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Does acupuncture work? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know?
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Speaker 1: From house Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant's
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Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven and this is Stuff you Should
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Speaker 1: Know two thousand eleven, our first one. Man. We've been
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Speaker 1: doing this for years, like four seven, eight years something
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Speaker 1: like that. I think it's our twelfth year. Yeah. Overall,
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Speaker 1: we've been doing it since ninety there, since everybody's worried
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Speaker 1: about black helicopters. Yeah, and that was our our second podcast,
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Speaker 1: I think was on the Y two K bug, wasn't it?
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Speaker 1: It was? Didn't that pan out to be almost nothing?
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Speaker 1: You know? The iPhone has a bug like a Y
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Speaker 1: two K bug that's left over if Yeah, apparently that's
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Speaker 1: a a Y two K grandkid. Well, I think if
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Speaker 1: you're depending on your iPhone to wake you up, and
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Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't use anything, but we'll look
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Speaker 1: at you. So two thousand eleven Man Future Man Omega
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Speaker 1: Man Chuck. Yes, have you ever heard of a little
1:14
Speaker 1: condition called amblyopia? No, Amblyopia is also unfortunately referred to
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Speaker 1: as lazy eye. Yes, yes, and um. I used to
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Speaker 1: have a friend in college named Grant, and Grant Um
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Speaker 1: did not have amblyopia unless he had been drinking. And like,
1:34
Speaker 1: you could tell how much Grant had drunk depending on
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Speaker 1: how pronounced this amblyopia was. And I didn't know. I
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Speaker 1: knew Grant for a while before I finally noticed this,
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Speaker 1: and it was surprising when I finally did, and he's like, yeah,
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Speaker 1: it happened sometimes. Did you ever take English from that
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Speaker 1: guy at Georgia that had the Michael Jordan's It wasn't.
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Speaker 1: There was an English teacher named Michael Jordan and he
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Speaker 1: had a lazy eye, and like on the first day
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Speaker 1: of class he said, this is the eye that's looking
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Speaker 1: at you, just to clear it up, because his was like,
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Speaker 1: as my friend Guy called it, a disco eye. It
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Speaker 1: was way out of whack. Yah. See, I have a
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Speaker 1: soft spot for people with strab SMUs, which is any
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Speaker 1: kind of um, you know, walleye, lazy eye, cross eyed, disco.
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Speaker 1: I've never heard that one before, but the same thing, right.
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Speaker 1: I actually wrote a pretty cool blog post on it once.
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Speaker 1: You should check it out. Strab SMUs Blogs at house.
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Speaker 1: Stuff works, it should bring it up, right, but chuck. Um.
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Speaker 1: I recently ran across an article that showed a study
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Speaker 1: of kids age seven to twelve years with amblyopia, right,
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Speaker 1: were cured of their lazy eye through acupuncture. Yeah, and
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Speaker 1: this is a This is an accredited article in the
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Speaker 1: Archives of Optimology, which is a publication of the American
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Speaker 1: Medical Association. And basically they had a control group, which
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Speaker 1: was kids who had their eye patched their I guess
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Speaker 1: dominant or good eye, non lazy eye patched for two
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Speaker 1: hours a day, which I guess kind of forces the
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Speaker 1: lazy eye to correct itself. That's the pretty standard treatment.
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Speaker 1: Or the other group, Um, we're given acupuncture five times
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Speaker 1: a week. What a cruel study. We're gonna fix you kids,
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Speaker 1: but we're hoping you don't show any improvement. You you
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Speaker 1: would think so, but get this. The kids who had
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Speaker 1: their eye patched, Um, sixteen point seven percent had their
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Speaker 1: ambiliopia resolved. Forty one point five percent had their ambiliopia
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Speaker 1: resolved in the acupuncture alone group. What was it again,
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Speaker 1: sixteen percent? That is huge, huge, um. But you'll know
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Speaker 1: my my incredulousness. Yeah. Um, when I was saying, no,
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Speaker 1: this was published in a respectable journal. Right. That's because
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Speaker 1: this podcast was recorded in the West. Eastern medicine is
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Speaker 1: still poo pooed in many circles around here, it is,
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Speaker 1: but with acupuncture specifically, this is one of those um
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Speaker 1: those things that has made the crossover largely into the West,
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Speaker 1: and it kind of has you know, Western thought puzzle
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Speaker 1: a little bit, like what's going on with this um
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Speaker 1: And there's what let's talk about both approaches to acupuncture,
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Speaker 1: like explaining what's going on because one of the um
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Speaker 1: the predominant thoughts about uh acupunctures that it works somehow. Right, So,
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Speaker 1: if you're Chinese, Chuck, how does acupuncture work? If you're Chinese, Josh,
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Speaker 1: you believe that your body has the Yen and the end,
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Speaker 1: a couple of opposing forces, and that your body has
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Speaker 1: a an energy uh running through it called Chi even
4:41
Speaker 1: though it's spelled q i, and that when your body
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Speaker 1: is in balance, and we've talked about balance and homeostasis
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Speaker 1: and all that and in the East, then you have
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Speaker 1: good chi energy is flowing. When things get blocked up,
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Speaker 1: that means your che is blocked. That means the end
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Speaker 1: and the Yang fall out of balance. And that means
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Speaker 1: you get to right and your energy flows along pathways
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Speaker 1: in the body called meridians. Right, Yeah, you've got to
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Speaker 1: think a dozen of them from point to point. We'll
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Speaker 1: get to the acupoints later. But uh so they well,
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Speaker 1: let's get to him now. The acupoints are there's two
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Speaker 1: thousand of them later, Okay, I'm just kidding. Along these
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Speaker 1: fifteen meridians, there's I think twelve meridians. I'm sorry, there's
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Speaker 1: a total of two thousand little points. And these are acupoints.
