Acupuncture for Anxiety: A Natural Approach to Calming the Nervous System

0:03 Good evening and welcome. 0:06 Thank you so much for joining us for tonight’s webinar, Acupuncture for Anxiety, a Natural Approach to Calming the Nervous System, presented by Ms. Olga Magas. 0:17 My name is Katie Delaney, and I am the Family and Medical Outreach Coordinator for the New Jersey Center for Tourette Syndrome and Associated Disorders. 0:25 I will be your facilitator for this evening. Before I introduce our presenter, I want to go over some housekeeping notes. 0:32 The audience is muted. 0:34 If you are attending the live webinar, questions can be submitted in the questions box at the bottom left of your screen. 0:40 During live Q &A, the audience will gain access to unmute themselves. 0:44 We will stop recording right before this. 0:46 At the top right of your screen, you will see a paperclip icon. 0:50 There you will find a copy of the slides and upcoming events. 0:53 At the bottom of your screen, you will see a react button. 0:56 To the right of it is an arrow. 0:58 When you click the arrow, you will see a few emojis appear such as a heart, a thumbs up, et cetera. 1:04 Throughout the webinar, feel free to use this feature to let our presenter know how they’re doing. 1:09 So can you guys let me know that you found the react button, give a thumbs up or a heart so we know that you guys got it? 1:19 Beautiful, thank you. 1:21 Okay, so for those viewing the webinar recording, you will not have access to these features. 1:26 However, any questions you have for the presenter can be submitted through the chat box to the left of your screen. 1:31 The presenter will answer those questions on our webinar blog located on our website njcts.org under the Programs tab. 1:40 This blog will be monitored until Monday, November 4. 1:42 Any personal information will not be included in the post. 1:47 The New Jersey Center for Tourette Syndrome and Associated Disorders. 1:50 Its directors and employees assume no responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, objectivity, or usefulness of the information presented on our site. 1:58 We do not endorse any recommendation or opinion made by any member or physician, nor do we advocate any treatment. 2:06 You are responsible for your own medical decisions. 2:10 Now, it is my pleasure to introduce our speaker for this evening, Ms. Olga Magas. 2:14 Ms. Magas is nationally certified as a diplomat of Oriental Medicine. 2:19 She is a licensed acupuncturist and a certified practitioner of Chinese herbal medicine in the state of New Jersey. 2:27 Olga received her master’s degree in Oriental Medicine from the Maryland University of Integrative Health. 2:36 She’s also a certified Qigong, I hope I pronounced that correctly, and yoga instructor and a champion of Chinese nutritional therapy. 2:46 She has treated a wide range of conditions, including pain and headaches, stress-related mental and emotional issues, reproductive health concerns, gastrointestinal issues, allergies, and cancer treatment side effects. 2:59 Ms. Magas, the floor is all yours. 3:03 Thank you so much, Katie, for the introduction and for inviting me to present this webinar to you. 3:10 Good evening, everyone. 3:12 I’m happy to be here and share a little bit about acupuncture and what I can do for anxiety. 3:19 Next slide, please. 3:22 All right. 3:22 So I’m going to tell you just a few words about my practice. 3:26 So I have been in private practice since 2014. 3:31 I currently work in Princeton, New Jersey. 3:35 And I have been in this location since 2017. 3:39 Prior to that, I practiced in Washington, DC, in Maryland area. 3:44 And after that, we moved to New Jersey with the family. 3:47 Happy to be here in New Jersey and enjoy working with people here. 3:54 My specialties are, I have three main specialties. 3:59 The first one is the emotional wellbeing. 4:02 The conditions that I most frequently see are anxiety, depression, and stress reduction. 4:09 My second specialty is women’s health and fertility support. 4:13 And I also specialize in pain management. 4:18 As Katie already mentioned, I got my master’s degree in Oriental Medicine from the Maryland University of Integrative Health, which is one of the oldest schools of acupuncture and Oriental Medicine in the country. 4:30 I’m also nationally certified as Diplomat of Oriental Medicine, and I’m a licensed acupuncturist in the state of New Jersey. 4:39 I have over 10 years of experience working with various emotional issues, Specifically, anxiety and depression, those are like, as I mentioned before, the most common issues that I see in my practice, I work with different age groups, from teenage years to, you know, people in their 80s and 90s. 5:05 So I have, you know, wide variety of clients, I do enjoy and I have kind of a special place in my heart for working with young adults because I feel like intervening early in life makes a big difference for someone’s future life. 5:21 So it’s really an honor for me to work with those young adults and be able to help them early in life to make some changes and have a more productive life. 5:34 But like I said, I do work with various conditions and various age groups. 5:42 And we’re gonna move on to the next slide, please. 5:47 All right, so probably most of you are asking yourself a question. 5:50 So what is acupuncture? 5:51 So I wanted to spend a little bit of time, describing acupuncture and some of the fundamental principles that it is based on and also how it works. 6:03 So acupuncture is one of the oldest continuously practiced medical systems in the world. 6:09 It has been used for at least 2 ,500 years. 6:15 Some sources even say that it has been used for like 4 ,000 to 5 ,000 years. 6:20 So it is a really old medicine. 6:23 It’s time tested. 6:24 It has been used and continues to be used around the world. 6:31 It does involve insertion and manipulation of very small, tiny hairfin needles that are inserted in specific points along the body’s meridian pathways. 