Acupuncture for veterans and PTSD with Mitch Lehman

Hello, this is Julianne Good and welcome to Psych One-on-One. We're here to make psychology understandable, interesting, enlightening, and hopefully entertaining. And we're here to give some tips for you and your family and friends to make your lives a little bit easier. Tonight, my special guest is Mitch Lehman. I met him at Stand Down in Los Angeles a couple of months ago, and it's an honor to have him on the show. He is a licensed acupuncturist. He's a Navy veteran, and we are going to be talking about acupuncture and holistic healing and what's happening with the veteran situation. Hi, Mitch. How are you doing? Doing well. How are you, Julie? Not too bad. Mitch has happily agreed or offered his services this evening, so I'm going to be getting acupunctured while we're doing this show because for anybody who follows this show regularly... I got into a car accident last week, a really bizarre accident. I was in a booth, a middle booth, and somebody came along and hit it, and I got whiplashed all over my body. Yeah, beautiful, right? And the woman was in her 80s and driving a Caddy. Caddy SUV, yes. Nothing like an Escalade. That's it. If you want to bash into something, buy an Escalade, right? That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. So, Mitch, I want to talk to you about your experience in the Navy and how you got started in doing acupuncture. Sure. Well, when I joined the Navy, I worked in the Navy airing, actually, and as I started deploying on the ships, I started getting headaches. Didn't think much of it because I was on the boat. Headaches came on, got off the boat, headaches went away. So, it wasn't too much of a problem. It wasn't a problem until I had a longer cruise and all of a sudden the headaches didn't go away. And the Navy neurologist pretty much took me through everything that they knew how to do and they were kind of at a loss. So I'd had acupuncture once before when I'd broken my heels and that had worked quite well. In fact, that's how I got into the Navy, actually. Even with previously broken heels, I was in good enough shape to do that, which apparently is not really possible. So I figured it worked before. Before, it'll work again. So I would actually go see an acupuncturist at the acupuncture school in San Diego about three times a week out of my own pocket. But it kept me on active duty and it kept the headaches at bay a little better than the medication did. I think it was combination of all of it, but I noticed there was a huge trend in I was functioning better. So as a result of that, I could pretty much see the writing on the wall that if you keep having migraine headaches, you're not going to be in the Navy. And I was like, I'm not going to be in the Navy too long. So I began to really start looking for what I'd be doing next. How old were you then? I was 29. Okay. I was 20, so I was hit with it pretty young. And I thought, well, this works for me. Why not? So I started attending classes while I was still on active duty. And one thing led to another and I actually became, for the college I was in, the test case for the veterans benefits. I was in the veterans benefits for acupuncture school. And I started there in 1993, graduated in 1997 and actually started practicing in 1995, doing my internship. So it's sort of kind of rolled all into one. And actually as I was going through school, I ended up getting a whole lot of acupuncture because the migraine headaches were controlled, but not really gone. So did they figure out what the source of the migraine headaches were? Yeah. So did they figure out what the source of the migraine headaches was? Or was it just kind of like a hit and miss and do a lot of acupuncture and eventually went away? Well, actually the neurologist, my neurologist was really pretty sharp and his impression was that it was some kind of organic solvent. And I said, well, great. Then why don't we just do a blood test and find out which one it is? He goes, well, because there's about 350. And he said, and they're all going to show up. And he goes, and I have one man who has migraine headaches. And he said, well, I have a man who has migraine headaches and 5,000 on that carrier who don't. So he said, realistically, there's no way to know which one it was. As time passed, it turned out that every time I am around a jet fuel, I get, you know, or oil-based paint, same kind of solvent. I get just dizzying and violent headaches. So my guess, it was the jet fuel, which if you're on an aircraft carrier, you're just not getting away from that stuff. It was in the water. It was just by the chow hall. So you really can't get away from it. It's sort of everywhere. So that kind of explained why it hit me so hard on the ship. And then staying away from all that really seems to be that and fluorescent lights. Those are the two big things that really kind of trigger it. Which we have, Ryan, right now. So just let us know if you want to cut the, yeah. Oh, not a big deal in short doses. Yeah. Just the things where in your standard office, eight hours a day, I'm probably not the best guy for that. Yeah. Yeah. And who wants to work in an office eight hours a day? Been there, done that. Exactly. And what I would teach, I would actually put up my own lights. Works out much better when you can control your own lighting, really. Yeah. It's amazing that a lot of people don't know the sensitivity and illnesses they can get off of fluorescent lighting. A lot of people don't know that. And this is common lighting for most all. Yeah. A lot of office buildings. Oh yeah. Yeah. And with the mini fluorescents now, you can't get away from them. Yeah. And they flicker. I mean, for me, these things are flickering like mad. And that's one of the difficulties with migraines is you can actually catch the flickering. It flickers 60 times per second and we actually can catch tracers of it. So it's actually visible. So that's one of the ways you can tell somebody who's got migraines. Really? That's interesting. I've never heard of that. Huh. Well, thanks for letting us know that. So yeah. So now it was