I had a really insightful chat with eastern medicine provider, Brehan Crawford, who’s helped many individuals with chronic pain and many other health related issues such as long covid, fibromyalgia, perimenopausal symptoms, and much more.
I love how he has been able to relate eastern medicine in a research back way, and can explain the physiology as to how herbal medicine, qigong, and acupuncture can help with chronic pain.
I’m eager for you to hear this, as western and eastern medicine has been seen as polar opposites, when in fact, the goals and mechanisms of healing are relatively the same.
Hope to hear from you about this episode!
- Dr. Jay
PS Brehan has a free online group where he teaches baduan jin twice per week https://www.skool.com/chorus-circle
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Interested in working with us? We're looking for healthcare workers, busy parents, and working professionals over 30 who want to eliminate chronic pain from their life so they can enjoy a more active life with their friends & family. We've helped over 550 people find long term success in becoming pain-free. Book a call here to speak with us: https://www.flexwithdoctorjay.co/book
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to the Won Body Won LifePodcast.
Hi, I'm your host, Dr.
Jason Won, Lifestyle PhysicalTherapist.
As you guys know, I love to talka lot about anything in regards
to pain relief, strengthtraining, mobility, but in
general, anything in terms ofhow to incorporate more
healthier strategies and maybeeven demystifying things that
may be able to help with yourhealth and fitness, whether it's
(00:23):
physical and mental health.
So today I have a very specialguest.
His name is Brehan.
Crawford, and he is a Chinesemedicine provider.
So he provides things such asherbal medicine, Qi Gong,
acupuncture.
And when I dive into some of thespecifics of what he does, but
also uncover maybe somefallacies around, some Eastern
medicine.
Cause I think a lot of timespeople think it's not research
(00:43):
based.
Some people think there, theremay be some things in terms of
demystifying how energy flowswithin the body and me being
also of Chinese descent.
I have some interest in terms ofme.
Not necessarily.
I've always been interested inthe Western medicine, physical
therapy, that's the route I'vegone down, but I love to hear
more insight from Brehan interms of what he's been
practicing for quite a while.
(01:04):
So welcome in, man.
How are you doing?
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm having a great day.
How are you, Jason?
I'm fantastic.
Very good.
So I guess let's dive into this.
Just do a brief intro on who youare, how long you've been
practicing and who do you serve?
So I went to Chinese medicineschool here in the United States
and got a master's degree in2009.
It's a four year master's degreeprogram.
(01:25):
And so it's a prettycomprehensive education, both in
terms of biomedicine and Chinesemedicine.
Ultimately I was not satisfiedwith the clinical experience I
received in school.
So after graduating, I enteredinto a, basically my
profession's version of aresidency.
And spent five years under closedirect supervision of a very
senior doctor of Chinesemedicine who was trained in
(01:45):
China.
I went to China, receivedtraining there and then have
been in clinical practice eversince focusing mostly on
patients with chronic Disorders,chronic illnesses that don't
respond well to Westernmedicine.
They're, most of these chronicillnesses, fibromyalgia, IBS
post viral conditions like longCOVID in the last five years,
(02:07):
they have more than onecontributing factor, more than
one cause.
And so using a whole systemsapproach like Chinese medicine,
I find to be very effective inaddressing all of the
contributing factors to theseillnesses and helping people
find remission.
That's really awesome.
I actually have some experiencewith long COVID.
It's not the easiest thing totreat by any means.
Some people think that peopleare just.
(02:27):
Faking it and they're trying toget out of work, but it is a
real thing.
There's a lot of, there's a lotof neurophysiological changes
that happen that leaves themwith chronic fatigue.
They can't function have unusualamounts of like muscle soreness
that they can't shake.
So I guess let's talk aboutthat.
Excuse me with the types ofchronic pain patients that, that
(02:49):
you treat how do you feel like.
How do you feel like Chinesemedicine is directly integrated?
I guess let's dive into maybethe physiological mechanisms
like how does this specificallywork in someone's body,
especially when you're treating?
A lot of people like to thinkthat there's a huge difference
between the way that Chinesemedicine views the body or, and
that Western medicine views thebody.
(03:10):
And ultimately they usedifferent terms to describe
what's going on, but they prettymuch agree on everything.
There, there's very little,there are places that science
can't yet describe Chinesemedicine theory.
And there are aspects of Chinesemedicine theory that have a,
that seemed to conflict withwestern medicines, understanding
(03:32):
of physiology and pathology, butthe deeper we look into it and
the more we're willing to play,connect the dots and read
between the lines, the morewe're able to distill that
actually these two things arejust describing the same
phenomenon using differentterms.
For example.
Chinese medicine, a big part ofthe physiology of Chinese
medicine is understanding themechanics of what's called Qi.
(03:54):
And that character Qi,unfortunately in its, in during
most of the time that Chinesemedicine has been exposed to the
West, it's translated most oftenas energy.
And it Has an energetic aspectin the way that gas, when you
put it in the car, gives the carenergy, gives the motor energy
to run or carbohydrates, in ahuman body can be, you can get
(04:18):
glucose and then go into ATPproduction.
It does have that kind of energyquality to it, but it is.
Something that is a bettertranslation of that word is gas
so that the idiogram, theChinese character for tea is
steam rising off of a pot ofcooking rice.
So it's not anything.
You don't have to be a hermit.
(04:39):
For 30 years to be able tounderstand what that is, or to
be able to perceive it in yourown body.
It's literally warmth, vapor,gas subtle amounts of moisture.
And it's subtle.
It's not something, if you'renot paying attention, you can
miss it.
But chi is learning to feel chi.
It does not mean that you're,turning into a Jedi.
(05:01):
It just means that you'rebecoming aware of your own body
in the way that All of us do aswe're growing up or when we're
learning a new exercise orphysical learning to sew,
learning to play a musicalinstrument, you're becoming more
sensitive to your body mechanicsto what you're learning to
massage somebody.
You're learning how to feellearning to feel she is exactly
the same.
If someone, when someone teachesyou to do that.
(05:23):
Gotcha.
Cool.
And is that, does that play intothe fact that I guess I could
speak from Chinese descent isthat, usually When you're
drinking like cold water versushot water.
And that's why a lot of timespeople, when you're at Yumcha
you drink tea, right?
Cause it provides more warmthand blood flow.
So there's a lot of there's alot of things that my grandma
has told me around you want tokeep the body warm.
You want to bias it towards likehot soup or is it like cold?
(05:46):
So does that play into anythingat all in terms of.
That warmth that moisture where,Chinese people are very
interested in always keeping thebody warm, promoting more blood
flow in a very practical sense.
The main difference between aliving person and a dead person
is that the living person iscreating heat.
And and you can see this inother places in nature to, a
(06:06):
compost pile as disgusting as itis, it's a great pile of compost
if it's if there's steam risingoff of it.
And in it.
So in a human body and manytraditional.
Cultural medical systems,Chinese medicine, especially
have noticed this and been like,Oh, okay.
Dead people cool down and thenstay cold.
Living people create warmth andheat.
(06:28):
That's life force is warmth isthe endogenous creation of that.
So doing things that foster thatdrinking warm liquids versus
cold things applying heat to anarea of injury or, versus ice
And I know in, I've been told inthe profession of physical
therapy, please correct me ifI'm wrong, that there is
generally a movement away fromicing injuries lately.
(06:50):
And that the data has finallycaught up to the traditional
cultural wisdom of many placesaround earth where they're like,
cold constricts blood vesselsand it does dull nerve endings
so that it stops paintemporarily.
The constriction of blood flow.
Can reduce swelling, but it canreduce, it can slow the
inflammatory process.
(07:10):
But in an acute sense, in ahealthy person, inflammation is
how we heal.
And you need that, you need theinflammatory cascade to complete
itself.
You need tissue repair to workproperly.
And in order to foster that, tofacilitate that happening, heat
is going to be more effectivethan ice, even if it causes the
a bit more temporary discomfort.
Yeah.
So it was the first Yeah.
(07:31):
inflammation is the first phaseof remodeling, right?
So if you're trying to speed upthe first phase and you're
skipping out on that phase,right?
So you want to, the body doesget inflamed on purpose in order
to protect the body from movingit.
So if your ankle swells, Yeah.
For a reason, because it'strying to build inflammation
around the area, swell it up sothat it has time to heal it.
But in, for example, if you'retrying to reduce that
(07:53):
inflammatory phase and you'respeeding up that first phase,
which could be catastrophe lateron, that ankle might be rendered
unstable for a given amount oftime.
But yeah, like rice, the rest,ice, compression, elevation,
tend to be like a dying art.
And I think that what you'resaying too, is.
It makes sense because the waythat I help a lot of my clients
is whether it's acute or chronicinjury is you're trying to
(08:14):
actually do more strengthtraining.
You're trying to strengthen asfast as possible, but in given
return to ability, all of that.
Yeah.
So what promotes more heat andblood flow?
It's also contraction.
It's movement, active range ofmotion.
I'm totally with you on that.
Yeah.
And that Chinese medicine takesa very similar approach
especially in areas like Qigong.
There's there's an exercisesystem in China.
(08:35):
That's a lot of people arefamiliar with, Chinese Kung Fu
with martial arts.
Probably with Tai Chi, which issometimes taught as a martial
art.
Oftentimes, it's also promotedjust as a health system.
And Tai Chi can be a form ofwhat we call Qigong.
And then there are, thousands ofdifferent kinds of that which
are just.
At its basic level, it'sbreathwork body awareness,
(08:57):
cultivation and gentle exercise.
And oftentimes it involveselements of resistance training
of specific mobility, work rangeof motion, exercises, balance
exercises, learning to stand onone foot learning to get down on
the ground and get up off theground, all of the kinds of
things that we associate withhealth and longevity these are
built into many of thesemethods.
(09:18):
Absolutely.
My grandma who still lives inOakland, California, she's the
last, I guess she's the lastgrandparent to be alive, right?
Because the other grandparents,whether they smoked or drank,
chronically over the life, mygrandma, she, she's, she just
turned, I think, 97 or 98 yearsof age.
So that's pretty.
That's pretty respectable.
(09:39):
That's up there.
I think one of the things,outside of the fact that COVID
for a lot of people left, a lotof people deconditioned.
We know that.
And before COVID though, she wasactually walking a good one to
two miles to Oakland, Chinatown.
She actually led Tai Chiclasses, very large group of
(10:00):
people.
And I remember always being likevery respected of her, wow.
Like she, her balance isamazing.
She was super strong.
She was the one obviously again,she's the one grandparent that's
still alive.
