Blog Post – California Center for Conscious Acupuncture

November Newsletter

admin — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 23:42:34 +0000

It has certainly been more than a minute since my last communiqué, since before heading to China in April. I’d actually like to make this a kind of annual excursion, the crux being the acquisition of pu-ers in Yunnan.

Let us know if you have an interest in joining us. Here’s a shot of a bicycle taxi-driver in Beijing with a USC cap:

January New Year’s Edition

admin — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 23:38:46 +0000

Happy New Year! Well, technically we all know that the New Year actually begins this year on the 31st. It will be the year of the Fire Horse. As a celebration for the New Year, we’ll be a night out celebration at Feng Mao, a simply fabulous lamb kabob restaurant Chinese style. It will be on the 25th of January around 7:30ish. Budget about $40 and contact me before the 23rd if you’re interested in attending, so that I may reserve space.

Wind Horse Edition

admin — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 23:36:11 +0000

Gentle Reader {subtag:name}

We hope your year has gotten off on the right foot. In case you haven’t done so, take a look at the CCCA’s “snazzilicified” website. There’s lots of information organized around conditions and therapies. Just this week, I put up a few articles on cupping, so be sure to check it out.

On other news, from now till Valentine’s Day, the CCCA is offering 25% discount on weight loss products and services. This includes items from green coffee extract to customized formulas and treatment plans. Over the next few weeks, be on the lookout for communiqués that explain Chinese medicine’s uniquely holistic approach to the matter of weight. Even though vanity may be the motivating factor for losing weight, it often points to more serious physiological issues. See the article below for further illustration.

Reminder: We’ll be welcoming the year of the Wind Horse by gathering the 25th, next Saturday, at Feng Mao, 3091 W. Olympic, around 7:30. The reviews on Yelp are sterling, definitely reminds me of Beijing. Feng Mao is a lamb kabob house, also with a fabulous array of authentic Chinese dishes. There’s a lily-bulb and asparagus dish which has silenced many a skeptic. Contact us by Thursday to have a spot reserved or just show up.

Here’s a gratuitous shot of a lamb shank ordered from a Uighur restaurant in Beijing.

February Edition

admin — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 23:31:17 +0000

Howdy! I hope you’ve found the communiques I issued around weight loss instructive. Weight imbalance is a clinical issue which can lead to a range of deeper health problems. In nterestesting case arose recently regarding the diabetes-inducing side-effects of a popularly prescribed medication which is a known hormone disruptor. In short, read your medication labels or consult reliable sources if you are taking bio-pharma medications.

Anyway, there are still a few days left to the weight loss special. I do have a handful of patients whom I treat across the country through herbs and exercise advise, so distance is no obstacle.

Clinic On Location

All About Me Boutique, Sunday Feb 23rd, 5493 Blanco Way, Culver City, 90230.
Join Us for the ultimate Day Out, where You are the focus. We will have a variety of vendors from fashion to wellness, all to promote beauty from the inside and out, for women and men. Here’s just a sample of who’ll be there…

Que Dulce Bath & Body Treats
Premier Designs Jewelry
L.A. Gold Parties
Arbonne
Take Shape for Life: Body Fitness by Christian Zaky
Doc G Back Fitness
California Community Center for Acupuncture
Melt Massage

Yours truly will be present offering microcurrent ear treatments for stress and pain relief. Bring your friends to sip, shop & socialize. There will be complementary massages, complementary appetizers and (drum roll) complementary coctails. See the attachment.

Call (310) 994-3151 for details.

Acugraph and Evidence-Based Acupuncture

Digital Meridian Imaging the New Wave of Validating Tradition. Digital Meridian Imaging is a translation medium: taking the arcane language of the Chinese medical classics and putting it into illustrative graphs that are meaningful to the “modern” mind.

One patient asked whether I found the acugraph truly useful, to which I replied yes. Even though the overwhelming benefit is educational, showing patients exactly how the body is performing, it has defintely expanded my point repertoire and allowed me to assess energy patterns in a much broader context.

To learn more about the Acugraph system, just click the link below to watch the video on the CCCA website.

Video

Something for Sunday?

admin — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 23:24:51 +0000

Clinic On Location

Que Dulce Bath & Body Treats
Premier Designs Jewelry
L.A. Gold Parties
Arbonne
Take Shape for Life: Body Fitness by Christian Zaky
Doc G Back Fitness
California Community Center for Acupuncture
Melt Massage

Call (310) 994-3151 for details.