interesting. Mitch and I were having a little bite to eat before the show and we were discussing he's from San Diego. And I saw that he had gone to the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine down in San Diego and that got me excited because I had gone to massage school in San Diego in my early twenties over at the Mueller School of Massage and Mitch had taught there, but it was after that I had gone there. So can you tell us a little bit about that experience about teaching over at the massage school? Sure. Well, basically there was kind of a turnover when the school was sold. So I came in there to teach one class and then my predecessor just kept going, can you teach this class? I'm tired of teaching it. So I ended up really... Yeah. Restructuring their whole oriental medicine program so that it was in a lot of ways on par with the massage programs at the acupuncture schools and it actually taught things that just were formerly not done. Acupuncturists tend to use, look at tongues and feel pulses and be able to tell what's wrong there. So I had my students pretty much work toward that level and really develop their sense of touch. So it was kind of interesting to take all the theory that I had an acupuncture school and take it out of my head and put it in my hands. And until I went to teach at massage school, it was just a mental construct. I mean, it was real to me, but when I had to teach at the massage school, I had to make it something massage students, because they're not going to have needles. Mm-hmm. So I had to actually begin to start feeling again. Yeah. Which really was, the truth of it is I got paid to learn. So really the fun part is my students taught me a lot. Hopefully they came away with something, but I came away with huge amounts because their feedback managed to hone everything I do to the point where you're talking about stand down. That was really kind of the consummate result of doing all that. How many years later? I'd been doing stand down for about four years when I started Mueller College, but it was only me and a couple of other people and it hadn't really grown. So I was treating, doing massage, acupuncture and sort of administration. So it was kind of just a big fat mess. So when I was at Mueller, I began to be able to recruit massage therapists from a couple of the schools. I was able to recruit acupuncturists from some of the other schools. So I actually had to take a step back and look at how to organize something and step away from patient care, which as you well know in your field, you just don't want to do that. You don't want to voluntarily sign up for paperwork. Oh, right. There's too much of it, period. Exactly. We trained for everything else, and I ended up having this huge amount of paperwork, but that kind of allowed me, bought me the time. And the various disciplines because things like Reiki, which is a type of energetic healing, healing touch, all of that became much more real to me because that was part of the program at Mueller. So I got very much more exposed to it. And so I began to invite those people in. So pretty soon we went from one person and I think in 2012 down in San Diego, I had 250 volunteers. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. And we had 1600 patient visits in about 20 hours. Oh, at a stand down? At a stand down. So it's quite epic now, not due to me, due to just all these people coming together. And I mean, we have six different departments. We have the largest square footage, even including medical of usable. I mean, medical has a lot more waiting room space, but actually usable space, we actually have more than straight VA medical. Just in terms of floor space. How did that happen? Demand, really. It came down to the point where we needed the space and that medical had been set up for a long time and they've been trying to slowly expand. And it just became a question of, we were all being crushed into a tiny space and the organizers just said, we just need to give you space. You need this. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We need more space. Can you treat more people? And I think in 2009, we had treated around 800. I think we had topped out somewhere around a thousand until we invited some chiropractors from up here in LA at the LA Chiropractic College. I think it's Southern California University of Health Sciences. Mm-hmm. Properly. And I invited them down and they said, sure, we'll show up for three days. And all of a sudden, we just had a tremendous number of people. And a lot of the homeless vets know. Yeah. They know that chiropractic, I mean, that was what they kept asking for. Chiropractic, they come in for massage. And then if they're waiting for a little while, they'll think about acupuncture because between the two, you've got laying on the hands or the stainless steel needles. So there's a little bit more appeal to human touch really. Yeah. And the whole thing too is just trying to get a person over the phobia of needles, period. Because I think in general baseline, most of us are... Most of us are afraid of needles. But I think a lot of people don't realize how micro fine the acupuncture needles are. And when they go in, it's just like, boop. And you really don't feel anything unless you're 10 step, right? Usually not. No. Yeah. That's true. And that's what it really is, is the phobia. Because every time I have a new veteran come in, I work at Veterans Village down in San Diego. I run a volunteer acupuncture clinic where I train acupuncture students. And also other fellow acupuncturists in a style that allows us to work with a ridiculous number of people and get results in a very, very quick manner. So the biggest thing is everyone who walks in, they say, I'm afraid of needles. It's like, okay, everybody who's not afraid of needles, raise your hand. All hands are down. So I said, nobody's not afraid of needles. Yeah. And nobody just walks in and says, oh, I just love... Or especially if they've had too many medical procedures and... Exactly. What do you do? Well, even former IV drug users, they don't like needles so much. Even guys with huge sleeves of tattoos. I