This week we will discuss Acupuncture and how it supports out nervous system, reduces stress and promotes emotional balance.
I love Acupuncture for many reasons! My guest, Tom Ingegno, will discuss his work as an acupuncturist and how he helps people regulate their nervous systems to have a positive impact on mental health and enhance overall well-being.
website: charmcityintegrative.com/
book: thecuppingbook.com/
podcast: irreverenthealth.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/baltimoreacupuncture/
Tune in for this visionary conversation at TalkRadio.nyc or watch the Livestream by Clicking Here.
During the first segment Shervon begins by introducing her guest Tom Ingegno, a doctor of acupuncture and chinese medicine. Tom then goes on to tell us abit more about himself, including how and why he chose to go into acupuncture. As well as what his biggest source of motivation was for looking into a more alternative style of medicine.
In the second more informative segment Shervon tells us a more basic textbook definition of what acupuncture is, an ancient chinese technique of inserting long thin needles into certain points along a meridian line to help direct the flow of chi throughout the body. Tom follows up by going into a more detailed description of the practice and how it is done to help with a variety of different symptoms and issues.
The third segment of the episode Tom and Shervon talk about the effects of acupuncture and how it affects our endocannabinoid system, which is Endo-internal cannabinoid compounds coming from cannabis found within our brain and body prior to ever consuming canabis. They also share their own experiences with acupuncture and the connection and feelings that they have felt during and after acupuncture sessions.
Shervon and Tom wrap up the episode by talking about how acupuncture has evolved over the course of history. With Tom giving insight into what the needles were like when he first started and how they have gotten smaller over the course of his time practicing. The episode ends with the two encouraging us to give acupuncture a try and to not be afraid, as the needles and acupuncture as a practice is over exaggerated in media and is not something we should be afraid of.
00:01:10.350 --> 00:01:17.149 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Hello, and welcome back to the Expansion Room. I'm Siobhan Larisse, your host, and…
00:01:17.420 --> 00:01:27.610 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: We have been talking about holistic mental health approaches for probably the last 6 episodes or so, and today.
00:01:27.610 --> 00:01:37.720 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: I am joined by Dr. Tom Ingenio, and we are going to be talking about acupuncture, which is one of my favorite things.
00:01:37.820 --> 00:01:54.299 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: But I am not the expert, so I'm so glad that he is here, to share his wisdom and knowledge with us about this topic, and especially how it relates back to mental health.
00:01:54.580 --> 00:02:01.390 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: And well-being, and the overall ways that we can take care of ourselves.
00:02:01.540 --> 00:02:03.899 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: So, Tom, welcome!
00:02:03.900 --> 00:02:13.580 Tom Ingegno: Dr. Von, it's so great to talk with you again. I always have a great time. When I see you, you're always smiling, you make me feel happier, and I'm just so happy to be here right now.
00:02:13.580 --> 00:02:20.530 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Awesome, thank you. I'm glad to have you. Tom is a doctor of acupuncture.
00:02:21.050 --> 00:02:26.960 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: And Chinese medicine, correct? Yeah. All right. And you've written more than one book.
00:02:26.960 --> 00:02:32.300 Tom Ingegno: Yeah, yeah, yeah, two, two books, two books.
00:02:32.310 --> 00:02:43.739 Tom Ingegno: First was, to be honest, Siobhan, was I wrote it because somebody said, I was gonna get interviewed for a national press release, in print, it was gonna be a big thing, and I was getting…
00:02:43.740 --> 00:02:53.359 Tom Ingegno: And they said, well, where have you been published? So I listed, you know, the Journal of… North American Journal of Oriental Medicine, I listed… and then they go, no, no, what book do you have?
00:02:54.210 --> 00:02:56.220 Tom Ingegno: And I said, what?
00:02:56.330 --> 00:02:59.450 Tom Ingegno: And they, they said, oh, we can't use you then.
00:02:59.900 --> 00:03:01.290 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Whaaat!
00:03:01.290 --> 00:03:14.180 Tom Ingegno: So my first book was, I believe in poker they call it limp, limping in. I did the bare minimum to kind of get something out. It's called You Got Sick, Now What?
00:03:14.180 --> 00:03:34.089 Tom Ingegno: And it was 7, home care tips, if you got the cold and flu, and now it did require some, some pre-planning, before you got sick. And then somebody said, oh, if you do a rewrite, an Oriental medicine publishing company was going to, you know, publish it for me.
00:03:34.530 --> 00:03:49.290 Tom Ingegno: I said, I don't rewrite this. So then I wrote my second book, you know, which I think a lot of us did during COVID when we were closed up, called The Cupping Book, and then it took me to 2024 to actually get it out the door to people.
00:03:49.290 --> 00:03:54.199 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: There we go. Okay. And that one is the one that you put your…
00:03:54.200 --> 00:04:02.390 Tom Ingegno: I actually promoted that one, I actually am proud of that one, and I think it leads a little into…
00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:19.520 Tom Ingegno: you know, I've been practicing for 25 years, and now there's this kind of, like, what can I do to impact more people, the ones that can't get into my office, the ones that are nowhere near me, and maybe the ones that don't have the ways and means to come in, right? So how can you do the most for a community
00:04:19.620 --> 00:04:30.609 Tom Ingegno: Well, you give knowledge, and it doesn't matter your cultural heritage, where you're from on the globe, there, there was this, this…
00:04:30.700 --> 00:04:44.579 Tom Ingegno: native-to-all-of-us kind of medicine that we were all doing, and cupping therapy had spread so far across the globe, so early on in history, that you'll see, you know.
00:04:44.580 --> 00:04:58.350 Tom Ingegno: goat herders in Nairobi doing it, you'll see fishermen in Vietnam doing it, you'll see Russians doing it, so it kind of went all over the globe, and it fit this bill where it has modern research.
00:04:58.350 --> 00:05:14.260 Tom Ingegno: It can be safely done at home with modern tools, and it's part and parcel of the human experience, right? And that's what I really loved, and can I hand this back to… it was affectionately called grandma's medicine by a lot of people, so can I hand this back to the households, right?
00:05:14.260 --> 00:05:14.920 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Yeah!
00:05:14.920 --> 00:05:28.709 Tom Ingegno: And I'm very passionate about that, because I think we're living in this amazing time, and then you play something where they're quoting Neil deGrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan, and I'm like, oh my god! All these consciousness kind of things, not even talking about space, right?
00:05:28.710 --> 00:05:29.170 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Right.
00:05:29.170 --> 00:05:48.379 Tom Ingegno: But there is this kind of return to the classics a little bit, and what did we leave behind as we became more modern? I feel like I'm just going, though, so… but it's… there's so much in our history that I think has some value, and value to humanity now.
00:05:48.640 --> 00:05:51.800 Tom Ingegno: And that's what's really getting me going these days.
00:05:51.800 --> 00:05:58.270 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: I think… I very much agree with you there. Some of the things that we've talked about in these last 6 weeks.
00:05:58.320 --> 00:06:05.270 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: has been those kinds of things. Like, what are we… what are we not doing that humans have done
00:06:05.270 --> 00:06:18.549 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: For time in Memoriam, right? Like, one of my episodes was literally about sunshine, like, getting out into the sun on a daily basis because of what it does for our circadian rhythm, our sleep.