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Speaker 1: And someone correspond to like that part of your body,
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Speaker 1: and others correspond to others. And like you said, we'll
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Speaker 1: get into a little a little more later on. But
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Speaker 1: the point being, energy flows along these meridians. It can
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Speaker 1: get blocked at these points. If you manipulate these points,
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Speaker 1: the chief flows freely and yin and yang are balanced.
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Speaker 1: And you may have a bad tattoo as a stimulate
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Speaker 1: stimulate these points, and there's lots of ways to do that.
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Speaker 1: Well wait, wait, what happens if you are in the West.
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Speaker 1: How does acupuncture work well in the West, They would
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Speaker 1: say that it's uh stimulates the central nervous system releases hormones,
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Speaker 1: arrow transmitters boost the immune system, dull's pain, stuff like that.
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Speaker 1: So you know, the same thing, the same result, two
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Speaker 1: ways of explaining it, isn't it. Yeah, Yeah, that's what
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Speaker 1: I think. So, Chuck Um, you mentioned that this is Chinese,
6:15
Speaker 1: didn't you ancient Chinese? Right? Where did it come from?
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Speaker 1: How long has it been around? Well more than years
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Speaker 1: in China. And it's rooted in Taoism, which is all
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Speaker 1: about harmony between the humans and nature and the earth
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Speaker 1: and stuff like that. The yin and yang again, can't
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Speaker 1: have good without bad, light without dark, all that, all
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Speaker 1: that good stuff. And if you have too much of
6:36
Speaker 1: one or the other, you either can't see or you
6:38
Speaker 1: can't see. Yeah, too bright or too dark, either way
6:41
Speaker 1: you can't see. Right, It's true. I think that they said.
6:45
Speaker 1: The first place it appeared in text was in uh
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Speaker 1: the Nijing, which is the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal
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Speaker 1: Medicine by Hwangdi. I like, how to sink the Chinese
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Speaker 1: are in their language? Yeah, me too. Two words for
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Speaker 1: Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal medic to one syllable words,
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Speaker 1: and that's at a three hundred BC, And he described
7:07
Speaker 1: Hwang describes diseases, and it was, from what I can tell,
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Speaker 1: one of the first medical books to actually be written.
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Speaker 1: And he described various acupuncture points in this book, so
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Speaker 1: boom there it is. Then about five hundred years later,
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Speaker 1: um acupuncture is completely laid out in this twelve volume
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Speaker 1: text called the um zen U g Xing, The Comprehensive
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Speaker 1: Manual of Acupuncture and Maxibustion. Yeah. I didn't know about maxibustion.
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Speaker 1: We're getting into that. That's kind of cool. But this
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Speaker 1: Comprehensive manuals like I said, it's twelve volumes and it
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Speaker 1: basically says like this point here will do all of this.
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Speaker 1: You've got this problem right right here, right, and but
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Speaker 1: there's only three d sixty five ACU points early on,
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Speaker 1: one for each day of the year. Yeah, and then
7:55
Speaker 1: eventually like this just stupid, there's two thousand. Let's just
7:58
Speaker 1: come out and say there's two thousand. Right. I wonder
8:01
Speaker 1: if the twelve Meridians had something to do with the
8:03
Speaker 1: twelve months, maybe so, or the twelve days of Christmas,
8:08
Speaker 1: or the twelve signs of the zodiac perhaps early on.
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Speaker 1: Instead of needle while they were needles, but they were
8:14
Speaker 1: made from stone and bone, which probably wasn't want of fun,
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Speaker 1: so they decided we should probably use metal like bronze
8:20
Speaker 1: and gold and silver, and that worked for a little
8:23
Speaker 1: while these days of stainless steel, thankfully. And now that
8:27
Speaker 1: you mentioned that, it occurred to me that we never
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Speaker 1: defined acupuncture. Oh, everyone knows what it is, right. I
8:33
Speaker 1: thought everyone knew a roller Derby was all right. Acupuncture
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Speaker 1: is a a Eastern medicine where they're small needles are
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Speaker 1: stuck into various points of the body and manipulated in
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Speaker 1: certain ways or not. And because you're living today, those
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Speaker 1: are a little tiny stainless steel, hair hair thin needles,
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Speaker 1: not like knitting needles or anything, not like a bone. No,
8:55
Speaker 1: but it was at a time I already said that. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Uh so in the nineteenth century, early nineteenth century, uh,
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Speaker 1: people started going to China and were introduced to acupuncture,
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Speaker 1: brought it back to the West in Europe to a
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Speaker 1: certain degree in the course of doctors in Europe, probably
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Speaker 1: before the doctors in the United States were like, hey,
9:14
Speaker 1: this is kind of neat, let me experiment around, especially
9:17
Speaker 1: in France with George Soule de Moron. Yeah, he was
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Speaker 1: like the champion of acupuncture in the West. He went
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Speaker 1: to China. He's a scholar. Um, he went to China
9:29
Speaker 1: at the turn of the twentieth century, which means the
9:32
Speaker 1: eight hundreds of the nineteen hundreds. And he saw firsthand
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Speaker 1: that acupuncture worked, and um, he brought it back in
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Speaker 1: championed it in France. In France actually came up with
9:44
Speaker 1: their own type of acupuncture. I bet us because of him, Actually,
9:48
Speaker 1: I would think so, because he was probably the first
9:50
Speaker 1: dude to get it going. Are we gonna we're gonna
9:53
Speaker 1: talk about that now. You want to skip on to
9:55
Speaker 1: that later, We'll get to it in a second. Uh.
