Episode #20: Acupuncture with Jim Rohr (Part 1)

Hey everyone! Have you ever had questions about acupuncture, but were afraid to ask? Well, I bring my friend, Jim Rohr, author, acupuncturist, love coach, and volleyball buddy onto today's show!

Jim has been practicing Acupuncture since 2005 working in integrative health centers in Chicago and Miami Beach and is currently in private practice in Brooklyn, New York. In the last few years, he's expanded his presence to online coaching, helping single women working in healthcare up-level their love lives so they can attract amazing partners. His book is called Unlearning Stress and his podcast is called Pleasure Points. 

Find his book, Unlearning Stress here

Also check him out on his Podcast - Pleasure Points!

Here are the show notes for today:

Intro:                            00:01                Hey everyone and welcome to unconventional wellness radio, a powerful and inspiring podcast set to revolutionize and disrupt healthcare. It's trying to put you in the driver's seat and be the force of change necessary for the lifestyle you've always wanted.

Frank:                           00:16                All right. Hey everybody, this is frank. Uh, as you may be aware of, you are listening into unconventional wellness radio. We're also going to go ahead and live broadcast this to Facebook live because we want to make sure that you can see this strapping man right here. His name is Jim Rohr is a licensed and practicing acupuncturist. He actually is also, besides that, he's also a love coach. He's an author and a fellow podcaster. And what I had the pleasure of being able to meet Jim during our incentive trip with doterra essential oils down in Puerto Vallarta every time I say that by the way, I got to go. Lovely. Where co La Yard? No, like we're on a a like we're on a [inaudible] game show or something like that. When we were playing like press your luck cause they always gave out that for night, five days, stay in lovely parts of our yards.

Frank:                           01:07                Uh, but uh, but anyway, I met Jim, we actually, uh, I had the opportunity to play a lot of volleyball and then we just got to chatting about, uh, you know, what I'm calling unconventional wellness and what he's been doing since o five. And, uh, sort of like just, you know, you become like the best of friends and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, by the way, I also do this for a living. And so we had that just been a really great conversation and a, and be able to get to know one another up much better and figuring out what we're doing to really help people get the help that they deserve. And so he, uh, he started working in integrative health back in oh five, uh, with some health centers in Chicago as well as Miami beach by currently he's in private practice in Brooklyn.

Frank:                           01:47                And over the last few years, he's actually expanded is online wellness presence to coaching. And then also helping single women working in health care to actually find individuals that they can actually attract as amazing partners, which is really, really cool that he's doing that. So, uh, he also has a book, it's called unlearning stress and his podcast is called pleasure points and we'll talk about his podcast out, you know, here as we, as we continue with the podcast. But thank you so much Jim for joining us. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here and there. So, um, the, the, the reason why guys for this podcast I wanted to bring Jim on is because, you know, we've been talking about the core four and we've been talking about what I definitely believe in a lot of other integrative health providers believe is the things that we can be doing on a daily basis in order to improve our health.

Frank:                           02:38                And so, you know, it's, it's all wonderful and well and good that we might be using essential oils or we might be using like say hemp oil and we might be using this, what might be using that. But the bottom line is, is that there is no magic bullet. Our body is specifically made to have multiple things come into it as a dynamic environment in order to improve our health. And so, you know, we're talking about great diet, great movements, getting great sleep, reducing your stress and removing the toxins out of your life. And so I wanted to bring on Jim because as a licensed acupuncture, as he brings a special skillset that a lot of you might be able to use in order to be able to benefit your wellness. And so, Jim, if I could, first thing I'd like to talk about is sort of like what is this concept of acupuncture? And then also how does it sort of relates to to eastern medicine and how can we use it here in the United States especially.

Jim:                              03:30                Sure. So acupuncture is part of what we call eastern medicine or Chinese medicine. And, uh, together with herbs and she'd gone, those are kind of the main pillars of the ancient medicine. So it's the main form of healthcare that they've used for thousands of years to treat an entire nation of people. Um, and so what we're talking about acupuncture specifically because acupuncture is become really popular in the u s it's translates easier. Um, you know, it, it photographs, well it shows up on TV. People are used to seeing acupuncture now, whereas the Chinese herbs, it's a little bit harder to get that into mainstream. It tastes bad. They're not like, um, they're, they're bizarre almost, you know, people don't have any kind of familiarity with. So the acupuncture is the part that's become really popular and we use, um, the acupuncture to treat just about everything that might be annoying to you. Um, you know, so the way I like to think about it as if you're waking up and something isn't feeling well, but you don't have to be rushed to the hospital, chances are trying these medicine and acupuncture in particular have a treatment for it.