00:06:18.550 --> 00:06:25.550 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: our mental health, emotional well-being, all of that. But it's free. Like, you just go out there and do it.
00:06:25.550 --> 00:06:39.390 Tom Ingegno: Yeah, you know, I think I've said this on my podcast, at least both Matt said it more than once, the things that really work are not going to be the things that become New York Times bestsellers, right? You know, it's like, you know, eat.
00:06:40.140 --> 00:06:40.750 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Yep.
00:06:45.950 --> 00:06:49.170 Tom Ingegno: trainer. You know, get goods…
00:06:55.470 --> 00:06:56.270 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: There you go.
00:06:56.600 --> 00:07:00.689 Tom Ingegno: But it's not sexy enough to, sell a book.
00:07:01.340 --> 00:07:02.550 Tom Ingegno: This is fair.
00:07:02.610 --> 00:07:11.500 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: But we can talk about it in podcasts. Yeah, we definitely can. What's the name of your podcast, because I was on your podcast, and I…
00:07:11.610 --> 00:07:16.329 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: have been on many a podcast as a guest, I have never laughed so much.
00:07:16.330 --> 00:07:22.710 Tom Ingegno: I, oh, thank you, thank you. I mean, we don't pride ourselves on the humor, but, you know, I… I think…
00:07:22.890 --> 00:07:29.639 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: We can dress everything up, we can talk about it at a scholarly level, and we can…
00:07:29.970 --> 00:07:32.620 Tom Ingegno: Have these conversations
00:07:32.630 --> 00:07:51.209 Tom Ingegno: that are a little bit more interactive, a little bit more personal, and relate as if just a group of friends are sitting around and talking about the subject, right? We don't need to pull out a white paper on something and quote the latest JAMA article.
00:07:51.210 --> 00:08:07.629 Tom Ingegno: But here's something that we have on, and time and time again, regardless of the topic, when we have a guest on, it's like we're all just sitting down and, you know, at a coffee shop, having a chat, you know, or a bar, if you want to go there, too. I don't, you know, either way.
00:08:07.630 --> 00:08:10.930 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Talking about good stuff. It represents health.
00:08:10.930 --> 00:08:11.480 Tom Ingegno: Yeah.
00:08:12.030 --> 00:08:21.909 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: I like that. Alright, so can you share a little bit about what brought you to acupuncture as a career path?
00:08:21.970 --> 00:08:32.959 Tom Ingegno: Yeah, I love telling this story, because to be honest, part of it I blocked out, when I was younger. So my grandfather was a pharmacist.
00:08:32.960 --> 00:08:47.100 Tom Ingegno: And… my junior into my senior year of high school, he had a massive heart attack. He died in the pharmacy, which I found out later he had always said he wanted to die with his lab coat on, and he got his wish.
00:08:47.220 --> 00:08:56.659 Tom Ingegno: So I think he won. But, one day when I was helping him out in high school, and I didn't remember this until years later.
00:08:56.660 --> 00:09:20.269 Tom Ingegno: he was counting out the pills. This is back before the machines, right? So he's on this little plastic thing where you slide some into the thing as you're counting them, pour them into the patient's bottle, and then pour the rest back into the master container. And he looks at me, and he was working in an area, his pharmacy was in an area that had a large Latino population. He actually learned Spanish.
00:09:20.530 --> 00:09:33.300 Tom Ingegno: So he could speak to them. And he, he said, you know, this guy's a day laborer, he's gotta buy, you know, he's gotta take 3 of these pills every day, he doesn't have insurance, this is $5 a pill. And he's doing that for the rest of his life.
00:09:33.300 --> 00:09:33.680 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Wow.
00:09:33.680 --> 00:09:42.829 Tom Ingegno: And this is back in, like, 90… 90… 92, 93, maybe, that he said this to me. And, he goes, that's a lot of money.
00:09:43.370 --> 00:09:45.310 Tom Ingegno: There's gotta be a better way.
00:09:45.710 --> 00:09:46.340 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Hmm.
00:09:46.340 --> 00:09:48.760 Tom Ingegno: Y-you-you gotta look for it.
00:09:49.050 --> 00:09:56.510 Tom Ingegno: And, after his heart attack, I blocked that out. And, when I was in college.
00:09:56.970 --> 00:10:03.209 Tom Ingegno: I had this course of events, I was pre-med, you know, you're told you're smart, you gotta be a doctor, right?
00:10:03.210 --> 00:10:18.300 Tom Ingegno: So… either I'm not that smart or really just didn't want to do it, because I met a… I had a physician that was a teacher of mine, and he told me that he passed out the first time they put a heart in his hand, a human heart.
00:10:18.400 --> 00:10:20.019 Tom Ingegno: And I went, you know…
00:10:20.430 --> 00:10:27.379 Tom Ingegno: I like the stuff on the inside of the body to stay on the inside of the body, and
00:10:27.880 --> 00:10:39.419 Tom Ingegno: while I was thinking about all this, I took a Tai Chi, like, after-school class, there was a Chinese philosophy class, and that was kind of the first thing. Then, my financial aid package changed.
00:10:39.650 --> 00:10:54.190 Tom Ingegno: So I transferred to another school, and they were like, oh, this is great, there's a DO program, you can streamline from the undergrad right into the doctor of osteopathic. Great, you'll be a doctor, no one knows the difference. And…
00:10:54.380 --> 00:11:01.199 Tom Ingegno: in that… junior year intersession for Christmas, I got a postcard in the mail from an acupuncture school.
00:11:01.900 --> 00:11:20.600 Tom Ingegno: And I'd been reading a lot about Taoism, so I went to the open house that this postcard was promoting, and I came home with the application, and I was enrolled two weeks later. So I was doing, my first semester of my master's program while still finishing up my second semester of my junior year.
00:11:20.830 --> 00:11:43.450 Tom Ingegno: The master's program gave a bachelor's in professional health science as well. You don't need more than one bachelor's, and come on, let's face it, most people aren't even using their damn bachelor's anyway. So I… after I convinced my parents that, no, this was a real career, and yes, this school is accredited.
00:11:43.450 --> 00:11:44.240 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: They let me.
00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:59.450 Tom Ingegno: I skipped my senior year. But, I never looked back. It was a joy. I absolutely loved everything I learned, and I was fortunate enough to meet my mentor there, who,
00:11:59.890 --> 00:12:06.540 Tom Ingegno: I don't know what he saw in me, but he believed in me enough to help me make it 25 years.
00:12:06.830 --> 00:12:07.760 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Awesome.
00:12:07.980 --> 00:12:12.439 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: That's wonderful, thank you. Thank you for sharing that, I did not know all of that.
00:12:12.440 --> 00:12:16.240 Tom Ingegno: Well, you know, it's a long story, and most people don't…
00:12:16.440 --> 00:12:20.090 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: you know, I mean, I'm here.
00:12:20.740 --> 00:12:21.520 Tom Ingegno: I also…
00:12:21.520 --> 00:12:27.109 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: I also went to college as pre-med, thinking I was going to be a doctor as well, so…
00:12:27.770 --> 00:12:34.939 Tom Ingegno: Well, you want to help people, right? That's really neat. And if you know only a couple of slots for that.