9:58
Speaker 1: Then it eventually, like all things made tway to the
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Speaker 1: United States. Um. And the article that said President Nixon's
10:03
Speaker 1: visit to China was a big deal as far as
10:07
Speaker 1: introducing a lot of Chinese ways to the States, it's
10:10
Speaker 1: like China fever. Yeah, in the first blast of China fever. Right.
10:14
Speaker 1: And then in the U s. There's a guy named
10:16
Speaker 1: James Reston who um writes for the New York Times
10:19
Speaker 1: where he did and he had a appendix to me, Well,
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Speaker 1: he had appendix surgery, which I'd take to be appendix
10:26
Speaker 1: to me right. Um, and uh, he he got acupuncture
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Speaker 1: to treat um his pain and it worked, and he
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Speaker 1: wrote about it, and this is the first mention. Now
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Speaker 1: here we are today, right here we are. Um, it
10:39
Speaker 1: is viewed as a legitimate medicine. Right. Yeah, I've got
10:43
Speaker 1: a stat that says, uh, twenty million Americans have undergone acupuncture,
10:47
Speaker 1: which is a lot higher than the article, but it
10:49
Speaker 1: may just be more recent, right because that was the
10:51
Speaker 1: two thousand two National Health Survey. Yeah, and the FDA
10:54
Speaker 1: said that Americans spent a half a billion dollars in
10:57
Speaker 1: the nineties alone on acupuncture. That was the nineties. You know.
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Speaker 1: Now people are all cookie for this kind of stuff,
11:03
Speaker 1: so it's probably even more I would think so, not
11:06
Speaker 1: the cynical nineties. It was also legitimized six um when
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Speaker 1: the f d A decided that UM acupuncture needles should
11:15
Speaker 1: be considered uh medical instruments. Yeah that was a good thing. Yeah.
11:19
Speaker 1: It makes the whole process a lot safer now because
11:22
Speaker 1: you have to use sterile needles, right, um or or
11:27
Speaker 1: they have to be sterilized somehow, Like you're not gonna
11:29
Speaker 1: get an infection, and if you are, you're really going
11:32
Speaker 1: to the wrong acupuncture, you know, I would say so, Um,
11:35
Speaker 1: and uh, like you said, how many how many billions
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Speaker 1: of dollars did we spend on a chuck half a billion,
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Speaker 1: five million in the nineties. I know that's sort of
11:43
Speaker 1: an old stat, but you know, the f d A,
11:46
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that means. I don't either. Yeah,
11:49
Speaker 1: that's the stat they give me, so chuck. We've been
11:51
Speaker 1: focusing just on the Chinese version, although we did foreshadow
11:56
Speaker 1: that there's a French version to Yeah, TCM traditional Chinese medicine. Yes,
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Speaker 1: let's talk about the different kinds of acupuncture. Well, that's
12:03
Speaker 1: the Chinese kind, Okay, it comes out of t c M.
12:06
Speaker 1: And uh, there's the Japanese counterparts, a little more subtle.
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Speaker 1: Needles are generally a little shorter, a little thinner, Uh,
12:14
Speaker 1: don't pierce the skin as much. And there are two
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Speaker 1: kinds root in local obviously root if you treat the
12:21
Speaker 1: whole body for something. And then local. Yeah, local is
12:25
Speaker 1: when they you know, get like I'll stick in the
12:27
Speaker 1: ear to fix your foot. Um, you may live in
12:29
Speaker 1: Japan for a little while. And she told me that
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Speaker 1: there were two couples in her um, little province, little town,
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Speaker 1: um that performed acupuncture and both couples were blind. Really
12:43
Speaker 1: can that crazy? I would trust that. Yeah, it seems
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Speaker 1: like it, because you know, you know the body feel around?
12:50
Speaker 1: Sure for the points. What's the touchy Like if I
12:53
Speaker 1: need a doctor to have eyes to know where my
12:56
Speaker 1: kneecap is, then I don't want to be at that doctor.