mean, I've seen people with piercings and tattoos and former IV drug use and none of them like needles at all. But they like what the needles do. So the... The end result. Exactly. And we tend to get... What I think we in Southern California want is instant total gratification. And we want it in teal. I mean, that's just sort of what we... Really what we're set up for. And that's what we've managed to be able to do for the veterans. Because if it doesn't work the first time, I mean, being a veteran myself, we're a skeptical bunch. We don't believe in anything. So if it doesn't work the first time, why on earth would it do anything the second time? So how do you... So how do you convince vets with a mindset coming in like that, that what you do is going to be therapeutic, it's going to be in their best interest? And how do you start to work with that? It's interesting. Most of them actually, they're going to talk to their friends. So when we're at a stand down, it's usually a closing event in San Diego. So we have... We're at the San Diego High School athletic field. And so it's a closed event. Right. And so a lot of these guys have been on the street together. So one person comes in and he says, wow, this really worked. Or they're watching us and they're getting a massage and they're getting chiropractic and now they're really relaxed and maybe they've had healing touch and so far nothing's hurt. So they said, why not? I hurt. I'm just tired of hurting. And whatever we're doing is hurting less. And they're kind of going, okay, I'm willing to suck it up. I'm willing to take a little bit of pain to see if we can take away the greater pain. So most of them pretty much talk themselves into it. Or I have a lot of really perky admin people up at the front desk. And they're usually the ones who are doing that. I'm usually in the back somewhere running around trying to see what everybody's doing or doing needling myself. Yeah. And they're cute and convincing upfront, right? Very much so. I know I saw that happening at the LA stand down. And for our listeners who don't know exactly what a stand down is, can you explain that a little bit, please? I can. Well, a stand down, the way we're using it right now, kind of comes from an old medieval term. And that was even maybe back to the Roman times when you were up on a, say, some kind of a wall or even on a fortress wall. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. you don't know there may be arrows, spears, you don't know what's coming towards you. So when you actually stand down from the wall, you're safe. So that's where the term comes from. In the military, they usually call them a safety stand down. For instance, whenever there's a downed airplane, everybody quits, they all get together, find out what went wrong and how to make that happen differently. How to make sure a downed airplane doesn't happen. I was in the Navy air wing. But really any type of accident in the military, they literally stop operations. They want to go to the smallest detail. What can we do to stop this from happening? So a bunch of Vietnam veterans, about 27 years ago, John Natchison, who is really one who started and Robert Van Curen were two Vietnam vets who said, we need to do something because we've fallen through. We need to do something. We need to do something. We need to do something. the cracks. We don't really, we don't know what to do. So our running joke is it was basically a bunch of flyers and a bucket of chicken is what it started with. And that's not too far from the truth. So what they did is they ended up getting as many services as they could together and tried to bring our fellow vets in inside the wire. And anyone who's been out there inside the wire is where you're safe. It's the encampment. It's, but we have a lot of, a lot of people, you know, we say, well, we don't leave our wounded behind, but the truth of the matter is there's a bunch of them out there in, in San Diego, as many as two thirds of the homeless people are veterans. That means we left them all behind. That's such a shame. And they've fallen through the cracks. So the stand down is one of the things we do every year to catch as many, and we can only catch a thousand people there. And of there's far, far more than that, that, you know, and some, some are easy to catch and others, you know, war does terrible things to people's minds. And after a while, it's very difficult to play with others again. And a lot of veterans find that when they have been out and they come back, this is not the world they remember it being. And there's a lot of reasons for it. It's not that the world's just necessarily changed, but they have. So the perception, the perception is completely, completely skewed. So they have a number of tours and after a certain number, say somewhere between three and five tours out in combat, it's really hard to come home and play nice anymore. I would imagine multiple, you know, multiple incidents of, of PTSD. Post-traumatic stresses, you know, I mean, that's, that's one of them. They've got, they've got high anxiety as well, which they've had to fight through. And they often, they get medicated through. So that's a way to get, you know, to induce people out, which is unfortunate. But the, I mean, the post-traumatic stress, the flashbacks are, are awful to actually watch. And we sort of deal with them sideways. When you say we, who do you mean by we? Well, in, in acupuncture or what we do at Stand Down and also what we do in our veteran clinic, is we kind of go at it sideways because the first symptom of, of post-traumatic stress is I don't have post-traumatic stress. The second symptom is, damn it, I don't have post-traumatic stress. And the third, you know, you just have someone going completely off in your face. So at that point, we, we don't go after the post-traumatic stress. What we'll do is a lot of them have got a lot of physical pain. Well, it turns out that acupuncture is going to work on the neurochemistry of the brain anyway. So we start treating that. And then it's like, okay, that was fine. What about relaxation? How do you sleep? So we actually go about