00:12:35.370 --> 00:12:41.970 Tom Ingegno: Yep. You know, and then I really think that's a shame, you know? We interviewed somebody that,
00:12:42.080 --> 00:12:56.879 Tom Ingegno: you know, told us when he was 55, he moved to Thailand, developed this product that now I'm using every day, and then, you know, when he got some money, he bought 60 acres of rainforest, and then set up a primate preserve.
00:12:56.880 --> 00:13:06.460 Tom Ingegno: And I think my first words were, where were you at career day? No one ever said you could just go off the grid. No one ever said.
00:13:06.460 --> 00:13:08.609 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: That's true! That was not an option.
00:13:08.610 --> 00:13:21.029 Tom Ingegno: What do you want to do? Yeah, it sounds crazy, go do it. And, you know, by the end of the call, I asked them to be my guru, and now I have a WhatsApp chat with him and Matt, my co-host. Okay!
00:13:23.420 --> 00:13:33.660 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: There we go. That's perfect. I mean, I think nowadays, people are starting to realize there are more options than what they've… they've been led to believe, and so…
00:13:33.660 --> 00:13:50.710 Tom Ingegno: the creative right brain process is really starting to see, you know, we can focus on all the bad things, but this kind of coming around, whether it's a psychedelic renaissance, a consciousness renaissance, when this pendulum swings back the other way, I think it's going to be absolutely amazing.
00:13:50.710 --> 00:13:55.910 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Indeed. Indeed. We will be soon doing an episode on psychedelics.
00:13:55.910 --> 00:13:56.560 Tom Ingegno: Mmm.
00:13:56.560 --> 00:13:58.450 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Several!
00:13:58.450 --> 00:14:01.490 Tom Ingegno: While you're on psychedelics.
00:14:01.490 --> 00:14:02.740 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Indeed!
00:14:04.190 --> 00:14:11.379 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Alright, so the history behind acupuncture… Yeah. How far does it go back?
00:14:11.380 --> 00:14:14.089 Tom Ingegno: This is where it gets a little sketchy. We,
00:14:14.670 --> 00:14:34.029 Tom Ingegno: China, as a unified country, before that, it was a bunch of separate kingdoms, and they had the warring states period and all this. Absolutely. And unfortunately, a lot of the knowledge that we had, when one kingdom invaded another and took over, the thing they did was destroy a lot of the scrolls.
00:14:34.270 --> 00:14:37.700 Tom Ingegno: You know, a lot of the teachings, right? We can't have that.
00:14:37.820 --> 00:14:51.439 Tom Ingegno: There's books that reference people that we know were famous physicians. They talk about their books that this other physician wrote. We don't have them. Wow. That, and we're looking back, conservatively.
00:14:51.440 --> 00:14:58.050 Tom Ingegno: The textbook that we refer to as… it's called The Yellow Emperor's Internal Classics, it's composed of 3 volumes.
00:14:58.150 --> 00:15:09.190 Tom Ingegno: It points to this, about 2700 years ago, give or take 300 or 400 years, as a formalized, here's the final product.
00:15:09.190 --> 00:15:20.520 Tom Ingegno: But we know those books were written before. We have references to them. So, we even have references to something called needle therapy. We have no other words about it, going back 9,000 years.
00:15:20.680 --> 00:15:21.200 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Wow.
00:15:21.200 --> 00:15:44.309 Tom Ingegno: So, it's a big gray area, the history is almost like it's coming out of the ethers and seeping into consciousness. Maybe I'm getting too flowery there. Go for it. But, you know, the more we piece together, the more things I see translated, because let's face it, I don't read ancient Chinese, let alone modern Chinese.
00:15:44.450 --> 00:15:54.159 Tom Ingegno: So I'm really, you know, excited when I see something that gets brought into English, and you have, like, a team of scholars going, look.
00:15:54.430 --> 00:15:56.989 Tom Ingegno: This character can mean 3 different things.
00:15:56.990 --> 00:15:57.360 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Damn.
00:15:57.360 --> 00:16:09.680 Tom Ingegno: And you're like, oh my god, this one verse, we don't know. But within that, it gives this rich kind of tapestry, and it allows for this human experience in it. And…
00:16:10.590 --> 00:16:19.199 Tom Ingegno: It's still living and breathing today, so it's been evolving this whole time, and when it touches a different culture, it… it imprints on it.
00:16:19.210 --> 00:16:33.820 Tom Ingegno: and the medicine gets imprinted on as well. So, you know, one of my favorite journals I referenced before is the North American Journal of Oriental Medicine. It's published in Japanese and English. It's specifically for Japanese-style acupuncture.
00:16:33.820 --> 00:16:39.910 Tom Ingegno: But they'll print things in Japan, or reprint articles that were in their Japanese journals in English.
00:16:39.920 --> 00:16:56.600 Tom Ingegno: And then we write stuff, and it goes back there, and then it goes worldwide. So we're really seeing this, like, multidimensional cultural exchange, and it only makes the medicine better, the systems better, right? Because we can all put our little mark on this.
00:16:56.780 --> 00:17:09.829 Tom Ingegno: But I do have to say this as a straight white male, middle-aged white male, right? Everybody should be listening to me. But within that, there's an expression, when drinking water, remember the source.
00:17:09.930 --> 00:17:26.379 Tom Ingegno: So how far back can I go? Who gave this to me? Where did they get it from? You know, and it's a long game of telephone, we don't always get it right, but as long as we're honoring the people that came before us, and we're taking their concepts without butchering them.
00:17:26.380 --> 00:17:31.810 Tom Ingegno: And having a logical reason of using them, and how do we bring these into the modern world.
00:17:31.810 --> 00:17:37.109 Tom Ingegno: I think that in that element, we can make our medicine better.
00:17:37.600 --> 00:17:38.480 Tom Ingegno: You know?
00:17:38.850 --> 00:17:45.780 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Perfect. And on that note, we will go to break. I like that. When we come back, we'll talk
00:17:46.070 --> 00:17:50.510 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: About more of the, like, that… Textbook definition of acupuncture.
00:17:50.510 --> 00:17:51.190 Tom Ingegno: You got it.
00:17:51.190 --> 00:17:53.690 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: And then, its effects on the body.
00:17:54.160 --> 00:17:55.500 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: So come on back!
00:20:13.590 --> 00:20:28.690 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Welcome back to the Expansion Room, where our topic today is on acupuncture, and my guest, Tom Ingenyo, is going to share with us a little bit more about acupuncture and how it
00:20:28.780 --> 00:20:48.149 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: plays well with our bodies and mental health, that's what I'll call it. Plays well. So a basic definition, or working definition, that I was able to find that wasn't too lengthy was that, acupuncture is a traditional Chinese medicine practice that
00:20:48.150 --> 00:20:56.060 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: involves inserting thin needles into specific points, which I know those points are a long meridian line.
00:20:56.440 --> 00:21:05.839 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Correct. That help to bring the body back to balance and energy flow, good energy flow.
00:21:07.190 --> 00:21:09.150 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Is that… Basically, I…
00:21:09.150 --> 00:21:14.420 Tom Ingegno: It, it, it is, it is a, it is, like, the basic kind of textbook.
00:21:14.580 --> 00:21:27.790 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: definition we would give somebody for that quick understanding. I always feel like I have to explain it both in Western terms as well as Eastern terms, right?
00:21:27.790 --> 00:21:33.659 Tom Ingegno: Absolutely. This idea that we have this energy network that runs through the body.