Head’s Up & About Deficiency Syndromes

admin — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 23:17:43 +0000

Quick reminder about the event today (23 Feb) “Besos Boutique” in Culver City from1-5 pm, 5493 Blanco Way. See the flier attached. If you want to gander the wonders of the Acugraph, then I encourage you to come out for a complimentary screening.

Oh, a heads up on a tea journey I’ll be hosting on the 12th of April. Available for only 8 tea enthusiasts and featuring three types of Yunnan tea, all pu’er but of remarkably different nature and appeal. More details next month, but you can always call to reserve your spot(s) pronto by picking up the phone and calling to reserve your spot.

Eflex: Use It…

admin — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 23:14:20 +0000

As the end of March draws nigh, your health card benefits account, Eflex, will be running out as well. It’s a simple yet urgent matter of “use it or lose it!”

The good news is that CCCA can help, not just in terms of preventing you from throwing good money away, but in addressing relevant health concerns, like weight, sleep, and energy. Yep. Energy and sleep are huge when it comes to over all health, and get this… we use time-tested natural means to do it, so you don’t have the lurking anxiety about side-effects. Is 2000 years of recorded medical history time-tested enough for you?

Want to be a more productive and valuable part of your workplace? Then prime the engine through the proven approach of Chinese medicine. Remember CCCA provides a pointed approach to the whole person.

Science Meets Tradition

See the Qi with Acugraph. Similar to the EKG that reads the electrical activity of the heart, the Acugraph measures the electrical activity of the various organs of the body. See exactly why you’re experiencing conditions like back pain, low energy, or sinusitis by viewing how the organs are related to your specific situation.

The Chinese medical classics state something that has become a truism even in English, “Don’t wait till you’re thirsty to dig a well.” It’s talking about prevention, which is much more than a yearly diagnosic exam but a matter of determining energetic imbalances before they morph into physical problems.

More energy and focus is within. A pointed approach to the whole person means usng science to bring you into greater balance to allow you to do the things you want to do.

Contact the clinic to set up an appointment, if not for yourself then for the ones who love and depend upon you! ph. 323.936.5152323.936.5152

Tea News, Obama “Care”, Deficiency Sx II

admin — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 23:06:47 +0000

I certainly hope you understand that my enthusiasm for tea is largely because it is an expression of the beauty of Chinese medicine. This week I started a Meet-Up which will convene here at CCCA on the 9th of March which is Sunday at 2:00pm. The group is entitled Bamboo and Loquat: Pu’er Tea Enthusiasts of Los Angeles. You can join here.

Saturday the 12th of April will be our Three Tea Journey, featuring some of the best teas purchased from our trip to Yunnan about a year ago. See the attachment for more info.

Clinic Corner
Obama “Care” Covers Acupunture but Administrative Obstacles Persist.

With the new developments in “healthcare” legislation, many want to know what it means forHealthCare receiving services through CCCA? Good question. Suppose rates on home and auto insurance increase, what impact does it have on cleaning the yard or getting new tires? Acupuncture IS actually covered under the new legislation, but reimbursement is still unacceptably low and administrative oversight is akin to telling you how to clean the yard or the mechanic how to tend to your car.

If you want the ease of mind that the natural solutions of Chinese medicine offers, then there are options we can discuss for yearly, condition-specific, or even 100% money-back plans. Often what expresses at the surface is an indicator of that which more serious underneath. Addressing both is the substance of providing a pointed approach to the whole person.

Deficiency Syndromes
HealthyLatinaHypertension Case (Cont.)
In the last episode of our discussion, I introduced the concept of deficiency syndromes by referring to the core concepts of yin and yang. Admitting that these two concepts are sufficiently meaningless to a student of Chinese medicine not to mention patients, I began to discuss the matter of yin and yang in the context of a particular patient, female, suffering from hypertension.

I had just finished making the point that the name of a condition, e.g., hypertension, is not indicative of the course of treatment that should be implemented. The only true way of making this determination is by consulting the pulse, a diagnostic approach that does not exist in the Western biopharmaceutical model of market-based medicine delivery.

