What does your career involve and how would you describe it?
I am a licensed acupuncturist, and I also work a lot with functional medicine. Essentially, I look at how people can focus on wellness and prevention. We do a lot of wellness labs to look for things that might come up as a potential area of concern before it becomes a disease. I’ve had good evidence that it works really well, because when we had COVID run through here, not one of my clients ended up with long term suffering from COVID. Every single one of them got over it just fine. In addition to acupuncture, I'm also an educator and an author.
I created a system of acupuncture that uses the person's body to tell me what it needs and how to direct it. I use palpation methods where I press on specific acupuncture points on the body. If their body has a positive response to it, then I know that's where they need to focus their healing on. In my work I’ve combined three different types of acupuncture. One is classical acupuncture. This comes from the oldest written texts that acupuncturists have available to them. I then integrated that theory with Japanese palpation techniques, where we palpate the body looking for different things. For instance, if somebody comes in with shoulder pain, it could be many different areas of the shoulder that hurts. If it's the Deltoid area that's a referral for the lung. If it's the back area, that's usually a blood sugar referral. If it's the frontier, that can be longer gallbladder. Different organs refer to different parts of the body, and the Japanese have done a really good job of mapping that out. Finally, I like to combine this with what I call point prescriptions. They're actually mathematically based, and were formulated by Buddhist monks in 800 AD.
How does the practice of acupuncture work to heal our system?
Everything in this world vibrates to a particular frequency. We see color based on what frequency it is, and we hear sound based on what frequency it is. Acupuncture meridians run on energy, and energy is measured in frequency. Every meridian, when it's healthy, resonates to a particular frequency. If it's not healthy, it's either too high or too low. There's a communication hub for the acupuncture meridian system in the upper abdomen. All the meridians come together there to talk to each other and communicate.
What makes the acupunctural point special is that it's an area of low electrical resistance - a place where the body can take energy in. Acupuncturists have taken mechanical point finders that are basically measuring resistance on the skin. I realized that I could place the supplements and foods and different things on that upper abdomen, where all the meridians come together and are really concentrated. If it's a beneficial supplement or food for the lungs, then a certain part of the shoulder will release. If it's beneficial for digesting fat and helping the gallbladder, then the front part of the shoulder will release. I've written books on it, and a textbook, which I’m just about to pitch to a bunch of the acupuncture colleges in Canada.
What did your path to becoming an acupuncturist look like?
When I was younger, I had a lot of health problems. I remember always having digestive problems from the time I was a little kid. I had melanoma skin cancer when I was sixteen and two eye surgeries at different times. I had all these problems when I was younger, but I was always really good at numbers. When I was in school, I decided I wanted to go into business. When I went to school, they didn't have entrepreneurial programs. I tried to go to the university, but I couldn't read because I had to have eye surgeries. I ended up dropping out of college, and I went to the community college, and I did really well there. I took an accounting class, and I had a very high average, over a hundred percent. It was like I could do accounting in my sleep. I got offered a job at Dun & Bradstreet in their trust accounting department as soon as I graduated. It was a completely different world from acupuncture.
I continued with accounting for a few years, but I always wanted to be self-employed with my own business. And then, I got into two really bad car accidents. I had my first accident when I was 19 and I was stopped at a light. I had to have reconstructive jaw surgery, and I was out of work for about six months. I also found out I had degenerative disc disease in my back, and it was about here that I started getting interested in alternative health. My brother had already had two back and neck surgeries and wasn't doing very well, and I didn’t want to end up like him. I started doing chiropractic, massages, and healthy eating. I was feeling a lot better. But then, I got hit on the highway. I was driving about 65 miles an hour, and these two cars came airborne across the medium. I hit them head on, and I thought I was going to die. My son was in the front seat next to me, and I looked at him thinking it was the last time I was ever going to see him.
I didn't end up hitting my head, but I damaged my pituitary inside of my head. This is what happens to football players and boxers when they get repeated head injuries. The pituitary controls the whole endocrine system. But, because I didn't hit my head on anything, the doctors completely misdiagnosed me. I went to the emergency room, and my blood pressure had skyrocketed, and my heart was slowing down and speeding up and skipping beats. I couldn't sleep, and I had severe insomnia.. My tongue swelled up really big, and I stuttered and stammered pretty bad for about seven years when I never had before. They tried all sorts of medications, and it just got worse.
During this time, I met an acupuncturist. This was back in the late 1990s, and acupuncture wasn't that well known back then. I was lucky that I was able to go get treatments with a $20 copayment, because I didn't have a lot of money. I was willing to try anything, so I did that acupuncture with her for a couple of months, and within three treatments, I could go back to work. It stabilized me enough to where I could start to function. I could sleep, and my blood pressure was starting to stabilize. I worked with her for probably about six months before I found this other acupuncturist. He was an old Chinese man and he did acupuncture for a lot of famous sports people. He didn't speak much English, but I told him what happened, and he knew what to do, and he would do all this acupuncture on my head, and I got a lot better. I did that for a couple of years, and then I decided that, because it helped me so much, that was what I wanted to do as well.
