Podcast Episode #21: What You Need to Know About Chinese Medicine, Ben Greenfield’s Secret 1-2-3 Rapid Weight Loss Strategy and…Can Fat Make You Fat?

Podcast number 21 November 10, 2008 from BenGreenfieldFitness.com welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. Each week we'll be bringing you cutting edge content on holistic nutrition medicine, weight loss and sports performance, as well as a host of other exciting topics pertaining to fitness, diet and lifestyle wellness. My name is Ben Greenfield and I'm a certified nutritionist and exercise physiologist. So whether you are an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, we're going to keep you entertained and help you achieve success in all your personal goals. So enjoy this podcast and stay healthy. Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and in Today's podcast on November 10, 2008, we have some fantastic information to go over. The first topic is going to be an explanation of the quickest way to shed fat fast proprietary method that I use with a lot of my clients that I'm going to show you today on this podcast or I'm going to talk about today on this podcast. I'm going to share that with you and teach you how you can put it into your own routine. We have a little bit of a debate between John Gilbert and myself. If you remember, John Gilbert is the guy who's been contributing articles to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com newsletter. If you haven't signed up for that, you can at the blog. But John's article in this week's newsletter is a little bit controversial and I actually disagree with some of the things that are in it. And so John and I are going to discuss that today on the podcast. And the actual name of the article is you have to eat fat or I'm sorry. It's about a myth that if you eat fat, you'll get fat. And I'm going to talk to John a little bit about that myth. We're going to share our potentially controversial viewpoints on it. And after that we have an interview with a Chinese medical physician or a practitioner of Chinese medicine who is also an acupuncturist and she has some great information for us, some really, really interesting things on why you should probably consider incorporating Chinese medicine into your wellness routine. And then finally, I've got a couple of coupon codes towards the end of this podcast to help you save on a metabolism boosting supplement. As as a fantastic announcement for any people who happen to live in the Inland Northwest around the Spokane, Washington area. I have some great information to share with you at the end of this podcast. So make sure you listen in. Let's go ahead and move on to Today's content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com okay, as promised, I want to give you some proprietary information that I just decided to release to the general public. And I actually posted this information on a recent blog posting at a website called trainingpeaks.com which is a great resource for you if you're trying to find a way to track your exercise via software. And it's actually the same online software that I use to track all of my clients, nutrition, fitness, triathlon progress, etc. But they happen to have a blog on there. And I'm one of the blog contributors and I answered a question on that blog that I received recently and the question was very, very basic. It says I need to lose five pounds of fat fast. What is the best strategy? And this question was from Kathy, Minnesota. And here is my basic answer to Kathy. What you need to do is you have to get your body into fat burning mode when it's most likely to use the greatest amount of fat. And it's a three step process that you can incorporate that's going to allow you to lose right around five pounds of fat in about two to four weeks if you do this every day. Remember, consistency is the key with this. So you've got to do this on a daily basis. And this is something that I'll use with some of my triathletes who need to shed a few pounds quickly for an upcoming race or also something that I'll do with people who just have a lot of storage fat that they need to burn through. So first thing you have to do step number one, determine your maximum fat burning heart rate zone. You can do this, and I actually do this with people who are local in the Spokane Coeur d' Alene area via a metabolic test where you're actually walking on a treadmill breathing gases in and out. And essentially we measure those gases and that gives us a picture of exactly how many calories you're burning. How much is comprised from fat? How much is comprised from carbohydrate? You can do this test at a metabolic laboratory. You can also approximate the information this test will give you by exercising at what is about 55 to 65% of your maximum heart rate. If you don't know your maximum heart rate, that's okay. You can approximate it by taking your age and subtracting about, or I'm sorry, taking the number 220 and subtracting your age. You'd think I'd know this. So the number is 220. If you're 40 years old, you subtract 40 and your age, predicted maximum heart rate would be 180 and then you take 55 to 65% of that number and that would be approximately your peak fat burning heart rate zone. It's not going to hit it hit the nail on the head