NourishDoc: Good morning, everyone from San Francisco; good evening in India. I am Amita, co-founder of NourishDoc, a natural and holistic medicine platform that showcases successful outcomes by showing research and anonymous case studies. Our educational session today will discuss how acupuncture and yoga can help you with anti-aging, menopause for women, and ED for men.
Presenting this topic, we have Dr. David Lee. He has a master’s in acupuncture and Oriental medicine and a Doctor of Philosophy in Oriental Medicine. Dr. Lee has discovered revolutionary treatment protocols called soma and tetra soma acupuncture. Dr. Lee practices out of his LA office using constitutional medicine with acupuncture, food, and Asian herbs; Dr. David Lee has treated thousands of clients for different ailments. Dr. Lee has also written multiple books on acupuncture and Chinese herbs; his goal is to spread awareness of the benefits of acupuncture to people of all levels. We are honored to have you on our show, Dr. Lee.
Dr. Lee: Thank you, it’s my pleasure to join you.
NourishDoc: Great, so joining him, Dr. Lee would be our Eknath Ji, yoga guru; you have seen him in our previous webinars as well; he is a celebrity yoga guru, doctor of naturopathy, and a yoga therapist. Eknathji has trained Bollywood movie stars like Shilpa Shetty; now, he has a yoga studio in Goa, India. So please feel free to ask any questions; we will start with Dr. Lee talking about the aging process for women.
What is anti-aging?
Dr. Lee: Yes, it’s my pleasure to speak with you about it – Aging and anti-aging; this is a huge, huge large topic which we can actually tackle knowing what to do with it in a very safe and effective manner, so this will be valuable information for you and how natural medicine can be so empowering for your system to be sustaining the anti-aging activity itself. What is anti-aging? Aging is a progressive lessening of internal functions over time. Its effect is noticed between ages forty to fifty as you know, before age thirty or you’re walking on air, you feel like you’re floating, it’s that efficient your whole system is many different parts integrated well together and around after age thirty, you start noticing slight differences. It’s quite evident by age forty and fifty that we need to upkeep ourselves to keep systems working as well as before; at the same time, there’s still a natural process.
So some of the evident symptoms are fatigue, being tired, forgetful, not remembering things as well as before, frequent infection, meaning the immune system is down, shielding easily, your metabolism is not as functioning as well, so you’re not producing as much heat, so you have a few chills, but you notice more than before, and even with the same amount of activities you don’t seem to retain as much muscle mass, strength and bone mass and little aches and pains come and go, neck pain, shoulder pain, elbow pain, low back pain is the most common and some of them they stay around and of course, general hypo functioning of the internal system; they are your organs liver, lung, kidneys, stomach, intestine and glands, thyroid and adrenal pituitary and so on and so on.
So there’s micro regression that’s happening over time, and that’s the process of aging and disease is a little different because the disease is more of an immediate acute strong form of imbalance and so when the disease manifest unless the body is doing well that’s where we start focusing on; let’s treat the disease. Well, even treating the disease, you’re treating the body to have the body treatment beat the disease. So disease is just a strong form of what we call convenient aging, and then when you treat the disease, it’s the same model as when you treat aging. Then what is anti-aging? Anti-aging is trying to address aging at all levels, and it makes sense when you talk about the cells because our parts are everywhere; I believe it’s definitely many trillions of cells in our body, several trillion brain cells in our head, and several trillion cells in the rest of the body and all of them assemble together as a unity, a group, so then it becomes a different system, different organs, different plans or you could say the immune system and different parts, different functions, so each cell has its own responsibility, and when you support the process of each cell then you have an overall profuse improvement everywhere else, so for each cell, you support its ability for growth, we all want to grow you know what that means, so continual growth is what we know is progress but at the same time is a systemic, sustaining, a state, reproduction, cells have several days for it to function well.
