:11:16
Speaker
jungle yeah like i'm in the middle so this stuff is it's all west i don't know my geology sucks yeah i mean i think we should call africa the middle of isn't that where we all came from so like we're all northerners i guess right or whatever else I guess we have Hippocrates to blame, right? Because he would have been in the Rome region. Is that is that why? yeah For calling it Western medicine, you mean? Yes. i feel like I feel like Hippocrates might be the, he might be the center and that's where it came from.
01:11:51
Speaker
Yeah. Just a guess. Don't trust a hypocrite. That, I mean, democracy came from there. I mean, most of our kind of Western way of thinking, which which did expand out much faster.
01:12:05
Speaker
um Because, oh man, here's a little thought of mine. Because it was more inclusive of other cultures. That was part of the whole Greek thing. It was like in the Romans later too. They were like, believe whatever you want. Just pay us taxes. Yeah.
01:12:17
Speaker
um versus China, which was maybe a little bit more like do it our way or get the fuck out. um So that's kind of why I think the Greek and Roman expansion of their culture it has infiltrated so far and wide and so long after because they haven't been around for thousands of years.
01:12:33
Speaker
um Yeah, we use our stuff all the time. Awesome. It was awesome to get your feedback. I hope you come regularly to these because it's so helpful to get your perspective on stuff.
01:12:46
Speaker
And anyone who's in the Wheat Ridge area, you guys are lucky. you get ah ah you know You're in proximity to Alana, so you should go see her. oh yeah. Three Pillars. Thanks, Deanne. Three Pillars Health. So close.
01:12:59
Speaker
Yeah, so close. Three Pillars Holistic Health over in Wheat Ridge. Nice. Nice. Beautiful. I got all the parts, Alana, just a little...
01:13:11
Speaker
You did. you You did. And, you know, the word health is in there. So I better i better live up to that name after this podcast. Sweet, y'all. Well, thanks for joining us. Tune in in a couple weeks for the next episode.
01:13:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Take care, guys.