6:42 We’ll talk about that in a little bit. 6:44 But the important thing here is that the needles that we use in acupuncture practice are very different from the needles you see in the Western Medical Office. 6:53 They’re really hair-thin, small. 6:56 You know, we don’t collect any fluid. 6:57 We don’t collect any blood. 6:59 We just use those needles to stimulate the points and allow the body to rebalance itself. 7:06 The acupuncture is really a non-invasive procedure. 7:10 It’s very safe and effective, and it has become increasingly popular modality of alternative and complementary healthcare in the United States. 7:22 In fact, the National Health Interview Survey showed that the use of acupuncture among US adults more than doubled between the years 2002 and 2022. 7:33 That’s the recent statistics that we have, rising from 1% to about 2.2% of the U.S. population. 7:43 So it’s, you know, many people are trying it and have found it effective. 7:49 So it is a very popular modality, and I wanted to actually launch our first poll and see how many of people in our audience actually has tried acupuncture. 8:04 So why don’t you give me some thumbs up if you tried acupuncture and you’ve seen an acupuncturist. 8:10 And we can see the poll results right here in front of us. 8:33 All right. 8:36 So it looks like we have some people that tried it and some that haven’t, which is great. 8:43 We’ll talk more about it. 8:45 So maybe for some of you, it’s gonna be totally new information. 8:48 And for some of you, you’ve already experienced it and can, it’s gonna be a review for you in some ways. 8:57 Okay, so let’s move on to next slide now, please. 9:05 All right, so we’ll talk about the foundational principles of acupuncture. 9:11 what it is based on from the Eastern worldview, the Oriental medicine worldview. 9:18 We’ll also talk about, you know, some scientific Western scientific research that shows how acupuncture works as well. 9:26 So we’ll kind of look at the Eastern, you know, Eastern view on it and also the Western view on it. 9:33 I think it’s good to kind of look at both to have a better picture of acupuncture and how it fits into the current health system. 9:43 So from the Eastern point of view, what they say is that for good health, what’s really important is to have the balance movement of life force energy, so-called chi, through the human body that is moved via the channels called meridians. 9:59 You’ll see, you can see this little man on the top right corner here with meridians or channels. 10:08 they also, you know, those names are used interchangeably, and then some of the points there on the little men as well. 10:18 So there are actually many like thousands and thousands of points, but there are 14 main meridians that are bilateral, and then they go through the body. 10:30 and so each of the meridians connects to a specific organ or gland and it provides life-supporting nourishing chi to every cell, tissue, muscle and organ in the body. 10:43 So it’s a very complex and interconnected system and it is believed from the Eastern point of view that health is maintained when this life-force energy is full and moving properly through the system and illness occurs when the Chi movement is in some way blocked or this harmonious. 11:03 So we can imagine our bodies to be like a river. 11:07 And you know, over time, as we go through life, and we encounter some stressful situations or difficulties in life, you know, things change in our bodies, right? 11:18 So like in the river, we would have some debris or maybe logs or something that’s blocking the water flow. 11:24 So the same thing would happen in our bodies, you know, we may have some blockages of chi that had occurred due to different circumstances or difficulties that we went through. 11:36 And so in order for us to kind of reestablish the flow and make sure that the water is flowing good or the cheese flowing good through our system, we need to remove those blockages and help to the body rebalance. 11:53 And that’s actually what an acupuncturist does. 11:55 You know, we figure out what the cause is, we find out the root cause of an issue, we find which meridians are affected, we find where the blockage is, and then we work on reestablishing the flow. 12:09 The second foundational principle of acupuncture is that there has to be a harmony between two opposing yet complimentary forces, yin and yang, to support our health. 12:22 So you’ve probably all seen yin-yang symbols and how those two have to work together and be harmonized So it you know, and we live in Duality world, right? We know there is light and darkness. We know there is like cold hot and so on. 12:40 So those are complementary opposing yet complementary Things so it’s same with the health when we talk about the yin and yang energies they are opposing to themselves, but yet they have to work together and be harmonized. 12:55 So if one is deficient and one is vice versa, exceeding its optimal state, then the health will be affected. So we always want to keep yin and yang in balance. 13:08 And the third principle is the harmony of five elements. 13:14 So you probably most of you heard of the five elements, the fire, earth, metal, water, wood. 13:19 And again, they need to be harmonized in the body. 13:23 They symbolically explain the function of the body and how it changes during disease. 13:27 So when person gets ill, usually one or more of those elements gets affected. 13:34 And so there are certain symptoms that arise and an acupuncturist would determine which elements that are affected and bring them back to balance based on the diagnosis. 13:45 And we can move on to next slide, please. 13:53 Right. So now we’ll talk a little bit about the Western research and how it explains how acupuncture works. 14:03 So. 14:05 You know, there are many different theories right now that that are out there, and there is not one that explains it all because acupuncture does help with so many different conditions. 