00:21:33.740 --> 00:21:48.710 Tom Ingegno: Our cells are alive, we have electromagnetic fields, we have electrical currents through our body. I was on a podcast the other day where we were talking about this research from the 80s that showed that the microtubules inside the cells
00:21:48.720 --> 00:22:05.700 Tom Ingegno: they did a study that, they put a dye in, and they found that the microtubules along these pathways seem to line up some way to create this energy flow. And then, of course, two days before that talk about serendipity, I was listening to a ASMR video on…
00:22:05.770 --> 00:22:22.069 Tom Ingegno: it's called the Sleepy Psychiatrist, or Sleep… Sleepy Physicist, sorry, about consciousness in the quantum field possibly being transmitted along the microtubules in the cells, and I'm like, okay.
00:22:22.160 --> 00:22:22.950 Tom Ingegno: How…
00:22:23.540 --> 00:22:30.359 Tom Ingegno: How did the Chinese know this thousands of years ago? And I've said that so many times over the years.
00:22:30.540 --> 00:22:42.760 Tom Ingegno: Now, the classical saying that they use in a famous physician said… a famous physician said, you got me when I'm losing English now, was…
00:22:43.010 --> 00:23:02.460 Tom Ingegno: where there's free flow, there is no pain. Where there's pain, there's no free flow, right? So the idea is… and we can say pain, disease, imbalance, whatever… whatever word goes in there. The idea, classically, is that somehow, us putting these needles into these specific points, or stimulating them with
00:23:02.460 --> 00:23:14.600 Tom Ingegno: acupressure or moxibustion, which is an herb that we burn on the skin, or massages that are meridian-based, and that's everything from shiotsu in Japan to Ama or Tuina in China.
00:23:16.020 --> 00:23:24.649 Tom Ingegno: All of these things are about getting that energy to move in the right way. Is it stuck? Is there not enough? Is there too much? Where do I have to move it?
00:23:24.730 --> 00:23:26.580 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Now.
00:23:26.670 --> 00:23:34.710 Tom Ingegno: We give respect to both the channels as well as the points, because sometimes we want to work on the whole channel, and sometimes we want a specific function.
00:23:34.710 --> 00:23:58.059 Tom Ingegno: that's in the acupuncture point. It's a little weird when somebody comes and goes, I have back pain, which point is that? No, that's not how it works. Your back pain is unique to you, and we look at you as a whole being, rather than, it hurts here, here's where you put the needle. Now, when we look at this from a Western standpoint, and all this research goes back to the 90s and keeps coming out more and more every day.
00:23:58.170 --> 00:24:13.369 Tom Ingegno: we see these huge overarching effects, right? If we're looking at point specificity, we can needle a point that's indicated for low back pain, say, in the foot or in the leg. And the area that's associated with the back in the brain lights up. It's crazy.
00:24:14.500 --> 00:24:15.620 Tom Ingegno: Now…
00:24:16.040 --> 00:24:23.150 Tom Ingegno: after about 10 or 15 minutes, and I know we're gonna touch on mental health soon, and this is gonna be a good segue into that.
00:24:24.250 --> 00:24:35.550 Tom Ingegno: We enter the rest and digest mode, your autonomic nervous system's parasympathetic nervous system response. We get you out of the fight or flight that,
00:24:35.550 --> 00:24:46.870 Tom Ingegno: Part of the brain called the amygdala that wants every stick on the ground to look like a snake to keep us alive gets really active when you're kind of at the top of the food chain and life is kind of safe.
00:24:47.560 --> 00:25:03.590 Tom Ingegno: So, we get, you know, we used to call it paper tigers back in the day. Oh my god, my boss is gonna kill me if I don't get this done. Now, are they gonna kill you? Probably not. Could you get fired? Maybe. But, you know, there's a lot of steps before something really bad's gonna happen.
00:25:04.070 --> 00:25:22.060 Tom Ingegno: But our brain does not like that. So it'll rev us into this fight-or-flight mode most of the time. Now, we heal in rest and digest. That's right. So this overarching effect, we put those needles in, and after about 10 or 15 minutes, and it's really cool when you do it in a group community setting, because you're
00:25:22.060 --> 00:25:24.500 Tom Ingegno: Watch the whole room, you know, they're chatting.
00:25:24.500 --> 00:25:24.859 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Not either.
00:25:24.860 --> 00:25:25.370 Tom Ingegno: chatting.
00:25:25.370 --> 00:25:25.900 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Yeah.
00:25:25.900 --> 00:25:28.760 Tom Ingegno: One person goes, and then they're all quiet.
00:25:28.760 --> 00:25:29.770 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Yup!
00:25:29.960 --> 00:25:31.290 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: And…
00:25:31.290 --> 00:25:38.940 Tom Ingegno: The cool thing is that we can double and triple up on that, so systems like mine will do 2 or 3 stages of needles
00:25:38.940 --> 00:25:59.790 Tom Ingegno: to maximize that. Now, pairing that with our differential diagnosis, the conversation we've had, you know, when you came in, and we're asking everything about bowel movements, and, you know, best time of day, and what hurts, and what color's your tongue, well, I do a Japanese style, most of them were blind, so we don't look at the tongue as much.
00:25:59.790 --> 00:26:13.489 Tom Ingegno: palpating areas of the body to kind of give us a clue to what's going on with you as a whole person. And I'll say this once again from quantum physics, the physical body is just really compressed energy.
00:26:13.810 --> 00:26:29.759 Tom Ingegno: So, you know, your spirit, your emotions, your psyche, your physical body is all one thing. It's not a ghost in the machine. Sorry, Descartes. I know that phrase was termed much after him, but it was a Descartesian concept. But with that.
00:26:30.020 --> 00:26:31.600 Tom Ingegno: Being able to…
00:26:31.770 --> 00:26:40.930 Tom Ingegno: Almost use the body as the physical place where we hold the needles while we're getting the treatment is really what we're trying to do there.
00:26:41.420 --> 00:26:46.700 Tom Ingegno: And… What happens is, after that 10 or 15 minutes.
00:26:46.700 --> 00:27:07.700 Tom Ingegno: you drop into this zone, you get increased vasodilation, so all the blood vessels open up, so you're circulating more blood through the tissue that, when you're tense, doesn't get the same blood flow. So now we're bringing… flushing out the old tissue with metabolic waste in it, or inflammation markers like cytokines.
00:27:07.700 --> 00:27:08.950 Tom Ingegno: And then…
00:27:09.160 --> 00:27:22.679 Tom Ingegno: bringing fresh blood with oxygen, nutrients. We see, brainwave activity. Looks like deep meditation. So you're getting alpha-data… alpha-theta brainwaves switching. You might get deep
00:27:22.710 --> 00:27:33.160 Tom Ingegno: Sleep delta brainwaves maxing out. And all of this, you can be having a conversation with me when I'm treating you, and you're in that brainwave state.
00:27:33.730 --> 00:27:37.229 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Thank you for saying that. I have had a mystery.
00:27:38.850 --> 00:27:43.180 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: for years, so I've done acupuncture off and on.
00:27:43.440 --> 00:27:47.710 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: in my adult life, the second acupuncturist I had.