it kind of indirectly because one of the things that I've learned is I don't like people messing with my mind. And most, you know, most veterans really, you know, I mean, we've got, we've got a great facility down at Veterans Village. We have a lot of marriage and family therapists, interns, you know, doctors of psychology. We have some licensed clinical social worker trainees. So we've got this huge, you know, this huge team working. And one of the difficulties is a lot of them aren't veterans. So it's kind of hard to, it's kind of hard to bare your soul to somebody who has no idea what you're going through. And that's, and that's one of the reasons the acupuncture works is because we don't really talk. So what we can often do is kind of get them in a state of mind. Because once you put the needles in, the neurochemistry changes a lot from being distrustful to a little more trustful. So we actually can work with the marriage and family therapists. Because one of the difficulties is, is with, with veterans, including myself, is this, is this huge distrust. So if we get through that with acu, I mean, if you trust somebody sticking needles with you, all of a sudden talking to somebody, not so scary. Exactly. Yeah. That's that, that's the first barrier to get over is that huge fear. It sounds like resistance and denial and anger. Oh yeah. And then, and then you don't want anyone to think badly of you. And. I just had a friend recently pass away who was firmly convinced everyone that he served with was going to heaven, but he was headed straight to hell. He's probably one of the kindest people I've ever met in my entire life. And to just hear that kind of brings tears because these were the Vietnam vets that actually were the role models for us that served later. I mean, these are the guys who showed us what we had to do, who we had to be. And the ones who taught us if we don't take care of our own, how are we going to look ourselves in the mirror? Yeah, I would imagine. I mean, especially for. As much as Vietnam vets had been shunned when they came home. I remember seeing that on TV. I was pretty young at, you know, during that time, but I remember seeing that on TV and they were just, I mean, just the look on the vets faces was just, it was heartbreaking because it's like, are you kidding? As a society, we're going to sit there and turn away men and a few women at that. Not too many though, but we're going to turn away these men who have protected us and have gone out and put their lives on the line and they're coming home and people are protesting around them. Are you kidding? No, I, I share with you, I was there at that time. Fortunately, I got a chance to work at the VA drawing blood for a while to actually pay for acupuncture school. And I got a chance to meet a lot of these guys and say, welcome home, which is something that a lot of them just, they never heard of. I mean, I was from the second Gulf war era. We all got a welcome home. People from the, from the second Gulf war, they get a welcome home, the Korean war vets, but the Vietnam vets, it takes us to say, welcome home. And some of them were just stunned. It was something that they'd never thought they'd, you know, or thank you for your service. Cause they never got that. We do. And, and certainly when I see the young vets today and I see them in uniform, it's the first thing you walk up and say, thank you for your service. And then they get really self-conscious. They go, look for those of us who came before to those of you now, you know, you are important to us just like the ones who came before us. So I said, we're just looking at ourselves. We're just looking at younger selves. They need that recognition. They do. They do. And I think that, that that's where we failed with the Vietnam vets, which is why they learned to band together and show the rest of us that, you know, we really had to band together. Yes. And I think it's beautiful that you're doing this work for the vets. Most definitely. I was, I was so impressed with the work that you did at the LA stand down. And I, we were broadcasting that day for Skid Row Studios, but I got to go on the floor and see what a lot of the professionals were doing. A lot of your work, a lot of the Reiki healers. I got to have a treatment, which was great because I was a little out of sorts. And that just calmed me down and was just beautiful. I mean, department of mental health was there. The VA was there and a lot of other services to help the vets to hopefully get them on their feet a little bit and give them some compassion and some caring. Well, and, and the general veterans benefits, a lot of, a lot of veterans, if they apply the first time and are denied benefits for whatever reason, they generally just quit. Now, this is sort of odd. You think, because in the department of defense, the first thing they teach you is to fight, but to actually have to fight for your benefits. And the strange thing is it's not that the VA is particularly not wanting to divvy the benefits. It's so there's a really odd perception. And what it comes down to is if you don't fill out government paperwork, right, they really don't have a choice. And that's, and that was one of the hardest things because I had to fight for my benefits. So I was angry for a very, very long time. But. But then you learn that it's not that they're doing that. It's kind of like Sesame Street. You know, one of these things looks like the other. Well, all the benefits people have to do is they look at what's in the binder and they look at your application. And if they're not the same, they can't give you your benefits. Isn't there help for, for filling out that paperwork? There is. Actually, there's a veteran services organization, the veterans of foreign wars, American Legion. Oh, God. DAV. And I am just blanking on the, on the acronym. But there's, there's, when you're in the Navy, they also have you apply to one of these and give a power of attorney. The difficulty also is, say you want medical benefits. Unless you're injured in the service and can prove it, you're not going to get medical benefits. Now, if you were in