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Acupuncture for Your Good Health!
365 Plays1 year ago
Today's episode is about acupuncture, and I have a great guest, Deanna Stennett, a Georgia-licensed and Nationally Certified Acupuncturist. Because of various delays since this was recorded, Deanna's Ellijay, GA, location has very recently changed. Her Ellijay location is now at the Natural Wellness Center on Kiker Street in Ellijay.
Her website URL is www.acupunctureinnorthgeorgia.com , but it may not yet have the correct Ellijay, GA address!
Also, please be aware that the interview portion of this episode was recorded using different equipment and in different surroundings than usual (after service in our Unitarian Universalist Church), so you will notice a difference in audio quality and background noise. I have tried my best to minimize this, but I ask your forgiveness and hope you will find the information in this episode interesting anyway!
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Transcript
Introduction to Dr. Anthony Burton and Holistic Health
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcast. The full spectrum holistic health podcast is all about holistic health, what it is, various holistic and alternative health therapies and practices, and how those may help you to be a healthier person. I want to thank you for choosing to listen today. We know there are many podcasts out there for you to choose from, but I'm glad you are here.
00:00:30
Speaker
I'm host for the podcast, Dr. Anthony Burton. I'm a reggae master, EFT therapist, meditation teacher, sound therapist, and a shamanic practitioner. My personal goal is to help people be healthier in mind, body, and spirit. And that's why I'm here. A large part of what I do is educational in nature because so many people are unaware of the power and efficacy of various holistic and alternative therapies.
00:01:00
Speaker
In these podcast episodes, you will hear information that will inform you, perhaps enlighten you and help energize and balance you. Of course, it won't always be simply my opinions and ideas. Occasionally I will be interviewing knowledgeable and interesting guests from a variety of areas of holistic, complimentary, and even allopathic health practices. So kick back, relax, open your mind and listen.
Guest Introduction: Diana Stennett
00:01:31
Speaker
Spectrum Holistic Health is a complimentary health and wellness business located in Northwest Georgia, USA. Check out the website at www.spectrum-holistic.com for more information. My interview guest for this episode is Diana Stennett, a longtime acupuncturist and energy worker.
00:01:56
Speaker
While Dee also works in reiki and shamanic healing, the specific topic for this episode is her work in acupuncture. Deanna, or Dee Stennett, is a Georgia-licensed acupuncturist, and she's nationally certified as well. Prior to living in Georgia, Deanna lived in Maryland for 27 years, where she had a private practice while teaching at Maryland University of Integrative Health, MUIH, in the acupuncture department for 20 of those years.
00:02:24
Speaker
She received her master's degree in transformative leadership and social change from MUIH as well. Since moving to Georgia, Ms. Dennett has been practicing in Ellijay and Blairsville. As someone who has practiced acupuncture for over 30 years, Deanna has learned a great deal about the power of acupuncture in balancing the mind, body, and spirit.
00:02:48
Speaker
Diana Stennett has also authored a book called Poetry of the Body, stories about acupuncture points, where she shares shamanic journeys to the spirits of the points, stories of personal healing and the healing of her patients and how the seasons affect our balance and harmony. The book is written for the layperson and is available on Amazon. This interview was conducted earlier in a different environment and with different equipment. So you will notice a difference in the acoustic quality, but now,
00:03:18
Speaker
Here's the interview with D.
Diana Stennett's Journey and Impact of Acupuncture
00:03:21
Speaker
Uh, hi there D and welcome to the full spectrum holistic health podcast. Thank you for being here. My pleasure. Now you're, you do a number of different, uh, therapies, therapeutic modes. But one of the things that I wanted to talk about today really is the acupuncture. How long have you been practicing acupuncture and where did you study it?
00:03:44
Speaker
Well, I've been practicing for 30 years this year, and I studied at a school that was called the Worsley Institute of Classical Acupuncture. It's now known as the Academy for Vibellum and Acupuncture, and it's in Gainesville, Florida. So how long did it take you to learn acupuncture? The program was three and a half years. So I believe it came to something like 2,700 hours.