00:27:47.930 --> 00:28:02.399 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Had a community acupuncture, spot in Silver Spring until the rent just got too high. It just was ridiculous. But I would go then. It was community acupuncture, so there was, like, 9 or 10 chairs set up. Yeah.
00:28:02.400 --> 00:28:02.810 Tom Ingegno: Yeah, yeah.
00:28:02.810 --> 00:28:08.690 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: We all definitely experienced that, where he would come through, pin everybody, and all of us would be like.
00:28:10.070 --> 00:28:17.339 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Some point. But one of the things I experienced, and you reminded me when you said meditative state.
00:28:18.080 --> 00:28:20.030 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: During that time.
00:28:20.180 --> 00:28:33.810 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: I was going through my certification, my training in Tantra yoga, so I was doing a lot of meditating. I would go to acupuncture and literally feel the chakras, the chakras spin. It was amazing!
00:28:33.880 --> 00:28:38.420 Tom Ingegno: So, and I'll say this, too, you know, I trained,
00:28:38.660 --> 00:28:46.729 Tom Ingegno: very, heavily in Tai Chi, Qigong, and my training brothers and sisters would come in and get treated.
00:28:46.860 --> 00:28:51.040 Tom Ingegno: And my yoga instructor patients, all of them.
00:28:51.550 --> 00:29:08.839 Tom Ingegno: feel more. They have more physical energy, prana sensations than everybody else, but I will tell you, the long-term patients, and I've been in Baltimore for, god, almost 20 years now, I have some patients that have been with me for longer than 15 years.
00:29:08.880 --> 00:29:22.570 Tom Ingegno: And I put the needles in, and they go, okay, I feel that here, I feel that here, I feel… one of them describes it as pinging, and sure enough, she'll be, like, describing the channel as it looks on the chart on the wall.
00:29:22.910 --> 00:29:29.339 Tom Ingegno: And it's very interesting when you're in that zone, when you're tuned to that.
00:29:29.770 --> 00:29:42.099 Tom Ingegno: how much you can actually feel, and if we think of a time before the iPhone, when we were sitting around and meditating, and these scholars were studying the human body, they were also going inward.
00:29:42.100 --> 00:29:42.570 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Yes.
00:29:42.570 --> 00:29:53.009 Tom Ingegno: And able to kind of go, oh, I feel that here, I feel that there, and map that out slowly over time. We even know the channels and the points.
00:29:53.010 --> 00:30:07.820 Tom Ingegno: The channels came first, and there was only 9, and then we got up to 12, and then we found some extraordinary ones, and then we started putting points on them. I might have that order out a little bit out, but the points came last. And it was an evolution, based on…
00:30:08.160 --> 00:30:14.379 Tom Ingegno: Observation of the practitioner, observation of the patient, and the people that were actually cultivating
00:30:14.440 --> 00:30:30.750 Tom Ingegno: Whether they were doing some Taoist, alchemy, or Qigong, or some form of yoga. I mean, these movements are different, they're called different things, but at the end of the day, that's what we're doing. We're all… I mean, we all have the same energy.
00:30:31.000 --> 00:30:34.559 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Absolutely. When I went through my yin yoga.
00:30:34.900 --> 00:30:38.360 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: It all included meridian lines.
00:30:39.180 --> 00:30:46.100 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: along them, and so forth, so… Wow, thank you. So that just cleared up a question for me that I've had now for…
00:30:46.350 --> 00:30:48.550 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Almost 9 years.
00:30:48.550 --> 00:30:49.519 Tom Ingegno: Yeah, I mean…
00:30:49.520 --> 00:30:55.469 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: feeling that? We also see a huge influx, or normalization, I should say.
00:30:55.470 --> 00:30:58.910 Tom Ingegno: of neurotransmitters. So your serotonin and dopamine levels.
00:30:58.910 --> 00:31:01.059 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Yeah, we'll get into that. You got it.
00:31:01.060 --> 00:31:22.159 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: There we go, that'll be it. So, we're about to take a break, and we're gonna then talk about these neurotransmitters and how acupuncture affects them, and then how mental health can improve with a consistent, I don't want to say practice of acupuncture. So come on back after the break.
00:33:28.760 --> 00:33:30.530 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Welcome back!
00:33:30.740 --> 00:33:50.649 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Today, we're talking about acupuncture, and I just learned a new thing, which I am so grateful for. And so in this segment, let's talk a little bit about the neurotransmitters that acupuncture affects, and how it then also affects, because of that, stress, anxiety.
00:33:50.650 --> 00:33:51.000 Tom Ingegno: Yeah.
00:33:51.000 --> 00:34:05.599 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: depression, insomnia, and for me, I started using acupuncture for an autoimmune issue. Yeah. Which, luckily, at this age and stage in my life, I no longer have symptoms of when
00:34:05.600 --> 00:34:19.739 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Oh, that's amazing. You know? But it was the combination of yoga, acupuncture, mindfulness practices, like, doing… incorporating all these things that I talk about in this show. And acupuncture was definitely a part of that.
00:34:20.290 --> 00:34:29.599 Tom Ingegno: You know, I think, there are so many strengths in different cultures, and in the East, lifestyle medicine.
00:34:29.739 --> 00:34:46.959 Tom Ingegno: It seems to have really reigned supreme. You know, we're always talking about, you know, what we need to do to de-stress, or self-care, or, oh, this is my wellness day, and that's nice, but our whole lifestyle should be set up like that.
00:34:47.770 --> 00:34:48.310 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Dang.
00:34:48.310 --> 00:34:55.999 Tom Ingegno: And, you know, that's part of the reason we're getting so many autoimmune things, right? We're constantly bombarded.
00:34:56.000 --> 00:35:11.350 Tom Ingegno: And just doing something every day that tells us, no, no, we're here, pulls us back down, puts us back in our body, puts us back on the planet. However you want to word that is critical, and acupuncture is one of those many ways that, like.
00:35:11.550 --> 00:35:30.780 Tom Ingegno: I don't… you might not need it every day, but it should be used before you get hit by the bus. You know, and I think we have all these crazy success stories of those, like, last-ditch effort, oh my god, if you can't fix me.
00:35:30.780 --> 00:35:33.319 Tom Ingegno: But in its best case.
00:35:33.610 --> 00:35:47.779 Tom Ingegno: a use case is really using it as preventative, using it as a lifestyle thing. Come see us once a month if you're feeling pretty good. Come see us more frequently if you're not. Don't wait for, you know, your back to go out.
00:35:47.950 --> 00:35:55.290 Tom Ingegno: But when we're talking about all these benefits and steering this back to those neurotransmitters,
00:35:55.470 --> 00:36:15.390 Tom Ingegno: Serotonin and dopamine have to be in this nice little balance. Two sides of the same coin, if you will. I'm oversimplifying here. Too much one, you get anxiety, too much of the other, you get depression. Not enough of either, the same thing can happen. We call this, you know, in Chinese medicine, we call this true excess, or, like.
00:36:15.390 --> 00:36:34.729 Tom Ingegno: deficient excess, which is not enough of the other one to cool off the other, so this is a yin-yang imbalance, yin-yang imbalance. Oh, God, I'm so sorry, guys. But, some other cool stuff that happens. We know that during acupuncture, we produce more oxytocin. Oxytocin is a bonding hormone.
