Acupuncture with Dr. Yin

Dr. Klimczak and Dr. Reed speak with an acupuncturist named Dr. Yin. Dr. Yin discusses the science behind acupuncture and how she uses it for fertility patients. Dr. Yin describes how often acupuncture should be done and what problems acupuncture can be used to treat.

Transcript

0:06

Hi, I am Dr. Beverly Reed. And I'm Dr. Amber Klimczak. And we are Two Peaks in a Pod. Well, hello everybody. We are so excited because we have another in person guest experience and Dr. Yin, actually, I think you're in good company because was our last in person guest experience your husband? Yes. Dr. Klitschek is the only other one we've had in person, right? Yes. Okay. So you are part of a very special, small group of people. Um, and we are so appreciative that Dr. Um, Yin came in to see us today and I wanted to just kind of share with everybody how we found Dr. Yin. So Dr. Yin is actually a specialist in acupuncture and. The reason my curiosity was piqued is I had a patient who I did IVF on and unfortunately her IVF cycle didn't go well. She didn't get pregnant. It didn't work. And then after that, she went to see Dr. Yin and she got acupuncture. and she got pregnant without IVF or fertility treatment of any kind, which of course I was so happy for my patient, but I was extremely jealous because I said, how did Dr. Yin do that? And so ever since then, I've been just really wanting to learn as much as I can about acupuncture. A lot of you may have seen a recent podcast that we had about, we talked about acupuncture, traditional acupuncture and laser acupuncture. But as we kind of talked through it, we have some questions that we did have trouble answering because we ourselves were not extra, um, experts in traditional acupuncture. And so we were so pleased and happy that Dr. Yin was willing to come and join us to answer some of our questions. about traditional acupuncture. And so, Dr. Yan, can you just tell us a little bit about how you got started in this field and what kind of training you need to have to be an acupuncture specialist? Yes, my name is Dr. Yan and I've been working and practicing acupuncture for a long time. I started acupuncture We're going to a medical school in China, and in China we, we have to learn western medicine and eastern medicine both, and we practice both after we graduate. So I was practicing acupuncture and traditional acupuncture Chinese medicine and also the Western medicine in the hospital for seven years and Then I came to United States because my husband came here for his PhD degree so Since then I started Teaching as a professor in Florida? Mm-Hmm. in acupuncture school. Acupuncture college. Oh wow. You taught acupuncture, right? Right. You're saying I was teaching there for a few years and then, um, I moved to Texas and also, well, I was teaching in the acupuncture school, which was closed already uh, for a couple years. And, um, I started my, um, own practice in Texas and Frisco like 20 years. So that's, um, basically I started my acupuncture career and I really enjoy and like this natural healing treatment, um, which has been helping people a lot to help in different, um, kinds of conditions. And especially I see very good results. fertility, um, support treatment. I wanted to say support treatment to help our doctors get good results to help people. Yes. Amazing. Okay. So we're going to talk through a lot in the podcast, but for people that are listening, that would, like to come try acupuncture with you. How can they schedule an appointment with you? How can they find you? Does your practice have a website or? Yes, we have a website, yinsclinic. com. And, uh, in, on the website, uh, we have, uh, you cannot schedule by yourself, but you can go into a kind of a link to give us, Your information. So we can call you back. Leah will call you back as soon as we receive the information, your inquiry, um, and telling us your your concern or conditions. We can give you a call back or we you can just call directly to our office, which is the direct number 972 668 2626. So it's easy to reach out to us. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. Okay, great. Well, I just want to say for our listeners that I've been to Dr. Yan's clinic and I really enjoyed my experience. So I do highly recommend them. so much. Um, and her staff is lovely. They do call you back very quickly so they can get you in and they're very flexible with scheduling, which I think really makes it nice on fertility patients. Cause as we've talked about before, our patients have a lot of doctor's visits already, so it's nice that you're flexible with getting our patients in. That's great. Cause I know Dr. K is such a busy doctor. So the fact that they're able to accommodate that and, and help you get in and out, I think is just so helpful. Most of our patients are working women. We've got, we've got to have the time to be able to do things like this. So, yeah. Yeah. We are trying the, Trying the best to help accommodate our patients