Frank:                           04:37                Yeah, there's a, I mean cause you know, I'll, I'll speak and it's really kind of great. I have this whole like west meets East West meets east philosophy and a lot of folks who get involved in integrative health care just really we, we use the word integrated because it sounds cool but really let's face it, it's a lot of western practitioners who are adopting eastern philosophies because they weren't. And so we want to really empower patients to be able to understand that they have a lot more capability and understanding and then really honestly give themselves credit for, I often say to my patients, I was just telling Jim before we started this podcast and this, this Facebook live is that, you know, I've, I've told patients like, you know, I would essentially want you to kind of fire in me and not because I'm a bad pa, but because of the fact that you will become so healthy and these conversations that we've had have become so good that you are so empowered that you just only need to know, maybe come see me for yearly checkups or maybe when you get actually sick and we need to give you a dose of antibiotics or something like that.

Frank:                           05:36                So, um, it's really great that you're doing that. I actually saw, um, one time, Jim, I saw a really cool, gosh, I don't even remember if it was discovery channel or what, but it was like, it just showed the Chinese men and women walking into the pharmacy, you know, in China. And they just say something like, my head hurts and this is going on and this is going on. And the, the folks back there with the herbs just would make them like they get out a piece of wax paper. Yeah. What, like different herbs. And so how do they do that? Like how do they know what to use and the ratios and all that kind of stuff.

Jim:                              06:12                Yeah. It's amazing what I worked in the hospital in China. I was in Chengdu, which is the western part of China. Um, in the ward in the hospital. You know, some would come in, they'd meet with the equivalent of I think, uh, like some kind of nurse who would listen to what their issue was and then tell them which ward of the hospital to go to. And if they went and got herbs, they would get a prescription. They visited with the doctor who would hear their symptoms, ask some questions, and then write out the formula. And this based on, again, thousands of years of knowledge has been passed down and studying formulas and um, you can think about them like recipes, you know, um, an individual or would be like giving someone a bag of sugar and then a full formula. It's like baking a cake. So there's a, there's more elegance to it. Um, and then they take that formula and they'd go down to the equipment of the herbal pharmacy, which is this massive room that has, you know, Florida ceiling herbs everywhere. And 20 minutes later they've got all these, um, twigs and leaves and berries and stuff in that wax paper. And then they take it home, cook it, and drink the sludge.

Frank:                           07:13                Yeah. Most of the time, I mean, I guess I just learned something new, is that I thought that they make it into a tea, but I guess they don't

Jim:                              07:20                do that normally, right? Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah. So they would take it home and cook them. They would cook it in the pot for an hour or two hours and they'd make it see, um, there's, there's different ways of making them. Now there's some more advanced stuff. And um, most of the ways, I mean, honestly since I've been using Doterra, I don't even really use the Chinese serves any works. I think the essential oils are so good, it's so effective and um, they transport really easily and I smell nice. Like the whole experience of the Doterra is amazing. Um, so I've really, I've really stopped, pretty much stopped using the Chinese herbs in my, in my practice because I just prefer the doterra. Yeah. When I was giving him, we'd given a pill form. So the company will take the raw herbs, make it in a tea, um, and then they would compress it in pills so that it's easier for the patient to take.

