#75 - Dr. Janette Kurban on Ancient Ear Acupuncture Points and Modern Practice, Part 1

Hi guys, welcome to The Factor Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Riddle, and I have to tell you, I am so excited about the training we are featuring today. Many of you may know that our parent company, Southeast Professional Education Group, has recently began offering acupuncture and dry needling courses. We currently have a 100-hour chiropractic acupuncture certification course, a dry needling level 1 and level 2 course, and have several other 200-level and 300-level acupuncture courses in the works for the ACA's acupuncture diplomate program. I have honestly lost count of the number of healthcare providers I've spoken with that have said that adding needling to their practice has been an absolute game changer. As a highly effective treatment for musculoskeletal pain and a variety of both acute and chronic conditions. In today's episode, we unravel the complexity of auricular acupuncture, exploring the 12 master control points on the ear and how they correlate with everything from inflammation, allergies, hormone balancing, and even pain management. We'll delve into the artful blend of traditional wisdom with cutting-edge applications, Revealing how these ancient pearls can revitalize modern treatment protocols. Be sure to bookmark this episode. It's one you'll want to listen to more than once. Let's dive in.

present a short webinar. It'll be about possibly 40-45 minutes long today on Master Points in Auriculotherapy. And when I— when Jessica asked me if I'd like to present a webinar for her, I immediately— I, of course, love sharing the information that I've been given over the years. So, a little bit of background. This will be auriculo only. So there are Master Points on the body for those of you in the audience who are certified in acupuncture or are thinking about learning acupuncture as a— just a modality there, an extra modality to use on your patients in your office or your clients. There is an entire system, and we'll go over a little bit of that here in a few slides, that exists only in the ear. And it's not new. It's very modern as far as the research. But But we know it's— it actually developed in ancient China, so it's not a New World thing. It's very, very old. And these extraordinary points will be very, very easy for you to implement into your daily treatment plan for your patient or your client. And without further ado, just a little bit about me. I am a board-certified American Chiropractic Association Diplomate. It is the only diplomate that's actually recognized not just nationally but worldwide as a chiropractic diplomate in acupuncture. And of course, here it lets you know a little bit about me and you can always peruse that later. But there I am and on with the show. The description I've put in here, you'll not only learn the auricular master acupuncture points and why it might be a good idea to integrate them into your clinical protocols, but we will cover How to integrate them, why to integrate them, why that will increase your patients' positive treatment outcomes, and how you can do this on the next visit or even today, especially if you're already certified and you've had a little bit of auriculotherapy in the past but maybe feel like you need a little bit more, or even if you've had none. The points are very, very easy to find. A lot of times people think you have to have special instrumentation to find these points, but they're not hard to find. Most of you are aware of the electrical stimulation devices. Some of them are called Pointer Pluses. You don't really need those. If you want to use electrical, that's fantastic. That works even faster for the patient in breaking that pain modulation there in the body and the brain. But You do not need electrical devices or current. You can use the really, really tiny— I use the very, very smallest needle I can find. It's, for me, it's been the searing needle and it's the size, it's a facial needle. It's just so tiny, patients don't even feel it in the ear either. Otherwise, if you use your average gauge needle, acupuncture needle in the ear, not only could there probably be a little bit of bleeding, There could be a lot more pain involved for the patient, and that might not give them a reason to want to have you repeat that. Whereas with the electrical devices, much of the time they're pain-free. So that's a little bit of the course description. Here's a picture of 10 points. We'll actually go through 12. There are 2 additional ones that we'll also cover at the end of the PowerPoint presentation. For all— everything for the upper limbs and any type of pain for the lower limbs. So, a total of 12. But as you can see, I will be starting up here at the— I will call it 12 o'clock. When I look at an ear, and I will— you'll hear me talk about the grid. A lot of these points are on grids and they're parallel to each other or they're perpendicular to each other. And that's just how they are. It's almost like if you think of the ear as a hologram, Mm-hmm. You've got all these grids and you've got deeper, deeper lines, deeper points, more surface points. And just for the knowledge here, you'll