00:04:13
Speaker
And that included a whole year of internship where I was treating patients under the supervision of teachers as well. So like a residency. Yeah. Yeah. So is there licensing or certification involved? Yes. And most states have their own acupuncture board and you have to check with each individual state. There's also a national certification and many of the states require the national certification as well.
00:04:43
Speaker
And what's required here in Georgia where you practice? Georgia is a licensure through the medical board and the national certification. Oh, you have to recertify every so often or re-license? We have to renew our license about every two years and then we have to do 40 continuing education units in those two years. Oh, like CEUs for a teacher or a nurse or anything like that. Yeah.
00:05:10
Speaker
What was the compelling reason that you decided to study acupuncture? Well, many years ago, I lived in California. My first husband got MS and we tried everything. And one day when I was taking my now 37 year old daughter to preschool,
00:05:31
Speaker
when one of the moms there said have you tried acupuncture and so we tried acupuncture from that and I saw him on his first treatment go from being completely paralyzed on his left side to the next morning he was in remission and you couldn't tell he had it. That's amazing. It was and that sold me so I started getting treatment too
00:05:55
Speaker
And then later when we split up, I had been a stay home mom and I had to go back to school for something. So I figured why not study something that's helped me so much and that I love so much so I can help others. Oh, that's a good reasoning to me. You know, my, my late father-in-law had a lot of back pain and, um, he went and had acupuncture for that. And it was a great help to him. They lived up in Wisconsin.
Understanding Acupuncture: Methods and Effects
00:06:24
Speaker
You know, a lot of people who listen to the podcast may or may not know exactly what acupuncture is and what it's about. So can you kind of give us a brief rundown on what acupuncture really is? In a nutshell, you have a circulatory system of energy, just like your blood circulatory system. And in fact, the energy system follows the blood and each pathway connects with an organ and then connects with the next pathway.
00:06:54
Speaker
And as long as that energy's flowing smoothly, the organs are healthy and the person is healthy. But anything can happen to make that energy change its normal flow. So trauma can make it stop or get stuck, or you could be exposed to elements that make it either speed up or slow down. And so what the needles do, they access this energy along
00:07:20
Speaker
the pathways to either help it speed up, slow down, or unblock it so that it flows smoothly again. And so treatment doesn't actually cause someone to get better. It helps the body do what it does normally, and that's healed. Oh, okay. Well, now those pathways, I know, correct me if I'm wrong, the pathways in the West, we call them the meridians. I'm sure there's a Chinese word for them too, but meridians, right?
00:07:49
Speaker
Yes, that's what the pathways are called, the meridians or channels. And it's electrical magnetic energy, just like light. So all those times that we've been told that we're light beams, we really are. We really are, yeah. Well now, you place needles? Needles, and the needles are stainless steel.
00:08:13
Speaker
Think of it from an electronics point of view. The needles conduct the energy and help it to speed up, slow down, or become unblocked. Okay. So it has needles. Does it hurt? Sometimes. I mean, I'm going to be honest. Okay. You know, I, I'd like to throttle the person who said that all acupuncture is painless because it's not. Um, but it's just a momentary sensation.
00:08:37
Speaker
Now, the actual points are so tiny, they're like the size of the tip of the needle. So the anatomical description gets me to the area, but I have to feel for that energy to get the exact point. If I don't get it, you don't feel the needle. When I get it, then you feel the shear, the energy reacting to the steel. It's like the, it'll grab it. Like a magnet?
00:09:06
Speaker
like a magnet. And so sometimes that grabbing has like a dull ache or a sharp electrical feeling or anything in between. It lasts like a few seconds and then it's gone.