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Speaker 1: You should be able to feel your way around to
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Speaker 1: the kneecap. Sure, sure, alright, So the five element in
13:07
Speaker 1: Debt crack area for some reason. Five element acupuncture is
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Speaker 1: Chinese as well, and that treats the body and mine
13:14
Speaker 1: and that's based on the idea that the earth and
13:18
Speaker 1: body and everything in nature is governed by the five elements.
13:22
Speaker 1: Water would fire, earthen metal. So that's kind of neat, yes,
13:27
Speaker 1: And apparently you can um manipulate the balance of these
13:31
Speaker 1: elements through acupuncture within yourself. And then here finally, everyone
13:37
Speaker 1: who's been hanging on for this one. This is the
13:39
Speaker 1: French one auricular, right, Oh, yeah, that is the French one. Yeah.
13:44
Speaker 1: The French um apparently decided that the ear is all
13:48
Speaker 1: you need to do. Yeah, there's um two hundred ACU
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Speaker 1: points located on the ear that correspond to different parts
13:56
Speaker 1: of the body and by manipulating these ACU points. You
13:59
Speaker 1: can do the same thing that um can be done
14:02
Speaker 1: with traditional Chinese acupuncture, right um. And apparently that's kosher
14:09
Speaker 1: in China because it's viewed the ear is viewed as
14:13
Speaker 1: a sensitive spot for manipulating chi the flow of che,
14:17
Speaker 1: isn't it well? Yeah, and with all the accup points
14:20
Speaker 1: on the ear, and wonders how piercing affects that. You know,
14:24
Speaker 1: if there's one thing if I could spend like to
14:27
Speaker 1: do something to my body, it would be to cover
14:29
Speaker 1: up these old ear piercing holes. Yeah, I got one too,
14:32
Speaker 1: but mine's looks so stupid. And I think about the
14:35
Speaker 1: dudes with the gauges. It's cool now, kids, but and
14:41
Speaker 1: of course you don't want to be the old guy
14:42
Speaker 1: saying just wait till you're older. But it's one thing
14:44
Speaker 1: to have a tattoo you're not proud of. Another thing
14:46
Speaker 1: to have like a big hole in your ear. Yeah,
14:49
Speaker 1: or both? Yeah, I think it's generally both, isn't it. Yeah?
14:53
Speaker 1: Those kids? Uh? Korean hand acupuncture is is is the
14:57
Speaker 1: last one listed here, and that's essentially the same thing,
15:00
Speaker 1: is the auricular accept It all goes through the hands, right,
15:04
Speaker 1: and then Chuck, You mentioned moxibustion, right, So maxibustion is
15:10
Speaker 1: um acupuncture with these are we just mentioned the different
15:13
Speaker 1: types of acupuncture. There's also different things you can do
15:16
Speaker 1: while you have needles sticking out of your body. Yeah,
15:19
Speaker 1: these are related, sure things that you can do, and
15:22
Speaker 1: moxibustion is one of those things. So um, this is
15:25
Speaker 1: the the stimulation of acupoints using heat. Right, And Moxa
15:31
Speaker 1: is an herb that comes from the mugwarp plant and
15:34
Speaker 1: traditionally in Chinese medicine, UM, you take about a rice
15:38
Speaker 1: grain size piece of moxa, put it on an acupoint
15:43
Speaker 1: and set that thing on fire and then let it
15:45
Speaker 1: burn and create pain and leave a scar. Now, this
15:49
Speaker 1: can be done in conjunction with the needle treatment as well.
15:52
Speaker 1: Is that right now? I think this is in lieu
15:54
Speaker 1: of it unless you're doing indirect that's direct moxibustion. Unsurprisingly,
15:58
Speaker 1: then there's indirect ox in busting, which is UM basically
16:02
Speaker 1: wrapping mox in paper, lighting the paper which you know
16:05
Speaker 1: makes the mocks of smolder, and then holding it near
16:07
Speaker 1: an acupoint or wrapping moxa around an occupied lighting that thing. Yes,
16:16
Speaker 1: you can also use electro acupuncture or saw no acupuncture
16:20
Speaker 1: to either move an electrical current through the needles or
16:25
Speaker 1: in the case of saw no, it's there are no needles,
16:27
Speaker 1: but you use sound to affect your acupoints. When I went,
16:31
Speaker 1: they put a heat lamp over the needles to heat
16:36
Speaker 1: up the needles. While acupuncture once just kind of it
16:42
Speaker 1: is not the point when you're supposed to go like
16:44
Speaker 1: a chiropractor and get it, you know, until you're fixed.
16:47
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think I mentioned it once before. I
16:49
Speaker 1: found a cheap place in l a that it was
16:50
Speaker 1: like a school you can get for like tin bucks,
16:53
Speaker 1: you can get acupuncture. It was awesome. What was it?
16:56
Speaker 1: It was real? Why didn't you go back? Um? I
16:58
Speaker 1: wanted to, and then you know, like some big job
17:01
Speaker 1: came up and I got distracted. It was one of
17:03
Speaker 1: those deals. It wasn't there. I didn't believe in there.