14:16 But the latest research kind of tries to combine the knowledge that they already have. 14:22 and explain how acupuncture can really work both locally and globally in the body. 14:29 Because it’s pretty easy to explain how it would help like a knee pain, for instance, if the person comes for a knee pain, you know, and we put a lot of points around the knee to help the blood flow and help to bring healing to the area, that’s pretty easy to explain. 14:43 But it is much harder to explain how acupuncture helps to calm the nervous system, how it helps with anxiety or a headache, you know, And a lot of times when people come to my office, let’s say they’re coming in for a headache and I’ll be putting points in their feet. 15:00 So the natural question is, okay, why are you putting points in my feet if you’re treating my head? 15:06 And the way it works for acupuncture is that it has a global effect as well. 15:11 So it doesn’t work just locally, but also work globally through your whole body. 15:17 So one of the theories that right now explains it called the interstitial theory. 15:24 So the layer of skin into which acupuncture needles actually inserted is called this interstitium. 15:30 And it is in the past, they the way they looked at interstitium, the researchers, they thought it was just like a connective tissue lining the digestive tract, lungs, urinary system and, and the fascia between the muscles. 15:44 So the latest research, however, that was published in the very recognized Journal of Nature scientific report shows that interstitium is a structured and organized system in the body. 15:58 And instead of it being kind of like a web of densely packed connective tissue, it, it is actually a network of interconnected fluid field compartments, you can see this little picture here, I don’t know how much you can, whether you can see the all the details, but the bottom line is that there are these collagen bundles and in between fluid-filled compartments. 16:19 And so when the needle is inserted into this space, what they’re saying is that stimulating sorenacupuncture points allows this fluid, interstitial fluid to travel through the body. 16:31 And that allows to bring the, like facilitate the transfer of blood, organic matter and electrical signal between the healthy and injured parts of the body and so have a far-reaching effect. 16:42 So instead of just being local, the fact that it actually can affect the whole system. 16:48 So that’s the latest research on that. 16:52 And I think we can move on to the next slide. 16:56 But before we do that, I wanted to just launch another poll and see what you guys think of first, what first comes to mind when you think of acupuncture. 17:38 All right, so needles and alternative medicine. 17:45 Yeah, so I just wanted to see, because a lot of people, you know, don’t know much about acupuncture, so I just wanted to see kind of what things you think about when you think of acupuncture. 17:57 But as I mentioned before, you know, the needles that we use are very different needles, so It’s important to know that. 18:05 That’s why I kind of wanted to cover that in the beginning to remove some of the fear around the needles. 18:12 Okay, so we’re gonna move on to anxiety and how acupuncture can be a very helpful natural solution for anxiety. 18:24 First of all, I just wanted to give you kind of a little bit of a statistics on anxiety. 18:29 the numbers for anxiety disorders are really alarming. 18:35 And they have gotten worse since the COVID pandemic, unfortunately. 18:42 And it is really a big issue in the United States and not only around the world. 18:51 And so, like I said, it’s one of the reasons why you know I actually wanted to talk about this topic is because I think we need to do more education and to let people know that there are natural ways to address anxiety disorders and the earlier we can intervene if we can work with younger people, the people who are still you know either teenagers or young adults and they can get help that could be a big change for their life. 19:27 And we don’t even have to go, you know, like they may or may not need to end up doing the medicated route, depending on how early they intervene and how early they seek help. 19:42 So anxiety disorders currently are the most common mental illness in the United States. 19:48 um 19.1 of adult population age 18 and over um is diagnosed with some sort of anxiety disorder and almost 32 of adolescents between 13 and 18 years old now we need to understand that this these numbers are for diagnosed anxiety disorders actually not just occasional anxiety because you know most people will experience occasional anxiety at some point in their life during a But usually, once that period is over, a person is able to kind of bounce back and feel as normal. 20:23 For people with an anxiety disorder, the anxiety does not go away and can get actually worse over time. 20:30 So although these numbers are really alarming, the good news is that the anxiety disorders are highly treatable. 20:38 And unfortunately, only 37% of those suffering with an anxiety disorder are actually receiving treatment. 20:49 Could be many reasons for that, you know, some people not even aware that they have a disorder. 20:53 For some people, it could be, you know, they may live in certain cultures where there is still stigma around getting treatment for mental health conditions, or they just don’t have access or don’t know about all the options that are there out there for anxiety treatments. 21:12 So Western medicine offers relief in the form of psychotherapy and medication and acupuncture can enhance both of those both psychotherapy and appropriately prescribed medications if used as a supplementary option with Western medicine and In fact, I found the best results that I get in my clinic is if the person who is if they’re coming to me with some sort of an anxiety disorder The best results is if they have both receive both psychotherapy and acupuncture therapy together So if I have a client who comes to me and they don’t have a psychotherapist, I oftentimes recommend that they you know, find one or I refer them out to a psychotherapist and then I work together with that practitioner as needed to help get the best care for the patient. 