00:09:19
Speaker
Well, as an energy worker myself, I know that the process of healing is not always pleasant. Right. Because sometimes you go through a healing process and the actual healing process may cause discomfort. I know that when I tell people, give people their first Reiki treatment, I say, look, this is the first time you've had Reiki. Make sure you drink plenty of water and you're going to be detoxing a little bit. And you may feel kind of crummy for 24 hours because
00:09:48
Speaker
you're getting rid of that stuff. Right. Acupuncture can do that too. There's lots of things that can happen because we're not just physical bodies, but we're bodies, minds and spirits. So, and that includes the emotion. So in that detoxing that can come from acupuncture,
00:10:06
Speaker
You might have emotional stuff that comes up. You might have weird dreams. You might have a reoccurrence of symptoms. And they call that in Chinese medical theory, the law of cure. And that's when symptoms reoccur that you've had in the past, maybe something you haven't had for 50 years, you know, comes back and it'll come back for
00:10:29
Speaker
24 to 48 hours and then go away. That's just it clearing is all it is. So it's like a healing crisis. Exactly. What I've called pretty cold before. Yeah.
Comparing Medical Philosophies: Western vs. Chinese
00:10:39
Speaker
Well, what can acupuncture do for someone? I mean, what kind of illnesses or conditions is acupuncture used to treat? There's so many, I couldn't list them all. Most, most of the, um, unfortunately Western culture thinks that it's just for pain and that's why I
00:10:57
Speaker
If you find an insurance company that covers acupuncture, you can only bill for pain. But if you think about what happens when you go out of balance inside yourself, anything can happen. It can be emotional depression. It could be pain. It could be a physical disease that comes on.
00:11:17
Speaker
And if acupuncture is done the way it was designed in China thousands of years ago, you'd start getting it long before you got any symptoms just to maintain your balance and health. And in fact, in ancient China, the acupuncturists only got paid when their patients were well. If their patients got sick, it was assumed they weren't doing their job right.
00:11:40
Speaker
But basically in America, what I would say, if you can name it, acupuncture can probably help it. Okay. Yeah, I know that in Western cultures, in traditional Chinese medicine, they're very different in traditional Chinese medicine and also in Ayurvedic medicine and other traditional forms of medicine.
00:12:03
Speaker
Prevention is the word. You keep it from happening. Whereas in Western medicine, we have tended to say, okay, we're going to take a mechanistic approach to this and we're going to treat the symptom rather than preventing the problem from occurring in the first place.
00:12:19
Speaker
Exactly. I've heard it said that Western medicine is really a sick care system, not a well-care system. Yeah, that's right. You're not giving good health. You're making money for pharmaceutical companies, but maybe I shouldn't go there. Well, I don't want to sound like I'm opposed to Western medicine at all. In fact, I think that acupuncture is complementary, not alternative. Agreed. So I most of the time never tell patients to
00:12:48
Speaker
stop taking their medications or stop seeing their doctors. In fact, I asked, how can I help support you in what you're doing?
00:12:55
Speaker
I agree and I have on my own website, I have a statement that we don't condone or ask you to just give up your physician or stop taking medicine. You always check with your physician first. Uh, and it's, that's just the smartest thing, the best thing to do. Now somebody asked me, I know they asked me about Reiki all the time. They say, Oh, can it, can Reiki cure this or that? Uh, uh, does it heal or is it an eighth dealing? What does it do? So.
00:13:24
Speaker
How do you feel about acupuncture and what it does? Acupuncture doesn't cure or heal. Acupuncture puts the body back in balance so that your body can feel or cure. Right, yeah, I hear that. And if you think about it, you know, we're designed to heal. The minute you cut yourself, all these white blood cells immediately go to the site and begin healing. Or if you get exposed to a pathogen, you start making antibodies. That's the nature of who we are. We're supposed to heal.
00:13:54
Speaker
And if we don't heal from something, that means there's a blockage somewhere, or the energy's moving too fast or too slow, and so it just needs to be balanced. Yeah, I agree with you there. I always tell people that the body, in conjunction with nature, the universe, heals itself. All that I do is try to provide ways to help aid it along that way. So again, complementary medicine, not alternative medicine.
00:14:24
Speaker
So how long is a typical acupuncture session? And for that matter, how many sessions would someone need? So now I'm 64 years old and I've been getting acupuncture since I was 31. So I believe it's part of my health maintenance is how I look at it. I get treated like once a month or once every six weeks. In the beginning, I tell people, if you want to see some results, you need to come weekly.