see these green triangles that you can observe here on the screen right now. And then the little square blue, cobalt blue circles. We'll start with the allergy point. It has one of each. So what that tells me and what that will tell you when you look at a slide, and there's a key on a following slide too that you can— a legend. The round cobalt just means this is a surface point on the ear. You don't need to look for it. It's not hidden. It's not underneath the ridge or behind the ear, posterior ear. It is right there at the allergy point. It actually is at the apex of the ear. The easiest way to find that is for you to take— after you've observed the patient's ear, we haven't gone through any of the inspection or— observation, but you will— you can fold the ear just almost in half there, and at that very tip where that crease is where you fold, that will be the allergy point. Now there's a second allergy point, and I do use that if the surface allergy point, the one that's in blue, doesn't seem to be quite doing the job that I think it needs to be doing. Maybe on the second or third visit I can add That little green triangle means, it tells me in the reference material, that that is underneath that ridge there that's on the superior helix of the ear. So you have to go in there with a pair of tweezers and find that or use your hand and look under there. It's underneath that little ridge and you can feel it right now in your own ear. There's just a little ridge there and it's right at the apex, but it's underneath that little ridge there. at the superior helix. That's the allergy point. Then if we're going clockwise, for me it would be to the right here, sympathetic autonomic point. That's obviously hidden also, it's in that green triangle there between the superior helix and then we're headed down towards the— what would be the helix root. So not quite midway, about 2:30, maybe 3 o'clock there. Then we have the mass— We have the zero point there at the root of the helix. Helix root in the ear, on around to the master oscillation, you have the tranquilizer point, and we'll go through these pretty quickly. Endocrine, the master cerebral, master sensorial, the thalamus point. Always look at the thalamus point as about 7 o'clock on the— what we know, we'll know to be here in a quick review, the antitragus of the ear. The zero point, which we covered, that Shen Men, it's also known as Divine Gate. So just the name itself kind of tells us it's a pretty special point, and we'll learn all about those here beginning now. But first, all of you know the parts of the ear, but it seems to be on the 100-hour exams anyway. We have a national 100-hour certification exam, at least in our state, that's required, and then the National Board Acupuncture Review is also required. But this seems to be The group of questions that doctors miss the most, that students miss the most, the student doctors, the doctors, the PTs, whoever, MDs. There's a lot of anatomy to the ear, and here are the different areas for you to review and look back at when we talk about where each one is located. You've got— I think there's 12 or 13 different areas where points can be located. And there's probably even some more, and I know there are more posteriorly, which we won't even cover today, but there are several points on the posterior surface of the ear. But moving right along, also know, at least depending on your scope, I know here where we are in Texas, our scope is limited. Our rule of law here in Texas is limited to neuromusculoskeletal, so We do cover a lot of musculoskeletal points today. However, if in your scope you can treat other conditions, many of these points that we'll cover today and we'll— we'll be cut— we'll cover all the musculoskeletal, but you'll also see where they cover other conditions. So if you have a broader scope than we do here in Texas, great, wonderful. You can cover many other—

Conditions.

conditions for your patients with ear acupuncture alone, without even touching any other part of their bodies. And of course, people— it seems like it's always a question from the chiropractors that are in the group anyway. You always adjust the patient first, then you provide the therapies. Acupuncture is the therapy modality, and it is performed after the patient is adjusted. So just in case you had that question. But when you look at these musculoskeletal points here, attendees, you'll see points for every system in the body. You have your lumbar spine, your sacral, your thoracic. You'll see cervical spine there, face, eyes, forehead, temples. And while we're looking, elbows, chest, wrist, hand and fingers, knees, there, toes at the very top, almost at the apex. Beside it, I put the little homunculus that you see in all the embryological books and the diagrams in the acupuncture books. And if you look a lot, a lot of times these musculoskeletal points correspond with a part of the body if it were an upside-down or inverted fetus there in the ear. And we know that it's, it's nothing new. Again, auriculotherapy is— it's more modern now because we've proven how it works with all our modern technologies. We're proving more and more how it works, but it's very, very, very, very ancient.