22:05 And if somebody has a more serious anxiety disorder and they have to be on medication already, that is fine as well. 22:14 They can receive acupuncture along, you know, with using the medication that they prescribe. 22:19 And of course, in that case, they have to be under care of a psychiatrist. 22:24 But anxiety disorders develop from a complex set of risk factors, including genetics, brain chemistry, personality, life events. 22:35 So, you know, it’s really important to take the time and find out what the root cause of the anxiety is, what’s causing it for the person. 22:44 And that’s why, you know, as an acupuncturist and a holistic medicine practitioner, I take the time, you know, to get to know the person, to get to know their health history, and to be able to identify the root cause of the condition before we come up with any treatment plans. 23:03 And we can move to the next slide, please. 23:10 So here are some most common anxiety disorders. 23:14 Again, this is not an all-inclusive list. 23:16 This is just the most common ones. 23:18 So we have the generalized anxiety disorder, which is a chronic anxiety where you have a persistent feeling of warrior dread, which can interfere with your daily life. 23:28 It can be unprovoked for no apparent reason. 23:32 Panic disorder happens to people that have frequent and unexpected panic attacks. 23:40 So, again, panic attacks are sudden periods of intense fear, discomfort, a sense of losing control without clear danger or trigger. 23:50 But not everyone who experiences a panic attack will develop a panic disorder. 23:54 So, again, if somebody just has it one time, you’re in a very stressful event, but they don’t continue to have those panic attacks, they don’t have a panic disorder. 24:03 Social anxiety disorder, also called social phobia, It’s an overwhelming anxiety and self-consciousness during social situations in front of others or when you’re meeting new people. 24:16 Obsessive compulsive disorder is an anxiety which is accompanied by also obsessive thoughts, compulsive behaviors such as excessive hand washing, counting or cleaning. 24:28 And then we have the PTSD, the post-traumatic stress disorder, which is anxiety that develops after traumatic events such as a physical or sexual assault, an accident, or military combat. 24:40 So those are the, like I said, the most common types of anxiety disorders, but there are others as well. We can move to the next slide, please. 24:53 So let’s see how acupuncture can really help with anxiety. How does it really work? 24:59 So again, there’s a lot, it’s been a lot of studies, research studies that are currently done on acupuncture for anxiety and they find out some, you know, the data shows some fascinating data there, kind of that shows what acupuncture can do in terms of like calm in the nervous system and, you know, balancing hormones and all that. 25:27 So we’ll talk in detail on some of these things just so you have an idea of, you know, how much is really out there, and a lot of it is still unknown, but acupuncture can certainly do a lot of things for mental health. 25:44 So the first thing that it does is that acupuncture deactivates the limbic system, which is responsible for anxiety and worries. 25:53 It also stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system to initiate the relaxation response. 25:59 It down regulates the body’s stress response by balancing hormones. 26:05 And it also reverses the effects of stress-induced behavioral and biochemical changes that are triggered when someone experiences anxiety. 26:13 It regulates the release of inflammatory markers and chemicals, which are associated with anxiety. 26:19 So we’ll talk about each of those individually and in a little bit more detail to give you an idea about what’s really happening here. 26:29 So we can move to the next slide, please. 26:33 And next. Yeah. 26:37 So, um, there’s been a lot of, as I said, research, but specifically a big progress is made when they were able to do to use the magnetic resonance imaging um for to see how what’s what happens in the brain during the acupuncture treatment. 27:01 So in the last two decades they’ve done a lot of studies with healthy subjects to kind of understand and see the effect of acupuncture on the human brain. 27:12 And um these studies really showed that acupuncture does two main things. 27:18 The first one is that it deactivates the amygdala and hypothalamus, which are the limbic structures in the brain responsible for regulation and control of emotion. 27:30 And they get activated by stress, pain, and negative emotions. 27:34 So anxiety is a negative emotion. 27:36 So when we experience anxiety, those brain structures get activated in our brain. 27:42 But acupuncture allows us to deactivate those structures. 27:48 And the second thing that it does, it activates the primary, some other sensory cortex, which is the area of the brain that actually allows us to reduce sensitivity to stress and pain. 28:01 So, you know, it does two things that are complementary and are really important for calming the nervous system down. 28:09 First of all, it deactivates the area of the brain that is responsible for control of emotion and activated by the negative emotion. 28:20 And the second thing is it actually activates the area of the brain that helps to reduce sensitivity to stress and pain. 28:27 So both of those things together help to manage anxiety really well. 28:32 Okay, so we’re gonna move to the next slide now, please. 28:41 And we’ll talk about the parasympathetic nervous system and how that helps with the relaxation response. 28:50 Okay, next. 28:54 All right, so many of you probably have heard that when we get stressed, we get into so-called fight-or-flight mode. 29:05 So that’s when our sympathetic nervous system gets turned on and we get into fight or flight. 