The Needle and Leaf, 148 Main Street Suite G, Seal Beach, CA (2025)

02/11/2025

Heh

With what might be a loss in my professional life, I’ve decided to remove what little filter I have left.

Yes, I’ve read the cultural commentary on the halftime show, SO controversial it MAY have been heard in SPACE (sarcasm).

We have fun though, and my patients dunk on me too thank god 👹😍 it’s fun to be able to talk to people about what they can do for an easier physical experience, lord knows I have tried it all, treated a lot of it, and gone to school for a thousand effing years lol

02/06/2025

I’m one of the estimated 250k combat veterans who are dealing with a subset of Gulf War Syndrome/Illness. This was applied to soldiers who were part of Operation Iraqi Freedom- I was part of 3ID during the initial invasion, and I was in the area for about 18 months total.

Once my diagnosis was firmed up at the VA, I was able to conceptualize this better to make decisions. These are basically permanent changes to the nervous and immune systems- they are heavily sensitized to input, so there’s an exaggerated reaction. I hang around Stage 3 Fibro and Stage 2 CFS, but it can be more or less manageable depending on the day and the demands of the day. It’s annoying and difficult, and believe me when I say, I totally understand my patients.

In TCM, this shows as pretty intense Kd Yang Xu. It includes Liver Qi Constraint, a level of Bi (“bee”) Syndrome, and Heart Yin Xu- both for me and for patients I treat with this. I’ve found the only things that really work are acupuncture, KD yang tonics in appropriate formulas, and occasional microdosing mushrooms. Medications are generally pretty depleting.

Supplements and other strategies (avoidance, pacing, etc) work as a base to arrest it getting worse.

So, there have to be some changes in life going forward. I’d prefer to keep getting out of bed every day, and people even more well versed in large populations of this stuff have indicated it’s relapsing-remitting, so I do hope for a little more ability back. I have tried everything I know to reverse it, and that’s not happening.

01/30/2025

Check out the predictions in the Linktree in bio. Marlyna Los has a free BaiZi chart, so you can see the entire thing.

I personally like Paulynne Cheng- I went deeper in her YouTube- I am a Water Dog Year. And her predictions are creepy accurate for my year in 2025.

01/09/2025

I think a lot of outside forces are pushing an agenda online, and it bugs me a bit because this is a tragedy on a massive scale- it feels like people are using tragedy to capture attention of others. Health, policy, and environment are inextricably linked. Let’s just all admit that. One doesn’t exist without the other, especially in a place that’s as densely populated as LA county.

Let’s talk about water in LA. This is one of my special little hobbies.

Here’s a little fun fact about rainfall in LA: The Santa Ana Valley Water Authority has been doing a cloud seeding program for the past couple years. All the links and meeting notes are in the Linktree. And wouldn’t you know it, this program was suspended this year. Interesting, right?

The last cloud seeding program happened in April 2024. The burn scars were determined to be a mudslide risk, so the program was suspended this year, and we haven’t had rainfall in any meaningful way since.

So, we have overgrowth of brush from heavy rainfall in previous years, Santa Ana Winds that feel like Downslope winds in the Rockies, decisions about fire funding and reservoirs made by officials in context of previous years of heavy rainfall, a rainfall season that’s been cancelled, and a super populated area.

I would ASSUME that this is also the information insurance companies might use in regression analysis.

I’ve seen people bang on about conspiracies and stuff, but is it a conspiracy? Or is it a convergence of factors? People believe what they want to, and everyone uses these words that provide a gut response.

This is awful, so let’s focus on providing care to our neighbors. I know Right Mealz in Long Beach is driving up there to give donations, so that’s a good place to start locally.

Then, maybe consider that nothing comes from “out of the blue;” maybe we are just generally distracted, tired, and unwilling to look at influential factors. We can’t really disconnect and live our own lives here- we are too attached to local policy, governance, environment, healthcare and housing. Don’t let anyone leverage that to create more discord.

12/17/2024

Nah. Unless?

Ai Ye (TCM mugwort) is used for so many things this time of year. We can burn it topically, “fumigating” acupuncture points, we can use essential oil, we can eat it, we can use it as a foot bath, as a body oil, all types of ways. It’s sort of like food for the acupuncture points; emitting long- middle- and short- length infrared waves- kind of like the first red light therapy. It’s helpful in cases like fibromyalgia, because of the intense way it interacts with superficial tissue and T lymphocytes.

It’s warming and drying, and please don’t use it if you are actively pregnant. It can cause uterine contractions, so there can be uses towards the end of pregnancy, but ask your acupuncturist.

Here at Needle and Leaf I use it mostly for conditions that involve pain when it gets cold, or pain that’s pretty chronic. Painful me**es respond beautifully and so do fertility cases for both sexes. Chemotherapy side effects also respond well.

People come in and say it smells like w**d haha sigh and then I say, “You must get bad w**d, that should be a crime,” and the we both laugh. It’s nice.

There are also infrared moxa pens. It’s pretty good so I might get some for to use here in the next month, but in Needle and Leaf I’m happy enough to just send people home with some moxa cones.

12/17/2024

Down the outside
Up the inside

Ask your acupuncturist 🫶
These wild nights out are getting allllll the stomachs

12/16/2024

Okeeee

Here’s the basic talk I usually give patients when they are concerned about autoimmunity. I’ve seen it a bunch in practice and there are also a lot of ways to change the immune response.

Most people are SUBCLINICAL (meaning few indications on panels) for years before they get the full expression of a diagnosable condition(including Celiac, MS, SLE, Type 1 Diabetes, Graves, Hashimoto’s, RA, Sjogren Syndrome, Reactive Arthritis, IBD, and more). I am also personally positive on my ANA; as are many people with chronic pain issues.