If earning a certification is on your CE plan this year, then you're in luck. Southeast Professional Education Group just launched 3 new certifications on our online learning platform. You can complete your certification in functional nutrition, chiropractic acupuncture, or clinical human performance With immediate access to get started learning right away. To learn more and get started, click the new certifications link in our show notes or visit online.sports-seminars.com today. Oh, and one more thing. If you have no idea what a CE plan is or why you should have one, don't stress, we've got you covered. Simply check out episodes 26 and 27 where Dr. Tom Teeter Explains what the rehab continuum is, and lays out a plan for developing and expanding a strong clinical skill set through CE courses. Now, back to the show.

We'll start with allergy point, but real quick before we move on to the points, just a little bit of history. We know that the ancient, the ancient Chinese did have auricular points. They did exist, and they are. mentioned in the Neijing and some of the oldest books on the planet that do describe acupuncture and list all the conditions that it can help. But in 1957, really when it started in America, Dr. Paul Nogier— and many of you that are in acupuncture have heard of him, his son now carries on his legacy— he connected these somatotropic or the inverted fetus correspondences to the auricle or the ear, to the auriculo part of the ear. And when he did that, modern China just went kind of nuts about this because they thought, well, this is us and we haven't even discovered this. And, or maybe they discovered it and just hadn't written about it. But so the year— a year later in 1958, modern China initiated a massive study. And they, they did this study using Dr. Nogier's clinical effectiveness of this auricular acupuncture. And they found it to be incredibly confirming and successful, and it just exploded at that time, kept exploding. So by the early '70s, there were cases researched for many, many different types of, quote, modern problems or conditions in humans. And one of those was the detoxification of opiate withdrawals. And they used it in the '70s, actually beginning in about 1973 here in the United States. There was a doctor. an MD, Michael Smith, and he applied auriculoacupuncture to much of his clinical work where he helped addicts withdraw from opiates and crack cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, you name it. And he actually used double-blind studies that began shortly after that, all proving that these points work. So many of you are familiar with NADA, where the detoxification group, Now has the 5 points they use for addiction withdrawal in these addiction centers. It's a business all in and of itself. So a little bit on the history, I wanted to cover that. And then we'll go to allergy point. We've already said that it is at the apex of the ear and then underneath that little ridge there at the apex of the ear. And the main thing too, real quick, to remember, and I didn't mention this on the slide on the master points. that we are going over today, they don't relate to any one specific anatomical organ, but they do affect a broad range of physiological functions just as many other body points do also. So in your allergy point, it's used for anti— any inflammation responses. So you think, oh, well, we can't treat allergies under our scope, or I can't do that in my office legally. Well, no, you can because while you're treating that rheumatic arthritis or any inflammatory response, guess what? Whether we like it or not, it will address the energy in that human's body. And those of you that are familiar with acupuncture understand this even better, more than I can go into today. It will address that imbalance in that body that's causing those allergies maybe to affect that patient or that human more than necessary, or trigger that immune response in a contraindicating way for that patient to not be miserable with with the condition, but it's also used for rheumatic arthritis, toxicity. It will also help if a patient's in anaphylactic shock, not that we treat that, but it could actually help that. It excretes the metabolic waste, it helps the body excrete metabolic waste. So all of these things are going to help inflammation also. So I put it in here, wanted to cover it because we treat inflammation every single day in our offices as chiropractors. And of course, that's the perspective I'm coming from. But even as the physical therapist, your patients have inflammation in their body. It's a— it's a biggie nowadays. But it can also be used, the slide tells us, to relieve excess Qi. And— and it can also— and I do this quite often— I let the patient become part of the— answer instead of me being the provider and me, me, me being the one that, that quote heals them. I let them know they're responsible for their own healthcare. That's their body. It's their point. They can stimulate that point. And one, one real easy way on the allergy point is pinching it because it's so easy to find. You just fold your ear and then pinch that where that crease is. And not hard, but just 3 or 4 times a day. that allergy's bothering you, you can do a