29:13 So for instance, if somebody were to chase us or we were really scared, then the first thing that would happen, the sympathetic nervous system would turn on and it would trigger certain physiological, emotional changes in our body to allow us to run or escape from the situation, right? 29:32 So that’s called the fight or flight response. 29:35 Now, the parasympathetic nervous system acts like a brake and it is, when we stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, it allows our body to actually go into the relaxation mode. 29:49 Right? So, and if a person is, you know, is under a short amount of stress, then usually the body is able to kind of switch off the fight-or-flight response and go back to the relaxation mode on its own. 30:03 doesn’t need any help with that. 30:05 The problem is that currently, you know, most people are under a lot of chronic stress. 30:11 And so if somebody is also anxious, you know, on a regular basis, you know, they suffer from an anxiety disorder, they are under chronic stress and for long periods of time. And so their sympathetic nervous system is pretty much on most of the time. 30:30 So the body kind of loses this ability of switching off and on. 30:36 So it forgets how to switch off the fight or flight response and go back into the rest and digest mode. 30:42 And that’s where we need to help the body to kind of reestablish that ability to go back into the relaxation mode when the person needs to relax. 30:54 So most of you probably heard of the vagus nerve and how it’s one of the main nerves for the parasympathetic nervous system, and it helps with the brain-god connection, brain-god access, it’s also called. 31:15 And feel free to use the react button to kind of let me know if you’ve heard of some of these things, if this sounds familiar, so I kind of have an idea whether you, you know, how, how the material is, is how you understand the material thus far. Okay. 31:33 So the, the vagus nerve establishes the connection between the brain and the GI tract. Okay. 31:44 And then it also kind of sends the information back from the GI tract back to the brain. 31:50 So it’s kind of this like double connection that is established through that nerve. 31:58 And acupuncture actually helps to influence the vagal nerve activity, and it helps to improve the heart rate, reduce inflammation, and enhance digestive function, all of those things that the vagal nerve is responsible for. 32:13 So when we do an acupuncture treatment, not only we’re helping our bodies to really go back into the relaxation mode and to this rest and digest response and kind of switch off but also it allows us to kind of calm our heart rate so because a lot of people when they’re anxious that they experience the palpitations or you know faster heartbeat it reduces the inflammation in the body and it helps the person with there with any digestive issues that might have. 32:49 So it all happens together because this is what parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for. 32:56 So oftentimes, what I find is that when people come to my practice with some sort of an anxiety disorder, they tell me, well, I’m really struggling with I’m not able to sleep. 33:08 I’m not able to switch off. 33:09 I always feel like not only I’m kind of anxious during the day, but also at night, I wake up many times feeling anxious, or maybe they could be waking up from some scary dreams, or they’re waking up and their heartbeat is really high. 33:27 So there are different ways it can manifest. 33:30 But what it indicates is that their body really cannot switch off that fight or flight response, and it’s kind of always on. 33:39 And it’s very difficult for them to get a relaxing sleep or restful sleep, right? So a lot of times, that’s what we work on first. 33:49 We kind of help the person to be able to kind of switch into that relaxation mode, start to, you know, deepen their sleep, so that they get a restful sleep. And then that allows them to heal. 34:01 And we can work on other issues once that is established and, you know, the sleep is better. 34:09 Yeah, we can move on to Next slide, please. 34:15 So acupuncture also helps to balance hormones. 34:19 And you can go next. 34:25 So as you probably already know, that the stress triggers production of certain hormones, like adrenaline and cortisol, are the most common ones. 34:35 So if it’s a short-term stress, it will likely be adrenaline that’s released, right? 34:40 And if it’s long-term stress, then cortisol is released, Because those hormones help the body to deal with stress Strat chronic stress can also reduce your serotonin levels, which is the hormone associated with happiness and feeling, you know Really? Wow, like have a good, you know feeling happy pretty much can think of it that way. 35:02 Um, so We have increasing cortisol during chronic stress and we have decrease in and serotonin which Kind of leads to people most people kind of feeling a little bit, you know, sad or depressed, you could say. 35:18 So acupuncture can help regulate this hypothalamic pituitary axis and reduce cortisol levels, which can lead to reduction in stress. 35:29 And the second thing it does, it also can help regulate the release of serotonin and dopamine, which play a key role in regulating our mood and emotions. 35:39 So it kind of, again, does two things together that can help reduce anxiety and depression and improve the overall well-being because not only we are you know reducing the cortisol levels which allows us to reduce the stress but it also helps to regulate the emotions and the mood by increasing the serotonin and dopamine release. 36:00 So those two things work together to help the person feel better and you know not only reduce the stress but also deal with the anxiety. 36:10 Can we move on to next slide, please? 