coming. Mm hmm. Yeah, because we know it's not easy for everybody making that time to to do the treatment each week. Yeah. So Yeah, trying the best. I'm kind of curious. Um, certainly I have a lot of patients that ask me about acupuncture But I'm just curious on your side of things When it comes to fertility patients, are most of the patients that you're seeing being referred by their doctor or are they finding you before they've even seen a fertility doctor? So for example, if somebody is just trying at home to get pregnant, let's say they've been trying for a year and a half and they're kind of thinking, Hey, should I schedule an appointment with a fertility doctor? Are you seeing those patients even before we're seeing them sometimes? Or what is your general sense of the proportion of patients that you're seeing for fertility purposes? Yeah, we've been seeing both, um, both kinds of patients. Some people refer by their doctors. Um, after, after trying, um, IVF or IUI, they need support treatment. Um, the, um, They refer to us, and some people, they, they heard from, heard acupuncture from their friends or heard from other, um, information from, from other information area, and then they, um, they're trying for a while, like, um, a couple years or a few months, they still wanted to keep the natural conceived way, so they come to us too. So we do use acupuncture to help people, um, getting, um, getting pregnant, like trying to help them getting natural conceive. And also at the same time, we do, um, use acupuncture. We use different skills. Like, um, we say the herbs or nutrition supplements or laser acupuncture, different things to support their IVF or IVF. IUI, fertility treatments. Yeah. And based on what the, what steps they are in, some people, they have plenty of time, like a few months before, um, a few months before their fertility treatment. But some people only has, uh, only have like a few weeks. So we do have different treatment plan, different, um, frequency, different treatment plan based on what they, what their plan to help the most. So that's the, um, acupuncture, we helping in different ways. So that means now acupuncture becomes more well known. So a lot more, more and more people and doctors know acupuncture and some doctors. Just like, uh, they're more open minded to, yeah, to use this, uh, traditional way, the Eastern medicine to help the Western medicine. Yes. They can go hand in hand. Dr. Yin, do you feel like there are any patients that acupuncture is more or less effective for? And like, do you ever see a patient and you're just like, I really don't think acupuncture is going to work for you. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So. I want to say acupuncture is a natural healing treatment. Uh, it is you, it should be useful for most of the people, but any science or any kinds of treatment, I don't want to say it's 100 percent um, useful for everybody, everybody. So, um, so occasionally where I want to say some sometimes, um, Some patients don't respond to the treatment is sometimes can see, but most of the case, most cases I want to say we've been using acupuncture, use this to help increase the success rate of fertility treatment a lot. Yeah, most cases doing very good. Now, Dr. Yin, I've never had acupuncture done myself, and I probably a big part of that is I am terrified of needles. Okay. Do you ever see patients like me who are terrified of needles and do, how, how does that go? Do they get over it? Is it painful? Can you tell me kind of, what would you tell a patient like me? Yeah. Oh, we have patients. scared of needles, they're terrified, they feel like, oh, this, this is injection needles, I'm nervous or something. So, but these needles are different from injection needles. They're thin, like hair thin needles. Okay. So when we put the needles in, usually it's just the minimum. feeling. You just feel a very light tap, but you don't feel real pain, and occasionally you feel a little bit pain, so that's some, some, some, um, points themselves, they have more qi clogging than other points, so you may feel a little bit more, but most of the needles you may feel is like pressure heavy sensation, we call that qi sensation, it's a good sign. Yeah, it stimulates your bioflow energy moving in the meridians. That means it's working that way. Okay, and Dr. K, I know you have a needle phobia like I do. What, so, I mean, how did you overcome that? I mean, this is just very out of character for you to voluntarily let people put needles. And you're very true. So my first experience with acupuncture was a few years ago, and I think the very first time you do it, especially if you're a needle focus when you're most nervous about it. And it certainly wasn't what I was expecting. It does not. I've given myself injections to raise nothing like she's saying. It's not like a shot injection type of needle, much smaller. But one thing that was different at Dr. Yen's clinic is one time. Um, the, who, what's the name of the doctor that