little pinch. Also, we have press needles many of you are familiar with, and also Acupatches, seeds, beads that you can tape on that part of the ear and give that patient something to take home with them. So they have that in their ear, they can stimulate that 2 or 3 times a day by tapping. And when you see them back in 2 or 3 days to replace that tape, you can ask them how they've been doing with their own self-care. And that puts them in charge of their healthcare and takes you out of the role of paternalistic all-doer when we know that really they're the ones that are going to be healing their own bodies, that we don't do the healing. The next point is the endocrine point. So it balances the endocrine hormones and it can raise or lower glandular secretion. Well, we know, all right, with hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism, diabetes, Let's just look at where that point is. To that point, the way I find that point, it's— to me, it's so easy. Just find that intertragic notch there. It's right there in the center. If you look at the ear as a grid and you were saying, okay, allergy points probably at 12 o'clock, you can really— you can pretty much put the intertragic notch at 5 or 5:30, not quite 6 o'clock where the lobe is. So it's right there. It's— remember, it's the little green triangle, so you're going to have— it's down there in the little groove underneath the little rim or fold of the skin there, and that's where you'll find the endocrine point, one of the 10 master points. For perimenopause, and that's for any of the perimenopause symptoms, which could be cramping, irregularity, it also activates the pituitary gland, but it again has an anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic effect. So again, it has an anti-inflammatory effect. on the entire body and promotes water metabolism. So very, very powerful point for not only endocrine disorders but also inflammatory disorders. So there's an anti-inflammatory point for those of us who are supposedly only treating musculoskeletal here in the state of Texas anyway. So next, Master Cerebral. Let's look at where that's at. Again, the blue circle tells us that it is on the surface, so you don't have to look for it. It's not hidden. And really, it is part of the lobe, and how I find it is where the lobe meets the side of the head there, the chin, the mandible, and you go up not quite halfway up that lobe will be your master cerebral. And if you think about that, when you go back to the little slide that had the little upside-down fetus, the baby, the inverted fetus, that's right there at the head where the cerebrum is. It does address the prefrontal lobe of the brain, which we know affects decision-making and initiates conscious action, among other things. But it's used for nervous activity, OCD, fear, worry, neurasthenia, extreme fatigue, or lack of concentration. And this point also promotes deep sleep. I don't know about you, but it seems like for the last 15 or 20 years of my practice, Almost everyone now over 40, and it's beginning to be even younger than that, has trouble sleeping. When you ask them, are you sleeping okay? They say, no, I have insomnia. They either can't get to sleep or they go to sleep and they wake up and they can't get back to sleep. This is a wonderful point. I've used it many, many times and trained the patient how to use it, or stuck that press needle on there, or that bead, or Wonderful, wonderful point class for our attendees for promoting deep sleep. So there's your Master Cerebral point. Next is Master Oscillation. Now we're going back up toward— actually, it's on the tragus, underneath the tragus. So if you remember your anatomy, that little groove there that kind of— it looks like a little bud budding out there at the base of the— or just below the helix root is the tragus. And right underneath that rim is the master oscillation point. It's really easy to find. It balances the right and left sides of the cerebral hemispheres, the brain. Used in all the learning disabilities, ADD, dyslexia, or a patient who has a— who is sensitive to react or reacts to medications. And we all know which patients those are. They seem to be allergic to air. No matter if one person in the room is gonna have a reaction, I know I have a couple of patients, they're gonna have a reaction. That would be a great point for them. And then, we just kind of threw this in here, I did. When treating electrically, you can use a frequency as high as 2.5 Hz on this point. And again, when you treat electrically, we'll go over that real quick for those of you in the audience that might be using that, those frequencies. We want— remember, when the patient feels it, when they say ouch, it's too high. And the reason they're feeling it is because it's not going deep. The electricity is on the surface and it's just hanging around on the surface and electrifying that surface and they feel it. What, what you want them to be is just subthreshold. So Are not threshold. You want them to be where they barely, barely feel it. So you might start low, go up to where they feel it. That's usually what I do. I start real, real low. The last thing you wanna do is shock their ear. It's quite painful. I've had