After a certain time, it needs to reproduce to renew itself. So the reproductive process of duplication needs to be also optimized; metabolism will be the material or the energy that is generated within, so you have sugar from outside of the cell going into the cell, and the inside the tablet metabolizes the sugar to get the energy and function and then when it uses up the energy there’s a process where there’s a waste matter that also needs to go out so that proficiency of nutritious matter going into the cell and also the waste matter going outside of the cell that has to be also optimal and cell to cell communication means this cell communicates with another cell and that cell communicates with another cell. So there’s a network of relationships for their understanding each other through communication, so when all those growth reproduction, metabolism cell to cell communication happen smoothly, then you have a pretty good tune-up everywhere in the body, and that is what anti-aging is.
One of the experiences that we experience, we talk about energy, right?
So stamina, energy, focus, clarity, feeling integrated, feeling like you’re walking on air, no pain or minimal pain; all indicate that it’s an outcome of things happening correctly; you cannot give energy directly, you cannot give a sense of well-being directly, those are the outcome, and when you adjust every little part well, then the outcome is a higher quality of living. So then our goal is to establish that homeostasis or DNA wants to give instruction and so than the rest of the body that’s at the cellular level when it establishes the homeostasis, which is a normal range or range of normalcy, or you could call it even balance, homeostasis the word is used by the Westerners in scientific circles, balance is used by nature practitioners, same difference in the meaning. So when you establish homeostasis, the outcome is a higher quality of living and a reverse of the diseases.
How does Acupuncture help anti-aging?
NourishDoc: All right, so could you talk about how holistic medicine help with the anti-aging process you just described?
Dr. Lee: Yes. Holistic medicine is quite relevant for anti-aging and specifically targeted medicine, biomolecular language medicine. We call that scientific medicine or sciences at different levels. So when we talk about double-blind, randomized, peer-reviewed study, you could do that with molecules; people do that was some specific one ingredient, and that is valuable in certain instances like save life model, or when you need to intervene right away to change the function so that you get to not only prevent or and also to treat, so there’s a western medicine is highly valuable.
But we recognize that we don’t have enough information, we don’t have enough ability, nature is still vast and deep, and there’s so much going on that our brain cannot utilize all that information simultaneously. I think the advancement of artificial intelligence is the key to having the varied medical information be calculated very quickly so that you have the right answer that’s coming out.
So in that sense, artificial intelligence perhaps can’t go into interpreting holistic medicine and find a solution where we could apply the right solution for different kinds of problems and have a lasting improvement. So that’s what we could project towards with western medicine, but as for now what the Eastern medicine or Indian medicine, India is also East, or you can say the Middle East or the indigenous medicine where they recognized the trend in a pattern, not really causing in fact by looking at a pattern and matching a pattern with the pattern they realize how valuable it is because in the long run, it’s beneficial, it’s destructive its building and because you’re adjusting little things here. Therefore, over time, you become safe; for example, what treats complexity with complexity? That means our whole body is complex, our brain is the most complex thing in this universe, and you couple that with your body; it’s quite complex now; how do you even address that? Well, first, we recognize that nature has a solution. We see that everywhere, for example, outside like here; it’s so fulfilling for our soul or spirit and empowering.
Role of diet in anti-aging
What about food? Food has many benefits, and that is empowering. We’ve identified the right foods over time that help us not only for energy but also build up for a long-term benefit because food is not just nutritional; food is also minor medicine, and we consume food daily. So therefore it adds up food becomes a strong medicine to us over time, that’s complexity, food is quite complex we studied about what science, studied food how did they study first they identified sugar, protein, fats and then they identified vitamins and minerals now we have phytonutrients, oh I don’t know what to deal with this because it’s just so complex but since few decades ago, science is able to address phytonutrients, not in a very holistic way but at least in a molecular way in such a specific targeted way of interpretation, so that’s a good beginning as a start as with holistic medicine we take the complexity as a whole, let’s match up this person with this food and see how all this fits from top to bottom, from head to toe, from you know just everywhere, if it’s law every word and that’s multiple benefits and no side effects and that’s great about nature medicine that we’ve identified through thousands of years for a very long time, what is very good for us and of course going forward we’re discovering more and more stuff out in the nature that provides solutions even for the stubborn problems that we have today.