Frank:                           08:05                I know. And that, and that weird that we have to actually do that. Like we've just gotten so used to like having our, our medicines either in the liquid format, if you're a kid versus a capsule format. If you're an adult, you just, here's, here's, here's if I may say something about that, because of the fact that, you know, when we talk about plant based medicine, essential oils are wonderful because they're getting the large, you know, therapeutic value in therapeutic benefit of the plant itself. But talk to me a little bit Jim, about like full plant based medicine when it comes to full spectrum and getting like the entourage effect of like, you know, getting all of the bits of the plant rather than just maybe just one or two portions of it instead. Yeah, the idea is that,

Jim:                              08:47                or it's kind of made everything perfect before us. And so that's part of what I love about Chinese medicine with the theory of eastern medicine is that they took a look at nature and said, okay, what's happening in nature? It might also be happening in us. And so when you see an acupuncturist, we might talk about how someone has too much heat or too much cold or too much stamp inside their body. And so they're taking the same principles out of nature and then saying, okay, well that might also be happening here. And so the really the focus is on like to promote healing is to say, okay, what is the environment that this person is in? Um, and the same thing when it comes to the plant medicine where if we just try to isolate one active ingredient or one compound, we're missing all of these other flavors that are in the whole plant or the root or the stammer, whatever, that, you know, they had this great phrase for this, this term for it called inactive ingredients. And it's like, no, it's not an inactive, you just haven't figured out what it does yet. There's some part of their that might help assimilation might help counteract the toxicity. Um, and so that whole approach, it's just like eating whole foods, you know, it just makes more sense. Um, then focusing on isolating a specific compound.

Frank:                           10:00                Yeah, I mean like, just basically like if I eat an apple, how many times have I been told to eat the whole apple? Yeah, like flushing everything because that's going to do a lot more benefit from my body. Then just simply trying to get the little cute apple slices that have all of that taken off. Right? Yes. Yeah. So that's how it works. And so like the concept that I have tried to explain to people is that's called the entourage effect and it's very important that there's so many different vital constituents. Like we only have scratched the surface probably with plant based medicine is that there's so many wonderful turpines and monoterpenes in there and just so many different other beneficial compounds that that if we try to isolate and we might be having a problem. So that's why we really like essential oils as well because they are like typical kind of whole plant based medicine.

Frank:                           10:47                They, they end up actually getting you like the best of those compounds. And those compounds themselves all interact very well. Like just for example, lemon essential oil, you know he got limonene in it, but then it has other constituents in it as well that actually enhance the function of limonene and so a and so although they may not necessarily tastes great, we know that they're good for you and there's plenty of teas that we can make out of that. So I always, I always loved herbal medicine and my wife, if you didn't know it was actually an herbalist as well. She actually went back home. She studied there for two years and now she's teaching me a bunch of things that I absolutely did not know. We have a lot of different things that she's been able to use, so all right, well I am now your patient if you don't mind and a bit trepidatious because I've heard that acupuncture is, it involves you poking me with a bunch of needles and I don't know if that's going to be harmful or helpful or just a waste of time if you will. So I'm going to give you the, the typical classic somebody comes in. I have no idea. Mr Jim, I'm here with uh, you know, I say back pain pain and I'm stressed

Jim:                              11:54                out. So I mean I asked that you would kind of think about a typical session for me, what you would do for our listeners. Sure. So the first thing that I'm going to do is ask you a bunch of questions. Well, there's always paperwork. So you've got to do the paperwork, you know, and then we'll be asking you a bunch of questions. Um, you know, the, the basic kind of history and intake. When did it start, what happened, what are your symptoms like all of them. And as you're talking, a lot of times clients now they'll come in with a western diagnosis too. There'll be like, well, I, you know, the doctor says I have a herniated disc and the doctor says it's tension headaches or whatever. And I care about that because it helps to give me an understanding of what this person's been through.

Jim:                              12:29                And at the same time, I don't really care about it because I'm trained in this whole entire medical system of Chinese medicine. And so I'm listening to everything that you're saying. And I'm translating that into my head and say, okay, if this was 2000 years ago, what would we be saying about you? You know? And so that helps to meet for me, uh, as a licensed acupuncturist to keep this distinction between, you know, I don't want to just be using acupuncture to chase a western diagnosis. I want to be able to use the full breadth of the wisdom and the history and the lineage of Chinese medicine. Awesome. The treat you really, really well. And that's one of the ways I think that's one of the places that acupuncture really needs to, um, where our lobbyists need to do a better job of advertising us, is that if people have been given a diagnosis that's difficult or, um, might seem like it's going to go on forever.