combat, you get them for five years. That's it? Five years? Five years. Oh. And if you. Can't prove that you were, I mean, I don't care how much comp, if you can't prove somehow, and the difficulty is, is the onus of proof is on you. Now, the VA doctors, as much as they will take a look at you, they can't help you with that paperwork. There's a conflict of interest. So you have to go to compensation and pension. You have to go to a completely different set. And some of those doctors have an agenda, which is unfortunate because they believe that some of them believe that they need to deny. Certain amount of veterans. So there's a little bit of a problem with them because they're not exactly VA employees. They're, they're contractors. Ah, they're playing a numbers game. They're ex some of them do play the numbers game and it's actually not the VA that's playing the numbers game. It's actually other contractors. Uh, a couple who I've really, who I've run into who are just extremely unethical, uh, who I've gotten around, but it takes time. It takes effort and it takes a lot of guidance. It took years for me to listen to my veteran service. I was a VA representative and he finally said, uh, listen, read the paper. It tells you why you didn't get what you did. Go to another doctor, have him read it, highlight specific words and say, do these words fit? If they do circle them and make the, because a lot of doctors like to write their own reports. Well, that they don't use VA language, just like social security doesn't use the same language. So you literally have to set up something. Yeah. Yeah. Something like, you know, that's that simple circle, the words that describe me and some of them will be, they'll be on a certain percentage scale. So say post-traumatic stress, a hundred percent disabling has these characteristics. 70% has these 50, you know, 30, 10, and you have them, you highlight each one of those words and you have the doctor circle, the ones that apply to you and write a report accordingly. And if there's nothing up there in, in the a hundred percent range, then. You know, then they're going to write a report in whatever range it is that way. You're not leading to fraud. You're what you're doing is you're saying, these are the words that describe that. If you don't think those are the words, don't do that. But, but these are the words the VA needs to hear and they need to hear them in this specific manner. How confusing is that? I mean, for the average person, I mean, to me, it sounds like Latin and government together. And what a disaster. It's, it's, it's discouraging. And that's one of the other reasons. A lot of the people fall through the cracks is because how many times do you really want to go back and hit your head against the wall? I mean, for me, it took 13 years and then I just stopped fighting because I got to a certain point. Well, I'm not quite done yet, but my attitude is completely different. And as I walk a number of veterans through their own, you know, processes, because the veteran services organizations can't give certain types of advice, which I can. So that, that. That gives me kind of a unique place to say, this is what you can do. And this is what you can't, this is what you need, you know, who you need to see. And you have to start footing your own medical bills and you have to look through your records and find out, okay, where did this injury happen? When, you know, like for instance, post-traumatic stress, you can start seeing in someone's record where all of a sudden their behavior went kind of sideways. And isn't that difficult too? I mean, like with PTSD. PTSD, traumatic brain injuries, the memory, hopefully there's something still embedded to be able to even fill out that paperwork or, or just put the pieces of the puzzle together. That's gotta be almost impossible for some of the vets. Actually, because of just because of the brain chemistry. Yeah. I mean, the, the, the memory center, when it's under total constant panicky stress shrinks where the center of the governed sphere, or, or the last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last during the day are probably, if we're not fighting traffic, going to look for 2,000 things that look nice or relaxing. Say you're walking through the park or you're looking at a rose garden. You're going to look for things that are helpful, beneficial, or calming. Well, if you've gone through combat stress, you're looking for the 2,000 things most likely to kill, harm, maim, or in other way, injure you. So it's completely, you turn kind of sideways. It's skewed. It's extremely skewed. So you start looking, you see threats where someone else might not. Yeah, and you're on high alert all the time. Always. And in fact, I haven't been in combat, but just in general, when you put in 84-hour weeks, when we're out at sea, it's 12-hour days, seven days a week. So every day is kind of a Monday morning. There's no Friday. There's no Friday afternoons. So when you put out, you know, you start becoming very alert because all of a sudden you're asleep and there's general quarters drill. Or you start hearing the airplanes taking off. I mean, the whole ship reverberates. There's all sorts of noises all around you, and it doesn't matter which branch you were in. All of us end up to some degree pretty hyper alert at all times. Part of the training. Matter of fact, it comes in boot camp. That's where it starts. That's where it starts. You start looking for. You're just anything that might be out of place. And that's part of the idea is they want you to look at details because details, you live or die from details. You miss something out in the field, you might not come home. Right. That's the reality of it. It's the unfortunate reality of it. Yeah, definitely. Well, Mitch, we are going to take a commercial break. I would like to invite the listeners, if you would like to join in on our conversation, the number is 800-893-9562. Again, that's 800-893-9562. And my special guest is Mitch Lehman. We will return. The Chicago School of Professional Psychology offers numerous psychology, behavioral, and health-related science graduate