36:18 So acupuncture also helps to reduce the change, the effects of the behavioral and biochemical effects that are triggered by anxiety. 36:30 Next slide, please. 36:35 So with the biochemical changes, of course, it’s harder to track those and to do research on healthy or on human subjects. 36:43 So they usually use rats for that kind of research. 36:48 And so one of the studies that they’ve done, they’ve exposed the rats to a variety of chronic, unpredictable mild stressors for eight weeks. 36:58 And then they used a certain acupuncture point on the pericardium channel, which is a pretty common point that used for anxiety and also used for nausea. 37:12 some of you might have seen those like bracelets that you wear around your wrists for people who have morning sickness or motion sickness. 37:21 Some people use those and that’s the point that they are trying to affect with those wristbands. 37:26 It’s called pericardium six. 37:29 So anyway, they stimulated that point on these mice and that actually helped to significantly reduce all those biochemical changes that happened And to to mice when they were exposed to the mild stress stress and also kind of allowed them to restore the The stress induced decrease in and food intake so that what they also noticed is that these mice when they were exposed to mild Stressors, they stopped eating they kind of didn’t have any appetite in want to eat. 38:03 So they started to lose weight But when they were when when the acupuncture was performed in those mice they they were able to start eating again and kind of gain weight and come back to their normal weight. 38:17 So you know both the biochemical changes and the behavioral aspect of it was changed after the acupuncture stimulation. 38:26 So it’s just one of the studies that done I mean there are many more but for the sake of time you know I’m just giving you kind of the little examples of what what acupuncture can do. 38:37 All right, we can move on to next slide, please. 38:42 And the last thing we’ll talk about in terms of the effects of acupuncture for anxiety is that acupuncture can help regulate the release of inflammatory markers and chemicals which are associated with anxiety. 38:57 So next slide, please. 39:00 And some of you might know emotional disturbance can really lower somebody’s immunity right it really when we experience anxiety or depression or any other emotional issue we usually what happens is our immune response get is decreasing is decreased and and oftentimes we have increased inflammation in the body too so there’s you know there is again quite bit of studies that have been done on this, but I’m not sure it has shown to restore immune function when anxiety is present. 39:42 So it helps people to not only kind of overcome anxiety and feel more calm, but also helps to restore the immune function so they’re able to kind of combat any other disease or virus or bacteria that they can be exposed to. 39:57 So they did a research on anxious women and kind of specifically in this case they worked with the women population and they looked at certain immune functions that were affected for these women experiencing chronic anxiety and they when they did the acupuncture treatments they noticed that not only the immune functions was improved, but a lot of those changed immune parameters that usually change during anxiety episodes were also diminished after acupuncture treatments. 40:40 And another important thing here that they noticed is that the most favorable effect of acupuncture on the immune function appeared 72 hours after the session and then it lasted one month after the end of the complete treatment. 40:56 That’s an important point, too, and something that you need to know about acupuncture is that acupuncture has a cumulative effect. 41:05 You know, if we just perform acupuncture once, you’ll get some relief, but you’re not going to get a relief, that long-lasting relief. 41:13 So in order for you to get a long-lasting relief, you really need to complete a series of acupuncture treatments. 41:19 And that’s kind of what the study showed, and there are many other studies that show that too, that if a person completes the, you know, a series of treatments, then they may have a relief in their symptoms for quite a while. 41:32 In this case, it was one month, but in some other studies, you know, depending on what they’re studying, and they’ve shown kind of effects that lasted for months or for even up to a year, you know. 41:43 And so it’s important to know that we can accomplish those long-ranging effects, but We need to get the cumulative effect of acupuncture first and get the full treatment. 41:57 OK, I think we are good with this. 42:01 And I’m going to switch on to the acupuncture care plan. 42:07 It’s just a way to show you what you could expect in terms of if you were to come in for treatment and how many sessions you would need and what kind of stages of care one would go through as an acupuncture patient. 42:27 So oftentimes, the patients that I get, I get patients that come in with a lot of symptoms, right? 42:34 So they come in and they tell me, okay, you know, I feel pretty anxious all the time, or I’m struggling with, you know, I can’t maintain any focus, I’m easily distracted, I’m actions, I can’t sleep normally, I wake up many times or I can’t fall asleep. 42:54 You know, my energy is really low because I haven’t been sleeping and I can’t focus on the task at hand. 43:00 I’m struggling at work to maintain my focus at work or if they’re students, you know, they’re struggling with being able to study. 43:08 So there are a lot of symptoms all at once and that’s what we call the relief care, right? 43:15 So this is the first stages when the person just comes into the door. 43:20 They need help in many areas. 43:23 They have a lot of symptoms. 43:25 And we want to give them the quickest recovery that we know that we can. 43:32 So in order to do that, we need to have frequent acupuncture visits because acupuncture has cumulative effect, as I mentioned. 