There's probably a good reasonfor that because she really
practiced Tai Chi and a lot ofthings.
Although she is older now, butthere was a lot of merit to,
even just more anecdotalevidence to say she's the last
(10:23):
grandparent.
And even today she still has.
She's still moving decently.
But yeah I think that I'm a hugebeliever and a lot of my uncles,
also practice Tai Chi.
I heard a Tai Chi candramatically decrease your risk
for falls by 500%.
Oh, but the slow methodicalmovements, all that eccentric
(10:43):
forces, and just like the factthat you're just like slowly
moving on a single leg.
I think this promotes a ton ofblood flow.
So with regards to that, how doyou integrate herbal medicine,
Qi Gong, acupuncture?
Is it more individualized as faras how much of each you're
giving to each person?
Or do you integrate all threetogether?
(11:04):
right away.
So when I'm working with apatient one on one, I do the
kind of the classic clinicianthing of taking a thorough
history, making an assessment inChinese medicine these are,
these sound different thanbiomedical diagnoses.
We don't, we wouldn't say likelong COVID or chronic fatigue
syndrome or something like that,but we would say, something like
chi and blood deficiency or adamp phlegm, something like
(11:28):
that.
But then we create a treatmentplan.
And so when I'm working with apatient one on one will,
oftentimes that will includevery specific qigong exercises
that are necessary for them,whether that's a breathing
exercise, a physical posturethat they need to assume and
hold a range of motion exercise.
I don't my practice right now islargely virtual and I'm not
(11:49):
doing a ton of.
in person hands on manual carewith acupuncture and stuff like
that.
Used to be, I would do a lot ofphysical mobilization for my
patients, just gentle stretchesand body work kinds of stuff
during a treatment.
Nowadays, I prefer to just teachthem to do that on at, and then
have them do it on their own athome means they need less time
with me and are more able totake charge of their own health
(12:12):
and, continue their pathforward.
But and then herbal medicine asappropriate.
So like chronic fatigue syndromeis a great example of this.
With, especially after COVID,because, like you were saying,
these people have dramaticallyreduced physical capacity.
They oftentimes can't do thekinds of exercise that they used
to be able to do prior togetting sick.
(12:33):
And there's a great.
study that just came out showinghow they did some biopsies on
people with long COVID versuspeople who'd had COVID and then
fully recovered from it, had nosymptoms.
They took muscle biopsies andwe're looking at mitochondrial
function at clotting factors inthe muscle small injuries that
these people had sustained.
(12:54):
The baseline for the long COVIDpatients was dramatically lower
even before exercise than thepeople who had recovered
completely from COVID.
And then after exercise, it waseven a larger discrepancy.
The long COVID patients wereeven worse.
She gone has fantastic benefitsfor these people because they're
the ones who are most going tosuffer from post exertional
(13:15):
malaise.
They're the ones who are goingto enter into a an exercise
program.
And, we know that we know likewe have so much data showing
like physical exercise can begraduated increasing quantity of
exercise can be a path torecovery for people with chronic
fatigue.
If you know anybody who workswith this population, you listen
(13:36):
to your patients and you'relike, there are a lot of these
people who are just getting hurtmore by doing it.
And So looking at exercisemethods that have a way of one,
not pushing people too far toofast because the graduated part
of that, I think is the key takehome where you have to be, you
(13:57):
have to help the patient findthe tolerable amount and then
they have to go 1 percent pastthat.
Or maybe half a percent or atenth of a percent past that,
but just enough that they don'ttrigger a, a catastrophic
decline that takes them a weekto get out of bed afterwards.
And there's so much being donein China that they've actually
(14:18):
studied this in very largepopulations.
The most popular.
Qi Gong method in China iscalled the Baduan Jin.
It's the eight treasures ofbrocade, eight pieces of brocade
is what it's often translated asin English.
And it's a series of eightexercises that it was invented
during the Song dynasty.
It's 800 years old.
It's been continuously practicedsince then.
(14:38):
And it's open sourced.
And it's, it's one of the onesthat You go to a town square or
a large park in any major cityin China, and you're going to
see hundreds of people doingthis every morning together.
And there's a systematic reviewof meta analyses of randomized
controlled trials, where theylooked at this and they found
that it was one of the fewexercise methods that actually
(15:00):
showed objective improvementsfor people with who are very old
for people who and can't donormal exercise.
And for people who have chronicfatigue syndrome in terms of,
their balance, their sleepquality, their yeah, exercise
capacity, all of that.
That's awesome.
Yeah, I'd love to hear thatresearch or get an article and
(15:20):
maybe you can link it.
I was going to say that a lot ofthe stuff that you said like I
said, people thinking thatEastern and Western medicine are
like, very mutually exclusive.
They have no connection to eachother.
And there's also a lot of.
I guess there's a lot ofpolarity, in terms of what's
better.
But I do think that even thestuff that you said, like
sustained postures it's not muchdifferent from what I gave to
(15:42):
like my last client with chronicfatigue or long COVID it's
sustained postures is isometricsis doing something that yields.
a minute, minimally clinicallyeffective dosage of exercise.
And so you give him somebodylike some dumbbells and you do
that immediately.
It flares him up.
It might help somebody thatdoesn't have chronic fatigue
because they have greatercapacity.
(16:03):
But you have somebody likeisometrics and they're like, Oh,
my, my, my legs feel better.
My hips feel better.
Just sustaining postures or likegoing from sustained to slow
dynamic movement, which What'sslow dynamic moving.
This sounds like Tai Chi, soundslike Qigong, right?
It sounds like Tai Chi.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But if you start somebody onjump squat, which is higher
velocity movements, and that'ssomething that could be of use
(16:27):
to them later on down the road,when they're like my goals are
now once I'm in less pain, Iwant to run.
Okay.
That's where we got to speedthings up.
So everything that you say, I'mstarting to even hear more and
just connect the dots in termsof.
How physical therapy andstrength training and mobility
are all very similar things thatan Eastern medicine provider.
(16:49):
Although I understand there'sprobably some people in your
industry that you're just like,they don't practice in the same
way, right?
Same thing.
There's not always good physicaltherapy.
Oh, it's a crap shoot.
Like there, there are, I thinkthis is the case in every area
of medicine.
In any discipline, you findpeople who are entering the
profession for.
Absolutely the right reasons andthey're listening to their
(17:11):
patients and they're digginginto research and finding what
works and what doesn't.
And they're willing to changetheir mind.
They're willing to, reallycritically evaluate best
practices and yeah, and theirown methods and passionately
pursuing continuing education inevery.
And then you find people who arejust nuts and they're like in it
(17:33):
to scam their folks, make aquick buck and leave town.
And yeah, unfortunately that'sthe case in every field.
And there are absolutely quacksin my own profession.
I'm not going to deny that.
Yeah, but the, the core ofmedicine is to be of service.
And and I think, you I think anydiscipline hopefully is calling
(17:54):
people in who are there to helpfor all the right reasons.
Yeah, definitely.
So I guess we can talk aboutmaybe we can dive into like
little individualized thingslike, for example, herbal
medicine.
I definitely think that's, Ialways consider exercise as my
best medicine.
I don't prescribe certainmedications or anything, not
even herbs, right?
Because these are just thingsthat I would.
(18:15):
refer out for.
So can we demystify or,articulate on that event in
terms of herbal medicine?
How do you prescribe it?
Are there certain like herbsthat are more effective for
certain things?
Let's just dive into that topic.
Okay.
So to take this back to chi theconcept of chi is, in Chinese
medicine, we're looking at chiblood and body fluids for the
most part, in terms ofsubstances that we're working
(18:37):
with.
circulating throughout the humanbody.
And most of any kind ofmedicine, whether it's Qi Gong
or herbs, is improving thatfunction.
If we're looking at forms of Qi.
There are many described inclassical Chinese medical texts.
Most of these have a directanalog in Western medicine to
specific gases.
And the most common one that wework with is called nitric
(18:57):
oxide.
And so many people in the Westare only familiar with this in
the context of if they're intosupplements they're taking
arginine or beet powder.
Or if they're into drugs,they're taking Viagra or Cialis.
And those are, those are, hugenitric oxide boosters and they
can work as what we wouldconsider a tea tonic in that
(19:18):
capacity.
Unfortunately, most people thatwe see in the clinic are
actually in what we wouldconsider an excess category.
They have adequate nitric oxide.
They have adequate tea that it'sjust not moving through the body
in the right.
It's not circulating.
Just like blood.
You can have enough blood inyour body.
If you have an injury and theblood is stuck there, it's not
(19:40):
healing correctly.
And same thing with gases.
And there's a saying and in whenyou go through Chinese medicine
school, you learn that they sayshe is the commander of blood.
And blood is the house of chi.
So the chi tells the body whereto go.
And the direct biomedicalequivalent of this is nitric
oxide acting as an agent forvasodilation and
(20:03):
vasoconstriction.
So when you have that happeningsmoothly and fluidly throughout
the body, you get great bloodsupply everywhere it needs to be
going.
When it's inhibited by injury,by infection, by sedentary
lifestyle, you don't get that.
And so people are often flood,if they're looking for herbs
they're going to something likebeets, for example, we can use
(20:25):
that as a, it's a plant it's ahuge nitric oxide donor.
But it may actually be causingyou problems taking it in high
doses long term because all ofthe receptors that are
susceptible to nitric oxide canbe, it's a hot inflammatory
compound and they can beliterally burnt out by having
too high of a dose given tothem.
(20:46):
And we famously see this in menwho take drugs for E.
D.
when they don't really needthem.
And then.
Get E.
D.
That doesn't respond to the samemedication.
So it's a, we're looking for aGoldilocks zone with these
things.
So when we come to herbalmedicine the way that we
diagnose a patient is is thereexcess?
(21:09):
Or deficiency and whichever campwe're in, we're going to use
vastly different herbalformulas.
So some mostly with herbalformulas, we're looking at plant
substances.
We do occasionally use minerals,very occasionally animal
substances.
No one who is a professional inthis field is using endangered
species.
That's not done by anyone whoshould be in clinical practice.
If you ever find somebody inChinese medicine, who's pulling
(21:31):
out the rhinoceros horn, pleasego the other way.
That's not the right thing touse.
We have better stuff available.
But that's sustainably grown andprocessed there.
So we're mostly looking atplants and we're mostly looking
at their effects on gases.
And so we have some plants thatcan so anything that you ingest
orally there's a whole world ofherbs that are used topically on
(21:54):
the skin, especially for injuryrecovery.
A little bit different way ofthinking there, but for most of
the time when we're prescribingherbs to patients, they're
taking them orally, whether it'sa pill or a tea.