00:14:52
Speaker
And you need to do it for at least six sessions for you to see some results. Once we start seeing results, then we start to spread it out. And my goal is always to get someone where they come four or five times a year to maintain their health. A session the first time is an hour and a half. I do a physical exam. I talk about the medical history and then I give them their first treatment. Follow-up treatments are about 45 minutes to an hour.
00:15:20
Speaker
And like I said, I tell people, you know, right away, you need to come weekly if you want to see results. Yeah. It's kind of like going to the gym. You can go to the gym and work out and get yourself all tired and sweaty and say, boy, I did a lot. If you never go back to the gym, you're not going to develop that muscle. You're just going to be tired and sweaty that one time. I've had a number of people over the years that have come one or two times and said it didn't work for me and stopped coming.
00:15:48
Speaker
And, you know, unfortunately, what they do is they tell other people it didn't work. And that's not true. It's just they didn't do it correctly. Yeah. Well, you know, in my experience, the longer the problem has existed, usually the more time it takes to get it fixed. I mean, if it's an acute thing that just happened, oh, well, that's usually a shorter period of time. But if you've got an ongoing issue,
00:16:14
Speaker
Right. It takes more. I mean, you don't just immediately fix a thing that's been going on for years. True. Or months. And many of my teachers used to say, it takes one week of treatment for every year you've had the problem. That's a good rule of thumb there. Yeah. And the other thing is you can't have too much, actually. I'm sure. I mean, if you get it done, you know, every other day for a while, it's not going to harm you in any way.
00:16:42
Speaker
But if you can wait too long, cause if you let the symptoms all come back in between, then it's an effect starting over again. Yeah, I can see that. Well, probably some people are going to say, why, you know, going every, every week I could get pricey.
Cost, Coverage, and Value of Acupuncture
00:17:00
Speaker
So is acupuncture expensive? Um,
00:17:03
Speaker
or maybe I should say is good health expenses. Exactly. Right. Exactly. I mean, people spend money on all kinds of stuff that's outrageous. You know, they, they would spend more money on their car than they would on themselves, you know, is changing your oil on a regular basis. Is that necessary? I think it is. Yeah. So I say the same thing, you know, is, is keeping up your,
00:17:30
Speaker
health necessary? It depends. Do you want to live long? Do you want to be in good health? Do you want to feel good? It's totally up to the person. I don't say I don't think it's extremely pricey. I think it it's like around the same prices, massages and things like that. And some insurances cover it. Georgia is not a great state for insurance coverage, though. Maryland when I was there,
00:18:00
Speaker
probably 90% of my patients were insurance patients. Here there's a few that cover it and it's only under certain conditions and so at this point what I do is give someone a super bill with all the codes on it so if their insurance covers it they can file for reimbursement. Oh that's a good idea. I do offer
00:18:23
Speaker
20% off for law enforcement, nurses, first responders, um, military. Yeah. That's a good idea. It's very good because those people, they go through a lot and sometimes I'm assuming that acupuncture could be used to treat PTSD as well. Oh yes. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good thing. Yeah. It is.
00:18:47
Speaker
how, okay, you've talked a little bit about how long it takes to see results from acupuncture.
Success Stories and Spiritual Exploration in Acupuncture
00:18:52
Speaker
And that really, that's kind of a, I couldn't say how long does it take because it's a case by case basis. But what can people expect in general from an acupuncture session? Well, the first session people usually feel light, they feel relaxed, but like I said, things can come back up so they could have a healing crisis too in between. Um,
00:19:16
Speaker
Usually it takes four to six treatments before they're noticing anything at all with their symptoms. And if they come back and say, I had three days of no pain or three days of this gone, then we know it's working. Yeah. So we need to keep going on it. That's a good idea. Yeah. Well, do you have any special success stories to share without violating anyone's privacy?
00:19:43
Speaker
I do a lot with allergies, actually eliminating allergies.
00:19:50
Speaker
And I had one young girl, she was 13, out ready to start high school. And she'd spent her life with all these food allergies. Whenever they went out to dinner, her family had to order special things. And her request was, I want to find something that would make me normal when I go into high school. Oh yeah, because high school is such a traumatic time anyhow for a lot of kids, you know. Exactly. And feeling normal is so important.