Jim:                              13:18                One of the things that an acupuncturist can do for you is really reframe that we're gonna look at you with new eyes. And so I don't really care what kind of prognosis of Western doctors given you. Like, I'm not at Western document, I'm going to be looking at you with a different Lens, you know? Um, same kind of thing with the doterra stuff. I know I keep coming back to it because that's where I met you, but it's like you're introducing new opportunities there for the body to experience that it may not have ever experienced before. Um, so anyway, so I'm going to be asking you questions. You're going to tell me what's going on and then eventually I'm going to have you get on the table when you're on the table. I'm going to do, most acupuncturists are going to do two main types of physical exam.

Jim:                              13:56                The first one is feeling the pulse and so we're going to feel the pulse on both wrists and we're going to feel it with different pressure. This is one of the things that's crazy about acupuncture is that when we're feeling the pulse, it's not just feeling for speed, it's feeling for what we call the quality of the pulse. And so Chinese medicine talks about there was like 32 different types of pulses. Wow. Um, so the, my favorite descriptions are one of them is going to feel winery. And so a why repulse feels like a guitar string. So if you've ever felt like the, you know, it's got clearly defined edges, it almost can feel kind of sharp, like the height eastern on a guitar. Uh, another policy is going to feel slippery. So this is when you feel someone's pulse under three fingers. Uh, the description of that is it feels like a pearl in the dish.

Jim:                              14:44                So when you put a little bit of pressure on the pulse, it'll feel like it rolls out underneath you. Interesting. Okay. If you find woman who's pregnant who was like seven or eight months writing it and you feel her pulse, um, most likely her pulse is going to feel rolling and that's totally healthy for her. But if I were to feel that in a 19 year old who is suffering from bloating and, um, you know, chronic digestive issues, then that would be a sign of imbalance there. So we're feeling, we're feeling the pulse and then the other diagnosis that we're going to do, um, or kind of exam is going to be looking at the tongue. So the tongue also gives us an idea as to how someone's chi or energy is flowing. Um, so that the tongue stuff is crazy. I didn't have any pictures here now, but, uh, a healthy tongue is nice and pink, no cracks.

Jim:                              15:27                The coating is like thin and white. It just looks really good. And imbalances that we'll see in the tongues looked like a crack. Oftentimes in the middle, sometimes the tongue is really swollen. There can be huge tooth marks on the side. Sometimes there's a really thick nasty looking tongue coating. Everything from thick, white to yellow. I've even seen blacks on coatings and so, you know, those are the two things. So those are key parts of our assessment that help us to choose which points we need to do for, for you, for client. Okay. So based on then, um, I don't know, I mean like I'm just going to try to keep you on your toes if that's okay and not only, only in the, the best of interest for you is that, I don't know. I guess I got a relatively healthy looking tongue and uh, you know, at least according to you I guess.

Frank:                           16:16                And then, um, I would say that, you know, my pulses, you know, something that might be consistent with somebody who's in chronic pain, something like that. So what, what, what should I expect and lay down under your table and what, what kind of ideas come to mind about how you would start maybe treating me in, in your office? Yeah, so the basic premise is that when somebody doesn't feel good, their energy or what we call it, she has been blocked. And so we say that when someone is healthy, the chi, there's a lot of it and it flows really easily. So if someone's coming in, usually they're coming in because somebody doesn't feel well, especially if it's the first time. It's rare to have someone coming for the first time and they're just like, everything feels great. I just thought I'd try it out here, you know, usually some external.

Jim:                              16:59                And so I said, okay, where might that, where might that blockage B, you know, so it's my job to know the acupuncture points, to be able to take your experience of symptoms, taking information that I feel in the pulse and the talk. And then of the 360 some odd acupuncture points in the body, it's my job to know where that energy might be stuck for you. You know, like for instance, someone might have, let's say there's headaches, you know, um, someone might think, well, you have headaches, we've got to be just a bunch of needles in your head. There are some points in the head that we might do, but some of the best points for headaches are in the hand and in the feet, you know? And so it's Kinda, the way I like to think about it is there's the Meridian sees or pathways through the body where that she floats.