What does the pulse reveal, you ask? Well, it tells us the underlying nature of the condition itself, whether it is yin or yang in nature.. OK. You’re asking yourself, what on earth does yin and yang really mean? We discussed that already. It is the relationship of structure, yin, to function, yang. Often in terms of something like hypertension the structure may be water. In Western biopharmaceutical medicine a significant number of patients will be administered diuretics to help the kidneys expel water from the body, water that is stuck in the vasculature and causing the blood pressure to rise. You see even in Western biopharmaceutical market medicine there is still a measure of guessing, a progression of how best to approach a condition. The body is complex, comprised of a series of interlocking systems. There is a measure of art or guessing or experience that comes into play when choosing one form of treatment over the other. In Chinese medicine, these x-factors tend to be reduced to body types, symptoms and the pulse.

Many chronic conditions like hypertension have a certain presentation that imply their treatment. Common calls to lose weight, stop smoking, and exercise all make sense, but what about cases where no weight needs to be loss, there’s no smoking and regular exercise? Then, the best guide will be the pulse, at least in terms of pointing the treatment toward herbs that will be more tonifying or sedating.

One obvious question is, what if you just ignore the pulse and rely upon traditional formulas and herbs that are scientifically known to reduce blood pressure? That is a possibility. Interestingly, Chinese herbs that are known to reduce blood pressure range widely in terms of treatment category. For example, hawthorn berry fits in the category of herbs that relieve food stagnation; “dragon bone” is in the category for treating emotional excitability; and bupleurum is in the category that can generally be considered dealing with colds and flu. There are even some herbs that are contraindicated in instances of hypertension that can treat hypertension in the right circumstances, such as Chinese ginseng and ephedra and herbs generally known to reduce hypertension that would be contraindicated in certain circumstances, like bupleurum or American ginseng. Therefore, just randomly prescribing herbs scientifically known to reduce blood pressure might prove counterproductive or ineffective. These are the variables that demonstrate the various etiologies of a condition with a single name, like hypertension, and why proper diagnosis is critical to treatment success.

Time to wrap up this discussion, but I invite you to come by to have a discussion on matters of deficiency if your current course of treatment is not producing the results you desire. In the next installment of this series, I’ll connect some dots to more fully illustrate deficiency syndromes in the context of hypertension.

About
Yang-chu Higgins has been a licensed acupuncturist since 2008. Before medical school at Yo-san University in Los Angeles, he pursued advanced training as a master’s student at the University of Michigan’s Center for Chinese Studies, having lived in Beijing and studied at Peking University. His credo is “proving a pointed approach to the whole person,” which he translates into treating the individual not just conditions. Reach him at 323.936.5152323.936.5152 .

March Newsletter

admin — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 22:57:54 +0000

Have the pink jacaranda not been showing off since late February or is it just me? I still haven’t found out whether there’s any direct therapeutic effect from those gorgeous flowers, but I am tempted to steep a few to see what happens. Until then, there’s tea…

Most of our stash of pu-er (pu’erh if you must) is fermented and decidedly on the earthy side. Our most popular tea are minis that possess sweet sticky rice notes. They’re very easy to brew-up and as with other ripe pu’ers are smooth and wet, never attacking with bitterness or astringency even if brewed for hours. Recently, a patient brought by some remarkable ripe pu’er that she purchased in London of all places. Bearing the mark of only the most famous herb company that served the emperor, it’s simply the best ripe pu’er I’ve ever had: many infusions, rich, and minty fresh–the vaunted camphor notes.

In terms of floral, we still have some personally selected Yunnan Gold, which is a black tea that can be steeped Chinese style or in the fashion of most other places. The floral notes are more evident with the short steeps, a la Chinese style.

There’s also Moonlight White, which defies categorization but tastes like a softer, sweeter descendant of Yunnan Gold. We’ll actually be having Moonlight White with two other teas, one fermented and one raw, on the afternoon of the 12th of April. I’ve attached the details, but if you can’t make it for any reason be assured that there will be other occasions in the future or just call to schedule a session, 323*936*5152.

Clinic Corner

Heard about Auricular Acupuncture?
The body is comprised of numerous correspondences that make treatment of disturbed areasearseeds possible with reduced risk. One such area is the ear. Auricular therapy can be used to treat pain and functional problems. Treatment can be administered through needles, microcurrent or seeds. Not only is auricular theraphy nifty in terms of treating the body and cost-effectiveness, but it is also a great way around the fear of needles.

Earseeds work according to the principles of reflexology. Just as physiological treatments can be affected through the feet and hands by massage, so can the ears. The seeds are simply small enough to stimulate the relevant areas with precision. It also allows for treatment to be self-administered, extending the effects of treatment and speeding the healing process. I can personally vouche for its benefit for gall-bladder pain!

