Podcast Interview:
Hello everyone. This is Liz Harvey coming to you from our studios in New York City where we are dedicated to bringing you top quality advice from many of the leading expert professionals across the U.S. In today’s episode we are speaking with chiropractor, Dr. Dennis James, a performance chiropractic clinic located in Keller, Texas. Dr. James is a nationally recognized chiropractor and a member of both the American and Texas Chiropractic Association. He is also a Fellow of the Acupuncture Society of America. Dr. James specializes in family chiropractic care, treating infants to seniors.
Today we’re going to talk about a very important topic:
Acupuncture Without Needles
RC: Hi, Dr. James. How are you today?
Dr. Dennis James: I’m doing great. Thank you.
RC: Well, thanks for joining me.
What is the purpose of acupuncture?
Dr. Dennis James: Well, the purpose and the premise of acupuncture is to actually restore the proper energy flow throughout the body. Basically, what happens is that there are 12 main meridians throughout the body that travel the energy to the different physiologic systems within the body. Whether or not it’s the nervous system, the glandular, the endocrine system, eliminative system, cardiovascular system, it’s all maintained by that energy that allows it to heal over and over again.
Basically, we take the approach to find out is there a spot that has too much energy, too little energy, because if that’s the case, one area is going to be hyperactive as opposed to another area that’s hypoactive. When it stops to work properly because it’s not getting the proper energy flow, that’s where that disc-ease starts to happen, and that produces different disease processes and different conditions. Now when we can approach it from a standpoint of restoring that function back to normal, we start to see those conditions start to go the other direction.
How can you perform acupuncture without needle?
Dr. Dennis James: It’s actually very simple. It goes back to what we were just talking about with the meridians. Acupuncture, the name of it actually got stuck in about the sixteenth century for some Portugal sailors. It’s actually a derivative of what’s called meridian therapy. The entire goal is to balance those 12 meridians through acupuncture, and what that is is those needles, the long needle insertion or short needle insertion, but there’s many different methods that you can actually do to balance those meridians and create the health back to normal. Some of those things are what is called moxibustion. There’s a non-piercing needle called a teishin. You can also do acupressure or micro-current electrical stimulation on the points. As long as you can get the energy flow back to 100% and you can get those meridians balanced, you’re going to be able to produce health for the patient.
For a patient new to acupuncture, what is the typical session like, and how does it feel?
Dr. Dennis James: First and foremost, they’re going to come in and have a consultation with me. It’s very important to know exactly the history of what’s been going on, where their health is at that moment, start to see the patterns of what’s been happening so that we can have a vision of where we’re going. Once we have that, we’ll do an examination, because we need to determine where the energy patterns have been blocked, where they’re disturbed, so that we know how to get that back to 100%. That’s a very simple process.
There are some instrumental findings we can do. There are visual findings we’re going to see, palpatory finding, whether we’re checking the pulse or checking the tongue. Different unique perspectives that you can do through acupuncture and once we’re able to find out exactly where those blockages are and what we need to do to restore it, that’s going to give us an idea of the style of treatment that we’re going to do. In our office, the needleless that we do is almost always micro current which is a form of electrical stimulation or I even like acupressure even more.
What conditions can be improved with acupuncture?
Dr. Dennis James: Well, there are many. Textbooks say over about 2,000 conditions. The reason for that is because you’re not actually treating the conditions themselves. You’re actually restoring health, kind of like we talked about before. Once we get that function back to 100%, the conditions go away because there’s not an environment of disease anymore. Once we create that health by restoring those patterns, a lot of different things can get better. But just a couple of examples would be autoimmune systems we’ve seen improved. We’ve seen sleep and insomnia get better. Asthma, allergy issues that restore. A lot of nerve problems that can get better with what we do and then digestive components, high blood pressure, things of that nature.
Lastly, is acupuncture performed on a patient in conjunction with chiropractic treatment?
Dr. Dennis James: Depends on the case. I’ll tell you, in my office, almost always. You have to take a look at it from two different perspectives. Number one is the energy flow of the 12 meridians. That’s going to determine where that balance is and where we see the energy flow is, is first of all going to tell us hey, what type of acupressure are we going to do or micro-current – what we’re going to do to balance those meridians. But we’re also going to check the number one nerve route component of that nerve flow and that comes from the spinal cord. That spinal cord exits out the spine, so we’re going to take a look and say, hey, if there’s the energy flow that’s blocked there, we’re going to have to get back to that to restore that.
China is where acupuncture was started and then you had Japan and England and some of the main authorities out of there have stated that the spinal adjustment alone, which has been used over there as well, is one of the most important things in restoring that internal disease process. Without it, it could be inviting failure, but from a unique standpoint, if there’s no interference in the spine, there’s not going to be a need for a spinal adjustment, and if there’s no imbalance in the meridians, there won’t be a need for the acupressure. So depending on what it is, if they have an imbalance in both, we’re going to combine the two to get them better as quick as possible. Otherwise, we’re only going to do what’s necessary.
RC: Well, thank you, Dr. James. We know you’re extremely busy, so I just want to thank you for your time and help today.
Dr. Dennis James: Always a pleasure to be on with you.
RC: For our listeners across the country, if you are interested in speaking with the doctor, please visit www.performancechiropractic.clinic or call (817) 337-3636 to schedule an appointment.
On behalf of our team, we want to thank you for listening, and we look forward to bringing you more top quality content from our country’s leading experts.