Jim:                              17:44                So if you've ever seen a picture of like in Chinatown of, of, um, of man who's got lions everywhere, all over him, those are the acupuncture meridians, those are the pathways where the energy flows. So it's a unified system that explains how energy goes up, down, left and right through the body. And so some of the Meridians will go from the feet all the way up to the head. And you know, so you might be experiencing discomfort in your head, but the place where the energy might be the most stuck is in the seat. And so by putting an acupuncture needle into that point, we're basically clearing away the accidents, like a tow truck that removes the stagnation. And then once that's removed, all of the energy starts to flow again. Where before there was grid lock, now there's movements, and then once there's movement, the body's in a better position to heal itself.

Frank:                           18:33                Okay. Awesome. So how many then like sessions like, I mean, I know everybody's going to be different, but do you know how many sessions somebody would have to normally undergo for some?

Jim:                              18:46                Yeah, so in China they talk about a course of treatment is 10 visits and in the hospitals and trying to, you come in every day or every other day until you felt better. Um, so that's a lot of treatment and a short period of time. Typically in the U s we don't treat that way. Part of it is, you know, cost, part of it is, um, it's just not built in into the mentality of people that come in that often. So oftentimes I'll see someone maybe twice a week in the beginning, maybe three times if something is really urgent. Um, so the, the best course of treatment realistically is going to be twice a week for the first three or four weeks. And then we like to space it out maybe once a week after that until there are consistently feeling better. Usually my clients will start feeling a lot better after apple, hopefully after the first treatment.

Jim:                              19:31                But oftentimes after, you know, two, three, four treatments, obviously it depends on what the rest of their lifestyle is. Like if they're overweight, they're not taking care of themselves, they're eating a crappy diet, they have very little support at home or they're dealing with loneliness and isolation. They're getting a lot more treatment to get them into a place of balance. But everyone else, if the, if they've got a lot of other kind of healthy lifestyle things in place, um, sometimes just a little bit of treatment is enough to kind of give them that nudge. You know, it's like you clear the accident in the way and then assuming there's no more accidents, everything's going to keep flowing really well. But if someone's living a hard lifestyle or if they have a relationship, it's not going well or work is tough. It's really easy for the body's energy gets stuck again. So then we have, you know, we keep going through it.

Frank:                           20:17                I love that you said that. It's almost like you like read my mind and segway to us and then the next section, which was, you know, coming back to this magic pill concept again is that like, you know, if, if you are coming to see you and I'm thinking that you can help me fix a problem, then yes. I mean nutrition is crucial. Let's talk about your stress. Let's talk about how you're sleeping and things like that because, um, please stop me if I'm wrong, but can't sleep. And like a really big, like you know what you're talking about. It's a really big block and it can cause a lot of issues in the body that might need to be addressed with acupuncture. Yeah, for sure. I mean if you're not sleeping well, we know that that this regulates the hormones in the body. It leads to obesity, you know of course can lead to depression and all sorts of, you know, it's also just sucks to be tired all day.

Frank:                           21:07                Agreed. And we know that sleep and stress, the reason why, the reason why I talk about in the reason why a lot of integrative health providers talk about it is because they're pretty much very core like you know like like sleep will usually increase your stress and then because of the stress being increase, you reduce and you don't get as good of quality. Restorative sleep would, you can so and so sorry, go ahead and see if they start adding substances where they're starting to self medicate Bob in the morning and then coming home and they need to have some alcohol or something. That's a bit of a doubt. I didn't counteracting deputy and that bringing it all day, you know, then you just keep going into that movement and you know, yeah, no, I, I completely understand that. And there's unfortunately a lot of folks that might be actually listening to this podcast right now who they need the coffee to pick themselves up and then they need that.

Frank:                           21:54                They need something to slow them down at night. And that's why it's also extremely important. I just did a, I'm doing a class right now about 16 different ways to reduce your stress because, nice. Yeah. If you don't, if you don't have, if you don't have a way of reducing stress, let's face it, sleep. We'll constantly allude you. All right. We'll go ahead and stop it right there for this week. But please catch part two of my interview with Jim Rohr, a licensed acupuncturist out of state of New York and we are really going to dive in and some other great things. Next week, we're gonna to continue to talk about, uh, ways that you can improve your house, what acupuncture is all about, and some really great ways to be able to improve your health and wellness. So please stay tuned. Part two is coming to you next week. Take care now and we will see you again, man. Bye. Bye.