degrees at three campuses. Los Angeles, California, including branches in Westwood, New York, and New York. And we're also offering a free course at the University of New York. Westwood in Irvine, Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, D.C., and online. The Chicago School prepares students to meet the ever-changing mental health needs of society through classroom experience and real-world training. The Chicago School Counseling Centers in Irvine and Westwood provide caring, confidential, and affordable psychological services to individuals and their families. For more information, visit thechicagoschool.edu. And thank you to the Chicago School for sponsoring Psych One-on-One. And we're returning with Mitch Lehman. We are going to be doing some acupuncture here, and he's going to explain what he's doing while he's doing acupuncture on me, which, thank you again, Mitch, for doing this. I'm still in patches of pain here, so I really appreciate this. My pleasure. Well, basically what we're doing is, a lot of you have heard about reflexology. Well, think about this is sort of the same way only on the rest of the body. So the first thing I want you to do is, if I can see that, your left leg. So what we're going to do is, instead of sticking needles where the pain is, in a particular school that I belong to, we're actually looking for kind of reference points. So instead of going directly, what I'll be doing is going very much indirectly to the area. So I already know that her upper back is in pain. So we're going to start with kind of reaching around back behind her knee. Tell me when there's a painful spot. Over there. Okay. Yeah. And what you're seeing here is a guide tube. It's actually not the needle itself. So we're going to stick that back behind in there, and then tap the needle in, and sink the needle in. And that's actually for back, back into her rotator cuff. Rotator cuff in that area there. Meanwhile, I want to go back here toward the back of her neck. Tell me where I found that. Oh yeah, you don't want to move your leg too much after this. No. Not so much. For those of you who are watching, you definitely do not want to move with acupuncture needles in you. All the muscles don't move in the same way. Yeah, right there. Right there. Okay. So what I'm looking for is trying to, I'm going to go over here. Okay. I'm going to knock out the pain signals. Now, if you're wondering what the whole basis behind it is, think of this as more like as a lot of people want to figure the neurobiology. It just doesn't work quite the way we think it does. Think of it more as if I were the repair guy who was basically fixing the breakers in your house. Think of this as flipping switches. That's really pretty much what I'm doing is in the particular school I belong to, the switches for the pain, pain in her shoulder or in her leg. So just want to sink that. These are about two inch needles. And you'll notice they've gone in kind of deep. Go ahead and see how that shoulder feels. Left one, right one? Right one. It's feeling better because I know I've definitely have had problems with this one. Since I've had the accident, the whole back has been hot and hit and I can feel the pain. I can feel the pain. I can feel the pain. I can feel the swelling in the muscles. Okay. So. This is for the base of the skull. Go ahead and turn your neck. See what we got going there. That's pretty good. It's yeah. Where the problems I'm having is like right in that juncture between the neck and the. The neck and the shoulder. Yeah. Neck and the shoulder. The biggest thing whenever you have neck pain is that there's a large muscle trapezius that, is what you see on the top of the shoulders. That 85% of it is on your back and about 15% of it is up in your neck. So that's one of the major pains. So if you fix the shoulders, you automatically fix the neck. So what we're trying to do is get this all sorted out. And all it is, is a feeling. Yeah. It's a feeling. It's a feeling. It's a feeling. It's a feeling. It's a feeling. It's a feeling. It's a feeling. It's a feeling. It's a feeling. It's a feeling. And this is a feeling of kind of like a little prick and that's it. That's all I'm feeling. And all I'm feeling for is a node or some kind of nodule or very stringy type of muscle. All of this, the school I belong to is almost entirely touch. There are actually blind schools of acupuncture in Japan who use similar methods of, you know, everything being reduced to touch. So it's not what I see, it's actually what I feel. So, and if you'll notice her shoulders have dropped. They're not quite so high. And I felt a click in my upper back for like the bones. So that was good. Okay. And now the base of the skull. Okay, good. Yeah, it's pretty good. Now these are all single use disposable needles and that's a mouthful, but essentially these have never been in a human body before and they're never gonna be another human body again with the advent of hepatitis C and HIV. As a general rule, nobody reuse, hospitals don't reuse needles. The only ones who reuse certain things are surgeons, but those are only very expensive tools. Even scalpels are throw away now. So when I was at the VA drawing blood, we threw away needles after every single use. So acupuncture holds the same standard as every other medical profession. Yeah, I know that was a zinger. Go ahead and see how the side feels. Is it gonna be for the right side? It's gonna be for this side, yeah. Okay. So see how that's feeling there. Yeah. Yeah, that's feeling better. Cause I was really having some extreme pain through my wing area this morning, so. She's got basically what they call, it's a mouthful, intercostal neuralgia, which basically means nerve pain between your ribs. Love to say everything in Latin. It always sounds so much more important, but it's basically her sides hurt. So we're going along this line because of a particular relationship. There's actually 12 circuits, if you will, in the body. So we pair them up in a certain way and you end up getting this kind of result. Now let's see what the side looks like. Yeah, it's definitely getting better. Okay. Where