And.
What we're looking at are theeffects that those herbs have on
the flora of the GI tract andhow those flora then because
(22:15):
they also produce nitric oxide,they also require a certain
amount of nitric oxide to bepresent in order to live or die.
And.
Having too much is going tocause what we would classically
call heat symptoms in thedigestive tract.
And this are often associatedwith gastritis or inflammatory
bowel diseases.
A lack of them creates a coldand then often very damp, wet
(22:38):
environment.
And that's where we'll seepeople who have Candida yeast
overgrowth or or sometimes justa straight up deficiency of
lactobacillus and bifidobacter.
And those kinds of flora areoften not being adequately fed
by soluble fiber in the diet.
Or they've been depleted bywhich most Americans are not
eating enough fiber or they'vebeen significantly depleted by
(23:00):
infection.
COVID can destroy your bifidumpopulation just by itself.
You can also have taken a courseof antibiotics and that may have
saved your life, but they alsoreally wrecked your guts.
And so using herbs to nourishthe healthy flora that then you
produce enough chi on your ownis how these things are working.
So for injury recovery ifthere's somebody who's got I'll
(23:23):
use an example of like a, somekind of spinal injury, not a
spinal cord injury, but like alow back pain or a disc injury
or a low back pain, disc injury,arthritis, stenosis, something
like that.
We're going to use herbs thatare going to make sure that.
Nitric oxide is moving throughthat part of the body adequately
and through through Chinesehistory, the history of Chinese
(23:44):
medicine, they've noticed thatspecific herbs can actually
direct cheat direct gases tocertain parts of the body.
So if we see an injury there,we're looking like, okay, we've
got an injury.
We have herbs that direct to theshoulder.
We have herbs that direct to thelumbar spine, to the thoracic
spine, to the cervical spine.
It's fascinating stuff.
We have herbs that we knowspecifically.
(24:07):
Can increase the production of,or the expression of Oh, what is
it called?
Now?
It's it's evading me.
It's vascular endothelial growthfactor VGF in the knee.
Like it's that specific.
And so based on, the classicaluse of these things and then the
modern pharmacology, we're ableto prescribe pretty accurately
(24:28):
for the needs of the patient.
That's really, that'sfascinating.
Actually.
No, just to clarify, you'resaying that some people have
excess, let's say excess ordeficiency of, nitric oxide.
So are you saying that let's saythey're in deficiency, you're
clearly promoting herbs and teasand things that are going to
promote more vasodilation acrossthe entire body systemically.
(24:50):
Generally speaking, yes.
Yes.
But what about the people thatdo have excess?
Are you trying to, are you areyou trying to vasoconstrict?
Is there a different time?
We are.
So yeah, it's more aboutsmoothing it out.
The only time we would try tolike really reduce nitric oxide
is if somebody had a, grossinflammatory situation, like a
fever.
(25:10):
That's where we would considerlike really trying to bring that
down fast.
Most of the time.
So there is there is, you can't.
You can't move Chi withoutreleasing Chi.
If it's stuck somewhere, youhave to release it to get it to
move and you lose a little bitin the process.
So if someone's got what wewould consider an excess
situation in a, in an injury I'mtouching my shoulder.
(25:31):
Cause this, I have an oldshoulder injury and this is on
camera.
You can see it.
We're going to use herbs thatwould reduce some of the excess
nitric oxide that's there bymoving it out of the joint.
Got it.
If there is and if you overusethose things or you give them to
a deficient patient, they're notgoing to work or they might work
for a couple of days, but thenit'll stop and then they'll just
(25:53):
feel really tired or even getthe pain will go away for a
couple of days and then it comesright back and the same formula
doesn't work for it.
So this is why a goodprofessional can help you assess
excess versus deficiencyprescribed appropriately and
then treat you in stages.
Because you may have adeficiency, but the injury
really looks like an excess.
Okay, cool.
We're going to clear that.
(26:14):
Oh, now you're exhausted.
Now we got to boost you up orthat pain will return.
I see.
Got it.
And is there any, is thereanything out there?
For example we talked about howpeople that are on like.
ED medication.
A lot of times medication can beaddicting, can be very reliant.
A lot of times your body canstop producing, for example,
(26:36):
like melatonin, you can takeexcess melatonin.
Oh, sure.
That's a hormone, yeah.
And then your body, yeah, butthen your body almost, if you
use it in excess, you can,Disturb the ability for your
body to actually producemelatonin on its own.
So is there anything like thatin terms of people that either
from their belief system thatlike they start to get hooked on
herbal medicine or is thereanything in regards to like if
(26:59):
you use excessive amount ofherbs that their body downplays
ability to like regulated on itsown?
Totally.
So this comes into play mostlywhen we're working with the
endocrine system.
And that's because of thingslike you're saying with
melatonin, like it can be, itisn't always, but for some
people it can be habit formingor cause dependency because they
there's a negative feedback loopfor that.
(27:20):
And if you're, if you're if yourbody detects that there's
adequate or excessive like amelatonin supplement has 5, 000
times the amount of melatoninthat your pineal gland.
makes for you at sleep onset.
And so if you're taking thatmuch regularly, melatonin
production is probably going todown regulate because you don't
need it.
any hormone can well, not any,but many hormones work that way
(27:44):
and many and chemistry isuniversal.
So in Chinese medicine, we'renot, when we're assessing and
prescribing, we're not reallythinking in biomedical
chemistry.
We're thinking in classicalChinese context, but the
chemistry still applies.
If for example most of the herbsthat we will use to regulate a
woman's period to reduce painwith menstrual cramps or to help
ease the transition throughperimenopause will have a very
(28:07):
endocrine like effect.
They'll be carrying endocrinesubstances, in a certain
context, like you can look atthis as a form of HRT and they,
it's often not as directly, notas like powerful as HRT, which
means it's a little bit moreforgiving and because these
plants have these are wholeplants that we're giving.
It's not an extracted singlecompound.
(28:28):
The plants have their ownendocrine system.
They have their own metabolismand they will often have
balancing factors.
In the plant that helped toreduce the dependency formation
or the it's a gentler way ofprescribing and working.
And so you see less immediateeffect.
You also see that there's asafe, higher safety profile.
(28:48):
But you can still cause harmthat way.
If you give somebody, here's aspecific case example.
I saw a perimenopausal woman afew months ago who had been
treated by an acupuncturist whohad, and I, and she brought her
case record in and she was like,I took these formulas and I felt
worse.
And the acupuncturist wasperplexed.
She said, I don't know why thisisn't working.
(29:10):
You're in perimenopause.
You must be indeficient.
I give you in tonics.
I looked at her tongue, a yindeficient tongue should be
scarlet red, like crimson,bright red.
It should have no coating on itat all.
And the tongue should, in fact,be quite cracked on.
So that's showing that there'sthere's heat that's consuming up
the body's fluids and endocrinesystem in many ways is related
(29:33):
to fluid metabolism.
And this patient did not havethat tongue, but she had been
prescribed a formula that wouldbe appropriate if she had, so
her tongue was very wide.
Had a lot of scallops, toothmarks on it from pressing up
against the inside of her teethbecause it was swollen and it
had a very thick coating on it.
(29:54):
And so rather than give herendocrine tonics, something
that's like a herbal equivalentof HRT, which is what the
previous acupuncturist had givenher, I gave her something that
would reduce the swelling oflike her body.
The swelling of the tongue showsthat your body is maintaining
holding onto too much moisture.
like there's excess water beingstored in your interstitium.
(30:14):
And with that, and with a thicktongue coating, we can tell
there's a lot of excess biofilm.
And oftentimes we will see thatthe the biofilm and the excess
water is actually blockingendocrine receptors.
Her body was making enough.
Estrogen enough progesterone.
It's just not able to get whereit needs to go.
So rather than giving herendocrine like substances that
(30:37):
tonify her hormones that buildher back up and ease her through
perimonopause that way, it wasabout getting the excess biofilm
and water out of the way.
And in the first couple ofweeks, she lost five pounds of
water weight.
She started sleeping better, herbowel movements regulated.
And then the perimenopausalsymptoms she was experiencing
(30:58):
started to ease off with aformula that's used for
digestive health rather thanit's not an endocrine classic
formula we would look at for anendocrine issue.
It's more about the gut healthpart piece of that.
But that's where we see a lot ofthat fluid regulation occur.
Wow, that's really cool.
I feel like you're wiring me inways that I didn't think about
in this podcast in terms of howI guess how structured like how
(31:20):
structured and how diagnostictruly can be.
I understand that we have likeour own diagnoses and I've
actually been a person that.
Has thrown away a lot of thediagnoses.
Cause I think people really likestrongly identify with it.
And then like they, they staywith it, chronic fatigue or you
call them your identity and thenyou can't, yeah, there's
seriously going to identify,like I'm a fibro, and I never
want them to identify assomething that's that damages
(31:42):
their identity.
So I.
I like yours in terms of themore conservative, like
diagnostic labels that you woulduse, but just making sure that
like for yourself, who thisperson is for further treatment.
Yeah.
Is there a specific, is there aspecific types of people or
clientele that you're like,okay, these are 100 percent the
people that, that match what Ihave.
(32:06):
I am the absolute perfectpractitioner for that.
And is there some people thatyou're like, okay, I might need
to either refer out.
I might need to, I might needanother practitioners guidance
with this.
Cause there are people where I'mlike, I need.
I need a psychotherapist, that'smore person cognitive behavioral
therapy.
Yeah, can we differentiate that?
Because I'd love for people tounderstand really where Chinese
(32:28):
medicine can really play intothese, specific people that can
benefit from this moreeffectively.
I think there, there are somescenarios where Chinese medicine
is, I don't want to say it's aslam dunk, but it's pretty
reliably effective.
And we see this mostly in theworlds of diagnoses of
exclusion.
Things like fibromyalgia, IBSthese are labels that are
(32:52):
applied to patients, largelyfemale patients, but men can get
them as well.
They're, the diagnostic criteriafor those things means either
you're in pain or you have tummytrouble or bathroom problems and
your provider doesn't know why.
And so there's a ton of researchinto why these things are the
(33:13):
way they are.
And ultimately like it's afailure in multiple aspects of
the medical system of ourinsurance.
industry of, when a primary careprovider gets seven minutes with
a patient, they're not able totake a thorough history and
figure out okay, when did thepain start?
And it's okay you werepostpartum and you were not
(33:34):
sleeping at all.
and you caught COVID and thenthe pain started, there's not
time to ask, to go through thequestioning process to figure
that out.
Chinese medicine does a greatjob because we don't use those
diagnostic labels of a disease.