as well as if you were to do like a metabolic test, but it means you're exercising at about a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the easiest, 10 being the hardest. Now, you're not going to burn maximum calories at this heart rate. And there's a podcast I did a few months ago called the Secrets of Burning Fat that goes into great detail of why you can't just do this form of exercise. But this is going to be very, very effective if you add it into a pre existing exercise program. So you're not going to burn maximum calories at this heart rate at this point, 55 to 65% heart rate, but you are going to teach your body how to utilize fat effectively without causing a lot of muscle damage and without inhibiting recovery. Because it's important that you be able to take this strategy that I'm sharing with you and incorporate it into a pre existing workout program without having to restructure your program for rest, for recovery, etc. I just want you to be able to take this and just start into it without having to worry about, oh, on this day I got to move this around and I'm working out on this morning, so I can't do it on this day. Basically you just insert this into any exercise routine that you have. If you don't have an exercise routine, it's a great way to get started. Alright, so what do you do with that heart rate? Step number two, every day right when you wake up, and this is important right when you wake up, you're going to exercise for 20 to 30 minutes in that heart rate zone or at that 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 intensity. So that's going to be like a one or two mile walk, easy bout on the elliptical trainer, easy bike ride, just whatever allows you to exercise at that slightly lower fat burning intensity. The reason you're doing it when you wake up prior to eating anything is because when you're sleeping, your body burns through the liver's carbohydrate stores. And what happens is when the liver's carbohydrate stores are empty, the fat burning enzymes are going to work just a Little bit better, a little more efficiently, and you're going to essentially jump start at the beginning of the day, your body's fat burning process. So basically this means if you want to lose five pounds of fat in two to four weeks, yet you got to reset your alarm clock about 20 to 30 minutes early, you got to get up and you got to walk at that fat burning heart rate range. And don't skip breakfast afterwards. Still go and eat breakfast after. Go about your daily healthy nutritional program, but get that exercise in prior to eating. Okay? This doesn't mean that more is better. You don't go out and hike for an hour or two hours at your fat burning heart rate range because that's going to leave your body stressed out. It's going to increase the amount of cortisol, which is kind of like your body's stress fat burning hormone. And so you want to stay about 20 to 30 minute range for this. It needs to be doable and it needs to be kind to your body. Step three, this is kind of the bonus, the kudos step. To maximize the effect even more, you want to eliminate any eating for two hours prior to bedtime evening before you go and do this, 20 to 30 minutes of fat burning. Okay, so I'm going to go through this one more time. Step one, 55 to 65% of your maximum heart rate, or a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. Step two, 20 to 30 minutes every morning before you eat everything, before you eat anything. And then step three, no eating for two hours prior to bedtime. That's going to ensure that the carbohydrate stores in the liver are empty. It's going to ensure more efficient fat burning in the morning. And you do this literally seven days a week. It's not that hard. It's kind of relaxing as a matter of fact, to get up in the morning, put on your walking shoes and your coat and your hood and head out the door out here in Spokane, Washington, right now. Now, it's a little bit chilly. It'll wake you up, that's for sure. But this is a great way to lose fat in a healthy manner. So that's my 1, 2, 3 proprietary step to losing 5 pounds of fat fast. Hey, podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield, and as promised, I have John Gilbert here with me in my office to have a little discussion about fat. And you may not know about John if you haven't been subscribing to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com newsletter, but John is an exercise and metabolism student over at Washington State University and is studying quite extensively in some advanced nutrition and human metabolism courses. And he's going to be a frequently contributing author to the newsletter. And what we're going to talk about today is this upcoming week's newsletter content. Just because there's some information that John goes over in his article that I vehemently disagree with. No, actually I shouldn't choose words that way. Powerful. But that I think we could generate some good discussion with. So before I introduce John, let me make a side note that this audio is going to sound a little bit different just because we're using a different recording method than a headset. So you may hear a little bit of an echo, but you should be able to hear everything just fine during this part of the podcast. So, John, welcome.

