Transcription
Is pain normal? I'm going to tell you a story today about how lucky I am to be here today, to have this opportunity to share what I've learned, my experiences with you all, and thousands of patients every single year. This is a story about chronic pain and a holistic systems approach to our mind and our body. I want you to keep in mind as I tell you this story that every single year, 50 million Americans suffer and endure chronic pain.
But first, let's go back in time. The year is 1989, and they called me Mighty Mouse. I was just a little guy, and I grew up in a small town. And like most of the boys, I played football. Lucky for me, it was a small town because I would have never made the team anywhere else. I'd get all suited up in those pads, I'd be swimming in them, giant helmet. I was basically cannon fodder. Coach Gonzalez would say, "Go get 'em!" Oh, I loved it. It was so much fun.
But still, sometimes enthusiasm and effort cannot overcome the basic laws of physics. And when a little guy goes running into a fast-moving, big guy, bad things can happen. I was only 12 years old, and I was riding in the back of an ambulance. My head was strapped to a backboard, I had a collar around my neck, and I couldn't feel my fingers, and my neck wouldn't move. By the end of the night, the doctor released me, gave me some pills, and sent me home with my parents. I never quit. I played football for five more years. Don't recommend that.
Every single week, I would go to doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists. My neck pain turned into jaw pain, headaches, back pain, shoulder pain. I couldn't even play basketball with my friends without the feeling of nerve pain, of getting electrocuted every time I moved quickly. I'd go back to the doctors, they take X-rays, they look at them and go, "I don't see anything here. It's all in your head."
Now, from the outside, I looked fine, but on the inside, I was the definition of chronic pain. It wasn't just these muscle spasms, neck pain, back pain, headaches. My digestion was horrible, I couldn't concentrate, and my mood was spiraling downwards. My doctor did his best. He gave me antidepressants.
Now, you have to understand, by the time I was in my early 20s, I was a research biologist, and I was publishing in multiple scientific journals. And those opportunities catapulted me to research positions in academia. I worked in government agencies and in the private sector. But still, my mom, who's sitting here today, must have sensed that something wasn't right.
Now, you got to understand that she's a practical lady, and you're not going to get a lot of fluff or woo-woo out of her. When she suggested that I try acupuncture, you kidding me? Acupuncture is make-believe medicine, placebo at best. And I'd been to the doctor enough to know that I don't like needles. I was a skeptic. I was desperate. Desperation won out. So I went to this acupuncturist, and I remember those treatments distinctly because not only did I feel better, my neck pain went away, the spasms faded, you get the idea. But other things happened. My digestion improved, my mood improved, I was able to concentrate.
Those treatments taught me at a fundamental level that science is not about knowing the answers. Science is a process of asking better and better questions. And I wanted to know what was going on with this acupuncture thing. So I took the next most logical step. I bought a plane ticket to Singapore. Now, I had an opportunity to go meet an acupuncturist there, and he ran a busy clinic, and I could see how acupuncture works seamlessly into people's lives.
I took a deep dive. I spent the next 10 years traveling the world. Not the kind of gap year I recommend. I spent the next 10 years traveling the world. I got over 80 stamps in my passport. I met experts from many different perspectives and traditions. I read all the books that were available on acupuncture, and at this point, I've read thousands of research papers on acupuncture alone. Now, the research is fascinating, but acupuncture...
I came back and I noticed that the surveys showed that 98% of Americans had never even tried acupuncture. It was completely obvious that acupuncture had a communication problem. Doctors do not get it. Most patients, they don't get it. And to be honest, it does kind of sound scary. My mission became to translate acupuncture. There's plenty of research out there, but nobody was really having a meaningful conversation about it. I wanted to help more people like my friends, my family, and skeptics like me who otherwise would have never tried acupuncture.
See, the research shows that acupuncture isn't just doesn't initiate just one change in the body. Research from physicians and scientists like Robert O. Becker, look them up, and Michael Levin at Tufts University shows that our bodies are bioelectric. And research shows that when you interact with the body on that level, there's some really fascinating physiologic changes that can occur. And this is all a basis of ions in our body, positive and negative charges. These are the electrolytes that sports strengths have made so famous.
And now, when you look at the research and then you think, well, an acupuncturist uses these tiny needles made of surgical sterilized steel to make physiologic changes, and then you look at the data, you can see that when you read the research, acupuncture sets up a sets up a domino effect in the body. And it has been shown that acupuncture can do multiple things. There's a measurable change in endorphin levels that occur in the body with acupuncture treatments. Endorphins help us feel less pain and it lifts our mood. We've been able to measure changes in how we remodel connective tissue, so people can recover from injuries and accidents. A reduction of stress hormones occur with acupuncture, an increase in melatonin levels, it stimulates the immune system, and dopamine levels and serotonin levels are shown to increase.
Not only that, but research at Brigham Young University indicates that acupuncture can help people overcome addictions. Neurologists and brain scientists have shown fascinating changes in our nervous system, from our peripheral nervous system out to our fingers and our toes, to our vagus nerve, which is one of the master nerves in our body. And changes in our brain are measurable with acupuncture treatments. The brain has been shown to remap itself with that kind of stimulation. Carpal tunnel syndrome, it helps it re-helps remodel the brain by using acupuncture points distally on the nervous system. FMRI studies show that our brains get overactive when people are in chronic pain. Acupuncture helps downregulate that. And the parts of our brain that get overactive when people experience emotional trauma and PTSD, those parts also downregulate.
But maybe you're wondering, what does this all mean in the real world? Well, Andrew Vickers is an Oxford-trained biostatistician, and he and his team must have been asking the same question because because they took the data from over 20,000 individual patients, and they looked at people that had osteoarthritis, neck pain, shoulder pain, back pain, migraine headaches, and tension headaches. Then he took them and divided those 20,000 group people up and put the group that into standard of care. And standard of care is what 98% of Americans choose or have access to in their healthcare, and that includes surgeries, pharmaceuticals, and physical therapy. That's one group. Then they compared that group to the acupuncture group. The interesting thing is is the acupuncture groups not only got better, but they stayed better longer over time.
Acupuncture is used and utilized by the US military more and more, hospitals, addiction recovery centers, professional athletes, and pain management wellness clinics like ours. There are more and more private health insurance plans that offer acupuncture around the country. You can find acupuncture on Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA.
I opened our clinic in Portland, Oregon, to help more people by building a team of medical providers that patients and doctors can trust. At this point, we've provided over 25,000 treatments, but still, only a tiny fraction of Americans have utilized acupuncture. In 2022, only 1.7% of Americans even tried acupuncture. Now, keep in mind, this is at the same time Americans spent $4.5 trillion dollars on our healthcare, that's with a T, in one year alone. The opiate crisis rages on, and it claims the lives of over 100,000 Americans every single year.
This is a yes-and scenario. Yes, we need surgeries. Absolutely. Yes, we need pharmaceuticals. Yes, physical therapy is absolutely necessary. And the research shows abundantly clear that acupuncture can help. Acupuncture has been shown to be economical, effective, and patients report an improved quality of life, not side effects, but added benefits. Kind of interesting.
There are a lot of things that are common in the world, but they're not normal. And I know from my personal experience that pain is not normal. And we all have more healthcare choices available to us. As a medical provider, as a scientist, and as a patient myself, I'm here to encourage you all to keep on asking better and better questions and go find an acupuncturist near you. Find a good one and integrate acupuncture into your healthcare journey. And as for needles, I'm not scared of them anymore. Thank you.