NEW PATIENT APPOINTMENT

New patients are given a comprehensive treatment and intake that includes a full medical history from both Western and Eastern perspectives. The intake discussion will take your history and your goals into account to come up with your personal treatment plan. Treatments often include acupuncture and may also take advantage of other traditional Chinese medicine modalities such as moxabustion, cupping, tui-na medical massage, and lifestyle counseling. Herbal prescriptions, if warranted, are charged separately.

Appointment Duration: ~90 minutes
Treatment Cost: $100

What is Traditional Chinese Medicine?

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a unique way of thinking about, diagnosing, and treating the human body and disease. Its efficacy has been refined, grown, and honed through thousands of years of real-life experience. Over these millennia, knowledge has been shared and tested so that only what is truly useful in the maintenance and promotion of health has remained.

Much of the theory of TCM is rooted in the philosophy of Yin and Yang (pronounced: yahng). Yin is more dark, cool, still, and substantial; Yang is more bright, warm, active, and insubstantial. However, Yin and Yang are all relative. A chunk of ice is Yin to a campfire’s Yang, but that same campfire is Yin in comparison to the Sun.

It is the same in the human body, some things are more Yin and others more Yang. Keeping balance between the two is the focus of Traditional Chinese Medicine. This is so that we maintain our substance (your physical body, the Yin) while still retaining life (your metabolism, the Yang).

At this intersection lies a third concept in TCM: Qi (pronounced: chee). Qi lies in the interplay between Yin and Yang encompassing the substances and energy your body produces that drive your metabolism. Qi is what TCM practitioners hope to influence when treating a patient.

Other types of medicine focus on treating and eradicating the disease; TCM is different in that it tries to bring the patient into balance so that their body will have the resources to heal itself. TCM attains and maintains this balance using many different techniques or modalities, the most common of which are mentioned briefly below.

Acupuncture

Acupuncture is the insertion of very thin pins into various points in the body. The pins are sterile, single-use, stainless steel, flexible, and about the width of a hair. Acupuncture pins are not hollow and have a rounded tip that tends to push tissues aside as they are inserted.

Acupuncture pins are very different from the needles used to take blood or give an injection. Those needles are hollow and have a sharp edge that cuts as it is inserted. In fact, anywhere from 20 to 40 acupuncture pins can be inserted into the hollow point of a syringe!

Moxibustion

Moxibustion is the burning of dried leaves of the plant artemisia argyi (commonly known as mugwort) that has been processed into moxa floss. This plant was traditionally used because it can be found most everywhere and the processed floss burns evenly and gently. The floss is burned on various points or areas on the body. While in the past it was burned until a small blister formed, that practice has fallen out of favor. Now, it is burned until the patient feels a warm sensation, which may take several applications.

Herbal Medicine

Western pharmaceuticals often have quick-acting and profound effects on the body. The trade-off, however, can sometimes include undesirable side effects. Conversely, TCM herbal formulas use minerals and flowers, roots, and leaves of plants in combination so that the formula is balanced to reduce or eliminate side-effects. Some formulas also use animal products that can often be replaced with non-animal substitutes if you prefer.

Cupping

Cupping uses glass or bamboo cups to create vacuum suction on the skin. This suction draws blood out of the vessels without damaging them. This allows stagnant blood to be pulled out of circulation so that fresh blood can take its place, which speeds healing. Cupping is used in many traditional medicines throughout the world and was made popular during the 2016 Olympics by many of its athletes.

Tui-na Massage

Tui-na (literally “push-pull”) massage are TCM medical massage techniques often used when there are more superficial issues within the body such as musculoskeletal problems with muscles and joints.

Lifestyle Advice

Lifestyle advice often focuses on coming up with strategies to deal with factors that are negatively affecting patients’ health, such as stress. Strategies includes meditation and Qi Gong (pronounced: chee gung) exercises, which use breathing and postural techniques to influence health.

Dietary Advice

TCM categorizes foods by taste (sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, salty) and temperature (hot, cold, neutral) to offset imbalances in the body. Many foods also have specific effects on the body that your TCM practitioner can use to boost your health.