Thank you. Thank you for having me, man.

So where did you get this article on nutritional myths that you talk about in this week's newsletter?

Well, for the most part, I just search around looking for the latest news and health, whether it's Google or these sorts of things, to really try to see what people are looking at and really try to take the approach that most people would use for finding the latest health information.

Okay, fantastic. And it looks like, okay, the title of this article is Nine Nutrition Myths Exposed. And it's actually a really interesting article. And I know that John is going to be going through some of the myths over the next few weeks from the newsletter. And this is written by a guy named Joe Wilkes. And could you find any information on him?

I could, not necessarily, but the reason I chose the article was from what I've learned, it is consistent with a lot of the, the information that I have learned in school and these sorts of things. So that is why I chose it. It's based on the content, not necessarily on the credibility, but I believe in my opinion, his content enhances his credibility.

Yeah, and I read it as well, and it's actually, it's a, it's, it's a great, great article and I'll put a link to it in this week's show Notes. But I'm really not sure who Joe Wilkes is. The name of the article is Nine Nutrition Myths Exposed. So Joe, if you're out there listening, shoot us an email so we can introduce you to the podcast listeners. But anyways, let's go on to the content of this actual article that John reviewed. And what's the title of it, John, or rather, I mean, what's the title of the actual topic that you went over? The first topic in that article, fat.

Makes you fat was the first myth I tackled in the context.

And so what's this guy talking about in the. In the fat makes you fat part or the myth that fat makes you fat?

Well, a lot of people have come to think that consuming any fat is bad for their diet, when in fact fat contains many nutrients, fat soluble nutrients, and these sorts of things that are important for health as well as fat providing a satiety feeling, a feeling of satisfaction after your meals. So that really, I think, is an important aspect to incorporate into your health and nutrition planning, to really have a feeling of satisfaction and getting these nutrients rather than cutting them out of your diet. Because this really goes over how cutting them out of your diet can lead to consumption of more refined sugars or these sorts of things, because you generally have a fat, salt and sugar, and if you take out fat in there, you're going to most likely up the salt or the sugar, which can lead to other health problems.

Yeah. And you know, the interesting thing in this article is that the author actually talks about how in the 80s that fats basically became vilified by the government because of the. Of the cardiovascular damaging potential of some of the saturated fats found in animal and dairy products. And so when the government started telling people, don't eat any saturated or any saturated fats, it kind of has over the years become condensed down to, well, don't eat fats in general. They're all bad for you. And that's really not the case. And that's what John writes about in this week's newsletter, and he gives a lot of really practical and helpful information there. But here are some of the finer points of the article that I actually disagree with and that I know don't get talked a lot about in kind of typical nutrition education. So we're going to go over just a couple of little things that I disagree with. So one of the points that John makes. I'll have you read this part. John, read this, the sentence right here.

The feeling of satisfaction after eating satiety is drastically enhanced with the addition of healthy fats into any meal or snack. Healthy fats such as almonds, almond butter and avocados, peanuts, peanut butter, salad dressing, olives, olive oil and tuna fish or salmon will help you to feel satisfied after a meal.

Okay, okay. Okay. That's long. Okay, so we know the basic idea of what John's going after in this article. Here's where I disagree. Peanuts and peanut butter with a lot of the people that I do nutritional consulting with. We find that they experience not only allergic reactions to a lot of food, but they experience an inability to lose weight because of what would be considered an inflammatory or allergic reaction in the stomach. And anytime that your small intestine is basically, basically rebelling against some of the things that you put into it, or anytime that your body is not able to properly break down a lot of the metabolites from food that you're getting, it can be damaging to your metabolism, it can slow down your metabolism, and it can also cause allergic responses and inflammation that can actually retard weight loss or slow down your fat loss. And peanuts happen to be one of those legumes that a lot of people can be allergic to. So what I tell people is, you know what, if all you can get your hands on is peanuts or peanut butter, and you don't have any other way to get fat into your diet, then we could probably go with something like that as the main way that you're getting that type of fat into your diet. But most people have access to a lot of other different type of nuts that technically would not be considered legumes, which is what a peanut is considered. And so we're talking about some of the other things that you mentioned in that sentence. Almonds, almond butter, walnuts, Brazilian nuts, etc. But be cautious with peanuts and peanut butter. The final piece of advice I can give you with that is, are you familiar with aflatoxin, Josh?

Aflatoxin, I am not.