17:05
Speaker 1: She set up like huh and ran out with all
17:07
Speaker 1: these needles speaking out of your back, So chuck. You
17:10
Speaker 1: then know what to expect right if you go get acupuncture,
17:14
Speaker 1: at least from this one lady. Okay did it follow
17:17
Speaker 1: kind of with the article details the dim lights and
17:21
Speaker 1: uh soothing heat lamp. She left me alone, close the
17:25
Speaker 1: door and the on the CD player on low. It
17:30
Speaker 1: was very relaxing. I think there was music actually, so
17:32
Speaker 1: you're well, yeah, sure, deep purple. I mean that was
17:36
Speaker 1: my experience. I've never been locally here. Well, we were
17:39
Speaker 1: talking about UM the ACU points right and how they
17:42
Speaker 1: correspond to different parts of the body. UM, and they're
17:46
Speaker 1: actually mapped right, it's not just like this sounds like this,
17:50
Speaker 1: So let's try your cornea. It's not like that. It's
17:54
Speaker 1: numbered out and charted. It's a standardized absolutely. So the
17:59
Speaker 1: twelve maridi as we talked about, are they relate to
18:02
Speaker 1: different parts of the body. Right, So you've got like
18:05
Speaker 1: the bladder, you have the kidney, the large intestin, the spleen,
18:09
Speaker 1: the gall bladder, um, the liver, the parcardium, which is
18:14
Speaker 1: what is that it's over your heart, right, I think
18:16
Speaker 1: that's the covering of your heart. It scott cardio in there.
18:19
Speaker 1: It's got to be stomach heart Okay, man, now I'm
18:23
Speaker 1: second guessing myself. In the parcardium long small intestine and
18:27
Speaker 1: the triple heater, which that's that's the closer. Yeah, So
18:32
Speaker 1: you've got you've got these different these are the twelve meridians,
18:35
Speaker 1: and then uh, there's you know, different numbers corresponded to
18:38
Speaker 1: the different accu points along that meridian. So, for example,
18:42
Speaker 1: you have g B one is a certain accupoint on
18:45
Speaker 1: the gall bladder merdian. Okay, yeah, but that's how it's
18:48
Speaker 1: spelled out. But that doesn't necessarily mean if I want
18:51
Speaker 1: to fix the gall bladder I'm gonna stick you in
18:52
Speaker 1: the gallbladder meridian. Precisely, you could stick stick in the shoulder.
18:56
Speaker 1: Who knows an acupuncturist, but now exactly so. Um, when
19:03
Speaker 1: you go to an acupuncturist when you have a malady,
19:05
Speaker 1: you're going to tell him or her what's going on here.
19:07
Speaker 1: She's gonna take a history, um, get an idea of
19:11
Speaker 1: what your problem is, like a regular doctor doctor, right,
19:14
Speaker 1: and then consult this map and say, okay, well, this
19:17
Speaker 1: guy's having lower back pain. So I'm gonna go stick
19:21
Speaker 1: some needles around um the ub some alcohol. That's a
19:28
Speaker 1: big part of it. Yeah, if you're not swabbed with alcohol,
19:31
Speaker 1: get out of there, and you take the needle out
19:32
Speaker 1: of the package so you know it's nice and new,
19:34
Speaker 1: then I'm gonna stick anywhere from two, three, five, to
19:37
Speaker 1: fifty needles in some area that will correspond to that meridian,
19:43
Speaker 1: right and that pain. These needles are going to be
19:45
Speaker 1: stuck in anywhere from a quarter of an inch to
19:48
Speaker 1: three inches, which brings up a potential danger. With acupuncture,
19:55
Speaker 1: you have organs that are closer to your skin than
19:58
Speaker 1: three inches, so you couldn't conceivably have a kidney punctured
20:02
Speaker 1: a lung punctured. This is why you want to go
20:05
Speaker 1: to a certified acupunctuous. Yeah, and I want to say
20:10
Speaker 1: it's very rare. So don't let something like that scare you,
20:13
Speaker 1: because we could tell you American surgical stories that are
20:17
Speaker 1: equally as horrifying, like they remove my kidney and they
20:21
Speaker 1: weren't supposed to that kind of thing. So don't think,
20:24
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I'm gonna get stabbed through the lung
20:26
Speaker 1: with a needle. You know. That's called a big, big mistake,
20:29
Speaker 1: and it happens in all medicine. Everybody stabs people through
20:33
Speaker 1: the long with the needle. Uh, it's it's it's not.