We do more of a functionalinquiry.
When did this start?
What is the type of pain?
(33:55):
Does it wander around your bodyor is it fixed in place?
Is it is it better if somebodygives it firm pressure or does
that make it worse?
How's your sleep quality?
All these things play a hugerole in chronic pain when it
comes to digestive stuff, it's,very similar kind of a process
and like anybody who digs intothe evidence behind this knows
(34:15):
that there's a huge associationbetween fibromyalgia, what gets
diagnosed or labeled asfibromyalgia and chronic
infections or post infectiousdisorders.
We know there's a hugerelationship between that and
the gut.
We know there's a hugerelationship between that and
the autonomic nervous system.
People who have childhoodtrauma, I don't remember what
the statistic is.
It's some absurd number of timeshigher likely chance of being
(34:37):
diagnosed with fibromyalgialater in life.
With IBS, it's there's one studyI love where they took a huge
section of IBS patients and gavethem the breath test for small
intestine bacterial overgrowth.
And they found that 74 percentof the patients who'd been
diagnosed with IBS had adiagnosable form of SIBO.
And we know that those breathtests are not even that
accurate.
(34:58):
There's some people that theymissed.
So that that's a and that's acondition where the treatments
are.
There's emerging science intowhat treatments are effective
for SIBO.
And a lot of people will dosomething like a two week course
of antibiotics feel amazing forthose two weeks.
And it comes right back or theyuse botanicals and have exactly
the same thing.
Chinese medicine has a reallygreat track record working with
(35:18):
that because we're looking atevery aspect of digestion from,
Both ends of the tube includingbile, motility, stomach acid,
moisture levels, gas pressure,all of that kind of stuff and
stress.
And yeah, that being said, Ithink a referral is One of the
(35:40):
most powerful tools that anyclinician has and knowing when
it's like, Oh, you also need tosee a therapist.
Oh, you also need to be assessedby, like I had a patient the
other week who was coming herefor chronic UTIs and we, we made
great headway in that.
We made a ton of progress withthat.
She's basically over the chronicUTIs.
We got her guts all fixed.
She then started talking aboutvestibular migraine and I'm
(36:04):
getting a couple of hits of Oh,there's something neurologically
going on here that I don't orderMRIs.
I don't do, I do a neurologicalevaluation for my patients, but
I'm not a neurologist, but I'mfeeling like this person needs
to see one.
And we got her in I gave hercontact info for the local
neurology practice.
She got in there, she gotassessed in the neurologist.
(36:24):
You have a lot of symptoms ofMS, which is what I was
thinking.
And he said, it's probably notpossible to diagnose you right
now, but we can do that.
And he did.
They didn't, they, they didn'tsee lesions.
They weren't able to give her aformal MS diagnosis, but she has
all the symptoms of it.
They come and go, this is aclassic thing.
It takes 15 years to getdiagnosed with MS a lot of the
(36:45):
time, but we know from again,from traditional medical
systems, there's a lot you cando to proactively work on your
neurological health.
And so it's okay, you may begoing that direction.
But instead of taking 15 yearsto get you a formal diagnosis to
the degree that you then need tobe taking medication that has
really terrible side effects,what if we started now with diet
(37:07):
practices with exercise topromote balance with and
strengthen your legs with sleephygiene with all of the things
that we know are going toproactively improve your
neurological system and get youthe best quality of life from
here on out that we can.
Yeah, that's really insightful.
Preventative medicine issomething that I've been
(37:27):
practicing for the past sixyears.
And the reason why is becausewith being in the biomedical
system and I used to work withinsurance based practices,
everything's all about when theyhave the diagnoses, when they're
sick, that, that's when we comein and you get them to a place
of.
Simply just normalcy.
And you haven't really, youhaven't really led with what you
(37:48):
just said, like just coveringthe basics of like better diet,
improve sleep quality, how tomitigate stress, how to
incorporate more exercise intolife.
You're simply just giving them.
I always say this, like you'realways just given like a kid,
like a piece of candy or alollipop, and then you're
sending them their way.
But all we know is that the kidis eating more sugar or getting
them addicted to the wrongthings.
(38:08):
We're not really, we're reallynot helping the person
holistically.
And I've always consideredChinese medicine, although like
I've had a much more thoroughunderstanding, just talking with
you more of a holistic way oftreating the entire body.
Treating it, systemicallytreating the whole entire person
and I, I'm learning somethingabout how now with what you
practice is we have that incommon too.
(38:30):
It's like a very thoroughsubjective and developing more
of a therapeutic alliance.
It's absolutely critical to helpthe person rather than just
treating a symptom.
You're treating everything thatthey are.
And that's what chronic pain is.
It's very multifactorial.
A lot of the chronic.
These are things that I knowthat I don't have the best sense
of treating somebody's gut floraand having a more thorough
(38:51):
understanding of all thedifferent bacterias that you
know, but I do know that I canprovide them exercise.
I can teach them certain dietaryprinciples, but having somebody
like yourself to refer out tomeans a lot to me and
demystifying some of the stuffand incorporating a lot of the
research that you did to backkind of Eastern medicine, I
think was.
One of the more insightfulthings.
(39:11):
I think a lot of our viewers andlisteners would get from this.
So I guess with that being saidI don't know if you have
something that kind of likereally is indeed what you call
it, the quote unquote, the slamdunk.
What is the slam dunk on Easternmedicine?
Why should people look into thisfurther for their overall
health?
I think if there's one thing Ithink actually if there's one
thing that Eastern medicine isreally great at, it's at
promoting quality of life beforepeople get a formal diagnosis.
(39:35):
And so if you look at likehealth practices in China, it's
eating a lot of cookedvegetables, like a lot of cooked
plants.
High fiber content is associatedlike I think people who increase
their fiber by 10 or 15 grams aday tend to also increase their
longevity by 10 or 15 years.
It's some there's some statisticlike that.
I'm probably getting it wrong,but it's there.
(39:57):
There is a relationship between,fiber intake and health and
life.
There's.
People eating together as afamily, you rarely see people in
China eating alone and we knowthat Harvard came out with a
huge thing a couple of years agoabout how the quality of your
social relationships, thequality of your friendships in
(40:17):
your mid forties is a betterpredictor of your health and
longevity than any blood test.
And getting outside, gettingphysical exercise, gentle,
physical exercise that promotesthings like balance, which we
know are associated with healthand then using medicine
preventatively.
(40:38):
So being able to teach people,this is my current passion is
being able to teach people tolook at their own tongue and,
check in with their owndigestive health.
Once a day, because this issomething anybody can learn to
do and make very simpleadjustments day by day just to
keep them their tummy reallyhappy.
Do I need to, drink a lot ofwarm water today?
Do I need to sweat today?
(40:59):
Am I a little constipated and Ihave too many bowel movements
like all of that is important toknow and looking at the tongue
can teach people what kinds ofdietary practices they need to
do.
to really take care ofthemselves proactively and take
care of their familiesproactively.
Nudging the sweet potato towardssomebody who needs a little bit
more fiber and, maybe slidingthe barbecue in the other
(41:21):
direction.
Yeah, that's their favorite.
I think that's great.
You're acting more in preventionand the quote I always use is
like an ounce of prevention isworth a pound of cure.
Yeah.
So I think I think a lot ofpeople would be genuinely
interested in, in, in hearingthis, but also, potentially
working with you.
I think for me, even too, isthat I've always been interested
in longevity and longevity, theresearch on cardiovascular,
(41:46):
versus strength training andwhat's more important for
longevity.
Both of those, they decreaseyour risk of all cause mortality
by some 15 to 30%.
And even the things that you'reteaching very practical tools
that somebody can do from thecomfort of their home to look at
their tongue or look at theirand to keep their gut happy.
I think that's, yeah.
That's absolutely amazing.
I guess with that being said tojust end this off, like where
(42:07):
can people find out more aboutyou, more about your practice?
How can potentially people canreach out to you as well?
So my website iscrawford-wellness.Com and that's
my.
That's my private practice.
If they want to work with me oneon one, I also started a company
called chorus for life thatteaches people how to look at
their tongues and look at theirfamily members tongues in a
(42:30):
polite way and respectful andand eat, normal real world food
without hurting.
Both, we give dietary advice interms of paradigms of that but
we also teach a free Qigongclass twice a week that
anybody's welcome to attend.
We're currently working throughthe Baduan Jin the one that I
mentioned from the Song dynastyand we're seeing people make
(42:50):
profound changes just in thelast couple of weeks.
Anyone's welcome to join methere.
I'd be even very intrigued tojoin as well.
I've always wanted to ask mygrandma to teach me Tai Chi.
So just like little things thatjust to piece things together.
It's very it's a little harderat 97, 98 years of age.
She doesn't walk to OaklandChinatown anymore.
But I think, yeah, there,there's a lot of things that you
(43:11):
said that mean a lot to me,considering me of Chinese
descent that even me going toSouthern California A lot of
times we just bask in silence,but the thing is just we just
enjoy each other's company.
The fact that we're alwayseating together as a family
probably is one of the biggestthings that me and my wife's
family do.
And even on my side of thefamily, we're a little bit more
Americanized, but still,nonetheless, the most important
(43:31):
thing is like every single week,no matter what, we always get
together and.
We eat together.
We bask in each other's justsocial wellness.
And I think that can be saidfor, I'm very happy and
obviously very proud of mydescent.
Yeah, diversity of themicrobiome is associated with
every aspect of health.
And you, one of the things youget from sharing space with
(43:52):
people, sharing food withpeople, breathing the same air
rubbing shoulders is that it'snot always the, it's a little
gross to think about, but youare sharing all of your gut bugs
with each other all the timewhen you share space and that
actually really shows a lot ofdigestive health.
Promotion properties for peoplewhen communal eating like beyond
(44:16):
the social benefits.
There are real measurablephysical benefits to doing that.
We tend to eat slower.
We tend to chew more.
We tend to make healthier foodchoices.
We tend to eat a healthiernumber of calories when we're in
a social setting and yeah, it'sa I think that's a cultural
tradition that need that hasbeen unfortunately lost in the
United States.
(44:36):
There's so many people who justeat alone in front of a screen
and yeah that's not good foryou.
Yeah, absolutely.
Any case, I'm going to link alot of this stuff from Brian's
and all the links that hementioned from like the classes
to whether you want to work withthem one on one to whether you
want to learn how to assess yourtongue or assess your family
song and just making sure allyou guys stay healthy.
(44:56):
So I'll link that all into thedescription.