Aflatoxin is something that can be found in any type of food groups that grow underground because of moldy conditions, in more of a moist soil, plant condition. There are some type of peanuts that are grown in dry or arid climates. And basically those type of peanuts usually are known as Valencia peanuts. And they can be found in a couple of different brands that I'm aware of. Arrowhead Mills peanut butter and Maranatha brand peanut butter both use peanuts grown in dry, arid climates. And those tend to be a little bit lower in the type of toxins that could put potentially be metabolism damaging for someone who has peanut butter as a main staple in their diet. Oh, and then the other thing that I wanted to go over was salad dressing. You got to be careful with salad dressing, because I know you podcast listeners, anytime you go into the salad dressing aisle of your grocery store, you turn over the back of a typical quote unquote healthy salad dressing, and you've not only got basically a polyunsaturated or a high fructose corn corn syrup, or a canola oil or some type of other kind of non healthy type of oil or fat in there. But you've also got usually a lot of added sugars, oftentimes a lot of added like artificial sweeteners, especially in the low fat or the fat free dressings. You're going to get aces of thin potassium and aspartame, etc. My best advice to the listeners out there is for salad dressing, go after a good oil that is high in what's called monounsaturated fats, which are the type of fats that your body is going to burn really efficiently as a fuel. Top three oils that I can recommend to you are a extra virgin olive oil, a flaxseed oil or a grape seed oil. And if you use those and kind of cycle between those in your salad dressings, there's a lot of different type of dressings that you can make. One of my favorite things to do lately is I'll take a little bit of yogurt, I'll mix it with a little bit of one of those types of oils and then I'll add any number of herbs and spices. I like to do a little cayenne, a little paprika, and kind of make a bit more of a spicy dressing. But an oil yogurt mix actually goes great with the salad. So that was one of the things that I disagreed with in the article or in the review that John wrote was the use of peanuts and peanut butter and salad dressing, at least without putting a little caveat in there about them. Okay. And then read. I'm going to have John just read parts of his article. The second. There's basically three different sections I wanted to go over that I disagreed. So here's the second one. You could read this sentence right here.

On the flip side of losing weight, endurance athletes often struggle maintaining weight and fat plays an integral role of additional calories. Without as much food to consume, there's a high degree of difficulty in eliminating fat from the diet and trying to keep weight in this population as well as unhealthy concentration.

Okay, and you know what? I read this sentence and I got to tell you that the majority, probably about 95% of the endurance athletes who are working with me online or who walk into my laboratory in Spokane, Washington and want nutritional counseling or want to be tested, one of the first things that comes out of their mouth is I need to lose weight. And so what I want to tell you podcast listeners if you're reading this newsletter, is that if you're an endurance athlete, it really is mostly the kind of the pro athletes, people really on top of their game, who have difficulty keeping weight on. And as an endurance athlete, I know that a lot of you listen to this podcast because we help you kind of shed fat and improve that power to weight ratio. But I just wanted to make John aware of the fact that really the majority of your average endurance athlete, triathlete, weekend half marathoner, whatever, most of us are trying to shed fat, lose some pounds that we built up in college or whatever the case may be. And so even though we need healthy fats in our diets, it's definitely more of kind of the pro triathlete population who has to focus more on keeping weight on. And then the last thing that I wanted to go over was John finished his article with a little side note about exercise at low intensities and how when you exercise at low intensities, you utilize more fat as a fuel. And could you just read that sentence right there, John?

Some people may interpret this to mean that they should exercise at a lower intensity to burn more fat. However, this application is incorrect and ineffective.