it done. And I accidentally, when I was training back in '04, 2004, I had an associate doc was practicing on his ear and with a 9-volt battery, just one of the StimPro Pluses. Had it a little high and he never let me ever. It hurt him and he said, no, you're never going to do that to me again. And I felt terrible. It was just a second, a zap, but it was so strong. So I start— I just start so low. I start on the lowest setting of your device. Just learn your device, start on the lowest setting and slowly turn it up. And so the first time before you get the baseline, it may take you a minute. It may take 2 minutes. But usually not more than that to where they feel it. So when they say they— I tell them, I want you to just close your eyes and focus on it, and you might have to really think about feeling it. It should be where you barely, barely feel it. That's when we know it's going deeper, and that's what you want. You want that frequency to be barely recognizable to the patient. So your master oscillation, great for any types of Just balancing the left and right side of the brain. I love to use it on stroke patients with postthalamic pain syndrome, which we can treat in Texas since it's a pain syndrome, really balancing the left and right side of their brain. So I use it quite a bit with all the stroke patients I've treated over the years. Next is your Master Sensorial, and it controls the brain's cortex, cerebral cortex, parietal and occipital lobe. It's not a neurological class today. We're all doctors and you don't remember exactly what all that covers, you can look that up. But where is it located? It'll reduce any unpleasant excessive sensation, ringing in the ears, which we see quite a bit as chiropractors, and blurred vision. Now, it is in the lobe of the ear, on the lobe of the ear. Again, a blue circle on the surface, easy to find. How do I find that? Again, it's almost halfway up the lobe, so when you start really looking at ears, you'll see Huge lobes, tiny little lobes. I see grown men with little tiny ears the size of some 6-year-olds. So it depends on the ear, they're all different. But it's just about halfway up the center of that lobe. So I would take the very middle of that lobe if I were to fold that lobe in half and go about halfway up where you have that intertragic notch, but it's just to the side of it. But it still looks to me like— And much of the time on patients, it's still at 6 o'clock, just halfway up. to the antragus there, up the ear. So that's what you'd be treating there. Again, paresthesias, we see that quite a bit with many of our patients with radiculopathies, and then ringing in the ears we see quite a bit too. But any unpleasant or excessive sensation, and I know you're probably thinking right now about patients you have that have those type of, types of conditions that you could, you could help in your office today. Point zero, its location, very, very easy to find. I love it. It's the helix root. The helix, which just comes all the way around the ear, the rim of the ear is at the very root there, right as it joins into the concha of the ear. It brings the whole body into homeostasis, balances energy, hormones, brain activity. So, so, so important. I use it. It's almost an instinct now. It just takes 2 to 3 seconds electrically to stimulate the ear, 5 seconds at the most with an electrical Pointer Plus or whatever you're using. There's so many good tools out now to use. Why not just go ahead and do the Point Zero? To me, the Point Zero just kind of resets the body's entire computer. Because remember, those of you who've had the minimum class, the 100-hour class, All yin and yang organs either directly or indirectly begin and end in the ear. Again, the ear is so, so powerful. So if you'll recall that in your 100, your first 100 hours, all yin and yang organs either, either directly or indirectly begin and/or end in the ear. So this, this brings the whole body into balance, resets the whole body's computer or clock, whatever you want to call it, balances Or supports the action of all the other points you're using. So why would you not reset the computer and use Point Zero on every patient? It just takes 3 to 5 seconds, why not do it? I've had great success with it. It controls the visceral organs through the peripheral nerve ganglia and promotes willpower. So again, Point Zero, I love Point Zero. I treat Point Zero on every single patient. It's innervated actually embryologically by the vagus nerve, and that's going back to first and second year in school. But it's consistent with the location when you go back and look at the little homunculus of the cerebellum. And it's also reactive, and this isn't on your slide, but it's also reactive in many chronic degenerative conditions. So another great reason for us treating musculoskeletal. Which I think most of us do, the majority of. Another reason to just put this— never forget this point. It's a beautiful, beautiful point to use to help your patient every single day. Takes about 3 to 5 seconds. You'll pick 2 or 3 points for that day. For the patient, you might only pick 1 or 2 master points and then an actual anatomical point the patient's having trouble with. And You've, say, adjusted or