00:36:34.840 --> 00:36:59.839 Tom Ingegno: you bond with other people better. No, you're not gonna fall in love with them. This is not at the level of, you know, a mother and her baby, but it might make you a little nicer person. Now, my favorite one, Siobhan, my favorite neurotransmitter to talk about in this, because we do also talk about endorphins, which are… look like endogenous morphine, which is morphine that occurs inside the body.
00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:09.559 Tom Ingegno: It's a great pain reliever. But my favorite one, we did not know about the entire endocannabinoid system until 1991.
00:37:09.980 --> 00:37:10.930 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: not crazy.
00:37:10.930 --> 00:37:32.339 Tom Ingegno: Isn't that crazy? We thought we knew it all. And if you want to get even weirder, we can talk about the interstitium, a new organ, but let's get back to the endocannabinoid system. The endocannabinoid system is just what it sounds. Endo-internal cannabinoid compounds coming from cannabis. And the endocannabinoid
00:37:32.470 --> 00:37:49.779 Tom Ingegno: system probably existed in our bodies prior to us actually consuming cannabis, but seems kind of like an intelligent design to me. I see. So there's a few neurotransmitters that fall into this endocannabinoid system, but my favorite one…
00:37:49.780 --> 00:37:58.829 Tom Ingegno: And Siobhan, with all your yoga training, you know this word, anandamide. So, Ananda is Sanskrit for the word bliss.
00:37:58.830 --> 00:37:59.490 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Yep.
00:37:59.780 --> 00:38:18.540 Tom Ingegno: And what happens during an acupuncture treatment, or sex, or eating chocolate, or exercises, it's not all endorphins, it's also anondamide. And that is the bliss compound. So, when you see a, you know, patient walking out of the acupuncture clinic.
00:38:18.700 --> 00:38:29.840 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: And they're kind of floaty, kind of maybe a little out of it. Maybe they take a little bit longer to get dressed and get off your table, and you're in a rush because you've got the next damn appointment coming in. But they are…
00:38:29.840 --> 00:38:36.060 Tom Ingegno: Being bathed in all of these neurotransmitters, including ones that make you feel a little stoned.
00:38:36.650 --> 00:38:39.199 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: That means a lot about my, acupuncture.
00:38:39.200 --> 00:38:42.139 Tom Ingegno: Not a bad thing at all.
00:38:42.140 --> 00:39:02.579 Tom Ingegno: It's absolutely part and parcel of the medicine. It doesn't matter if you're there for arthritis, or you're there for, you know, IBS, or Lyme disease, or anxiety. That comes along for the ride, and it's a beautiful thing. All of these quote-unquote side effects…
00:39:02.610 --> 00:39:15.940 Tom Ingegno: in acupuncture and Chinese medicine, in a lot of cases, are, like, part of the ride. They're that entourage effect that we talk about in, you know, botanical medicine. And it is…
00:39:15.940 --> 00:39:24.350 Tom Ingegno: amazing, and… and… God, I… I did this interview where I kept going, how the hell did they know this? How the hell did they… because it's so…
00:39:24.350 --> 00:39:38.489 Tom Ingegno: amazing to me that before we had a microscope, and maybe we did, and maybe Graham Hitchcock is onto something, and there were other advanced civilizations before the Ice Age, but let's… that… that's another show.
00:39:40.410 --> 00:40:00.239 Tom Ingegno: Matt turned me on to that, and I know, next thing I know, I'm watch… I'm binge-watching it. My wife's like, you're watching this again? I'm like, they're… they're in white… white… white plains now. They're not in… they're not… they're not in the Mayan temples anymore. Exactly! But, it is so interesting that…
00:40:00.300 --> 00:40:12.440 Tom Ingegno: We had figured this out before having names for these reactions, having names for these receptor sites in our brain and along our nervous system, and… and…
00:40:13.090 --> 00:40:28.459 Tom Ingegno: acupuncture really lights up all of these systems. So, when we say it's a whole body medicine, or when people go, oh, I can't treat all of that, well, it can by aiming from a 50,000 foot
00:40:28.630 --> 00:40:38.139 Tom Ingegno: view. It's not looking… like, right, if I'm going to… to a oncologist, I want them to find that one cell that's out.
00:40:38.180 --> 00:40:53.039 Tom Ingegno: Take that one out. Like, I don't want the blanket treatment. I don't want massive radiation, massive chemotherapy, and oncology is moving in that direction. I think that's great. But how many people out there have been to the doctor and go, well, this is going on?
00:40:53.780 --> 00:41:01.489 Tom Ingegno: And then they leave, and they get the medicine, and that doesn't go away. Well, because the problem is upstream.
00:41:02.180 --> 00:41:14.240 Tom Ingegno: Right? It's a more holistic thing. You know, you go to the… the podiatrist, he wants to look at your foot, but what happens if it's happening in the knee, or the hip? Right? A savvy one will refer you out.
00:41:14.240 --> 00:41:14.570 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Yeah.
00:41:14.570 --> 00:41:20.019 Tom Ingegno: But, you know, a podiatrist will go, I don't know, take these orthotics, put them in your shoes, let me know how it goes.
00:41:20.450 --> 00:41:30.970 Tom Ingegno: Right? You know, and it's not… it's not their fault, it's their training. Now, on the same token, if you come to me and I see something that's out of my wheelhouse, I want to refer you to the specialist, too.
00:41:31.080 --> 00:41:38.969 Tom Ingegno: Like, no, no, no, that growth looks bad, call this dermatologist now. Yeah. You know, so it…
00:41:42.520 --> 00:41:49.839 Tom Ingegno: But, in a lot of cases, this will take care of a lot of problems before they set up and become massive issues.
00:41:49.990 --> 00:41:50.990 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: There we go.
00:41:51.260 --> 00:42:00.139 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: There we go. I always felt a little bit floaty after those, those acupuncturist sessions.
00:42:00.140 --> 00:42:04.769 Tom Ingegno: And I do have, and I have referred clients to acupuncture, especially.
00:42:04.770 --> 00:42:14.449 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: If they are dealing with… I've had a client who had postpartum, who started acupuncture, clients who live with depression.
00:42:14.590 --> 00:42:18.340 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: going to acupuncture, and PTSD.
00:42:18.760 --> 00:42:24.029 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Who go to acupuncture, and it's been… it's been marvelous for them to be able to pair
00:42:24.250 --> 00:42:27.090 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Therapy with acupuncture.
00:42:27.680 --> 00:42:37.830 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Yeah, it's been wonderful. What are the… when you… Oh, I think it froze.
00:42:39.640 --> 00:42:45.099 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: All right, well, when we come back from the next break, hopefully Tom will…
00:42:45.410 --> 00:43:00.819 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: have unfrozen, and then we will be able to talk about the applications of acupuncture, for daily life. Like, how do you incorporate this into day-to-day well-being?
00:44:49.690 --> 00:44:52.990 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: So we are back, and we are having interesting weather here.
00:44:53.740 --> 00:45:05.629 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: All of those of you who are New Yorkers, we are having interesting weather here. So that's why our internet is a little shaky today. So, with our last segment, Tom…
00:45:06.520 --> 00:45:20.710 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: question comes to mind for me, if someone is new to this idea of acupuncture, or maybe even curious about it, and I remember mentioning acupuncture and chiropractic care to a client
00:45:21.260 --> 00:45:26.700 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: This is more than a decade… decade ago, and she was like, Totally appalled.