00:20:17
Speaker
If you don't feel, you already feel abnormal when you're high school. And if all the kids go out for pizza and she can eat what they're eating, you know, then she makes her stand out more. So, um, the allergy treatment takes 15 treatments to actually work.
00:20:34
Speaker
And she had all these blood tests, even showing anaphylaxis for some of the allergies. And after her 15 treatments, she went and had blood tests again and showed no allergies at all. That's fantastic. And she was able to be a normal teenager in high school. And I know it's amazing. That's amazing. It really is.
00:20:57
Speaker
I'm sure that it made a big impact on her emotionally as well as physically because she didn't feel like she was standing out in a negative way from everybody else. Another one I love to tell is this was years ago. This woman had interstitial cystitis and so the inside of her bladder did not make the lining that prevents infection.
00:21:21
Speaker
So she had to take an antibiotic every single day of her life. And this had been going on for 10 years. That just isn't good for your health at all anyway. Right. And then once a month she had to go to this place where they injected some kind of a sticky substance up in her bladder. Now that costs their insurance company $6,000 a month to do. She started coming to me for acupuncture within six months. She was off of the antibiotics and within a year she did not need to go in for those things.
00:21:51
Speaker
And she was on a maintenance level of once a month with me. And back then the price of acupuncture was $60. Her insurance wouldn't pay $60, but they were willing to pay $6,000 for the other. That is the typical American slash Western way of dealing with things. We will pay for, we'll pay for treating symptoms, but we don't want to worry about keeping someone healthy. Exactly. Yeah. So it's so frustrating sometimes. I know what you're saying.
00:22:16
Speaker
Yeah, I see you felt like she had a miracle on life is how she felt. Yeah, I'm sure she did. I'm sure she appreciated your help very much. I want to thank you for being here with me today. Can you give me the name and location of your practice? Yeah, more than one office by the way. So I'm called acupuncture in North Georgia and my website is acupuncture in North Georgia calm. Okay, all one word.
00:22:44
Speaker
all one word. I have an office in Ella J. It's right at the corner of Maddox and Russell next door to the Dollar General and the Laundry Mac. Great landmarks. And I work inside Heaven Sent Massage there. And then I also have an office in Blairsville and that's off of Tate Road. It's pretty rural.
00:23:08
Speaker
And the name of the business I work in there is called Inner Awakenings. Oh, okay. All right. What kind of hours do you have there in those places? 10 to 6 and on Tuesday and Thursday in L.A.J. and 10 to 6 in Glaresville on Wednesdays. Wednesdays, okay. Any contact information you want to give or would that be on your website?
00:23:32
Speaker
My contact information is on my website, but if you want my phone number, it's 410-961-9033. And also I have a book I wrote called Poetry of the Body.
00:23:47
Speaker
stories about acupuncture points, and it's written for the lay person. You see, each point in the body is looked at from a spiritual point of view and has a name that talks a little bit about what it does. So for instance, this one right here on the side of my leg, it's called Abundance Splendor. And so when I use that point on somebody, the spirit of them begins to see abundance and splendor all around them. And so an attitude
00:24:15
Speaker
of gratitude comes up for them. And so all of the points can be used that way as well. And so this book is a real fun book, easy read, and it talks about a number of points I've chosen and how they fit like that. Well, that's great. I haven't read that yet, but I'm going to have to put it on my reading list. Okay. Okay. All right. Again, thank you for being here. I appreciate your time and your willingness to be interviewed here from my podcast. My pleasure. Thank you very much.
00:24:45
Speaker
Thank you. I want to thank you for being here and listening to the podcast today. I hope it's been interesting and informative and thought provoking. If you did find it interesting, please be sure to return for another episode and tell your friends about it too. I appreciate if you do that, you can share directly from most podcast platforms and subscribing to the podcast would be great. If you want to tell me you liked the show,
00:25:15
Speaker
or that you hated it, that you agree or disagree with me or anything else really, go for it. Just leave a message for me on your podcast platform. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and keep an open mind. Namaste.