Deficiency Syndromes Cont.

Part III in a discussion on Deficiency and Hypertension.

This series of discussions aims to shed light upon the matter of deficiency syndromes. I began by introducing the guiding principles yin and yang and endeavored to give these abstractions greater meaning through the case of a middle-aged female with hypertension. In the second installment, I sought to illustrate the meaning of the name of a condition not indicating treatment approach by discussing three Chinese herbs with different treatment function. I also noted that some herbs contraindicated for hypertension can actually treat hypertension given the right circum stances. The following discussion will now elaborate a bit on those conditions, while relating them to the organizing principle of yin and yang.

Our middle-aged patient has bp of 200/105 and a heart-rate of 51. Tongue is thin and white and the pulse on the left side is undetectable and on the right is weak, slightly wiry. The tongue has thick whitish coat and is otherwise thin with a red tip. The Acugraph readout shows an average below 20 with the heart qi being the lowest and overall physical symptoms manifesting in the upper left of the body. Patient feels occasional dull headaches and complains of red eyes.

Among 10 doctors of Chinese medicine, this picture will be diagnosed as “liver-yang rising,” meaning there is a deficiency of yin causing the liver energy to flair upwards, manifest in the eyes. This is a “yang” expression of a condition that arises from a deficiency of “yin,” blood or water to properly nourish the liver. An apt analogy is the engine of a car which runs hot because the motor oil is either lacking or of too thin a quality for as hard as the engine is running.

If the engine is running hard, excess yang, there should be corroborating signs beyond the red eyes, like thirst, heat symptoms, and rapid heartbeat. In this case, however, the patient’s heartbeat is about 20 bpm too slow, there are no signs of thirst, and the headaches are of a dull (deficient/yin) nature. The pulses, furthermore, at totally deficient, so much so that on the left, where the Acugraph marks trouble, it is utterly undetectable. These doctors would be incorrect, having diagnosed the condition based on the preponderance of cases that express with hypertension, as opposed to deriving a diagnosis based on the actual symptoms.

Lassitude, weakness, flabbiness, sleepiness, slowness… these are all deficiency signs, specifically deficiency of yang, of fire and function. When yang is deficient yin rises. In this case, the pulse literally gets drowned out by yin, the water in the body. The excess yin, also cold as evidenced by slow pulse rate, is resting at the locus of the heart, also confirmed by the reading from the Acugraph. Whatever name given to this condition, the treatment strategy is the exact opposite of the “liver yang rinsing” diagnosis, where more yin nourishing herbs are added. In fact, what is needed are herbs that will boost yang and expel the yin, in this case the excess water accumulated in the vasculature.

This completes our discussion on deficiency syndromes as far as the case of hypertension is involved. Yin and yang have practical application based on the symptoms of the individual patient. The case further demonstrates how and why a condition with the general name of hypertension cannot be treated till diagnosis of the yin and yang factors is determined.

Chinese medicine is a natural and time-tested means of treating serious chronic conditions. Through its sophisticated diagnostic approach, it can often produce results where Western biopharmaceutical market medicine fails. If you or someone you know is getting poor results from standard medicine or is concerned about the long-term implications of prescriptions they’re currently on, then invite them to take a look at these articles and by all means to give me a call, 323*936*5152.

About

Yang-chu Higgins has been a licensed acupuncturist since 2008. Before medical school at Yo-san University in Los Angeles, he pursued advanced training as a master’s student at the University of Michigan’s Center for Chinese Studies, having lived in Beijing and studied at Peking University. His credo is “providng a pointed approach to the whole person,” which he translates into treating the individual not just conditions.

Three Tea Journey and Deficiency of Lungs

admin — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 22:47:19 +0000

The 12th of April is drawing nigh, so you may want to act on reserving your spot for the Three Tea Journey. Ony five spots remain. For those curious about tea, I might suggest this article on the CCCA website. In short, the beauty of tea is the beauty of Chinese medicine.

Here’s one of the featured teas of the event, what I call “Lucky Cake” because of the big fu character on its wrapping.

You get two ounces of this gem along with two more of the other two teas. You can find some of the other pictures over at the meetup the CCCA sponsors, Bamboo and Loquat: Pu’er Tea Enthusiasts of Los Angles.