43:40 So we need to get that cumulative effect as fast as we can. 43:43 So generally I recommend twice per week treatments for the first three to four weeks And that’s the time when we get that cumulative effect and the person really starts to get the relief they start sleeping better They start feeling better the energy comes up. 43:59 They’re able to focus better, you know, their anxiety symptoms starting to subside so, um, that’s that first part now Now, once the symptoms and signs start to kind of, I would disappear, start to get better, we can start to space those visits out. 44:18 And this is called, the second stage is called kind of, we call it the corrective care. 44:22 So we can do once a week treatments now, and it could be for the next four to eight weeks, depending on, again, I’m giving you kind of averages, depends on the condition, depends on the person and what they’re going through. 44:36 But generally speaking, we would do, We will start with twice a week and then we’ll go to once a week and continue to maintain the effects and help and work on getting those symptoms to reduce even further. 44:51 And then at some point, you know, the signs and symptoms are either completely gone or the person feels like really a lot better. 45:01 And the effect of acupuncture is starting to be more, you know, they can maintain it for longer. 45:06 So like, you know, they we can do one treatment and they feel good for the next couple of weeks or so So this is the time when we we we kind of enter in the maintenance and wellness care Where people just come in for tune-ups as needed to maintain their health and vitality Usually could be once per month It could be once or two three weeks depends on the person depends on again on on on their circumstances and how much stress they’re under and all that Um, but generally speaking, um, in maintenance care, it’s once in a few weeks or once a month treatments that are just tuneups, um, to help maintain what we’ve accomplished and to help people, um, you know, to feel better and, and, um, and prevent anything from coming back. 45:57 Right. 45:57 So, um, that’s really a big plus of acupuncture too, is that it is a preventative medicine at its core. 46:05 And, and, you know, if I have a lot of clients that stay with me for, you know, years, because they know that if they just maintain and they come in for tune ups, and they maintain the wellness and health, then they never get sick, then you know, they don’t have big problems to deal with. 46:22 But that’s kind of a choice that, you know, when when you educate a person, and they know about about these effects, and they know they can prevent the illness, that’s the route they choose to do. 46:35 And I find that that’s really the goal for a lot of my patients for me to come to that point where they can just come in for maintenance and wellness care and they don’t have to come in often and they don’t have a lot of symptoms that they’re dealing with on a daily basis. 46:51 So, but that kind of gives you an idea of the progress. 46:54 We start with the relief care, we go to corrective care and then the maintenance and the wellness care, which is the ultimate goal where we want to end up. 47:05 Okay, so we are pretty much ready to start with questions, but before we do that, I thought we could do another, we can launch another poll question for you guys to see what is the most surprising thing you have learned today. 48:09 We’ll open it up to questions, Katie, if you could let me know if there are any questions from the audience. 48:16 Of course. So we have a few questions. So what we’re going to do first and foremost, I just want to say thank you so much. 48:31 We’re going to hop into Q &A. First we’ll ask the submitted questions and then we’ll switch to the verbal Q &A, which is when I will stop the recording. 48:39 So the first question we have, I don’t know if you’ll be able to answer this about recommendations for acupuncture services, but an individual said can you provide a list of recommendations for acupuncture services focus on anxiety in the South Jersey area close to Atlantic City? 49:04 So I practice in Central Jersey so as far as providing actual acupuncture, it would have to be in central Jersey. 49:14 But if you just want a consultation and to kind of discuss what options are out there and what can be offered, I can certainly do an online consultation for a person living in South Jersey. 49:28 Okay. 49:29 And another question we have is, have you observed clients or patients experiencing difficulties in their careers? 49:35 for example, challenges in advancing to better positions over time? 49:43 Yes, absolutely. 49:46 Yeah, I mean, I get clients with, you know, with all sorts of, you know, they go through different difficulties in their life. 49:55 It could be career challenges, it could be challenges with studying, it could be challenges with relationships. 50:03 So, um you know and and acupuncture can be very helpful in terms of um as i mentioned not only helping with the with the anxiety and any kind of you know mental emotional issue that they are going through and experiencing as part of that but also um it helps person to sleep better get better energy. 50:29 And so they’re much more clear about what they want in life, their ability to kind of determine goal, figure out their goals, figure out what they need to be doing, what next steps they need to be taking is much better. 50:46 And I also give my clients different tools that they can kind of use at home to help them maintain that focus to help them feel more clear, to them take actions that they need to take. 51:01 So, you know, I teach breathing, I teach, you know, different other tools that they can use at home that allow them to stay steady and more focused. 51:13 So, in terms of, you know, helping to overcome difficulties with career changes, certainly, you know, it can be very helpful for people. 