And I just want to thank you foryour wisdom and your knowledge
and providing some sort ofclarity on kind of demystifying
Eastern medicine and how it canrelate to certain people's long
term health.
In any case, that's what I gotfor you guys today.
If you found this episodehelpful, definitely share it
with your friends or leave a 5star review.
That way, this message gets outto more people and, I'll always
(45:18):
leave this quote with everyoneelse is we only have one body,
one life, make every action youmake be one that makes you a
better version of you.
So take care.
And Brehan, thanks so much foryour time.
Thank you for having me onJason.
Welcome to the Won Body Won LifePodcast.
Hi, I'm your host, Dr.
Jason Won, Lifestyle PhysicalTherapist.
As you guys know, I love to talka lot about anything in regards
to pain relief, strengthtraining, mobility, but in
general, anything in terms ofhow to incorporate more
healthier strategies and maybeeven demystifying things that
may be able to help with yourhealth and fitness, whether it's
(00:23):
physical and mental health.
So today I have a very specialguest.
His name is Brehan.
Crawford, and he is a Chinesemedicine provider.
So he provides things such asherbal medicine, Qi Gong,
acupuncture.
And when I dive into some of thespecifics of what he does, but
also uncover maybe somefallacies around, some Eastern
medicine.
Cause I think a lot of timespeople think it's not research
(00:43):
based.
Some people think there, theremay be some things in terms of
demystifying how energy flowswithin the body and me being
also of Chinese descent.
I have some interest in terms ofme.
Not necessarily.
I've always been interested inthe Western medicine, physical
therapy, that's the route I'vegone down, but I love to hear
more insight from Brehan interms of what he's been
practicing for quite a while.
(01:04):
So welcome in, man.
How are you doing?
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm having a great day.
How are you, Jason?
I'm fantastic.
Very good.
So I guess let's dive into this.
Just do a brief intro on who youare, how long you've been
practicing and who do you serve?
So I went to Chinese medicineschool here in the United States
and got a master's degree in2009.
It's a four year master's degreeprogram.
(01:25):
And so it's a prettycomprehensive education, both in
terms of biomedicine and Chinesemedicine.
Ultimately I was not satisfiedwith the clinical experience I
received in school.
So after graduating, I enteredinto a, basically my
profession's version of aresidency.
And spent five years under closedirect supervision of a very
senior doctor of Chinesemedicine who was trained in
(01:45):
China.
I went to China, receivedtraining there and then have
been in clinical practice eversince focusing mostly on
patients with chronic Disorders,chronic illnesses that don't
respond well to Westernmedicine.
They're, most of these chronicillnesses, fibromyalgia, IBS
post viral conditions like longCOVID in the last five years,
(02:07):
they have more than onecontributing factor, more than
one cause.
And so using a whole systemsapproach like Chinese medicine,
I find to be very effective inaddressing all of the
contributing factors to theseillnesses and helping people
find remission.
That's really awesome.
I actually have some experiencewith long COVID.
It's not the easiest thing totreat by any means.
Some people think that peopleare just.
(02:27):
Faking it and they're trying toget out of work, but it is a
real thing.
There's a lot of, there's a lotof neurophysiological changes
that happen that leaves themwith chronic fatigue.
They can't function have unusualamounts of like muscle soreness
that they can't shake.
So I guess let's talk aboutthat.
Excuse me with the types ofchronic pain patients that, that
(02:49):
you treat how do you feel like.
How do you feel like Chinesemedicine is directly integrated?
I guess let's dive into maybethe physiological mechanisms
like how does this specificallywork in someone's body,
especially when you're treating?
A lot of people like to thinkthat there's a huge difference
between the way that Chinesemedicine views the body or, and
that Western medicine views thebody.
(03:10):
And ultimately they usedifferent terms to describe
what's going on, but they prettymuch agree on everything.
There, there's very little,there are places that science
can't yet describe Chinesemedicine theory.
And there are aspects of Chinesemedicine theory that have a,
that seemed to conflict withwestern medicines, understanding
(03:32):
of physiology and pathology, butthe deeper we look into it and
the more we're willing to play,connect the dots and read
between the lines, the morewe're able to distill that
actually these two things arejust describing the same
phenomenon using differentterms.
For example.
Chinese medicine, a big part ofthe physiology of Chinese
medicine is understanding themechanics of what's called Qi.
(03:54):
And that character Qi,unfortunately in its, in during
most of the time that Chinesemedicine has been exposed to the
West, it's translated most oftenas energy.
And it Has an energetic aspectin the way that gas, when you
put it in the car, gives the carenergy, gives the motor energy
to run or carbohydrates, in ahuman body can be, you can get
(04:18):
glucose and then go into ATPproduction.
It does have that kind of energyquality to it, but it is.
Something that is a bettertranslation of that word is gas
so that the idiogram, theChinese character for tea is
steam rising off of a pot ofcooking rice.
So it's not anything.
You don't have to be a hermit.
(04:39):
For 30 years to be able tounderstand what that is, or to
be able to perceive it in yourown body.
It's literally warmth, vapor,gas subtle amounts of moisture.
And it's subtle.
It's not something, if you'renot paying attention, you can
miss it.
But chi is learning to feel chi.
It does not mean that you're,turning into a Jedi.
(05:01):
It just means that you'rebecoming aware of your own body
in the way that All of us do aswe're growing up or when we're
learning a new exercise orphysical learning to sew,
learning to play a musicalinstrument, you're becoming more
sensitive to your body mechanicsto what you're learning to
massage somebody.
You're learning how to feellearning to feel she is exactly
the same.
If someone, when someone teachesyou to do that.
(05:23):
Gotcha.
Cool.
And is that, does that play intothe fact that I guess I could
speak from Chinese descent isthat, usually When you're
drinking like cold water versushot water.
And that's why a lot of timespeople, when you're at Yumcha
you drink tea, right?
Cause it provides more warmthand blood flow.
So there's a lot of there's alot of things that my grandma
has told me around you want tokeep the body warm.
You want to bias it towards likehot soup or is it like cold?
(05:46):
So does that play into anythingat all in terms of.
That warmth that moisture where,Chinese people are very
interested in always keeping thebody warm, promoting more blood
flow in a very practical sense.
The main difference between aliving person and a dead person
is that the living person iscreating heat.
And and you can see this inother places in nature to, a
(06:06):
compost pile as disgusting as itis, it's a great pile of compost
if it's if there's steam risingoff of it.
And in it.
So in a human body and manytraditional.
Cultural medical systems,Chinese medicine, especially
have noticed this and been like,Oh, okay.
Dead people cool down and thenstay cold.
Living people create warmth andheat.
(06:28):
That's life force is warmth isthe endogenous creation of that.
So doing things that foster thatdrinking warm liquids versus
cold things applying heat to anarea of injury or, versus ice
And I know in, I've been told inthe profession of physical
therapy, please correct me ifI'm wrong, that there is
generally a movement away fromicing injuries lately.
(06:50):
And that the data has finallycaught up to the traditional
cultural wisdom of many placesaround earth where they're like,
cold constricts blood vesselsand it does dull nerve endings
so that it stops paintemporarily.
The constriction of blood flow.
Can reduce swelling, but it canreduce, it can slow the
inflammatory process.
(07:10):
But in an acute sense, in ahealthy person, inflammation is
how we heal.
And you need that, you need theinflammatory cascade to complete
itself.
You need tissue repair to workproperly.
And in order to foster that, tofacilitate that happening, heat
is going to be more effectivethan ice, even if it causes the
a bit more temporary discomfort.
Yeah.
So it was the first Yeah.
(07:31):
inflammation is the first phaseof remodeling, right?
So if you're trying to speed upthe first phase and you're
skipping out on that phase,right?
So you want to, the body doesget inflamed on purpose in order
to protect the body from movingit.
So if your ankle swells, Yeah.
For a reason, because it'strying to build inflammation
around the area, swell it up sothat it has time to heal it.
But in, for example, if you'retrying to reduce that
(07:53):
inflammatory phase and you'respeeding up that first phase,
which could be catastrophe lateron, that ankle might be rendered
unstable for a given amount oftime.
But yeah, like rice, the rest,ice, compression, elevation,
tend to be like a dying art.
And I think that what you'resaying too, is.
It makes sense because the waythat I help a lot of my clients
is whether it's acute or chronicinjury is you're trying to
(08:14):
actually do more strengthtraining.
You're trying to strengthen asfast as possible, but in given
return to ability, all of that.
Yeah.
So what promotes more heat andblood flow?
It's also contraction.
It's movement, active range ofmotion.
I'm totally with you on that.
Yeah.
And that Chinese medicine takesa very similar approach
especially in areas like Qigong.
There's there's an exercisesystem in China.
(08:35):
That's a lot of people arefamiliar with, Chinese Kung Fu
with martial arts.
Probably with Tai Chi, which issometimes taught as a martial
art.
Oftentimes, it's also promotedjust as a health system.
And Tai Chi can be a form ofwhat we call Qigong.
And then there are, thousands ofdifferent kinds of that which
are just.
At its basic level, it'sbreathwork body awareness,
(08:57):
cultivation and gentle exercise.
And oftentimes it involveselements of resistance training
of specific mobility, work rangeof motion, exercises, balance
exercises, learning to stand onone foot learning to get down on
the ground and get up off theground, all of the kinds of
things that we associate withhealth and longevity these are
built into many of thesemethods.
(09:18):
Absolutely.
My grandma who still lives inOakland, California, she's the
last, I guess she's the lastgrandparent to be alive, right?
Because the other grandparents,whether they smoked or drank,
chronically over the life, mygrandma, she, she's, she just
turned, I think, 97 or 98 yearsof age.
So that's pretty.
That's pretty respectable.
(09:39):
That's up there.
I think one of the things,outside of the fact that COVID
for a lot of people left, a lotof people deconditioned.
We know that.
And before COVID though, she wasactually walking a good one to
two miles to Oakland, Chinatown.
She actually led Tai Chiclasses, very large group of
(10:00):
people.
And I remember always being likevery respected of her, wow.
Like she, her balance isamazing.
She was super strong.
She was the one obviously again,she's the one grandparent that's
still alive.
There's probably a good reasonfor that because she really
practiced Tai Chi and a lot ofthings.
Although she is older now, butthere was a lot of merit to,
even just more anecdotalevidence to say she's the last
(10:23):
grandparent.
And even today she still has.
She's still moving decently.
But yeah I think that I'm a hugebeliever and a lot of my uncles,
also practice Tai Chi.
I heard a Tai Chi candramatically decrease your risk
for falls by 500%.
Oh, but the slow methodicalmovements, all that eccentric
(10:43):
forces, and just like the factthat you're just like slowly
moving on a single leg.