The characters in the foreground are wet and bold, like aspects of this sweet smoky treasure.

Deficiency Syndromes

Respiratory Infection

This is part of an on-going series on “Deficiency syndromes.” The objective is educate the reader on the utility of Chinese medicine in treating conditions that either fall through the cracks of orthodox biophamaceutical market medicine, have poor outcomes with regard to the standard medical delivery method, or are treated in perpetuity where there may be more direct means of getting to a root that resolves the condition once and for all.

Here we have the case of a successful 30 something yo female performer who has caught “cold” and been unresponsive to customary therapy of antibiotics. She primarily feels cold, reports of never having felt worse, and suffers from general malaise. There’s cough and no appetite as well. My conclusion is that she suffers from lung deficiency and currently has some type of infection that her immune system has been unable to eliminate.

Often when antibiotics do not work the reason is not due to the wrong antibiotic or to a super strain of the bug, but due to an underlying weakness of the body. Weakness means inability to muster an immune response, what usually comes in the form of a fever. Fever fundamentally is a good sign, because it shows that the body has the reserves to mount an attack to burn out the bug. Antibiotics tend to work marvelously in instances of fever. In these cases, antibiotics ostensibly make use of the body’s energy to kill bugs. This seems to be so because in instances where there is clearly an infection of some sort but the body does not experience fever, antibiotics prove to be useless. If antibiotics were simply killing bacteria, then they should be able to do so irrespective of the relative state of the body.

The same mistake is made by mediocre herbalists. They don’t pay attention to the relative strength of the body, evident through the presence of fever and quality of pulse, and errantly prescribe cold and bitter herbs which cannot function in a body that is already cold! If the body is cold, remedies like goldenseal, peppermint, lemon, and vitamin c are totally useless, and like antibiotics counterproductive because they make the body even colder.

My objective for this patient was to induce fever, essentially to work with natural immunity and to educate her on what to expect. Sure, at one moment it got challenging, but staying the course proved worth it in very short order, about five days.

Subjective feelings of cold is a benchmark symptom of deficiency. Respiratory cases where the patient feels cold, has possible sloshing in the lungs, swelling of the ankles, and a general lack of appetite also signal cold deficiency. When the body is cold, it cannot muster an immune response, i.e., fever. Even antibiotics will prove ineffective. The key is to actually induce fever through herbs that will warm the body to burn the “bugs” out.

That’s all for this post. Contact the clinic to schedule a consultation if this picture rings a bell and you’re ready to be done with it in short order, ph. three two three 936-5152

About

Yang-chu Higgins has been a licensed acupuncturist since 2008. Before medical school at Yo-san University in Los Angeles, he pursued advanced training as a master’s student at the University of Michigan’s Center for Chinese Studies, having lived in Beijing and studied at Peking University. His credo is “providing a pointed approach to the whole person,” which he translates into treating the individual not just conditions.

Blog Post – California Center for Conscious Acupuncture

November Newsletter

January New Year’s Edition

Wind Horse Edition

February Edition

Clinic On Location

Que Dulce Bath & Body Treats Premier Designs Jewelry L.A. Gold Parties Arbonne Take Shape for Life: Body Fitness by Christian Zaky Doc G Back Fitness California Community Center for Acupuncture Melt Massage

Acugraph and Evidence-Based Acupuncture

Something for Sunday?

Clinic On Location

Que Dulce Bath & Body Treats Premier Designs Jewelry L.A. Gold Parties Arbonne Take Shape for Life: Body Fitness by Christian Zaky Doc G Back Fitness California Community Center for Acupuncture Melt Massage

Head’s Up & About Deficiency Syndromes

Eflex: Use It…

Science Meets Tradition

Tea News, Obama “Care”, Deficiency Sx II

March Newsletter

Clinic Corner

Deficiency Syndromes Cont.

About

Three Tea Journey and Deficiency of Lungs

Deficiency Syndromes

About

Que Dulce Bath & Body Treats
Premier Designs Jewelry
L.A. Gold Parties
Arbonne
Take Shape for Life: Body Fitness by Christian Zaky
Doc G Back Fitness
California Community Center for Acupuncture
Melt Massage

Que Dulce Bath & Body Treats
Premier Designs Jewelry
L.A. Gold Parties
Arbonne
Take Shape for Life: Body Fitness by Christian Zaky
Doc G Back Fitness
California Community Center for Acupuncture
Melt Massage