51:24 And, you know, I’ve had those clients and I had, You know quite a bit of success with helping people make making the right kind of changes for their life Another question we have that was submitted was what would you recommend for someone who has significant trouble sleeping and Has already been taking medications with little to no improvement. 51:51 Yeah, so Insomnia is a very common Concern that I see in my practice There could be many different reasons for it, and of course I would have to talk to that person to see what the actual root cause of insomnia is for them, but a lot of times I get people that, yes, they’ve been on medications and medications are not working for them anymore, or they’re using some sort of natural remedies and it’s also not helping them, but a lot times it’s because they the body just can’t go into this kind of what I was describing that they they they feel constantly on and they can just their body cannot switch off and go into relaxation mode it’s a really a big factor for a lot of people that are struggling with insomnia and so through regular acupuncture treatments we can certainly I can certainly help the person to you know and help their body to reestablish that balance so that they’re able to naturally go into a relaxed state and have a more restful sleep. 52:58 It does take time. 53:00 It’s a cumulative effect. 53:01 As I said, it’s not a one treatment that it’s gonna help with something like that, with the chronic issue. 53:07 The more chronic the concern is, the longer it takes. 53:10 But the good news is that once the body reestablishes that balance and the person is able to sleep again, normally they’re getting a more restful sleep there. 53:19 They don’t have a superficial sleep anymore. 53:21 They have a deeper restorative sleep, which acupuncture helps with, then they’re able to maintain that, they’re able to actually have that without any help of medic, they don’t need to take any medication, they don’t need to take anything else, their body just doing it on its own, because we are reestablishing that balance and allowing the body to do it on its own. 53:41 So and at that point, you know, they just need maintenance treatments to kind of make sure that they don’t, you know, reverse back to the old ways. 53:49 Um, I always also, um, give recommendation to my patients in terms of, um, for sleep routine. 53:56 You know, it’s a really important thing, especially for young adults. 54:01 You know, um, you know, I tell them what time it’s important to go to sleep, you know, what are the best hours to get the most restorative sleep. 54:08 Um, I explained the importance of maintaining the same routine because when we change the time we go to bed every night, you know, the body cannot, you know, it doesn’t get the and it just kind of constantly shifts and we can’t get a restorative sleep that way. 54:24 So we really have to maintain that sleep routine. 54:26 I talk about the importance of not being on the screen before going to bed, at least for an hour, have all the screens turned off, being in a more not a very lit environment where we have darker room or just very low lights. 54:45 So all of those things are important, but certainly the biggest thing that needs to be addressed is that ability of the body to switch from the kind of the stressful mode into a relaxation mode. 55:00 And that’s really where acupuncture plays a big role. 55:05 And then I have one more submitted question, and then we’re going to go into the verbal Q &A. 55:12 So the last submitted question we have is, how do you find a qualified acupuncturist in the Chicago suburbs? 55:19 What credentials should we be looking for? 55:23 That’s a good question. Sure, I can help you with that. 55:28 So what you want to look for is, of course, the person needs to be licensed, but that goes without saying, I don’t think anybody in Chicago who’s providing acupuncture would do it without a license. 55:39 So that’s the first thing. But besides that, you want to look for the national certification. 55:47 So there is an organization, the national organization that certifies, which is called NCCAM, that certifies all acupuncturists and oriental medicine practitioners. 56:00 You know, I have that national certification, and I know that people who have that certification, that means that they pass the national exam, which is a pretty rigorous exam. 56:12 and also they are required to take continuing education. 56:16 You know, there’s a certain number of hours that they take every four years to renew that certification. 56:21 So it’s a pretty rigorous process that’s involved. 56:25 So that’s a good thing to definitely to make sure that the person is nationally certified as well as licensed in the state. 56:34 And then outside of that, you know, you could look for reviews and you could look for the, you know, specific training that the person has, But that’s going to be harder for you as a lay person to determine what what type of training, you know because there’s different different types styles of acupuncture and things that um, you know that you may not be able to be as familiar with but the main thing that I would look for is um, is the ntcom national accreditation certification and also Uh licensure and and training Um Okay, so I’m going to stop here so we have time for the verbal questions. 57:16 The remaining submitted questions will be posted to the blog at njcts.org under the programs for Ms. Magas to answer. 57:23 Those watching the recorded version, thank you so much for attending. 57:26 Please complete the exit survey. 57:28 Our next presentation will be Essential Connections, Navigating a Path to College Success presented by Colleen Daly-Martinez. 57:35 It’s scheduled for Wednesday, November 20th at 7 p.m. 57:38 Eastern Time with the recording following day, Thursday, November 21st at 2 p.m. 57:43 We offer professional development certificates for school professionals and school nurses that attend the live recording of the webinar to register for either time. 57:52 Please visit njcts.org slash webinars and with that I’m going to stop Good morning.