I think this promotes a ton ofblood flow.
So with regards to that, how doyou integrate herbal medicine,
Qi Gong, acupuncture?
Is it more individualized as faras how much of each you're
giving to each person?
Or do you integrate all threetogether?
(11:04):
right away.
So when I'm working with apatient one on one, I do the
kind of the classic clinicianthing of taking a thorough
history, making an assessment inChinese medicine these are,
these sound different thanbiomedical diagnoses.
We don't, we wouldn't say likelong COVID or chronic fatigue
syndrome or something like that,but we would say, something like
chi and blood deficiency or adamp phlegm, something like
(11:28):
that.
But then we create a treatmentplan.
And so when I'm working with apatient one on one will,
oftentimes that will includevery specific qigong exercises
that are necessary for them,whether that's a breathing
exercise, a physical posturethat they need to assume and
hold a range of motion exercise.
I don't my practice right now islargely virtual and I'm not
(11:49):
doing a ton of.
in person hands on manual carewith acupuncture and stuff like
that.
Used to be, I would do a lot ofphysical mobilization for my
patients, just gentle stretchesand body work kinds of stuff
during a treatment.
Nowadays, I prefer to just teachthem to do that on at, and then
have them do it on their own athome means they need less time
with me and are more able totake charge of their own health
(12:12):
and, continue their pathforward.
But and then herbal medicine asappropriate.
So like chronic fatigue syndromeis a great example of this.
With, especially after COVID,because, like you were saying,
these people have dramaticallyreduced physical capacity.
They oftentimes can't do thekinds of exercise that they used
to be able to do prior togetting sick.
(12:33):
And there's a great.
study that just came out showinghow they did some biopsies on
people with long COVID versuspeople who'd had COVID and then
fully recovered from it, had nosymptoms.
They took muscle biopsies andwe're looking at mitochondrial
function at clotting factors inthe muscle small injuries that
these people had sustained.
(12:54):
The baseline for the long COVIDpatients was dramatically lower
even before exercise than thepeople who had recovered
completely from COVID.
And then after exercise, it waseven a larger discrepancy.
The long COVID patients wereeven worse.
She gone has fantastic benefitsfor these people because they're
the ones who are most going tosuffer from post exertional
(13:15):
malaise.
They're the ones who are goingto enter into a an exercise
program.
And, we know that we know likewe have so much data showing
like physical exercise can begraduated increasing quantity of
exercise can be a path torecovery for people with chronic
fatigue.
If you know anybody who workswith this population, you listen
(13:36):
to your patients and you'relike, there are a lot of these
people who are just getting hurtmore by doing it.
And So looking at exercisemethods that have a way of one,
not pushing people too far toofast because the graduated part
of that, I think is the key takehome where you have to be, you
(13:57):
have to help the patient findthe tolerable amount and then
they have to go 1 percent pastthat.
Or maybe half a percent or atenth of a percent past that,
but just enough that they don'ttrigger a, a catastrophic
decline that takes them a weekto get out of bed afterwards.
And there's so much being donein China that they've actually
(14:18):
studied this in very largepopulations.
The most popular.
Qi Gong method in China iscalled the Baduan Jin.
It's the eight treasures ofbrocade, eight pieces of brocade
is what it's often translated asin English.
And it's a series of eightexercises that it was invented
during the Song dynasty.
It's 800 years old.
It's been continuously practicedsince then.
(14:38):
And it's open sourced.
And it's, it's one of the onesthat You go to a town square or
a large park in any major cityin China, and you're going to
see hundreds of people doingthis every morning together.
And there's a systematic reviewof meta analyses of randomized
controlled trials, where theylooked at this and they found
that it was one of the fewexercise methods that actually
(15:00):
showed objective improvementsfor people with who are very old
for people who and can't donormal exercise.
And for people who have chronicfatigue syndrome in terms of,
their balance, their sleepquality, their yeah, exercise
capacity, all of that.
That's awesome.
Yeah, I'd love to hear thatresearch or get an article and
(15:20):
maybe you can link it.
I was going to say that a lot ofthe stuff that you said like I
said, people thinking thatEastern and Western medicine are
like, very mutually exclusive.
They have no connection to eachother.
And there's also a lot of.
I guess there's a lot ofpolarity, in terms of what's
better.
But I do think that even thestuff that you said, like
sustained postures it's not muchdifferent from what I gave to
(15:42):
like my last client with chronicfatigue or long COVID it's
sustained postures is isometricsis doing something that yields.
a minute, minimally clinicallyeffective dosage of exercise.
And so you give him somebodylike some dumbbells and you do
that immediately.
It flares him up.
It might help somebody thatdoesn't have chronic fatigue
because they have greatercapacity.
(16:03):
But you have somebody likeisometrics and they're like, Oh,
my, my, my legs feel better.
My hips feel better.
Just sustaining postures or likegoing from sustained to slow
dynamic movement, which What'sslow dynamic moving.
This sounds like Tai Chi, soundslike Qigong, right?
It sounds like Tai Chi.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But if you start somebody onjump squat, which is higher
velocity movements, and that'ssomething that could be of use
(16:27):
to them later on down the road,when they're like my goals are
now once I'm in less pain, Iwant to run.
Okay.
That's where we got to speedthings up.
So everything that you say, I'mstarting to even hear more and
just connect the dots in termsof.
How physical therapy andstrength training and mobility
are all very similar things thatan Eastern medicine provider.
(16:49):
Although I understand there'sprobably some people in your
industry that you're just like,they don't practice in the same
way, right?
Same thing.
There's not always good physicaltherapy.
Oh, it's a crap shoot.
Like there, there are, I thinkthis is the case in every area
of medicine.
In any discipline, you findpeople who are entering the
profession for.
Absolutely the right reasons andthey're listening to their
(17:11):
patients and they're digginginto research and finding what
works and what doesn't.
And they're willing to changetheir mind.
They're willing to, reallycritically evaluate best
practices and yeah, and theirown methods and passionately
pursuing continuing education inevery.
And then you find people who arejust nuts and they're like in it
(17:33):
to scam their folks, make aquick buck and leave town.
And yeah, unfortunately that'sthe case in every field.
And there are absolutely quacksin my own profession.
I'm not going to deny that.
Yeah, but the, the core ofmedicine is to be of service.
And and I think, you I think anydiscipline hopefully is calling
(17:54):
people in who are there to helpfor all the right reasons.
Yeah, definitely.
So I guess we can talk aboutmaybe we can dive into like
little individualized thingslike, for example, herbal
medicine.
I definitely think that's, Ialways consider exercise as my
best medicine.
I don't prescribe certainmedications or anything, not
even herbs, right?
Because these are just thingsthat I would.
(18:15):
refer out for.
So can we demystify or,articulate on that event in
terms of herbal medicine?
How do you prescribe it?
Are there certain like herbsthat are more effective for
certain things?
Let's just dive into that topic.
Okay.
So to take this back to chi theconcept of chi is, in Chinese
medicine, we're looking at chiblood and body fluids for the
most part, in terms ofsubstances that we're working
(18:37):
with.
circulating throughout the humanbody.
And most of any kind ofmedicine, whether it's Qi Gong
or herbs, is improving thatfunction.
If we're looking at forms of Qi.
There are many described inclassical Chinese medical texts.
Most of these have a directanalog in Western medicine to
specific gases.
And the most common one that wework with is called nitric
(18:57):
oxide.
And so many people in the Westare only familiar with this in
the context of if they're intosupplements they're taking
arginine or beet powder.
Or if they're into drugs,they're taking Viagra or Cialis.
And those are, those are, hugenitric oxide boosters and they
can work as what we wouldconsider a tea tonic in that
(19:18):
capacity.
Unfortunately, most people thatwe see in the clinic are
actually in what we wouldconsider an excess category.
They have adequate nitric oxide.
They have adequate tea that it'sjust not moving through the body
in the right.
It's not circulating.
Just like blood.
You can have enough blood inyour body.
If you have an injury and theblood is stuck there, it's not
(19:40):
healing correctly.
And same thing with gases.
And there's a saying and in whenyou go through Chinese medicine
school, you learn that they sayshe is the commander of blood.
And blood is the house of chi.
So the chi tells the body whereto go.
And the direct biomedicalequivalent of this is nitric
oxide acting as an agent forvasodilation and
(20:03):
vasoconstriction.
So when you have that happeningsmoothly and fluidly throughout
the body, you get great bloodsupply everywhere it needs to be
going.
When it's inhibited by injury,by infection, by sedentary
lifestyle, you don't get that.
And so people are often flood,if they're looking for herbs
they're going to something likebeets, for example, we can use
(20:25):
that as a, it's a plant it's ahuge nitric oxide donor.
But it may actually be causingyou problems taking it in high
doses long term because all ofthe receptors that are
susceptible to nitric oxide canbe, it's a hot inflammatory
compound and they can beliterally burnt out by having
too high of a dose given tothem.
(20:46):
And we famously see this in menwho take drugs for E.
D.
when they don't really needthem.
And then.
Get E.
D.
That doesn't respond to the samemedication.
So it's a, we're looking for aGoldilocks zone with these
things.
So when we come to herbalmedicine the way that we
diagnose a patient is is thereexcess?
(21:09):
Or deficiency and whichever campwe're in, we're going to use
vastly different herbalformulas.
So some mostly with herbalformulas, we're looking at plant
substances.
We do occasionally use minerals,very occasionally animal
substances.
No one who is a professional inthis field is using endangered
species.
That's not done by anyone whoshould be in clinical practice.
If you ever find somebody inChinese medicine, who's pulling
(21:31):
out the rhinoceros horn, pleasego the other way.
That's not the right thing touse.
We have better stuff available.
But that's sustainably grown andprocessed there.
So we're mostly looking atplants and we're mostly looking
at their effects on gases.
And so we have some plants thatcan so anything that you ingest
orally there's a whole world ofherbs that are used topically on
(21:54):
the skin, especially for injuryrecovery.
A little bit different way ofthinking there, but for most of
the time when we're prescribingherbs to patients, they're
taking them orally, whether it'sa pill or a tea.
And.
What we're looking at are theeffects that those herbs have on
the flora of the GI tract andhow those flora then because
(22:15):
they also produce nitric oxide,they also require a certain
amount of nitric oxide to bepresent in order to live or die.
And.
Having too much is going tocause what we would classically
call heat symptoms in thedigestive tract.
And this are often associatedwith gastritis or inflammatory
bowel diseases.
A lack of them creates a coldand then often very damp, wet
(22:38):
environment.