does it hurt still? Probably right in here. Okay. Right at that junction again. Okay. All righty. Is it sore up in here? Oh yeah. Okay. All righty. How about that? There probably aren't too many areas in my body that, don't, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I feel bad right now. Yeah, I'm pretty much guessing. Or just a couple of choice areas that just might not. This is going to be up under your pant leg and yeah. Ooh. Yeah, that was sensitive. Yeah. And now let's see how your shoulder feels there. Yeah, definitely better. Yeah, that area is softening up. I can actually move it. Because before it felt like armor and it felt like the muscles were not moving at all. So then, you know, in a typical therapy session like this, how long would you take with a patient? Well, for me, I usually take about keeping the needles in for about 20 minutes, but I also treat multiple people normally. My office partner and I tend to treat what's called community-style acupuncture, where we'll literally have chairs around, much like Julianne saw at Stand Down. And we go from person to person and treat actually a large number of people in a very short amount of time. And we do pretty much what I'm doing here, which is we don't move on until the pain is gone. Once the pain is gone, then we can move to the next person. What if somebody's having long-standing chronic pain? It doesn't matter. I actually have treated someone who had a water skiing accident 25 years before, never been out of pain, and all of a sudden, nothing. You know, gone. Wow. With one session? With one session. Wow. That's amazing. I know I had had acupuncture done probably about five weeks ago because I had a chronic skin condition. Wow. That's amazing. And I've had eczema on and off since I was a baby, and this was really long-standing. And I thought, you know what, I'm going to go get an acupuncture session. And what I thought was amazing, because I've had acupuncture done a really long time ago, but it was much different. It was, you know, like this setup. But this woman who is local connected them to electrodes, which I didn't expect. Do you do the electrode situation at all? I don't anymore. I used to. In fact, God, until 1999, I did. The particular method that I use actually works, I mean, very fast. As you see, you're out of pain right now. That's not necessarily, I mean, when I went to school, it was like, well, come back next week and you might feel better. And the teacher who taught me this said, no. You should have people out of pain now. And if you didn't, it's... It's your fault. Because in medicine, the first rule is blame the patient. Which is, you know, blame the patient. There's something you're not doing. Well, no. He was pretty much of the school of no. If you're not getting a result, it's what you didn't do. You know, you weren't... And he was right. You know, if we don't get a result, it's because we're not paying attention. So we dedicated ourselves. This is probably 1,000th of what's out there. I mean, we stick exclusively to one very tiny family system of acupuncture. And it's... I mean, I've had a number of students from San Diego. Fortunately, I've actually had a couple up here in the Los Angeles area as well who have apprenticed with me briefly. Mostly at stand downs, actually. That's where I meet a lot of people. And they become curious. And then they become veterans advocates, which is really what I'm looking to do anyway. Yes. So... And, I mean, for me, taking care of, you know, fellow vets, that's just... Part of your calling. Yeah. And to me, it's not... I guess it's one of those things that it's noteworthy in the fact that I guess somebody's doing something. But it's, to me, the minimum that we can actually do. You know, it's the minimum that decency allows is taking care of our own patients. Our own. Yeah. And yet, we don't always do that. So that's... But as I say, for me, it's... I'm not entirely sure it's praiseworthy. It's just... It's like taking care of your family. In your estimation, how many vets have you treated over your long career? Oh. Let's see. A thousand a year in San Diego. Yeah. Yeah. I've been in San Diego for 14 years. So, 14,000... I've been... Okay. I've been doing stand downs in San Diego for 14 years. I started integrative medicine there. I brought it up to Compton three years ago, Orange County three years ago. The stand down that we were at in East LA that was actually in Venice Beach two years ago. And we also do the welcome home at the Long Beach VA on Veterans Day. Thousands? Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. Thousands. But this is... Like I say, as you see, this is... Once we're done inserting these, then we're just gonna let them do the job. And that's what I sort of like about acupuncture. All I have to do is put the needles in and they know what to do. Yeah. And then I can continue talking and I can just sit here like really still. Let's see. And these last ones are, you mentioned you had eczema in your hands. So what we're doing is treating your lungs, which in Chinese medicine, the skin is the third lung. So now we're treating... Can you explain that? Yeah. Can you explain that a little bit? That's an interesting concept. Well, yeah. The basic idea is, I mean, just the Chinese kind of have much more of an associative rather than what we'd call the logical A plus B equals C. They have certain tissue correspondences. And one of the things is that the skin actually does is that it does respiration on a much smaller scale. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a much smaller scale. But and of course, that's where we store all the toxins. But if we tend to get cold, you're gonna know that the back of your neck is gonna... When you get cold, you already know you're done. When your throat gets dry, that kind of thing. So you actually have to keep the skin covered more or less to the Chinese would say to keep out the 10,000 evils. And what would those 10,000 evils be? Or is that just kind of a general... Interesting you should ask. Actually, it's wind. They had a character that is wind over a bug. So the character for insects. So the idea of germs, if you will, is well over 2000 years old in China. Not germs as such as microbes. They didn't have microscopes. But they realized that it was something that the wind was doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it was a kind of a bug that the wind brought in. So it was an insect or a bug or a parasite of some kind that the wind brought in. So that's basically what the 10,000 evils are. They sort of jumped from one to two to three to 10,000. It's just a very Chinese way of counting actually. Yeah. It's a really complex, complicated system of medicine. But I think it's just, it's incredible. I've studied a little bit of it. I had a really good study. I had a recent bout of asthma because of the fires that we had a couple of weeks ago. And I went home and I took Chinese herbs. I took it out of the capsule and I just drank it and I thought, okay, this should subside pretty soon. And it did, which is great because I hate using inhalers. Just hate them because they taste nasty and they get me just jittery. So I was thankful that I was close enough to home. I was thankful that I could do it, do the preventative methods as close to getting the symptoms as possible. I think that's really what Chinese medicine is about. Isn't that one of the concepts? Well, prevention, I mean, now it's a prevention's worth a ton of cure. Actually one of the things I found out doing a standout about four years ago is all of medical was gone and the only ones who were there, I was just returning some blood pressure cuffs. And it was a woman having an asthma attack and she had lost her inhaler. Dr. Yeah. So I just sat with her and I pressed on the points that are, as you see here, and that I've got on your forearm here, and she began breathing easier. So I called the EMTs because acupuncturists are not first responders. I mean, the EMTs are, except there were no EMTs, there were no doctors. There was me. So we found out that, well, actually because of that policy's changed, it was nice because the medical director, Dr. Yeah. Dr. The medical director of San Diego, he and I worked very well together. He's actually my boss and I just said, we need doctors. We need somebody here afterwards. Anyway, when this, I had the EMT actually hold the woman's arms. I came back with needles, stuck them in, and then about 10 minutes later, the EMTs arrived looking very puzzled at why these needles are in there. Dr. I bet. And I just said, well, they're actually making her stop wheezing. I said, you know, do you have a nebulizer? Do you have an inhaler? Do you have something to give her? Dr. Yeah. I said, because they said, well, we'll be the judge of that. I said, okay, needles in or needles out? They looked at me and they go, oh, just take the needles out. And of course, she started wheezing again. Fortunately, one of the EMTs had brought a nebulizer. It was just that they pretty much were not, you know, they didn't want to be told what to do. And it wasn't that I was really wanting to tell them what to do. Dr. Right. I was just sort of telling them, this is the state she's in, guys. And just because we use needles, we're not crazy. Dr. I know. Well, you know what too, though? I mean, because of Western medical training, I'm sure that was so foreign to them. They were looking at this like, what the hell are we supposed to be doing with this? Are we going to keep them and we're going to take them out? We'll let Mitch be responsible for it and stuff. But yeah, I mean, it's just, it's beyond them. A lot of, you know, medical professionals that I've worked with, it's just Western medicine. Incorporating Eastern medicine along with it is just... You know, kind of out of the question. They weren't trained for it and they're, you know, or a lot of them just think it's, you know, not as good as Western medicine or what other fallacies they think about. And it's too bad because there's sometimes when Western and Eastern medicine, the combination works fabulous together. Dr. I can't agree more. I mean, if one were completely superior to the other, there'd only be one medicine. Yeah. Dr. And the one thing that I've liked about the VA at the Stanford Center, and I've been at the Stanford Center for a long time, is that they're not just, you know, they're not just a small VA. They're a big VA. And the reason I'm here today at the stand-downs is I've got invited to the ones in LA after doing Orange County, actually, which was really nice. I haven't worked in Central. I haven't worked with them, but I've worked with the Long Beach VA and the San Diego VA, which I've got a great relationship with. And we work side by side and it's, you know, and they've always treated me as a colleague or, you know, as an equal. That's beautiful. Dr. So, although they don't have us working at the VA, it's nice that I had things like stand-downs, all those barriers come down. Mm-hmm. Dr. So- I know. I saw everybody working so beautifully together. It was amazing. So, Mitch, if our listeners would like to contact you at the clinic, where can they do so? Dr. Best way to get ahold of me is probably by phone rather than by website. I am really bad about the internet. The number is 857-373-7000. Okay. Dr. And the name of the clinic? Dr. Actually, they'd just be contacting me. Fortunately, it's on a cell, so I'm mobile on all those. That's for the regular clinic and also the veterans clinic that I work at, at Veterans Village. Dr. Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much. And thank you for coming up from San Diego, Mitch. I told Mitch, you know what, we can do this by phone. He goes, no, I want to come into the studio and do this. So three-hour trip. Dr. Yeah. Dr. And he's a great trooper. Thank you so much. And you've been so informative and wonderful. And I'd like to have you on as a guest again. Dr. Be a pleasure. Dr. Thank you so much. And this has been Psych One-on-One with Julianne Good. We have downloads on iTunes store at Psych One-on-One under the podcast categories, about 30 to 35 podcasts so far. So check it out. And thank you so much for joining us. Take care of yourselves. Dr. Bye. Dr. Bye. Bye. Bye.