For the goal of losing weight. Okay, and here's the deal with that. If you listen to a podcast that I put out several months ago called the secrets to fat burning, or what you didn't know about burning fat rather, and you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and search for that in the blog, it'll come up as one of the previous podcasts. You'll find that the research that I laid out in that article, it affirms what John is saying about how exercising at a low intensity can be ineffective for the goal of losing weight. But at the same time, there are basically three holy grails of weight loss that I preach to the people that I work with with. And there's basically three different priorities that you should give to your exercise. The first is high intensity cardiovascular intervals. That means exercising hard and then exercising easy and going back and forth between the two in a manner that kind of keeps the heart rate up. The second is resistance training or weightlifting to put lean muscle on your body and increase your metabolism. And then the third, and this is still part the of, part of the holy grail is long, slow sessions in your fat burning heart rate range. And there's two reasons that I put those into weight loss diets. The first is that if you do cardio intervals every day, you're going to last anywhere from two to four weeks before you hit a wall and your body just breaks down from hitting the cardio hard day after day after day. Because remember, the key is consistency. But if the consistency means that you're pushing hard every single day, you just won't last. It's not realistic. And then the other reason that we try and put the long, slow cardio sessions as a part of someone's exercise program is because when you exercise in that fat burning zone, you can actually help teach your body how to utilize fat more effectively and more efficiently. And so when we have someone do those series of tests and then come back into the lab, or when they come to the lab and do a certain series of tests to find out where their fat burning heart rate is, and then we send them out and we do something as simple as exercising at that fat burning heart rate for say a half hour every day. When they come back in, we see that their fat burning heart rate has actually increased. The amount of fat that they're burning at that heart rate has also gone up. It's possible to lose weight at that fat burning heart rate. But I just want to kind of clarify that even though it's not the best way to lose weight, it should be be a part of a good weight loss program. So I want to finish because I know that I've taken up most of this interview talking, which is kind of the case of the podcast. It's me talking a lot and other people not talking very much, it seems like. But John, do you have any final recommendations for people based off of this article or anything that you wrote in the article that you really want to highlight to people when they read it?

Well, I really want to highlight just the incorporation of the healthy fats. You made some very, very good points on the specifics of the things I included and maybe some of the assumptions I shouldn't have made, but I definitely.

Would go along with a lot of.

Things I said in terms of ideas and examples to provide. I provided you to choose two out of the four goals and you can do all four if you wish and really look at the examples and how to incorporate and come up with some other ideas that you think are really something you would really like to eat, as well as incorporating that fat for feeling good afterwards.

Yeah, and that's one of the really cool things that John is doing in this newsletter series is he's including goals for you weekly, goals that you can implement from the articles that we go over or that he goes over that will really help you on a week to week basis basically improve. So over the course of the winter, I know we're going to be hitting some more nutritional myths. And you know what? I actually I cheated. I read ahead in the article and I know that I am going to disagree with some of the other things that are said in the article. Now for the most part, though, that article that's going to be linked to in the show Notes Myths About Nutrition is a fantastic read. John's article on that article is also a fantastic reader. John's review of that article is a fantastic read. So make sure that you sign up for the newsletter@bengreenfieldfitness.com hey John, thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me, Ben.

Alright, before we move on to this week's interview with a Chinese medical practitioner and acupuncturist, I want to go over a brief piece of information for anybody listening to this podcast who happens to be located in the Inland Northwest West. We've actually just launched here at my Exercise Metabolic Laboratory a program that allows you to get exercise metabolic testing, body composition, range of motion, fitness analysis, nutritional planning and consulting, unlimited phone and email access to a physiologist and nutritionist, as well as full access to comprehensive blood metabolic profiles, thyroid screening, hormone analysis, as well as biomechanical evaluations. And what we've done with this program is whereas in the past it actually was perhaps a little bit expensive to get started in this program on your own, we're now opening up the entire program to groups who can come in as a group of two or three or four individuals and actually engage in this comprehensive weight loss and fat loss program with a great group of other people. So it's a fantastic way to not only enjoy exercise and work as a group, but also to have access to a much more advanced way to know exactly what you're supposed to be doing for fat loss with zero guesswork. So you can find out more information about this program by simply clicking on the link that I'm going to put in the show notes or go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com if you live in Spokane, Coeur d', Alene, Liberty Lake, Post Falls, anywhere in the Northern Idaho, Eastern Washington area, this program is brand new, highly affordable, and guaranteed to get you very, very fast weight loss results. Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and I. I am here today with a naturopathic physician and licensed acupuncturist and the individual that I'm interviewing today actually practices out of Coeur d' Alene Healing Arts, the same place, you may remember, where Dr. Schlapfer, the naturopathic physician that I interviewed was based out of. And I'm going to be interviewing Dr. Pamela Langendorfer. And she actually has a far different practice than Dr. Schlapfer in terms of what she specializes in. And very, very unique field, very fascinating field that I think you're going to get a lot out of as we talk today about how to enhance your wellness, about how to address your sports performance, about recovery methods, and about a lot of things that Dr. Langendorfer kind of specializes in. So can I call you Pamela because Dr. Langendorfer gets a little bit longer. We don't want to use up too much time on this podcast.