20:36
Speaker 1: You might feel a little bit of pain with the
20:37
Speaker 1: initial prick of the needle, but after that, it's not
20:41
Speaker 1: like you feel the needle inside your body. You said
20:43
Speaker 1: it was relaxing, right, it's very relaxing. I didn't en
20:45
Speaker 1: feel the needles going in, to be honest, just a
20:47
Speaker 1: little tap and they're really tiny, the ones that used
20:49
Speaker 1: on me very very thin. Uh. They'll leave it in
20:52
Speaker 1: there five to twenty minutes for me, it was about
20:55
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, I think. And they can stimulate them while
20:58
Speaker 1: they're in your skin, like it said, with the various
21:00
Speaker 1: ways like heat, electricity, or they might even twirl them
21:04
Speaker 1: with their fingers if they're feeling saucy, if they want
21:06
Speaker 1: to do it by hand. Um. You said that you're
21:09
Speaker 1: supposed to go more than once. I think the the
21:11
Speaker 1: average is something like, um, twelve weeks, once a week
21:15
Speaker 1: for twelve weeks. It all depends on your issue, which
21:18
Speaker 1: if you're on Medicare, you're probably not gonna do because
21:20
Speaker 1: it costs anywhere from sixty bucks to twenty bucks probably
21:24
Speaker 1: more than that um for an acupuncture session, right. Um,
21:29
Speaker 1: And if you have to go to twelve times, you
21:30
Speaker 1: want insurance that's going to cover. Unfortunately, Medicare doesn't. Even
21:33
Speaker 1: though the federal government recognizes acupuncture needles as medical instruments. Right.
21:39
Speaker 1: Sounds like a bit of a double standard. Our insurance
21:44
Speaker 1: covers it actually, which is good, and a lot of
21:46
Speaker 1: major insurance carriers cover it. I'm gonna give it a try,
21:49
Speaker 1: all right. I've been meaning to. I've got this. Um.
21:52
Speaker 1: I have a muscle in my neck right here that
21:57
Speaker 1: has turned into you know those um metal ables that
22:01
Speaker 1: are braided. I have one of those in my neck. Man,
22:05
Speaker 1: I need to see if they can do something about that.
22:07
Speaker 1: You need to walk around on that thing she does.
22:09
Speaker 1: But I mean it's kind of like, oh, traffic or
22:14
Speaker 1: oh this dozen eggs has one broken in it something.
22:18
Speaker 1: You know, you need to relax. My friends. Oh you
22:21
Speaker 1: know how that they have that tiger Heart place and
22:23
Speaker 1: sort of emin park Old fourth Ward. It's on Edgewood.
22:28
Speaker 1: You should go there. It's an acupunctu tiger heart acupuncture.
22:31
Speaker 1: You're getting kickbacks from no, of course not. It's all
22:34
Speaker 1: my way to work though. So, UM, is it safe, Josh?
22:37
Speaker 1: I know you mentioned the one, the one issue with
22:40
Speaker 1: the stabbing through the organs, But other than that, well,
22:42
Speaker 1: like you said, for the most part, it is very safe,
22:44
Speaker 1: especially now that it's more regulated. Um. I think forty
22:49
Speaker 1: states have some sort of standard and require that acupunctures
22:54
Speaker 1: be certified for the most part um and this was
22:57
Speaker 1: news to me. There are any of Western physicians who,
23:01
Speaker 1: um who practice acupuncture. Yeah, you can be a med
23:05
Speaker 1: school doctor and practice acupuncture, or you can go through
23:09
Speaker 1: an acupuncture only program. The cool thing about that is
23:13
Speaker 1: is it requires a lot more hours to get accredited
23:17
Speaker 1: without the medical degree. So it's like to two to
23:20
Speaker 1: three hundred, two hundred, three hundred hours if you're a
23:22
Speaker 1: doctor to become an accredited acupuncturist. If you're just doing
23:26
Speaker 1: the acupuncture thing, it's like two thousand to three thousand hours. Yeah,
23:30
Speaker 1: so that's I mean, I would trust that for sure.
23:32
Speaker 1: There is a lot of hours and you have to
23:34
Speaker 1: do it within a certified masters program. Yes, so you
23:38
Speaker 1: have to be a smart person to be an acupuncturist. Apparently,
23:41
Speaker 1: I would say. So, Uh, you might bleed a little bit,
23:44
Speaker 1: don't worry too bad. But if you do have a
23:46
Speaker 1: bleeding disorder, if you're on blood dinners, they recommend you
23:49
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't do it. Or if you have like a
23:50
Speaker 1: pacemaker or anything else regulating your heartbeat electronically, it's probably
23:55
Speaker 1: not a good idea either, because accidental electro acupuncture is
23:59
Speaker 1: not good now. Um, so Chuck, we've we've shown that
24:03
Speaker 1: it is becoming more and more accepted in the West.
24:05
Speaker 1: But as far as hard science goes Western hard science,
24:11
Speaker 1: the well, I guess hard science is Western hard science
24:14
Speaker 1: isn't a uh, the jury is still out right. But
24:18
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of studies, um that show well,
24:23
Speaker 1: kind of mixed results. But there's been plenty of that
24:25
Speaker 1: show like this this, um, the one with the lazy eye,
24:28
Speaker 1: lazy eye study, the famous landmark lazy I study that
24:31
Speaker 1: just happened, um. And there's been plenty of others that
24:34
Speaker 1: have shown that acupuncture definitely does work. Right, yesod we
24:38
Speaker 1: talk about those Yes. Osteo Arthritis two thousand four and
24:43
Speaker 1: the Annals of Internal Medicine. They found that acupuncture significantly
24:47
Speaker 1: reduced pain and improve function. And they studied two four
24:51
Speaker 1: patients and this was in the knee, people with knee pain.