00:45:27.110 --> 00:45:29.220 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: that I would even suggest.
00:45:29.410 --> 00:45:33.379 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: This witch doctory was, I think, the term she used.
00:45:34.520 --> 00:45:42.759 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: So, if someone is in that headspace, what are small steps that they can take to explore acupuncture?
00:45:42.760 --> 00:45:51.850 Tom Ingegno: So, fortunately, after 25 years, and I've seen the field make massive strides in, let's call it PR, Absolutely.
00:45:51.850 --> 00:45:55.610 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Because I remember when health insurances didn't even cover it.
00:45:55.610 --> 00:46:02.199 Tom Ingegno: No, no. And it was hit or miss, and it was spotty, and here in Maryland,
00:46:02.270 --> 00:46:05.559 Tom Ingegno: You know, most policies do have some
00:46:05.570 --> 00:46:22.319 Tom Ingegno: benefits, and honestly, Good Morning America just ran a piece a few days ago talking about acupuncture for low back pain in JAMA, a huge study, and you know, the doctor raved about it, and I think there's a shift
00:46:22.680 --> 00:46:30.550 Tom Ingegno: happening in medicine, right? We know that the healthcare system is unsustainable. We know that we have so many…
00:46:32.960 --> 00:46:46.720 Tom Ingegno: health issues that are fixed long before you need the heart surgery, long before they cut your foot off from diabetes. And we need to change lifestyles, and I think doctors are hearing that.
00:46:46.970 --> 00:47:00.590 Tom Ingegno: I think there's, you know, a ton of research, too. When acupuncture studies first started happening, it was literally, let's get this witchcraft taken care of, out of our hair once and for all. Well.
00:47:00.590 --> 00:47:06.979 Tom Ingegno: 49,000 plus studies on PubMed now, peer-reviewed studies.
00:47:07.460 --> 00:47:26.109 Tom Ingegno: are showing, hey, these guys know what they're talking about. Now, they might have used different words to describe it. So, you know, Siobhan, I used to be called, you know, all of the horrible things, and a quack, and that kind of stuff, and I wasn't even saying anything super controversial.
00:47:26.110 --> 00:47:32.300 Tom Ingegno: And now, you know, I'm talking to University of Maryland's integrative health med students, you know, and it's like.
00:47:32.300 --> 00:47:37.709 Tom Ingegno: Like, well, we want to know what to do, Rather than, you know.
00:47:37.940 --> 00:47:54.910 Tom Ingegno: have them… cut them open on our table, or something like that. So, there's a shift in the medical community, and we are kind of the darling, you know? We're getting… I have a couple of, not to slam PTs, but I have a couple of surgeons that refer to me rather than rehab.
00:47:55.170 --> 00:47:55.660 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Wonderful.
00:47:55.660 --> 00:47:56.940 Tom Ingegno: Post-surgical.
00:47:57.300 --> 00:48:00.190 Tom Ingegno: With all of it.
00:48:00.390 --> 00:48:08.019 Tom Ingegno: It seems to be that the opinion is changing, so I don't have to force it. If somebody's really…
00:48:08.140 --> 00:48:09.290 Tom Ingegno: THAT?
00:48:09.570 --> 00:48:12.240 Tom Ingegno: anti-it, and they're not open.
00:48:12.390 --> 00:48:14.489 Tom Ingegno: I might show them some acupressure.
00:48:14.540 --> 00:48:34.189 Tom Ingegno: I might say, let's do a meditation, right? Because we know that meditation will reduce pain. Let's… let's… let's do some Qigong. How about some stretching with breathing? We don't have to call it yoga, we don't have to call it Qigong, we don't have… we don't have to make it sound any more foreign than it is to that person right there. We're gonna meet them where they're at.
00:48:34.190 --> 00:48:35.200 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: You know?
00:48:35.550 --> 00:48:38.429 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Yep, that's what we do in mental health therapy. You know?
00:48:38.430 --> 00:48:42.319 Tom Ingegno: If they're not open to it, how can I say it so you can hear it?
00:48:42.650 --> 00:48:49.610 Tom Ingegno: Yep. You know, I think we as Americans, you know, we go to a foreign country, and if somebody doesn't understand us, we speak louder and.
00:48:49.610 --> 00:48:50.140 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Yes!
00:48:50.200 --> 00:48:51.890 Tom Ingegno: That is not…
00:48:52.630 --> 00:48:53.210 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Hi!
00:48:53.210 --> 00:49:03.330 Tom Ingegno: That is… that is not how this works, right? We… we… we need to speak in a way that those patients understand us.
00:49:04.080 --> 00:49:07.890 Tom Ingegno: And not put them down. How do you not know this? No!
00:49:07.890 --> 00:49:08.710 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Exactly.
00:49:08.710 --> 00:49:11.360 Tom Ingegno: Why? Because I don't… they don't have a degree in it.
00:49:11.360 --> 00:49:33.640 Tom Ingegno: That's why they don't know it. So how do we take those steps to open this up? And look, I'm not trying to, like, if I could mainstream this, like, I'm not… I'm gonna use a term that they used back in the 90s, Siobhan, sell out. But I… I want… I want this medicine to have the respect and the… it's really the people's medicine.
00:49:33.640 --> 00:49:37.280 Tom Ingegno: And if we can put it into everybody's hands, and…
00:49:37.280 --> 00:49:51.000 Tom Ingegno: meet them where they're at, I think we'll have amazing success, we'll have better outcomes for Americans, we'll be a healthier society in a healthier, globe, you know? And I… God, it's…
00:49:51.000 --> 00:50:00.909 Tom Ingegno: it's overwhelming to think about, and it's pretty arrogant for me to even say, like, oh, I'm gonna be the one that does it, but I want to be part of that movement, you know? It's gonna take a lot of people.
00:50:00.910 --> 00:50:03.919 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Yeah. But it really, I think.
00:50:03.980 --> 00:50:10.389 Tom Ingegno: That's it. Take those baby steps, introduce small concepts. You know, it was funny, the other day.
00:50:10.720 --> 00:50:28.030 Tom Ingegno: you know, I've been reading about fasting. I've done intermittent fasting for years and years, right? And my mom came by to help us out, and babysit my teenage daughters, on a school night, because we had to go to a concert, but…
00:50:28.030 --> 00:50:39.379 Tom Ingegno: she goes, oh, I don't eat now, I only have a… you know, I have a 6-hour eating window, and I go, oh, you're doing an 18-6. I got you, Mom. And she's like, what? And I'm like, remember, I was…
00:50:39.600 --> 00:50:46.699 Tom Ingegno: fasting a lot years ago, and now I still do it, and, you know, so, like, she caught up, right? You know, she…
00:50:47.090 --> 00:51:04.269 Tom Ingegno: It became a new concept to her, but there had to be repeated exposure and good experience with it. So, I would say that, just, you know, keep it in the forefront, approach it in a way that's a little bit manageable, you know, like, don't eat the whole elephant at once.
00:51:04.830 --> 00:51:13.170 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Indeed. Indeed. It's baby steps. I like, I like that, you know, if you don't want to do the needles, start with acupressure.
00:51:13.560 --> 00:51:22.010 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: You know, starting with something and testing it out is the best way, and going, oh, okay, that wasn't so bad.