Yup. Pamela is just great.

All right, well, thanks for joining us, Pamela, and tell me a little bit about yourself and what exactly it is that you specialize in.

Well, as you mentioned, I'm a naturopathic physician and a licensed acupuncturist. And when I originally had started naturopathic school, and that's when I became more interested in Chinese medicine. And so I have a master's degree in Oriental medicine as well and just really found the adjunct of the two different philosophies helpful in restoring people's health. And my specialty is kind of ever evolving. I do quite a bit with women's health, fertility issues, chronic pain, fatigue. And I've also worked with some people who do do Ironman, helping them with some of the side effects that they sometimes happen afterwards with something.

Oh, come on. Ironman doesn't have any side effects. That's normal. Anybody can walk out the door and do one of those. Yeah.

And be ready for another one.

Yeah. So when you say Chinese medicine, Oriental medicine, what exactly is that? How does that differ from, say, just going out and going to an md?

Well, Chinese medicine, first of all, is a very old medicine. It's about 4,000 years old. And in Chinese medicine, the body is viewed very differently than how we view it here in the West. The body is viewed as a little microcosm of our environment. So what's really neat about Chinese medicine is that you can have five different people come in with fatigue and they may have five different Chinese diagnoses, and they'll get five different acupuncture protocols and five different herbal formulas. So it's really tailor made to a specific condition for that person. And as the person improves and as their condition changes, you're ever evolving the formulas and the acupuncture points to be specific for them.

Now, when you say different types of fatigue, to use your example, not necessarily five examples, but what Would be an example, for instance, two different types of fatigue that differ and the two different types of treatments that you would offer for something like that.

Well, in Chinese medicine, we look at the whole symptom picture. So let's say a person comes in and they have a lot of muscle fatigue. They can hardly get out of bed in the morning, it rains, and they feel worse during the damp weather. And then when I look at their tongue, they have a thick yellow tongue coating. Their pulse feels a little bit thick, slippery. To me, that, in Chinese medicine terms, would be a damp heat diagnosis. And your treatment protocol would be geared towards getting rid of dampness. And you would use herbs and acupuncture points specifically for that. On the other hand, you could have somebody that has fatigue and let's say they maybe had a recent injury, and overall their health is pretty good. But all of a sudden they have fatigue, and they've kind of recovered, but still are having some fatigue issues. And they have maybe a pain in a certain area, stabbing pain. And you look at the tongue, and it looks very dusky. And their pulse is what we call wiry, kind of tight, like a guitar string. And that would be using herbs to move qi and blood. Those are pretty extremely different scenarios. That kind of gives you an idea of how Chinese medicine looks at the body.

Yeah, that's fascinating. I think everybody listening to the podcast probably just went and looked at their tongue in the mirror just to see what their own tongue is looking like. You talked about working with women and fertility, and I know a lot of that is tied into hormones. And here at Champion Sports Medicine, we do a lot with metabolism, testing people's metabolic rate, and we do a little bit with blood testing, thyroid screenings, things of that nature. But we see quite a bit of people who are interested in metabolic management for weight loss. Is that something that you work with in Chinese medicine as well, helping people who have maybe been trying to shed pounds or trying to overcome some type of hormonal resistance to weight loss. Do you think there's a component that Chinese medicine can address?

Oh, certainly. And I think that's, again, the beauty of Chinese medicine, how it's specific for each person. Many times people, one of the side effects will be from acupuncture, that they happen to lose 10 pounds after they've done regular acupuncture for five to six weeks. And there are other acupuncture techniques. The world of cosmetic acupuncture is actually becoming very popular, and people are using it for weight loss to help lose inches, but also to help maintain lean muscle mass. So not only does it increase your metabolism, it will also help to regulate hormonal issues as well. And so that's kind of where looking at the person, if they're having trouble losing weight, is it really due to their hormones or is it maybe due to some other problem that they're having?

