On Pins and Needles

I paid my first visit ever to an acupunc­tur­ist yes­ter­day — her name is Beth. This was the first time I had ever vis­ited one, and maybe even the first time I had ever come face to face with one. Turns out, they’re not nec­es­sar­ily sadochists who get plea­sure out of inflict­ing pain on peo­ple. In fact, I felt vir­tu­ally no pain at all. A lit­tle prick here, a poke there, and a bit of a sharp pain in my hand, and that was it. I have to admit I flinched when she went to poke one of the pins into the top of my head, but it was unfounded. I cer­tainly couldn’t feel any­thing while I was lying there with the nee­dles stuck into me. It was some­where between an eye­brow hair falling out on its own accord and one being plucked. Cer­tainly way shy of a nose hair being pulled out!

I pent nearly 2 hours at the acupunc­tur­ist, prob­a­bly half of which was chat­ting about nutri­tion! We first sat at a small table in her rather large room and talked about var­i­ous things that were ail­ing me. She asked what I was eat­ing and I pro­ceeded to tell her every­thing, from break­fast to din­ner and late night snack. She was impressed with the amount of whole grains, veg­eta­bles, fruits, and pro­tein I was get­ting. I told her that I was basi­cally vegan these days, after I found out that my cho­les­terol was all out of whack. She asked what my num­bers were, but I hadn’t thought to take my cho­les­terol num­bers. I was quite sur­prised by the amount of time she took to dis­cuss my diet and pro­vide advice.

I learned sev­eral impor­tant things about nutri­tion, and have made some changes to my diet accord­ingly. First, Beth said that sugar, dairy, and gluten all cause inflam­ma­tion. She sug­gested that I try some gluten free breads, or at least go for sprouted wheat breads. Fur­ther, she said any refined sugar is bad and rec­om­mended that I try vanilla fla­vored ste­via in place of sugar or even honey. Agave would also be a good alter­na­tive she said. Sec­ond, I learned that if I were to con­tinue get­ting plain yogurt, it would be bet­ter to get full fat or low fat. The rea­son, as Beth explained it to me, is that if you take all the fat out, you are left with lac­tose which will have a higher con­cen­tra­tion of sug­ars. I  asked if going with a fat yogurt would increase my cho­les­terol, some­thing I was try­ing to reverse. She said that only if I ate a ton of yogurt — small amounts would not make any dif­fer­ence to my cho­les­terol. That was a bit of a reframe for me. Thirdly, I learned that tumeric is really good for bring down infla­ma­tion as are Omega 3 fatty acids (I later saw on the inter­net that Omega 6s help pro­mote inflam­ma­tion, so you don’t want too many of them — and they’re a lot eas­ier to get than Omega 3s, so you bet­ter make sure you take the 3s).

After we dis­cussed my diet and nutri­tion, it was time to be poked. I hopped up on a table that looked like a mas­sage table and lay on my stom­ach plac­ing my face in the round padded loop at the end of the table. As I described, the pins were a non-event. After about 15 min­utes, Beth came back in and placed four suc­tion cups on my back. I heard her light a match or lighter and then she twisted the jars onto my back. And they were suc­tioned on. She explained that they suc­tion the dead cells up towards the sur­face so the body could then ferry them away. After about another 10–15 min­utes, she came in and twisted them back off. When I later took a look at my back, it looked like some­one had smashed beer cans on it really hard, leav­ing four bruised circles.

Over­all, it was a really pleas­ant expe­ri­ence. I was sur­prised with the amount of time she spent talk­ing about my health, nutri­tion, and well being. I think it might have been worth my time and money just for this part of the ses­sion alone. Beth was very atten­tive, took a lot of notes, and radi­ated good health — she was beau­ti­ful in every sense of the word.

Later that evening I went to Whole Foods in Palo Alto to grab the items Beth had writ­ten up for me in a sum­mary sheet. She not only listed all of the foods I should get, she even sug­gested brands. I enjoyed hunt­ing the for the coconut bliss ice cream (made of coconut milk and agave), gluten and wheat free bread (they only had cin­na­mon raisin), and ste­via (i knocked one off the shelf and it broke, leak­ing all over the aisle !). I also grabbed some tem­peh which Beth had said was bet­ter than tofu, since tofu is a very processed food. And I grabbed some seed crack­ers unsweet­ened coconut milk!

So, I cur­rently have a diet that is with­out sugar, gluten, and dairy. I feel good about it. The trick will be to make this diet a habit while I’m at home so when I go back to work and the stress hits, I will have cup­boards stocked with healthy items and a head that knows a num­ber of easy recipes. Beth agreed that I should eat every 3 hours or so and not let myself get hun­gry. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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