My family thought I was crazy, but I quit my career and went to acupuncture school. I sold my house, packed up everything, moved across the country, and went to acupuncture school. I found my own system to check every single thing I do for a client. I think that comes from my accounting training. That's what I do in my acupuncture practice, which is why I think I've been so successful. I’ve helped thousands of women have babies and healthy families, and it works out great.
How has acupuncture found a place in today’s modern medical world?
There's undoubtedly a place for both of them together. In Western medicine, there’s a lot we as acupuncturists can integrate into our world. I do a lot of stool testing and saliva testing, and I’ll use people's blood test results. Acupuncture is great for retraining the body, but it won't hold if there's something underlying that's a problem. For some of my clients, I’ve used this knowledge to help them find out what other infections or illnesses need to clear. However, for certain types of parasites and other chronic viruses, the medicine doesn't work as well. Western medicine does a really good job, but sometimes people just can't process the medication. Acupuncture can help reduce the side effects of the medication.
Sometimes, acupuncture works really well when physical therapy doesn't work. And sometimes, physical therapy works well when acupuncture doesn't. They're very complementary. One tactic we use a lot is cupping. You can create suction in a glass jar. There are a lot of people that have pain where the disk is pressing in on a nerve on their spine. The disk is pressing inwards, so I stick the cup over it and pull it back out, and they get so much relief. That completely changes their health long term, because it gives relief in place of major surgeries that would take far more time and healing.
Does acupuncture’s lengthy history in medicine act as a benefit or disadvantage for its perception by the modern public?
It’s true that acupuncture is the longest continuously practiced form of medicine in the world. It has been continuously practiced for over 2,500 years. It has stood the test of time, and the reason is because people wrote down the fundamental principles of acupuncture. When COVID came around, I studied how it affected people. And then I compared it with the paradigms of ancient Chinese medicine, and realized how I could help. I then came up with protocols and to help practitioners. As an acupuncturist, I can adapt to new illnesses and issues. There's new problems with toxins and chemicals and autoimmune conditions that weren’t around 2,500 years ago.
What are some skills that have helped you to be successful in this career?
The first piece of advice I have is to figure out your niche. Instead of trying to be a jack of all trades, figure out what you do really well. My niche is women's health, especially fertility and pregnancy care. I didn't choose that, but I had all these people around me struggling with infertility, endometriosis, etc. And then I had my own experience with pituitary damage. I understood the endocrine system on a much deeper level than any of the other acupuncturists. So you just have to find something like that and get really good at it, no matter the industry. Combine your authentic self with a niche, and follow your heart.
What are some of the biggest challenges that you're hoping to solve concerning women's health in this field?
Unfortunately, a lot of the clothes that women wear, especially teenagers, are made with synthetic materials. When girls are growing, their skin will absorb a bunch of estrogen, and there's estrogen disrupting chemicals in these fabrics that affects their menstrual cycles. When they put these chemicals in bras, the breast tissue absorbs it rapidly. That's why breast cancer is on the rise, and it's more aggressive these days in younger women. I tell all of my struggling clients in menopause to change their clothes to natural fibers. I've noticed in the last five years that there's more clothing companies that are making sportswear from organic cotton and organic bamboo fibers, which is good to see.
Who are some role models who helped you grow into yourself and become successful in your career?
Both professions that I’ve chosen were female dominated. Women tend to trust women more in healthcare. In the accounting world, my specific niche was also surprisingly dominated by women. I looked for strong women who I could model myself after. When I was in acupuncture school, one of my teachers suggested that I go study under this woman, Kiiko Matsumoto. Prior to becoming an acupuncturist, she was a translator of ancient Chinese texts. She had a really good reputation, and she was teaching a class on menopause symptoms. Even though I was much younger at the time, I had a lot of similar symptoms because of my accident. So, I told her what happened in this class, and she gave me one treatment right then and there. Immediately after, I stopped stuttering and stammering, and everything stabilized. After that experience, I realized how powerful her work was. I followed her all around Canada for five years, because I really wanted to model myself around her.
What is one last piece of advice you would give to a young person looking to go into a professional field?
Pick a job that lights your life up. You're going to give so much of your time and your energy to going into a professional career, so choose one that really feeds your soul. Otherwise, you're gonna feel like you're selling yourself out. My husband doesn't really care for his job, and he’s counting the days down to retirement. I was really lucky because my dad, when I was growing up, was very artistic. But my grandfather had been the captain of the Chicago Police Department, and he made my dad be a lawyer, and he hated it. And so, when I was growing up, my dad really made sure I would choose something I loved. And it worked, because now I’m always excited to start my day. I feel blessed to have so much joy and fulfillment in my life. That’s my advice - to follow your heart and your soul.