Yeah, that's really interesting. And I want to actually ask you a little bit more about acupuncture, because I know that that might be a little bit different or have some different aspects to it than just the Chinese medicine examples that you gave. But first, I wanted to ask you about the specifics you mentioned. You work with some people who are preparing for Ironman in terms of their management for that. Now, how do you use Chinese medicine in something like, say, sports performance or sports recovery?

There are actually quite a few different acupuncture and herbal medicine protocols used for that. And you may have noted in the past Olympics, a lot of the Olympic. The Chinese Olympic. I'm not even saying the right word. You're going to have to delete this part. The Chinese Olympic diving team in the past all had acupuncturists. And it's very common for Olympic athletes over there to have a team acupuncturist that works with them. So for enhancing performance, acupuncture can help with that in terms of increasing the metabolic rate. And the other thing that I think is essential, though, are Chinese herbs. And one of the specific formulas that I use for people has a combination of things like ginseng, rhodiola, astragalus, licorice, things that are known in Western medicine to help to support the adrenal glands, which are going to help to regulate cortisol levels. And what's interesting, too, is that a lot of these herbs, if you take them right before you exercise, many people will notice that they recover faster, but they also perform better as well.

You know, that kind of reminds me of an interesting question. I don't want to put you on the spot, but there are several sports supplements that I'm aware of on the market right now that have things like cordyceps and rhodiola in them? And those are meant to have an effect on the adrenal glands. But is there, besides metabolism, any effect that you're aware of on lung tissue? On, for example, VO2, oxygen uptake, things of that nature, with Chinese medicinal herbs of that nature?

I'm sure that there has been studies with that over in China. But to quote you on, I'm not up on that. But I do know that a lot of those herbs, especially the cordyceps, I believe, and the ginseng, will help with lung capacity.

Yeah, there's a certain. A couple of different supplements that I've had some athletes take where they report enhanced oxygen uptake or feeling like they can breathe deeper. And a couple of them actually had cordyceps in them. So that's an interesting idea, especially for athletes. Now, like I said, I wanted to ask you about acupuncture and some of the underlying philosophies behind acupuncture and how they're practically applied for the people who don't know about acupuncture. And what exactly happens when you go to an acupuncturist? Can you walk us through not only how acupuncture works, but what you do in terms of basically with the needles, which I know is everyone's big fear if they haven't done acupuncture.

Yes. So when people come in, they fill out an intake form, and we're looking at their whole history. And sometimes if somebody's coming in for low back pain, they'll sit there and think, well, why do you need to know about my digestion and everything else going on? Because I want you to fix my back. But again, all of that is giving me a picture of what's really going on with this person internally. So we review symptoms, we look at what's going on, and then we'll take a look at the tongue and the pulse, which are key in helping with Chinese diagnosis. And then from there, we'll have the patient lay on the table and insert needles into specific acupuncture points to help with their underlying problem. And the acupuncture needles that are used, a lot of people do get a little bit fearful of those, but they're pretty thin, pretty flexible. They're not like the needles that you get when you have your blood drawn, which tend to be hollow on the inside and they don't move at all. So these ones are pretty painless. And most people don't feel much at all. Or some people feel a little zingy sensation when they needles go in.

And what exactly happens on a biological or a physiological level when the needles are inserted? Are we primarily working on nerve endings?

Not necessarily nerve endings, but more endorphins. Endorphins get secreted, which helps with some of the pain management part of it. Different hormones become more active. Cortisol, for example, can be increased or decreased depending on what you're trying to do. And what's really neat about Chinese medicine is that this medicine is so old and has been being used for so long. And we here are constantly trying to figure out, well, how does it work? We're trying to prove it. And now that we have more advanced things like MRI machines, they have shown that when you stimulate certain points, different parts of the brain become more active. And so it kind of just reaffirms what people have known for thousands of years that, yes, this point is good for this particular condition, but now we can prove why that is.

Can you become very, very injury specific with something like acupuncture? For example, if someone came in with patellar tendonitis or tennis elbow or something of that nature, are those the type of things that you could use acupuncture for?