Role of exercise in anti-aging
So about some other complex thing, exercise alright, you do regular exercise, mental exercise, physical exercise yoga, it’s so complex, and that complexity affects the complexity of our bodies. It’s quite, of course, safe, and it’s empowering; it builds you up. The effect adds up to a point where you’re at a different level of reality, which is the growth and going forward that we are looking for and that in itself is anti-aging, and we use the word tonic; a tonic is the same meaning as anti-aging. A tonic helps you in multiple ways so that it just preserves itself. So a tonic benefits the lung, liver, kidney, immune system, glands, muscles, and circulatory system. That’s what tonic is, and tonic is holistically beneficial, and it occurs at a psychological level, physiological level, and physical level; psychological level will be mental, anxiety, stress, post-traumatic stress disorder, or different ways of thinking certain perspectives where may not be within the right range of way of thinking because you want to have a good expansive mind, where you’re open, you’re flexible, and you’re able to adjust to different situations that are psychology. Physiology is the internal function of the organs and glands, and circulatory systems, the digestive system, your sleep, your bowel movement; those are all physiology and then physical that would be more like aches and pain, muscles and joints, tendons and ligaments. Hence, you want to preserve the parts well because you have good parts.
You have good functions, that’s functional physiology and functional psychology. So, therefore, holistic medicine affects you or benefits you at the psychological, physiological, and physical levels. So again, that’s a huge contrast between the targeted medicine. In general, pattern medicine, so you could say you could target the pattern, but what I mean by targeted medicine here is targeting for a specific function like, for example, I have a disease, hypothyroidism. Okay, take some centroid, or I have irritable bowel syndrome. Take this medication that reduces the peristalsis or regulates the peristalsis, or it’s some kind of antacid or protein in the protein inhibitor, proton pump inhibitors, and so on. So you’re targeting specific thing but what we realized after several generation is that you’re looking at the end product as then okay, here’s a disease and here’s a cause that led to the disease what about cause, the cause of the disease and what about cause to the cause of the cause to the disease; so let me go up the river as far as we can, we’re actually trying to treat the source and we do a pretty good job on that but when we treat at the last level, we call it bandaging.
That’s why when you have a disease and you take prescription medication, well you’re on it forever, you try stop taking it well, you’re back to square one or it could be even worse why because you’re introducing the active ingredient from outside to in and when you do that, then the body becomes less and less capable of taking over on its own, yes and so then the solution is to, again it’s very important, little bit acts overtime and we like the strong fast result and that happens with nature medicine, a nature medicine also recognizes incremental improvement over time also and that’s what good diet and that’s what exercise of course, that’s what then your control you got to do, that is foundation of your health and building upon it you add other solutions that are even more helpful because good diet and exercise do not solve all the problems and so within Asian medicine there are top-three that are being done and specifically with me is acupuncture body type foods and Asian herbs; so what is acupuncture? Acupuncture stimulates certain parts of the body’s skin so that stimulation gives instruction or information so that the body knows better what to do.
So if acupuncture is information giving, acupuncture delivers the information, body type food, yeah that is boosts, I mentioned foods are they’re mild medicine, and when you eat the food for your body type, body type is important, not just the content of the food, not just the cleanliness of the food, but when it matches you, for example, chicken, we hear chicken is good for everyone, yeah, but we recognize that chicken is bad for some group of people like for example, chicken is warming right, so you could bear with a warm body, and it’s in your DNA, and then your body does not do well with chicken, and it causes stress within your body, and so it disrupts the normal physiology, so specific food ingredients for specific body type, is what I identify and recommend and also what the Asian herbs, I do the same thing.