24:54
Speaker 1: And these were people that couldn't get helped through regular medicine,
24:58
Speaker 1: and after eight weeks they had far less pain that
25:00
Speaker 1: affective knee. Yeah, so that's one pains one that's an
25:03
Speaker 1: easy one because it's pain. What about chemotherapy induced nausea? Yeah,
25:11
Speaker 1: nausea period. Yeah, it turns out, as we said, nausea
25:14
Speaker 1: in general is supposedly supposed to be has been shown
25:18
Speaker 1: to be aided by acupuncture. There's a two thousand study
25:22
Speaker 1: in UH the J. A. M. A. Right, UM, the
25:26
Speaker 1: Journal of the American Medical Association UM that that studied
25:30
Speaker 1: electro acupuncture in people while a hundred and four women
25:34
Speaker 1: with breast cancer who had received UM high dose chemotherapy, right,
25:38
Speaker 1: and they found that, um, the women with the acupuncture
25:44
Speaker 1: had about a third of the vomiting episodes of women
25:47
Speaker 1: who did not receive acupuncture for treatment. And they're both
25:50
Speaker 1: on nausea reducing medicine. But anyone who's ever had chemo
25:54
Speaker 1: can tell you that a lot of times it stuff
25:56
Speaker 1: does not work. And then a meta analysis of eleven
26:00
Speaker 1: different studies found that nausea in general like similar results
26:04
Speaker 1: for any kind of study of acupuncture re leaving nausea.
26:08
Speaker 1: Al right, that's right. And fertility, fertility, if you're undergoing
26:13
Speaker 1: in vitro fertilization, there was a study in oh six
26:15
Speaker 1: and ought six and the Fertility and Sterility Journal, which
26:20
Speaker 1: is a hoot to read, and they said that women
26:23
Speaker 1: undergoing acupuncture had an eight. Uh, more likelihood, better chances
26:28
Speaker 1: of getting pregnant. Not bad. The problem is they also
26:33
Speaker 1: were slightly more likely to miscarry than the non acupuncture group.
26:37
Speaker 1: I want a percentage there. They didn't give one that
26:39
Speaker 1: bothered me slightly mean to like point one or something
26:43
Speaker 1: or one or two? Slightly is journalism for for I
26:46
Speaker 1: don't have the numbers in front of me. Uh, fibro mayalgia, yeah,
26:51
Speaker 1: fiber myalgia mayo clinic buddy. Yeah. Two thousand six, they
26:55
Speaker 1: did a study of fifty patients um and found that
26:58
Speaker 1: the stems of fiber miles are that include muscle pain, fatigue,
27:04
Speaker 1: joint stiffness were significantly helped. It's another journalism, right. What
27:09
Speaker 1: is significant significant is it's a lot greater than one.
27:14
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of more quickie graph stats here. Um.
27:17
Speaker 1: They did some um asking of questions, pulling of people
27:21
Speaker 1: who had acupuncture. Boy, it is twenty eleven and that
27:24
Speaker 1: we've been off. This is a rough one. Um. They
27:27
Speaker 1: asked people how satisfied they were with their acupuncture treatment
27:30
Speaker 1: and very satisfied. Yeah, exactly, uh, somewhat satisfied lead with
27:37
Speaker 1: thirty four percent were extremely satisfied and only eight percent
27:41
Speaker 1: were not at all satisfied. Those people are never satisfied.
27:46
Speaker 1: That should have been the last question. Are you ever
27:47
Speaker 1: satisfied with anything? Or are you a jerk? Are you
27:51
Speaker 1: satisfied with this question? Besides acupuncture, have you ever utilized
27:56
Speaker 1: any other treatment based on traditional Chinese medicine? And said no, So,
28:02
Speaker 1: even if you don't believe in it, you know, doesn't
28:04
Speaker 1: mean you won't go lay down on the table and
28:06
Speaker 1: get stuck with needles. And that's really the only interesting
28:09
Speaker 1: ones on here. Actually. So we've got this um well,
28:12
Speaker 1: all this information, all these studies that show that it works.
28:16
Speaker 1: Poles Journal, the American Michael says, you should all this stuff.
28:20
Speaker 1: But the problem is people still poo poo it. There's
28:23
Speaker 1: still a lot of um, a lot of skeptics who
28:27
Speaker 1: view acupuncture the way others may view hypnosis, and that
28:32
Speaker 1: the underlying mechanism isn't g or hormones or neurotransmitters, it's
28:39
Speaker 1: the placebo effect, right, Yeah, And that's tough because with
28:44
Speaker 1: placebo in uh, like a pill, you just get a
28:47
Speaker 1: pill that probably looks like the other pills. For acupuncture,
28:49
Speaker 1: they're gonna stick you with needles, but they're not gonna
28:51
Speaker 1: stick you in the acupoints. They're gonna they're gonna skip
28:54
Speaker 1: your acupoints purposefully, so you know, you get these needles
28:59
Speaker 1: stuck in. You might think I'm getting better, but that's
29:02
Speaker 1: the same as any placebo effect of because you have
29:05
Speaker 1: you're still getting a pill that you don't know whether
29:07
Speaker 1: or not it's gonna work. The I think the larger
29:10
Speaker 1: point rather than pooh pooing medicine in the placebo effect,
29:14
Speaker 1: is investigating how to manipulate the placebo effect. Because if
29:18
Speaker 1: we can heal our own bodies without drugs or sticking
29:21
Speaker 1: ourselves needles, doing whatever, um, then why not you know
29:26
Speaker 1: it still has the same effect. Good point. Can we
29:30
Speaker 1: end this now? Yeah? That's all I got acupuncture is
29:33
Speaker 1: give it, give it a shot if you want to
29:34
Speaker 1: give it a try, and I'm definitely gonna do it.