you work with? The other, the other acupuncturist. She came in and I had, I guess, the larger caliber needle in me. And she took that out and put a smaller caliber needle. And I was like, wait a second, there's smaller needles. I didn't know that that wasn't even an option. So can you tell us the difference between how come sometimes you can use smaller needles versus bigger needles on certain patients? So the needles, we have different size, different gauges. So based on the, um, different area, Uh, we put the needles in, such as the abdominal area or the back area, or the legs or the scalp, the hands. We, in different area, we use different size, different gauges, um, needles. So it, that means, um, so this different lay layers of the muscle or tissues you can. You can feel, you can feel the minimum. So trying to give you the minimum, um, stimulate, uh, and not stimulate minimum uncomfortable. Right, right, right. So the different size, uh, or gauges, needle is very helpful too. So they give the small needles to the people they like. Apparently. And the big ones to the people they don't like. Different area. Yeah. different area. No. Um, okay. So, and I know this is a complex question, but just from the scientist's point of view, what I really do try to understand is how could putting needles in the body help fertility? Can you kind of explain to me the mechanism of action by which acupuncture is thought to help? Um, fertility? Yes. Um, acupuncture is a kind of. Treatment is based on the meridian theory. So we have so many meridians which are bioflow energy moving in the channels in our body. So we have so many different kinds of meridians. We have 12 formal meridians. We have extra 8 extra meridians. We have other meridians going across. Uh, we say from, from down to, uh, from the toes to the head or from the head to the toes. And also it can cross the body into, uh, other meridians. So they, we have so many different meridians and they, this different meridians, they connecting with our different internal organs and systems. So the main organs and systems related to fertility will, will be the three. internal organs and systems and meridians related, which is kidney meridian, liver meridian, and also the spleen meridians. So we use acupuncture to target these different internal organs function that will help regulate the different, things in the body. For example, the kidney is the one to, um, dominate our reproductive systems function. It dominates our hormone levels, balance, pituitary function, and also the ovaries function. It tries to keep the balance, the triangle balance between the hormone, pituitary and ovaries triangle balance. So we use acupuncture help is to strengthen and tonify the kidney and also build up the kidney essence that will regulate this triangle balance between these three factors that will help stimulate your ovaries functional activity, improve, and then to help produce better quality of eggs. And of course, of course they add quantity too. So yeah, I know a lot of people have the problem like low egg reserve and we use acupuncture has been helping improve that part to help the. egg quality and also the egg quantity. And another organ is the spleen, which is the organ or system in acupuncture theory to, um, dominate our digestive systems, health, digestion, nutrition, absorption. And after that we say spleen has a function to produce qi and blood, which is bioflow energy. And from bioflow energy, we call that qi and blood is the nutrition supporting to our reproductive system. So with the So, sufficient, plenty of chi and blood production that will give more nutrition supporting to our uterus and ovaries. So that can bring more blood flow, especially to our ovaries and also the uterus. And to help our uterus part, that's the one we say can, can help. Um, give more nutrition supporting to have our, our animal trail lining, the lining size, lining layers, and also the receptors and then to help the implantation going well. So that's, um, um, the spleen can help. So we threw the way to tonify and strengthen the spleen and then related meridians that can stimulate this part to, um, build up more qi and blood production. And another organ is the liver. That's the organ system. Um, it has close relationship with our nervous system, which is liver meridian related, um, That's in acupuncture theory, we say it's a stress or anxiety. Those kind of factors can be a kind of barrier to prevent people getting pregnant or to big barrier to affect our fertility treatment success rate. So we use acupuncture to help is to soothe the lever chi, which is the meridians, starting from our toes and coming up and along to, um, to circle our liver and coming across our breasts and connect with our nerve system. So we use this way, we use acupuncture, this is natural way to stimulate the liver meridian qi moving that will stimulate your nervous system to help your brain release natural chemical stuff like endorphins, serotonin, those kind of things. So