And that's where we'll seepeople who have Candida yeast
overgrowth or or sometimes justa straight up deficiency of
lactobacillus and bifidobacter.
And those kinds of flora areoften not being adequately fed
by soluble fiber in the diet.
Or they've been depleted bywhich most Americans are not
eating enough fiber or they'vebeen significantly depleted by
(23:00):
infection.
COVID can destroy your bifidumpopulation just by itself.
You can also have taken a courseof antibiotics and that may have
saved your life, but they alsoreally wrecked your guts.
And so using herbs to nourishthe healthy flora that then you
produce enough chi on your ownis how these things are working.
So for injury recovery ifthere's somebody who's got I'll
(23:23):
use an example of like a, somekind of spinal injury, not a
spinal cord injury, but like alow back pain or a disc injury
or a low back pain, disc injury,arthritis, stenosis, something
like that.
We're going to use herbs thatare going to make sure that.
Nitric oxide is moving throughthat part of the body adequately
and through through Chinesehistory, the history of Chinese
(23:44):
medicine, they've noticed thatspecific herbs can actually
direct cheat direct gases tocertain parts of the body.
So if we see an injury there,we're looking like, okay, we've
got an injury.
We have herbs that direct to theshoulder.
We have herbs that direct to thelumbar spine, to the thoracic
spine, to the cervical spine.
It's fascinating stuff.
We have herbs that we knowspecifically.
(24:07):
Can increase the production of,or the expression of Oh, what is
it called?
Now?
It's it's evading me.
It's vascular endothelial growthfactor VGF in the knee.
Like it's that specific.
And so based on, the classicaluse of these things and then the
modern pharmacology, we're ableto prescribe pretty accurately
(24:28):
for the needs of the patient.
That's really, that'sfascinating.
Actually.
No, just to clarify, you'resaying that some people have
excess, let's say excess ordeficiency of, nitric oxide.
So are you saying that let's saythey're in deficiency, you're
clearly promoting herbs and teasand things that are going to
promote more vasodilation acrossthe entire body systemically.
(24:50):
Generally speaking, yes.
Yes.
But what about the people thatdo have excess?
Are you trying to, are you areyou trying to vasoconstrict?
Is there a different time?
We are.
So yeah, it's more aboutsmoothing it out.
The only time we would try tolike really reduce nitric oxide
is if somebody had a, grossinflammatory situation, like a
fever.
(25:10):
That's where we would considerlike really trying to bring that
down fast.
Most of the time.
So there is there is, you can't.
You can't move Chi withoutreleasing Chi.
If it's stuck somewhere, youhave to release it to get it to
move and you lose a little bitin the process.
So if someone's got what wewould consider an excess
situation in a, in an injury I'mtouching my shoulder.
(25:31):
Cause this, I have an oldshoulder injury and this is on
camera.
You can see it.
We're going to use herbs thatwould reduce some of the excess
nitric oxide that's there bymoving it out of the joint.
Got it.
If there is and if you overusethose things or you give them to
a deficient patient, they're notgoing to work or they might work
for a couple of days, but thenit'll stop and then they'll just
(25:53):
feel really tired or even getthe pain will go away for a
couple of days and then it comesright back and the same formula
doesn't work for it.
So this is why a goodprofessional can help you assess
excess versus deficiencyprescribed appropriately and
then treat you in stages.
Because you may have adeficiency, but the injury
really looks like an excess.
Okay, cool.
We're going to clear that.
(26:14):
Oh, now you're exhausted.
Now we got to boost you up orthat pain will return.
I see.
Got it.
And is there any, is thereanything out there?
For example we talked about howpeople that are on like.
ED medication.
A lot of times medication can beaddicting, can be very reliant.
A lot of times your body canstop producing, for example,
(26:36):
like melatonin, you can takeexcess melatonin.
Oh, sure.
That's a hormone, yeah.
And then your body, yeah, butthen your body almost, if you
use it in excess, you can,Disturb the ability for your
body to actually producemelatonin on its own.
So is there anything like thatin terms of people that either
from their belief system thatlike they start to get hooked on
herbal medicine or is thereanything in regards to like if
(26:59):
you use excessive amount ofherbs that their body downplays
ability to like regulated on itsown?
Totally.
So this comes into play mostlywhen we're working with the
endocrine system.
And that's because of thingslike you're saying with
melatonin, like it can be, itisn't always, but for some
people it can be habit formingor cause dependency because they
there's a negative feedback loopfor that.
(27:20):
And if you're, if you're if yourbody detects that there's
adequate or excessive like amelatonin supplement has 5, 000
times the amount of melatoninthat your pineal gland.
makes for you at sleep onset.
And so if you're taking thatmuch regularly, melatonin
production is probably going todown regulate because you don't
need it.
any hormone can well, not any,but many hormones work that way
(27:44):
and many and chemistry isuniversal.
So in Chinese medicine, we'renot, when we're assessing and
prescribing, we're not reallythinking in biomedical
chemistry.
We're thinking in classicalChinese context, but the
chemistry still applies.
If for example most of the herbsthat we will use to regulate a
woman's period to reduce painwith menstrual cramps or to help
ease the transition throughperimenopause will have a very
(28:07):
endocrine like effect.
They'll be carrying endocrinesubstances, in a certain
context, like you can look atthis as a form of HRT and they,
it's often not as directly, notas like powerful as HRT, which
means it's a little bit moreforgiving and because these
plants have these are wholeplants that we're giving.
It's not an extracted singlecompound.
(28:28):
The plants have their ownendocrine system.
They have their own metabolismand they will often have
balancing factors.
In the plant that helped toreduce the dependency formation
or the it's a gentler way ofprescribing and working.
And so you see less immediateeffect.
You also see that there's asafe, higher safety profile.
(28:48):
But you can still cause harmthat way.
If you give somebody, here's aspecific case example.
I saw a perimenopausal woman afew months ago who had been
treated by an acupuncturist whohad, and I, and she brought her
case record in and she was like,I took these formulas and I felt
worse.
And the acupuncturist wasperplexed.
She said, I don't know why thisisn't working.
(29:10):
You're in perimenopause.
You must be indeficient.
I give you in tonics.
I looked at her tongue, a yindeficient tongue should be
scarlet red, like crimson,bright red.
It should have no coating on itat all.
And the tongue should, in fact,be quite cracked on.
So that's showing that there'sthere's heat that's consuming up
the body's fluids and endocrinesystem in many ways is related
(29:33):
to fluid metabolism.
And this patient did not havethat tongue, but she had been
prescribed a formula that wouldbe appropriate if she had, so
her tongue was very wide.
Had a lot of scallops, toothmarks on it from pressing up
against the inside of her teethbecause it was swollen and it
had a very thick coating on it.
(29:54):
And so rather than give herendocrine tonics, something
that's like a herbal equivalentof HRT, which is what the
previous acupuncturist had givenher, I gave her something that
would reduce the swelling oflike her body.
The swelling of the tongue showsthat your body is maintaining
holding onto too much moisture.
like there's excess water beingstored in your interstitium.
(30:14):
And with that, and with a thicktongue coating, we can tell
there's a lot of excess biofilm.
And oftentimes we will see thatthe the biofilm and the excess
water is actually blockingendocrine receptors.
Her body was making enough.
Estrogen enough progesterone.
It's just not able to get whereit needs to go.
So rather than giving herendocrine like substances that
(30:37):
tonify her hormones that buildher back up and ease her through
perimonopause that way, it wasabout getting the excess biofilm
and water out of the way.
And in the first couple ofweeks, she lost five pounds of
water weight.
She started sleeping better, herbowel movements regulated.
And then the perimenopausalsymptoms she was experiencing
(30:58):
started to ease off with aformula that's used for
digestive health rather thanit's not an endocrine classic
formula we would look at for anendocrine issue.
It's more about the gut healthpart piece of that.
But that's where we see a lot ofthat fluid regulation occur.
Wow, that's really cool.
I feel like you're wiring me inways that I didn't think about
in this podcast in terms of howI guess how structured like how
(31:20):
structured and how diagnostictruly can be.
I understand that we have likeour own diagnoses and I've
actually been a person that.
Has thrown away a lot of thediagnoses.
Cause I think people really likestrongly identify with it.
And then like they, they staywith it, chronic fatigue or you
call them your identity and thenyou can't, yeah, there's
seriously going to identify,like I'm a fibro, and I never
want them to identify assomething that's that damages
(31:42):
their identity.
So I.
I like yours in terms of themore conservative, like
diagnostic labels that you woulduse, but just making sure that
like for yourself, who thisperson is for further treatment.
Yeah.
Is there a specific, is there aspecific types of people or
clientele that you're like,okay, these are 100 percent the
people that, that match what Ihave.
(32:06):
I am the absolute perfectpractitioner for that.
And is there some people thatyou're like, okay, I might need
to either refer out.
I might need to, I might needanother practitioners guidance
with this.
Cause there are people where I'mlike, I need.
I need a psychotherapist, that'smore person cognitive behavioral
therapy.
Yeah, can we differentiate that?
Because I'd love for people tounderstand really where Chinese
(32:28):
medicine can really play intothese, specific people that can
benefit from this moreeffectively.
I think there, there are somescenarios where Chinese medicine
is, I don't want to say it's aslam dunk, but it's pretty
reliably effective.
And we see this mostly in theworlds of diagnoses of
exclusion.
Things like fibromyalgia, IBSthese are labels that are
(32:52):
applied to patients, largelyfemale patients, but men can get
them as well.
They're, the diagnostic criteriafor those things means either
you're in pain or you have tummytrouble or bathroom problems and
your provider doesn't know why.
And so there's a ton of researchinto why these things are the
(33:13):
way they are.
And ultimately like it's afailure in multiple aspects of
the medical system of ourinsurance.
industry of, when a primary careprovider gets seven minutes with
a patient, they're not able totake a thorough history and
figure out okay, when did thepain start?
And it's okay you werepostpartum and you were not
(33:34):
sleeping at all.
and you caught COVID and thenthe pain started, there's not
time to ask, to go through thequestioning process to figure
that out.
Chinese medicine does a greatjob because we don't use those
diagnostic labels of a disease.
We do more of a functionalinquiry.
When did this start?
What is the type of pain?
(33:55):
Does it wander around your bodyor is it fixed in place?
Is it is it better if somebodygives it firm pressure or does
that make it worse?
How's your sleep quality?
All these things play a hugerole in chronic pain when it
comes to digestive stuff, it's,very similar kind of a process
and like anybody who digs intothe evidence behind this knows
(34:15):
that there's a huge associationbetween fibromyalgia, what gets
diagnosed or labeled asfibromyalgia and chronic
infections or post infectiousdisorders.