treated the patient with all the other modalities and tips up your sleeve and magical things you have as a doctor or therapist, and takes you an extra maybe 30 seconds to treat 6 or 7 points. So why wouldn't you do that at the end of the session? Or I know many practitioners who never stick needles in patients. All they do is ear, Electrical auriculotherapy, and they get incredible results. So that's your point zero. But those are just 3 or 4 different ways you could actually use point zero or use your electrical stim. If you use needles, you don't have to leave the needles in for 20 minutes. But if I do electrical needling, or if I do non-electrical needling in the ear, I usually will do 1 or 2 points max in the ear while I've needled the other parts of the body. I'm gonna I would be needling, so I just take those out and then don't use electrical that day, say. And they stay in 15 to 20 minutes. Shen Men. Shen Men tranquilizes the mind. Where is it? Okay, well, it's in an area called the scaphoid fossa, or you might see it written as triangular fossa. And on this picture here, you can kind of see it's shaded into where it's like a triangular shape. Flowing into the upper portion of the ear there. A scaphoid, it's a sailboat. So scaphoid, it's actually almost in the not quite center of the triangular fossa, and that's Shen Men. If you look at Shen Men, and now I know you remember the allergy point there at the apex of the ear, they are on a grid. You almost have a perpendicular line there where you could come straight down Some people have trouble finding Shen Men. That's Divine Gate, also known as Divine Gate. So if you are having trouble with that, you can always fold that ear and find that allergy point and then right straight, actually parallel with it, you'll see Shen Men or you'll be able to find it there in the little scaphoid fossa. Again, everyone's ears are different and you just have to kind of go by their anatomy of their ear. It actually alleviates stress. Pain. So again, musculoskeletal can treat— use that. Tension, anxiety, depression, insomnia. There's another great point for insomnia. Reduces inflammatory diseases, hypertension, and also fevers. But it is a key point, and all your textbooks will let you know this. I took a lot of this information out of Terry Olson's book on auriculotherapy, The Manual, which I know most of you are familiar with if you've ever had a course in auriculotherapy or Acupuncture. It's a key point for alleviating pain. So seems like just about all our patients come— sad but true. But who else to— we can, we can help their pain without prescription drugs or over-the-counter medications that also have side effects. And this is a great point, and you can teach them how to use it. And again, on this one, it's used to— Use it in subacute, chronic, or painful inflammatory conditions. And the reason why it's, it's so important— I'll just go a little deeper here— in its relationship to inflammation, it is a key point there along with Spleen. And we're not studying the organ points today, but that's really why it's so special for any types of pain. And you don't hear about that so much. You hear it tranquilizes the mind, it's called Divine Gate. But it, along with Zero Point, are 2 points that if I don't do any other auriculotherapy, Because I say needle the body and you don't have hours and hours to spend with each patient. But I do have 5 seconds. I'll just hit Shen Men or treat Shen Men and our Divine Gate in zero point in their dominant ear. Don't even have to do it bilaterally, but you can because we know there's crossover in the brain. So many, many schools teach to treat bilaterally because of that reason. So there you go. There's Shen Men.

That's it for today's episode. Be sure to tune in for part 2 of this 2-episode training series, where Dr. Kirban will cover specific conditions that can be treated with these master points, as well as effect of bilateral versus unilateral treatment on conditions. You won't want to miss it. Our next episode drops in 2 weeks. If you're ready to implement what you've learned into practice, one of the best ways to do so is to watch the full webinar recorded replay so that you have all of the visuals, especially the diagrams and charts of the ear and master points. I've included a link to the webinar replay in the show notes. Simply click the link to watch it at any time. If you enjoyed today's training, be sure to like, follow, and share it with a friend. We'll see you next time. Hey guys, if you like what you heard today, I encourage you to visit our website at factor-store.com. That's spelled F-A-K-T-R-store.com to find out more information about all that we have to offer. We have a variety of online offerings as well as our hands-on Factor Rehab System course scheduled in cities around the globe. Be sure to also check out our event calendar and Bookmark any of these upcoming live webinar dates coming up in the near future so you can join us live. And of course, the biggest compliment we can receive is for you to help us spread the word to your friends, colleagues, and classmates. You'll find all the important links as well as info about our sponsors in the show notes, so be sure to check those out.