I can order a variety of tests here to help someone understand why and how this looks chemically; these include cortisol tests, cortisol clearance tests, nutrient testing, and hormone testing using blood or dried urine metabolites. I don’t mind either way.

There’s a link to a functional medicine elimination diet protocol in the bio, so that’s usually the next step. I’d prefer to keep whatever you aren’t sensitive to in the diet rather than restrict. Your biome starts to change within 24 hours of dietary change.

When people p**s off their body less, there’s also easier hormonal transition- including getting pregnant, staying pregnant, giving birth, recovering from pregnancy, and having easier cycles. Men also have better semen analyses.

12/03/2024

You guys and your full shoulder tears🔥
I thought the colors were pretty so I snapped an incomplete treatment above.

Well, more about pain and injury, I suppose. The trouble with painkillers and, for example, injections that suppress pain from inflammation, is that

1. They can have unintended side effects and actually cause tendon rupture. Tendinitis can be a symptom of an early or partial rupture of a tendon, then cortisone shots happen which can compromise tendon integrity, the person goes out and does previous activity, and then there’s a full tear. This has been researched and noted at least since 1977. “Shoulder mush” is a phrase I think about a lot.

2. Behavioral habits rarely change if the person can’t feel discomfort, and the they wind up putting off PT or mobility training until it’s an emergency, then services are hard to find. Don’t make health decisions out of desperation if you can help it.

These injuries and chronic pain issues don’t happen in a vacuum where one patient experiences it at one time. The more degradation the tendons and ligaments get, the more likely it is to have a catastrophic injury requiring surgery to continue life activities.

3. I get on a deep personal level how chronic pain can destroy your life. Take drugs if it prevents further harm to your body and mind, BUT YOU HAVE TO SUPPLEMENT THESE DRUGS WITH ADDITIONAL NUTRITION TO HAVE THEM KEEP WORKING properly and to avoid side effects. You can literally Google this with the supercomputer in your pocket, but we can talk about it more.

4. USE OTHER MODALITIES BESIDES INJECTIONS AND PAINKILLERS. These will change the contents of your meat bag, but won’t change the electrical system, feedback mechanisms, or switching stations of your electric meat bag. So for example, we would use topicals and electro acupuncture in these cases. Use your body to fix your body.

Taking gelatin powder however you get it in seems to work well; in TCM we frequently use it (e Jiao) to stop cough, “nourish blood” (fix soft tissue), stop bleeding, and cool people down a bit. Collagen isn’t really enough, but people don’t like using gelatin powder (contd)

PMID 277411145, 919538, 27852613

11/27/2024

I chose violence, but hopefully in a helpful way.
Sorry about the cranberry sauce 🦃

If you’ve lived in the US for more than 6 months now, your gut is probably changed some. Industrial food production and health are not good bedfellows, so what we see here is a result of shelf-stable foods that are more expensive than the ingredients, now.

Anyway, here’s Wonderwall

Maybe bring a homemade dish. Look for organic labels,

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0896841107001400

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/is-canola-oil-healthy -it-is

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6409436/ #:~:text=Altogether%2C%20these%20findings%20show%20that,the%20development%20of%20intestinal%20inflammation.

https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-077310 #:~:text=Conclusions%20Greater%20exposure%20to%20ultra,mental%20disorder%2C%20and%20mortality%20outcomes.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7750273/ #:~:text=Evidence%20is%20growing%20that%20highly,capable%20of%20triggering%20addictive%20processes.

https://www.hartfordhospital.org/about-hh/news-center/news-detail?articleId=27851&publicid=46 #:~:text=Weight%20gain%20abetted%20by%20high,visceral%20fat%20around%20your%20organs.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/why-high-fructose-corn-syrup-is-bad #:~:text=High%2Dfructose%20corn%20syrup%20(HFCS)%20is%20an%20artificial%20sugar,disease%20(%203%20%2C%204%20).

11/27/2024

A small thread for the week on the Traditional Chinese Medicine situation of Food Stagnation 🍟🍕🌯🥪

It changes, but most people have some degree of it all the time. In a damp, cold environment, this will feel sluggish and add to an already overstressed body.

The function of the digestion can’t be improved with just supplements; supplements are highly processed food-like items. We use acupuncture, pressed herbs, and lifestyle change to restore function. Something like activated charcoal won’t fix the issue, and it can, in fact, ramp up intestinal agitation.

11/25/2024

This is a strange concept to most people.

If something hurts for more than about 2 weeks, your pain is deeper than a structural/mechanical issue usually.

Many people have structural issues (“bone-on-bone” and “the disc is herniated” are the most common phrases I hear) after age 45 or so. “I have a pinched nerve,” is another one I hear a lot.

These issues are common and frequent in the population at large. Not everyone has pain in population samples. What is the determining factor here?

Pain, especially long term pain, needs a multivariant approach INCLUDING
-Acupuncture to change local function of tissues in a handful of ways and nerve firing
-MOVEMENT to change what aggravates it
-DIETARY CHANGE because your inflammation isn’t helping and you have no basic building blocks of healthy tissue
-HERBAL FORMULAS to change your electric meat bag
-A SAFE ENVIRONMENT to engage your nervous system

TYPICALLY, people try one thing at a time and fail, or they will try random stuff scattershot. This is annoying to watch. They become TCM Blood Deficient over time and discouraged because they don’t build strategies.

We will get into it this week.

11/21/2024

Flavors of the week

Just mixing it up with the pathogens ayyyyy

The Needle and Leaf

02/11/2025

02/06/2025

01/30/2025

01/09/2025

12/17/2024

12/17/2024

12/16/2024

12/03/2024

11/27/2024

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11/25/2024

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