00:51:22.130 --> 00:51:25.909 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Maybe I'll do this next thing, right? And…
00:51:26.600 --> 00:51:33.389 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: I think people are intimidated by maybe what they've seen in media of a person
00:51:34.480 --> 00:51:41.820 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: all the pins. And I will say, I'm going to be the first to say.
00:51:42.310 --> 00:51:58.730 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: I wondered about the pain of the pins, too. They literally, unless I had, like, a very sore spot to begin with that was sore to the touch, I felt none of the pins go in or out.
00:51:58.730 --> 00:52:07.069 Tom Ingegno: So, so, and this is… so there's a couple of things there, right? TV, media, they have to sensationalize that.
00:52:07.070 --> 00:52:08.040 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Absolutely.
00:52:08.040 --> 00:52:25.239 Tom Ingegno: Two, and this is literally a logistics thing. Years ago, I wrote an article for a magazine that's no longer around called Baltimore Dog Magazine, right? And it was about animal acupuncture, and I'm certified to treat animals here in Maryland, and…
00:52:26.210 --> 00:52:43.120 Tom Ingegno: they said, we don't… we found some stock photos, they're kind of horrible. Do you have a dog? Can you bring them down? So I brought my French Bulldog, Piglet, down. And he was the star of the show, he loved it. You know, he's got… it's photos of him smiling, his tongue's out, his needles all up and down his back. They go, okay, great.
00:52:43.270 --> 00:52:55.479 Tom Ingegno: I get home, the company calls me, and they go, hey, we got a problem. I go, what's the matter? Did I leave a needle there? Yeah, you know, going through it, no, they're like, no, no, no. We can't see the needles in the photos.
00:52:56.550 --> 00:53:04.809 Tom Ingegno: So they literally had to superimpose a line on the needle, and then make the handles bright red.
00:53:04.930 --> 00:53:06.560 Tom Ingegno: So you could see them.
00:53:06.710 --> 00:53:23.110 Tom Ingegno: So some of this, when they're doing media stuff, they literally have to either, one, use bigger needles, so longer needles with thicker handles, use more needles, just for… for dramatic effect, I guess. And that's not really how we do things.
00:53:23.110 --> 00:53:23.530 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: No.
00:53:23.530 --> 00:53:30.570 Tom Ingegno: You'll see some practitioners that put a lot of needles in one area, and I go, that's the shotgun approach, you know, palpate, feel.
00:53:30.710 --> 00:53:41.769 Tom Ingegno: But this is another great advancement in acupuncture. We've gotten at least 2-3 gauges smaller since I started practicing.
00:53:41.770 --> 00:53:42.220 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: 1?
00:53:42.220 --> 00:53:46.149 Tom Ingegno: The ability to refine the needles make them smoother and thinner.
00:53:46.360 --> 00:53:51.550 Tom Ingegno: And refine our techniques. You know, back in the day, the needles were pretty big.
00:53:51.550 --> 00:53:54.329 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: You know, pre-industrial Revolution.
00:53:54.350 --> 00:53:55.040 Tom Ingegno: So there's…
00:53:55.040 --> 00:53:57.029 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: That makes sense. Yeah.
00:53:57.030 --> 00:54:00.190 Tom Ingegno: Yeah, handmade needles, naturally, are gonna be a little bit thicker.
00:54:00.190 --> 00:54:05.950 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Okay, yeah, I had never had a problem with the needles. No, and you shouldn't. -
00:54:06.180 --> 00:54:13.530 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Wonderful, alright. And so, when you first bring in a patient.
00:54:13.980 --> 00:54:21.230 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: And in less than one minute, can you say, like, what the order is that… Yeah. …of things that will unfold for them?
00:54:21.230 --> 00:54:30.039 Tom Ingegno: So, our first appointment is always longer. We do a very long intake. I have people answer a very large paper intake.
00:54:30.570 --> 00:54:41.090 Tom Ingegno: It checks all the systems. We then don't want to pigeonhole anybody, but we want to see where these imbalances are. Then we're gonna do palpation. We're gonna take your pulses.
00:54:41.090 --> 00:54:58.580 Tom Ingegno: We have 12 positions on the wrist that we feel, one for each one of those 12 meridians on the body, feeling which one's stronger and weaker, and which… we have some weird adjectives that we use. We'll do palpation along the acupuncture points. On the ab… we'll do inspection, looking at the color under the eyes, the tongue.
00:54:59.220 --> 00:55:11.030 Tom Ingegno: And then we'll put together a treatment, and there's a million different treatment styles. That's definitely longer than a minute, but we'll perform the treatment, hopefully in a stage or two, maybe three, like I do.
00:55:11.040 --> 00:55:24.989 Tom Ingegno: And then we'll incorporate some adjunct therapies, whether that's a little bit of bodywork from an Asian perspective, something like gua sha, cupping, mock sub bustion, maybe applying some topical herbal formulas.
00:55:24.990 --> 00:55:39.770 Tom Ingegno: It really depends on what the patient needs, and one of the things that I'll say about this is it's a living, breathing medicine. So I want to look at that patient with fresh eyes every time they come in, and we're going to vary that treatment. So it's not the same thing every time. Some people do that.
00:55:40.230 --> 00:55:46.469 Tom Ingegno: It's becoming less and less popular because we want to meet the patient where they're at, getting back to that concept.
00:55:46.470 --> 00:55:47.170 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Yep.
00:55:47.380 --> 00:55:55.709 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Wonderful. Thank you for that. That way, people can kind of have ease of mind when they're thinking about
00:55:56.220 --> 00:55:59.100 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Scheduling their first appointment.
00:56:00.580 --> 00:56:02.990 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Okay, I guess we're about out of time.
00:56:02.990 --> 00:56:05.529 Tom Ingegno: Yeah! That one… that went quick!
00:56:05.530 --> 00:56:20.749 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: You did! You did! Thank you, everyone, for joining us for this topic. This was one… this is one of the ones near and dear to my heart, because acupuncture, and we'll have a later episode on, chiropractic, those are the two kinds of,
00:56:20.920 --> 00:56:36.929 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: holistic practices that I think are really important to incorporate, and we just don't get to hear as much about them, and people still have misconceptions. Tom, I am so grateful for you joining me today.
00:56:36.930 --> 00:56:43.209 Tom Ingegno: Hey, Siobhan, I'll talk to you all day, every day, you just call, and I'm more than happy to hop on.
00:56:43.210 --> 00:56:46.130 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: I'll bring you back for a future one, then.
00:56:46.130 --> 00:56:51.930 Tom Ingegno: Whenever you want, you just let me know. I'll show up on time, I'll make sure the internet's… we'll check the weather and everything.
00:56:51.930 --> 00:56:54.180 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: I know, right?
00:56:54.530 --> 00:56:56.260 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Wonderful!
00:56:56.260 --> 00:57:20.130 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: If you found this episode helpful, and informative, and there's something, a nugget that you can apply to your life, then please do so. If there's someone in your life that you feel like could benefit from this episode, please pass it on, and take a moment to like and subscribe on whichever platform you're watching this or hearing this on.
00:57:20.130 --> 00:57:27.719 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: It helps us to get the word out more about the expansion room, and I'm looking forward to seeing you all next week!
00:57:27.810 --> 00:57:29.060 Shervon Laurice | The Expansion Room: Have a wonderful week.
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