Asian herbs for anti-aging
Asian herbs or herbs are strong form of, stronger form of food and it has more different type of phytonutrients, stronger phytonutrients, where it acts like medicine even more stronger than food ducks and those just by doing those three, they do a lot and then in nature medicine, holistic medicine, there’s different type of theories that the practitioners use and I noticed, I do constitutional medicine and I also noticed that other areas on the globe have already developed constitutional medicine and we call that Korean medicine but for me, Korean for Constitution medicine and I’ve created by soma tetra, soma acupuncture, that’s also constitutional medicine and then punani, that’s greco-roman started it and it’s widely practiced in Europe, Middle East and Africa, so there you go it’s spread out quite a bit and it started with Epocrates and then picked up by gaming and then also champion by the Sena which is the father of Middle Eastern medicine in Indian Ayurvedic, Pita, Buta, Kapa, those words are returning to specific body types also and then in the West, it’s more relegated to the psychology, the mental or temperament or characteristic personality of that person, so there’, they have different models, need theory, DISC, D will be dominant and I is influencing, S study, C is conscientious and then there’s social styles and myers-briggs type Indicator, that’s sixteen personality types.
Constitutional medicine for anti-aging
So, the West had quite well-developed ways to diagnose the person according to their psychological constitutional profile, so there you go. So constitutional medicine is quite everywhere as what here anti-aging, how does that, how do I do or how long does it take for you to see some improvement or how long does it take for the anti-aging take place? Well, acupuncture takes herbs to the adjustment, so you do that it’s acupuncture twice a week in the first month, by the end of thirty days, good significant improvement, I could tell I’m doing better more clarity of the mind, I have fewer aches, less pain, I have a better function, my organs are functioning better, my daily biorhythm is even more optimized and so on and so on. By the end of thirty days, you notice multiple improvements. In the second month, you have additional improvement. In the third month, it only takes two or three months to significantly improve anti-aging. You have gotten the momentum going, so since you have the momentum by the end of sixty days or by the end of thirty days and you’re still on the maintenance, why? Because aging still takes place. All you did was slow down the aging process. Hence, you need maintenance to keep you at a state level where the slow is slowed or whether the slow is optimized by just nudging it here and there, so then the acupuncture or visit to be, depending on what you have, could be a once a week if it’s a severe bad problem that you have to maintain, but that’s rare, it’s more of every two to four weeks, so I have patients who come in once a month, they just come in once every two weeks, simply depending on their particular need, they like it because mentally physiologically, physically they feel better yeah.
NourishDoc: I think that’s very informational, so I guess let’s talk about specific success cases that you’ve, you know, you’ve done for men as well as for women.
Acupuncture for sexual health
Dr. Lee: Okay. Alright, so let’s talk about ED; erectile dysfunction for males is a big priority, especially after surnames; usually, it’s after 50 that they want to keep that masculinity, and when it goes down, that is a bit alarming sign, oh I cannot have this. Again, you don’t want to be targeting a particular problem or disease. If you have something and it’s high club functioning now you want to start thinking about anti-aging, so let’s give this as an example, male age 48, he has normal testosterone, but lack of desire, it’s because his body type does not do well with lettuce and cabbage and he thought well, you know that’s good content, vital nutrients, the antioxidant and so on and there’s a lot of before saying that the lettuce and cabbage is good, so I’m gonna have juice every morning, so he did that for one whole year and suddenly he developed erectile dysfunction, he had a lack of desire, he was having regular sex two or three times a week, pretty much without fail, he’s one of those guys that loves regular sex with his wife and that was quite disconcerning because he has such a strong robust body, he almost never catches a cold, he almost never gets sick, he’d almost never built bad, he sells medical equipment, so he travels all over the different time zone and in the airplane, he’s okay with that he likes it.
So he indicates so much of his robustness, and then that being compromised became very disconcerted. Hence, you came over, and we talked, and I said, okay, what he is, what he said would he do this and then identify possibly lettuce and cabbage?
How do I know? It’s because his body type is dry; dry types do not do well with lettuce and cabbage; they don’t do well with all you put up. Some people have an allergic reaction to shellfish; okay, try types aren’t that tight, so I said, you know, just stop taking in those, why don’t you consume foods that are good for your body fat, that’s root vegetables, parsnip, turnip, radish, cassava, taro, beets, sweet potato, those are root vegetables, they’re good for his body type, and I said because it’s he has a warm body type, you should be reducing your turmeric, ginger, cinnamon if you have them; of course see by intuition, if you say yeah turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, they’re probably warming, okay?