Oh, certainly, yeah. Any sort of injury or chronic pain. If somebody has arthritis, osteoarthritis, even rheumatoid arthritis, degeneration, or the autoimmune component, Chinese medicine is excellent for that. Neck injuries, headaches, any injury you can think of that Chinese medicine is helpful for, because, again, we're restoring balance to the system, and symptoms are looked at as an imbalance in the system.

Now, with a chiropractor, when you see a chiropractor, often you're in there for three or four or sometimes up to a dozen different visits with the chiropractor before a problem is completely resolved. Now, with acupuncture, is it simply an issue where you see an acupuncturist one time and the symptoms are resolved, or is it usually a series of treatments that you undergo?

Usually a series of treatments is needed. However, it also depends on what is going on. So if it's an acute injury that just happened, maybe one treatment is all that's needed, maybe a couple. If it's something that's been ongoing for a long period of time, the person's going to need more treatments for it.

And if someone were to go in for acupuncture, how long would they expect to actually be undergoing a treatment? How long do the needles stay?

Needles usually stay in about 30 minutes. And I usually tell people to allow themselves 45 minutes to an hour just because we talk. And if there are any other things going on, but the needles themselves stay on for about 30 minutes. And that also can depend on what is going on with a person, because if you have someone that's real fatigued and they're really worn down and worn out, they might not be able to tolerate the needles very well and maybe can only have them in for five or 10 minutes. And that's not uncommon, especially seeing if someone's going through chemotherapy or radiation. So that's something else just to keep in mind is that acupuncture is helpful, but if you have someone that's really deficient, you don't want to wear them out even more. So you need to make sure you're doing things to build them back up. And that's where the herbs are important. And there's another technique that is used called moxibustion, which I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but moxibustian is a Chinese herb also known as mugwort, and that is burned over specific acupuncture points, either directly onto the skin or indirectly onto the skin. And that is very, very helpful for pain relief. And probably one of the most common things used to help with pain in the body. And another technique that I use quite a bit for back pain is something called cupping, which glass jars are put on the back and they create a suction, and that helps to release any trigger points or tight muscles that are in the back. And those are the things, if you've seen on the news, people have these basically round hickeys on their back. That's from the cupping.

Wow, that's fascinating. Now, in terms of reduction of inflammation and drawing swelling out of the skin, or same metabolites left over from an intense exercise session or even recovery from a very, very intense exercise session, like an ironman or something like that, does acupuncture or do any of the methods that you use in Chinese medicine work very well for inflammatory conditions?

Yeah, acupuncture works very well for inflammation and can increase or decrease inflammation pretty quickly for some people, sometimes within 2448. So acupuncture, I think that's one of the places that it excels, is decreasing inflammation in the back or wherever it may be in the body.

So in terms of ways that our audience can find out more about Chinese medicine and about acupuncture, do you have any specific resources that you would recommend?

Yeah, there's a couple places that you can go. One of them is Accufinder.

Did you say Accufinder?

Accufinder.com and that has a lot of information just about acupuncture in general and for different conditions, and also lists some practitioners looking for practitioners in your area. The national place that you can go is called the nccaom. And acupuncturists that after graduation, have to take that exam in order to practice and they have a referral site on there.

Is that nccaom.com.org I can find out. I'll put a link to all these in the show notes just to make sure that people have access to this stuff. What about if any listeners who are local to the Spokane or Coeur d' Alene area wanted to contact you, what would you recommend?

They could contact me by either emailing me or calling me. Email is always a quicker way to get ahold of me. And that is Dr. Pamelasue D R P A M E L a s u eorizon.net or my office number is 208-664-1644.

Fantastic. Well, I am looking forward to publishing some of this information on Chinese medicine and acupuncture and it may be fascinating at some point in the future to have you on the show again. And maybe we can even get more specific about sports supplementation, cordyceps, rhodiola, things of that nature, because I know that there are a lot of supplements out there right now, now especially being pushed to active individuals that purport to have many, many effects on the human body. And it would be interesting toto hear your opinion on some of that stuff. So even though we're pushed for time today, I think it might be fascinating to get you back on the show.

Sure. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Yeah, I want to thank you for joining us today and I will speak with you later, Pamela.

All right. Thank you.

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