We know there's a hugerelationship between that and
the gut.
We know there's a hugerelationship between that and
the autonomic nervous system.
People who have childhoodtrauma, I don't remember what
the statistic is.
It's some absurd number of timeshigher likely chance of being
(34:37):
diagnosed with fibromyalgialater in life.
With IBS, it's there's one studyI love where they took a huge
section of IBS patients and gavethem the breath test for small
intestine bacterial overgrowth.
And they found that 74 percentof the patients who'd been
diagnosed with IBS had adiagnosable form of SIBO.
And we know that those breathtests are not even that
accurate.
(34:58):
There's some people that theymissed.
So that that's a and that's acondition where the treatments
are.
There's emerging science intowhat treatments are effective
for SIBO.
And a lot of people will dosomething like a two week course
of antibiotics feel amazing forthose two weeks.
And it comes right back or theyuse botanicals and have exactly
the same thing.
Chinese medicine has a reallygreat track record working with
(35:18):
that because we're looking atevery aspect of digestion from,
Both ends of the tube includingbile, motility, stomach acid,
moisture levels, gas pressure,all of that kind of stuff and
stress.
And yeah, that being said, Ithink a referral is One of the
(35:40):
most powerful tools that anyclinician has and knowing when
it's like, Oh, you also need tosee a therapist.
Oh, you also need to be assessedby, like I had a patient the
other week who was coming herefor chronic UTIs and we, we made
great headway in that.
We made a ton of progress withthat.
She's basically over the chronicUTIs.
We got her guts all fixed.
She then started talking aboutvestibular migraine and I'm
(36:04):
getting a couple of hits of Oh,there's something neurologically
going on here that I don't orderMRIs.
I don't do, I do a neurologicalevaluation for my patients, but
I'm not a neurologist, but I'mfeeling like this person needs
to see one.
And we got her in I gave hercontact info for the local
neurology practice.
She got in there, she gotassessed in the neurologist.
(36:24):
You have a lot of symptoms ofMS, which is what I was
thinking.
And he said, it's probably notpossible to diagnose you right
now, but we can do that.
And he did.
They didn't, they, they didn'tsee lesions.
They weren't able to give her aformal MS diagnosis, but she has
all the symptoms of it.
They come and go, this is aclassic thing.
It takes 15 years to getdiagnosed with MS a lot of the
(36:45):
time, but we know from again,from traditional medical
systems, there's a lot you cando to proactively work on your
neurological health.
And so it's okay, you may begoing that direction.
But instead of taking 15 yearsto get you a formal diagnosis to
the degree that you then need tobe taking medication that has
really terrible side effects,what if we started now with diet
(37:07):
practices with exercise topromote balance with and
strengthen your legs with sleephygiene with all of the things
that we know are going toproactively improve your
neurological system and get youthe best quality of life from
here on out that we can.
Yeah, that's really insightful.
Preventative medicine issomething that I've been
(37:27):
practicing for the past sixyears.
And the reason why is becausewith being in the biomedical
system and I used to work withinsurance based practices,
everything's all about when theyhave the diagnoses, when they're
sick, that, that's when we comein and you get them to a place
of.
Simply just normalcy.
And you haven't really, youhaven't really led with what you
(37:48):
just said, like just coveringthe basics of like better diet,
improve sleep quality, how tomitigate stress, how to
incorporate more exercise intolife.
You're simply just giving them.
I always say this, like you'realways just given like a kid,
like a piece of candy or alollipop, and then you're
sending them their way.
But all we know is that the kidis eating more sugar or getting
them addicted to the wrongthings.
(38:08):
We're not really, we're reallynot helping the person
holistically.
And I've always consideredChinese medicine, although like
I've had a much more thoroughunderstanding, just talking with
you more of a holistic way oftreating the entire body.
Treating it, systemicallytreating the whole entire person
and I, I'm learning somethingabout how now with what you
practice is we have that incommon too.
(38:30):
It's like a very thoroughsubjective and developing more
of a therapeutic alliance.
It's absolutely critical to helpthe person rather than just
treating a symptom.
You're treating everything thatthey are.
And that's what chronic pain is.
It's very multifactorial.
A lot of the chronic.
These are things that I knowthat I don't have the best sense
of treating somebody's gut floraand having a more thorough
(38:51):
understanding of all thedifferent bacterias that you
know, but I do know that I canprovide them exercise.
I can teach them certain dietaryprinciples, but having somebody
like yourself to refer out tomeans a lot to me and
demystifying some of the stuffand incorporating a lot of the
research that you did to backkind of Eastern medicine, I
think was.
One of the more insightfulthings.
(39:11):
I think a lot of our viewers andlisteners would get from this.
So I guess with that being saidI don't know if you have
something that kind of likereally is indeed what you call
it, the quote unquote, the slamdunk.
What is the slam dunk on Easternmedicine?
Why should people look into thisfurther for their overall
health?
I think if there's one thing Ithink actually if there's one
thing that Eastern medicine isreally great at, it's at
promoting quality of life beforepeople get a formal diagnosis.
(39:35):
And so if you look at likehealth practices in China, it's
eating a lot of cookedvegetables, like a lot of cooked
plants.
High fiber content is associatedlike I think people who increase
their fiber by 10 or 15 grams aday tend to also increase their
longevity by 10 or 15 years.
It's some there's some statisticlike that.
I'm probably getting it wrong,but it's there.
(39:57):
There is a relationship between,fiber intake and health and
life.
There's.
People eating together as afamily, you rarely see people in
China eating alone and we knowthat Harvard came out with a
huge thing a couple of years agoabout how the quality of your
social relationships, thequality of your friendships in
(40:17):
your mid forties is a betterpredictor of your health and
longevity than any blood test.
And getting outside, gettingphysical exercise, gentle,
physical exercise that promotesthings like balance, which we
know are associated with healthand then using medicine
preventatively.
(40:38):
So being able to teach people,this is my current passion is
being able to teach people tolook at their own tongue and,
check in with their owndigestive health.
Once a day, because this issomething anybody can learn to
do and make very simpleadjustments day by day just to
keep them their tummy reallyhappy.
Do I need to, drink a lot ofwarm water today?
Do I need to sweat today?
(40:59):
Am I a little constipated and Ihave too many bowel movements
like all of that is important toknow and looking at the tongue
can teach people what kinds ofdietary practices they need to
do.
to really take care ofthemselves proactively and take
care of their familiesproactively.
Nudging the sweet potato towardssomebody who needs a little bit
more fiber and, maybe slidingthe barbecue in the other
(41:21):
direction.
Yeah, that's their favorite.
I think that's great.
You're acting more in preventionand the quote I always use is
like an ounce of prevention isworth a pound of cure.
Yeah.
So I think I think a lot ofpeople would be genuinely
interested in, in, in hearingthis, but also, potentially
working with you.
I think for me, even too, isthat I've always been interested
in longevity and longevity, theresearch on cardiovascular,
(41:46):
versus strength training andwhat's more important for
longevity.
Both of those, they decreaseyour risk of all cause mortality
by some 15 to 30%.
And even the things that you'reteaching very practical tools
that somebody can do from thecomfort of their home to look at
their tongue or look at theirand to keep their gut happy.
I think that's, yeah.
That's absolutely amazing.
I guess with that being said tojust end this off, like where
(42:07):
can people find out more aboutyou, more about your practice?
How can potentially people canreach out to you as well?
So my website iscrawford-wellness.Com and that's
my.
That's my private practice.
If they want to work with me oneon one, I also started a company
called chorus for life thatteaches people how to look at
their tongues and look at theirfamily members tongues in a
(42:30):
polite way and respectful andand eat, normal real world food
without hurting.
Both, we give dietary advice interms of paradigms of that but
we also teach a free Qigongclass twice a week that
anybody's welcome to attend.
We're currently working throughthe Baduan Jin the one that I
mentioned from the Song dynastyand we're seeing people make
(42:50):
profound changes just in thelast couple of weeks.
Anyone's welcome to join methere.
I'd be even very intrigued tojoin as well.
I've always wanted to ask mygrandma to teach me Tai Chi.
So just like little things thatjust to piece things together.
It's very it's a little harderat 97, 98 years of age.
She doesn't walk to OaklandChinatown anymore.
But I think, yeah, there,there's a lot of things that you
(43:11):
said that mean a lot to me,considering me of Chinese
descent that even me going toSouthern California A lot of
times we just bask in silence,but the thing is just we just
enjoy each other's company.
The fact that we're alwayseating together as a family
probably is one of the biggestthings that me and my wife's
family do.
And even on my side of thefamily, we're a little bit more
Americanized, but still,nonetheless, the most important
(43:31):
thing is like every single week,no matter what, we always get
together and.
We eat together.
We bask in each other's justsocial wellness.
And I think that can be saidfor, I'm very happy and
obviously very proud of mydescent.
Yeah, diversity of themicrobiome is associated with
every aspect of health.
And you, one of the things youget from sharing space with
(43:52):
people, sharing food withpeople, breathing the same air
rubbing shoulders is that it'snot always the, it's a little
gross to think about, but youare sharing all of your gut bugs
with each other all the timewhen you share space and that
actually really shows a lot ofdigestive health.
Promotion properties for peoplewhen communal eating like beyond
(44:16):
the social benefits.
There are real measurablephysical benefits to doing that.
We tend to eat slower.
We tend to chew more.
We tend to make healthier foodchoices.
We tend to eat a healthiernumber of calories when we're in
a social setting and yeah, it'sa I think that's a cultural
tradition that need that hasbeen unfortunately lost in the
United States.
(44:36):
There's so many people who justeat alone in front of a screen
and yeah that's not good foryou.
Yeah, absolutely.
Any case, I'm going to link alot of this stuff from Brian's
and all the links that hementioned from like the classes
to whether you want to work withthem one on one to whether you
want to learn how to assess yourtongue or assess your family
song and just making sure allyou guys stay healthy.
(44:56):
So I'll link that all into thedescription.
And I just want to thank you foryour wisdom and your knowledge
and providing some sort ofclarity on kind of demystifying
Eastern medicine and how it canrelate to certain people's long
term health.
In any case, that's what I gotfor you guys today.
If you found this episodehelpful, definitely share it
with your friends or leave a 5star review.
That way, this message gets outto more people and, I'll always
(45:18):
leave this quote with everyoneelse is we only have one body,
one life, make every action youmake be one that makes you a
better version of you.
So take care.
And Brehan, thanks so much foryour time.
Thank you for having me onJason.
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