What about cucumber, celery, or aloe? Are they cooling mint? Is it cooling? You could tell if you sense that the one food group is cooling. The other group is food is warming, so I said, you know you have a warm Constitution, reduce warm boots and warm foot is chicken too and if you were eating a lot of chicken because you know the chicken is now considered a good quality protein. Just by adjusting that and I gave an Asian herbal formula, it’s called Shi Er Wei Da Bu Tang, which consists of about twelve ingredients and of plant parts, that’s roots, vegetables, and fruits, that the East Asians had identified and put together as a formula and deer antler; deer antler is a little deer like they have antler, so those are the live ones are harvested and according to chemistry is known to contain growth formula.
But really that’s not the point, it’s not about the growth hormone, it’s about what that deer antler does and perhaps there’s probably more molecules within it that helps, but it’s also for a specific body type, deer antler is for dry type only if a damn type takes it, it’s a poison, that’s why the content itself is the second and the higher priority, the first priority of foods and herbs is matching up with that person regardless of what that contains and for a drive type, mushroom, different type of mushroom is quite empowering and yeah mushroom in general is good, also good for other types but it’s especially good for the dry body, so it’s not black and white and it’s gotta be opposite for the other but it could be neutral for one but beneficial for the other, okay and then as what the outcome, he’s erectile-dysfunction completely back to normal within three months and let me see and he was having sex two or three times a week normally regularly and actually he started noticing improvement on a weekly basis since he started this, he didn’t get acupuncture, just change in diet the herbs and weekly he noticed additional improvement by the end of three months, pretty much back to normal, I saw him this week a few days ago, he came back after four months and he noticed the erectile dysfunction starting to come back, so I asked him about foods, I forget what it was, so we had to adjust something, but at the same time just because he’s better doesn’t mean, he’s just gonna be better at times, there’s gonna be fluctuation sliding back indicating that we know where he is at, so then when he has symptoms coming back again then we just nudge it back to the high level of normalcy, that he should be at, so it’s a nice process, first have a lot of improvement and see how he does and then nudge it, nudge some momentum as time passes.
Case studies
Okay here’s another case being female age 48, yeah most of the symptoms gone after four months and this person came in because she was referred by a hand specialist because she broke her hand and she was trying to recover the hand ability, because she needs to go back to work and she uses her hand between the computer and other things and writing and you know, just manipulating things, so that was a high priority for her and then we talked about some things you know how your temper, how’s your pain and so she’s gonna bring me a list that’s what she brought in it’s like, I’m fatigued every day, I have hard time focusing, concentrating, I have a skin eruption bumpy and it’s itchy and it’s all over my body and I have hard time falling asleep or staying asleep and at times I have difficult bowel movement, I have a lot of flatulence gas, my hair is losing, you know, some people they talk about all these different things and at the end you know, my hair is losing and I know like yeah hair loss is the top thing that they want to treat and everything else secondary, anyway you know when a person loses hair that can be quite alarming for a lot of people and the nails they break easily, they don’t look as healthy as before in those two, you know she smokes and she wanted to quit smoking, it’s always been hard to quit smoking, easily irritated angry something happens upset, of course if you’re not feeling well on the inside then, something little happens in your workflow up, okay and then the tongue sticky, sticks by in the mouth and so it was like, it’s just sticking through the roof of her mouth and so it wasn’t a good exchange of fluid in her system, it’s not just digestive or stomach related issues, the whole fluid of the body circulation issue and skin is oily, meaning the skin is like releasing stuff from inside to out perhaps, there’s hypofunction or perhaps she’s eating stuff that she throws out of the body, wants to get rid of something and it comes out oily, she’s not able to relax, of course not, she can’t be comfortable and then she’s going like hair in wrong places, you know why am I growing hair on my chin, on my neck and of course, you know sexual drive, having a lot of headaches, tension headaches and body pain, everywhere hurts and she had dried lips and eyes, indicating not to fluid metabolism again ,eyelashes falling out and she’s just one, she has certain thoughts just can’t stop, she’s in this like cycling of a rut of thoughts over and over again which she cannot control and more complaints neck pain, a back of the head pain, low back pain, she does have arthritis and herniated discs ,so that’s chronic, you know spinal pain too and bursitis in the hip and daily stomach pain and hay fever, allergy, itchy eyes and sinusitis, oh boy which one should we start treating or which one should we target or should we treat everything at the same time?