that will help your body naturally physically and mentally stress reduction. Here we see the physically the organs stress reduction is more important. Yeah, just like to relax our arteries. Our arteries can function better. So because the stress level rising can cause a lot. internal organs contraction, the arteries contraction, or the uterus contraction. So uterus contraction, that happens a lot during the transfer step. So that will directly affect our, um, success rate of the implantation. So when this stress level reduce from the uterus, that will, um, really help increase the success rate of transfer step. So, yeah, that's basically what we work on. So, I guess these meridians are almost kind of imaginary lines that connect parts to different organs, right? Yes. Yeah. So, like your foot has a meridian, a line that almost connects to your liver, your spleen, or your kidneys. Mm hmm. And by stimulating the more peripheral points, it may somehow, um, stimulate those organs and, and help fertility, right? Yes. Okay. Yes. Gotcha. Yeah. Um, and then I was curious. So whenever you have a fertility patient come in,'cause I know you can use acupuncture for many different conditions. Mm-Hmm. But let's say a patient comes in, they say, I'm trying to get pregnant. Does every fertility patient have. sort of the same regimen, like the same number of needles, the same points, or does it really depend on what type of treatment they're doing or specifically what fertility problem they have? Is it kind of more customized for each patient or is it really all fertility patients get the same points? Um, it's a kind of customized, every patient is different, even though they have the same, um, issue that it called fertility, but it can be, um, we call that syndrome, different syndrome. It could be, we say liver cheese stagnation is the main thing or the internal organs deficiency like spleen deficiency or kidney deficiency as main syndrome. So based on the diagnose, um, with acupuncture theory, so we'll use different meridians, different points to help. Because I do think when I kind of think back to patients that have tried acupuncture, it seems like if me as the doctor can give them feedback as to issues that I'm having difficulty managing with them, then they can share that with the acupuncture specialist to target those issues. So let's say I have a patient where she has really thin lining and I'm doing everything I can to thicken it, but it's not working. Then maybe there's certain things you can try for that. Or if I have a patient who has low egg counts or something like that, then you can kind of target that. Does that exactly? Yeah. Yeah. So based on thing lining or, um, for example, if it's the thing lining, um, it based on. Uh, can be caused by any reason. And as a doctor, you give them like estrogen, you give them different medication. We use acupuncture. We need to, usually we need to target the yin deficiency. So the yin deficiency, 25. Um, tonify the yin yang balance, which is the basic balance in the body. So yin deficiency, we target the yin deficiency, and then to bring up the lining growing. And if the patient we diagnose as yang deficiency, we need to target the yang, to tonify the yang, and then to help more yin. balanced yin yang. So these two are important, even though it's, they are all related to kidneys, brain, liver, still, um, has like yin or yang deficiency, difference. So based on this difference, we use, use different needles, points or herbs to help. And And also, uh, recently we, we use, um, bio, bio, uh, biofeedback treatment that's been working, yeah, very successfully to help. Yeah. We also combine using with Mark Sebastian. Ah, okay. To, yeah. To help different kinds of, like young deficiency. Can you explain what the biofeedback is with the electric? Are you talking about the electric stimulation? Right, right, right. Yeah. Can you explain to magnetic, magnetic electrical stimulation? Mm-Hmm. Um, so that attached to different area. Mm-Hmm. of the. For, for lining, for a thin lining patients, um, attached to a different area or for low agrizole patients and that will attach to a different area and then we use this special, um, magnet, magnetic electrical stimulation to stimulate, which has been, um, Good, having good results. Hmm, amazing, okay, yeah. I have to say that Dr. Yin did this for me, or I guess your partner did this for me, and I kind of felt like a racehorse. You know how they, racehorses, they do this when they're trying to heal their injuries. They put like the electromagnetic stimulation onto their injuries. I was all hooked up, and I'm like, God, I'm going to take a picture of myself right now. I'm like training for the races. Have you tried the Moxibustion too? Is that how you say it? Moxibustion? Moxibustion. I think so. Tell us more about that. Right. The Moxibustion we use a lot, um, to target different points and different meridians too. But main thing is to help people with it. young deficiency patients for the young, young deficient patients. They, they're easy to present this thing lining. Um, so we give them instructions. So, um, to help them, uh, understand how to do this. We normally give the, give this as a homework. It's a kind of single herb. It's a single herbal stick. It helps the blood flowing, but it's a special, besides the, um, helping the blood flowing function, it has warm function in this specific points. We use a special, um, matzah box, put this in. Moxa sticks in and then to give the give patients treatments. Mm hmm. Yeah, so they're for Young deficient patients. We use this a lot. Mm hmm. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha Now for the average patient, I would say probably the most common patient I would see that's doing acupuncture is maybe somebody who's going to be Doing a frozen embryo transplant Um, and I will say to, um, from a scientific point of view, there are studies that have supported this, that show that acupuncture can be helpful if the patient finds it relaxing. Um, I will say sometimes I've seen a little bit of negative data on acupuncture if the patient finds it relaxing. Finds it stressful. Like for some people, maybe they really feel like they don't have the time to go to the appointments or cost is stressing them out or maybe the needle phobia or something or a combination of those factors to where it's creating so much stress hormone to do the acupuncture that it may work against them. But for the most people who I think find it relaxing, it has been shown to be helpful. So I just wanted to get a sense for how much commitment that is for a patient, like how many appointments. do what they typically need to do for a frozen embryo transfer cycle. Like on our side of things, you know, and my average patient would have a baseline sonogram, a lining check, and then their embryo transfer. So they would have three appointments with you. How many appointments would they typically have for you during that time period? Yeah, basically, um, depends on the IVF transfer schedule and if they have, um, three, three or more weeks, so we will say, um, we will do two treatments a week until two weeks before the IVF. Um, the transfer time. Those two weeks we will add one more treatment each week. Okay. When they're getting close to the transfer time. And the transfer day is a special day. Before and after transfer, one of, um, one treatment before and one after transfer, one treatment after. Okay. So that's the Yeah. And then what about once they do their transfer, do they have any more after that? I mean, I know the one right after, but like In the subsequent days or weeks after that? During the 10 days. During the 10 days waiting for the pregnancy test, we will do three different treatments. Okay. To help the implantation. Okay. Yeah. So that's, we've seen very good results from this kind of frequency. In China, we'd say we do more. Oh, really? More frequently. More frequently in China. But here, it's, it's hard to do more, people are busier, and also. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. We got a lot of working women patients. Yeah. Yeah. And then they commute, different kinds of traveling or something. It's more harder to do more, but I know some, a lot of patients, they are trying to say, Oh, I want to do, um, only once a week or, um, once every other week or once a month or something. Yeah. It's hard to. the same good results. Right. But would you say that one is better than none? You think or no? So like, you know, let's say ideally, ideally, maybe they should do three. But if they can't do three, do you still think one would be better than none, or what do you think? I think normally, um, um, I want to say 99 percent of our patients, they, um, they listen to our treatment plan. Gotcha. They listen to our treatment plan. That's good. I know. Because you know, uh, acupuncture is accumulated treatment, in fact. It takes this process to reach the point. Right. Just like, uh, for example, if we. Um, give, give a patient a pain management, you, you can see the difference. Normally, it's hard to see immediately, immediately relief from the first treatment or the first few treatments. And after a few treatments, they say, Oh, this is so, so different, it's so much better or something. So it needs this process to accumulate it. So I'm glad you brought that up too, because I was going to ask you what are other conditions besides just fertility that acupuncture can be helpful for? Um, so it sounds like pain management. Yeah, pain management. Uh, we call that natural pain management is a big category. That's great. Yeah. To help people all different kinds of pain relief. Yeah. From migraine or, um, or other pain as spinal disorder, cervical disorder. So all different kinds of arthritis causing the pain, injury, causing the pain. It is a good treatment to help the pain relief. Yes, and okay, I was curious, do you ever, because you're a specialist, Do acupuncture on yourself. Are you, can you do that? Are you allowed to do that? Can you reach your points that you need to get? Like, I only, I always do acupuncture myself. You do acupuncture every day or how often? Uh, I do, I do at least three or four times a day. Really? To help my sleep. Yeah, because I cannot sleep well and I do acupuncture myself. That's great. And also I wear a needle to go to sleep. do you? Oh my goodness. Sleep now. That sounds like a hazard. Right, right, right. And also, yeah, I can reach my back. I can do my back. You can you see your own points on your back? Yes, I can do that. Are there any points you can't reach? Uh, maybe middle back. It's hard to, yeah. On neck or lower back. I can reach my You can do it. Yeah. Yeah. I do love it. Self-sufficient woman. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, because I'm so familiar with that, and when I touch that, I know that, I know where they are. Yeah. I know where the points are. Love that. So are there any side effects that our patients should know about or expect if they're planning on doing acupuncture? Um, acupuncture doesn't have any side effects. Um, the only thing, some, uh, occasionally, um, patients can find some bruises, a little bit of bruises on the abdominal area or Abdominal areas are the most common, especially they're on blood thinner or doing the injections occasionally, but not very, um, not very much. Just like I want to say like 1 percent or 2 percent patients. It depends on their blood type. body quality. Um, I was going to ask about pregnancy too. So, um, we are really excited because we actually just got laser acupuncture here in the clinic and we were doing the training for it. Um, and they did tell us there are certain points you really should avoid doing on somebody if they're pregnant. Um, and so I think that comes from the actual acupuncture data. So it sounds like if a patient's in the window where they could be pregnant, they definitely need to let you know, right? So that you can avoid certain points, but can you tell us why you would need to avoid certain points? Yeah, those points, uh, once patients get pregnant, we see we, um, some points we have to stop doing treatments on them. Even though we're, we've been doing that during the process to help them getting pregnant. So those points, such as we stop all the points on the abdominal area. And also we need to stop some points, um, on the hands and, and also the feet. Okay. Okay. Also, they. Okay. Some points. But we only choose some safe points to try to support, uh, to send more nutrition supporting to the, to the uterus, to the, basically keep the meridian, kidney meridian, and also the spleen meridian. Yeah. Yeah. And, and at the same time, we say to reduce the stress is all, is always the, the key. for our topic. We can still do that. Yes. Well, because yeah, people may be wondering, well, if you're pregnant, why are you even still doing acupuncture, but acupuncture has been shown to be helpful for other things like nausea. And certainly we know when you're pregnant, you can feel lots of nausea. So it is kind of nice to have a natural treatment that you could consider for that as well. Because, you know, a lot of my patients, once they're pregnant, they really want to know For anything, is there any risk to taking this medication? Right. Um, I think acupuncture could be a really helpful option for patients who want to try something a little bit more natural. Um, for nausea, nausea, vomiting, right? Nausea. We do a lot, we do a lot to help people's nausea and also to watch the blood pressure and also the blood sugar. Oh, okay. Yeah. We have some referrals from, um, internal or OB doctors. They are patients. Um, got that. During the second trimester, they cannot take medication. So we use acupuncture to help them control the blood pressure to the, to the good level. Well, and I think that makes a lot of sense. Cause sometimes if somebody's really stressed out and worked up, like their blood pressure is up, but if they're feeling relaxed, I can see your blood pressure comes down and they feel better. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, amazing. Okay. Well, should we wrap it up for the week then? Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming. for having me here. so much. I learned so much. And one of these days I'm going to have to go get some acupuncture too. I've got lots of problems. Not fertility problems. I'm past those things. I'm too old for that. I've got lots of other things that I'm sure you can help me with, so I'll have to try it out. All right. Well, thank you guys. Um, if you have any questions for Dr. Yen or for us, you know, leave us a comment and we can follow up on that. Um, we'd probably love to have you back at a future time too. Alright, well thank you guys. And then if you would be so kind to consider leaving us a positive review on either our, um, podcast site or on YouTube or on our practice website, we would greatly appreciate, um, the help with that. And I hope you have a great day. Bye. Bye bye.