Yes let’s treat everything at the same time, so she was diagnosed as a worm damn pipe, okay so I asked her to redo some warm clothes, chicken, turmeric, cinnamon, ginger if she’s taking them and some other in warm food and consume cooling foods that would be celery, cucumber, aloe and so on and then damp, being a damn type, she should not eat nuts, so I asked her to be those nuts she should not be consuming dairy, so I asked her to reduce dairy but consume shell fish and a lot of lettuce and for her definitely a lot of cabbage too because it’s good for her damn type, so she came in twice a week for 12 weeks, total of 24 visits and she notice improvement right away immediately and that’s very important, early improvement the better it is because the most important is providing the hope, I’ve had this for so long, I’ve struggled for so much, I tried so many different, I don’t know what to turn to, oh my goodness I’m seeing a little bit of improvement, oh gosh a little breather and then every week the person gets better and better and better so the hope keeps going up and up as the person sees the pattern of improvement that they were looking for in the first place.
NourishDoc: That’s great, Dr. Lee, so we are a bit pressed for time, so maybe we could talk about a couple of quick cases, and then Eknathji has to do his demo as well.
Dr. Lee: Okay, great. Alright, so another person, different type of issue by multiple issues is pretty much the same. The person came in with pain in his upper arm; he’s also a traveling salesperson for a chain of restaurants and wanted to get treated for that. He’s aged 63, and he, in the process of treatment, I asked him to change his diet according to his body type and take herbs for his body type, get acupuncture, so acupuncture was mainly for his aches and pains and then as he changed his diet and took his herbs, his sense of well-being went up, more energy, more stamina, more clarity, not only that the skin itching and allergy that he had since childhood, they got so much better, and this was the most improvement that he has ever seen in his whole lifetime, okay. How is this related to anti-aging? Yeah, even after a certain age, some things can be reversed even if he had it for such a long time, indicating that his internal system is adjusted for the better at the very core level. So there is smoother, better functioning where there is anti-aging taking place. So he was noticing a fatigue discomfort over time, now he’s experiencing reverse cell blocks and general tension and malaise, case four, female age 32, she’s young. Still, she has been eating all the wrong foods; okay, she’s not supposed to have a high protein diet, she’s not supposed to eat dairy and nuts, and she’s not supposed to consume chicken, turmeric, ginger, and so on. I’m not harping on via the turmeric, ginger, it’s beneficial for a lot of, a lot of people, it’s just that for an individual, at times it doesn’t match up and so than this, being age 32 all she had was very, you know fatigue, stomach pain and being tired. Still, nothing else, so that is the beginning of the body is compromised, so when you catch it earlier, the reversal is quicker. The person continues to experience a high sense of well-being. If you addressed that earlier, the person had become even more robust later. Hence, their bodies taking over for anti-aging is more efficient than otherwise.
Acupuncture for Perimenopause
NourishDoc: Great. So this, quickly we will go through this pre-menopause case as well, and then, after that, Eknathji can give a small demo.
Dr. Lee: Yes, female age 51, she was having perimenopause, perimenopause with a lot of hot flashes, feeling a lot of PMS emotionally off, having swings of mood, irritable, anxiety, depression, all this significantly worse because the hormone was changing and this person had chronic depression for 20 years, identified as warm damp Constitution, adjusted diet, you know eat these particular foods are more muscular in medicine or effect for you, get acupuncture. So acupuncture is perfect for reducing hot flashes; think of anything that reduces hot flashes without adverse side effects, there are only a few, and acupuncture is just one of them; excellent safety and benefit; acupuncture reduces hot flashes quite a bit a lot, at a time to eliminate them, there’s a flash last about six and a half here, but when you’re dressed it earlier with the acupuncture, tremendous and when the patient reduces foods that are harmful to the body type, hot flashes reduced too, so it’s fun for them that they could address their own problem just by using diet as their medicine.