29:37
Speaker 1: I was talking to everyone, but I know you are specifically, Josh,
29:40
Speaker 1: give it a try. Um. We want to go ahead
29:44
Speaker 1: and apologize for this one is the first one that
29:46
Speaker 1: we've recorded. Is bad. I'm sure Jerry'll wash it out.
29:52
Speaker 1: I can't pronounce it. Um. If you want to learn
29:56
Speaker 1: more about acupuncture and see one really super a fluids chart.
30:01
Speaker 1: You should type in acupuncture. That's one ce UH in
30:05
Speaker 1: the handy search part how stuff works dot Com, which
30:07
Speaker 1: means it's time for listener mail. Yes, Josh, this is
30:12
Speaker 1: a homelessness email. And we got a lot of response
30:18
Speaker 1: for the Homelessness Show, ranging from I'm homeless to you
30:24
Speaker 1: guys are great. Thank you for highlighting this too. Hey,
30:27
Speaker 1: it's not my responsibility to care for veterans on the street.
30:32
Speaker 1: And a guy actually say that to me in one
30:33
Speaker 1: of his replies that I had engaged him in. Regardless
30:39
Speaker 1: of what you believe, if you're saying it's not my
30:41
Speaker 1: responsibility to care for homeless vets on the street, then
30:45
Speaker 1: but I did go off. I just want to say
30:46
Speaker 1: one thing. I went off on CEOs at the end
30:48
Speaker 1: pretty harshly, and I should have been more specific. I
30:52
Speaker 1: was referencing a story i'd read that day about UH,
30:55
Speaker 1: and I wish I would have looked it up, but
30:56
Speaker 1: I didn't have time. These certain CEOs are in the
30:59
Speaker 1: news that day for taking these huge bonus, record bonus
31:01
Speaker 1: payouts in the middle of the UH financial crisis while
31:05
Speaker 1: their employees were being laid off. I read this, I
31:08
Speaker 1: come in and sit down and read about talk about
31:10
Speaker 1: homeless people on the streets. I got a little hot
31:13
Speaker 1: under the collar, which I should have been more specific
31:17
Speaker 1: in what I was criticizing, because I'm certainly not criticizing
31:20
Speaker 1: all c e o s, and I'm not saying that
31:22
Speaker 1: they're to blame for homelessness or it's their job to
31:24
Speaker 1: fix homelessness. It's everybody's job to fix homelessness. And I
31:28
Speaker 1: wasn't clear enough in that. So one to clear that up,
31:30
Speaker 1: we'll put chuckers. Thank you. That's great? Was that it?
31:33
Speaker 1: Lat CEOs do a lot of, you know, big time donating.
31:36
Speaker 1: There's one guy who runs a carpet carpet manufacturer, Dalton
31:40
Speaker 1: Carpets in Georgia. I can't remember his name, but he's
31:43
Speaker 1: like the greatest CEO of all time. Really, he's a
31:45
Speaker 1: good guy. I have to be a CEO one day. Really,
31:49
Speaker 1: were you kidding me? Not? Get out for hi? Man?
31:51
Speaker 1: I gotta hire and fire. I couldn't do any in
31:55
Speaker 1: no way. All right, So with that, I'm gonna read
31:57
Speaker 1: up a letter from a homeless person. Hello, guys, my
32:01
Speaker 1: name is Blank. I told her I wouldn't read it.
32:03
Speaker 1: The podcast on homelessness really hit home with me. I'm
32:06
Speaker 1: a single mother of two. I've been homeless on and
32:08
Speaker 1: off for the past three or four years. I've always
32:10
Speaker 1: had a job, but my divorce basically bankrupted me, and
32:13
Speaker 1: I've had to start all over again. I think she's
32:16
Speaker 1: married to the CEO UM. I became homeless again back
32:22
Speaker 1: in March, and by June I was finally selected from
32:26
Speaker 1: about eight hundred people in the city of Tulsa to
32:28
Speaker 1: be approved for Section eight. So I feel like now
32:31
Speaker 1: I'm finally on my way to permanence. Uh. This whole
32:34
Speaker 1: thing has affected my kids greatly, but we're managing to
32:36
Speaker 1: stick it out. I believe there is stress of divorce
32:39
Speaker 1: in the stress of being homeless. It's caused my son
32:41
Speaker 1: to have lower test scores in school. My daughters don't okay,
32:44
Speaker 1: but most likely because she was only one when her
32:47
Speaker 1: father and I divorced. My son was three. Anyway, I
32:50
Speaker 1: just thought you might like to hear from one of
32:52
Speaker 1: your fans. It is true that getting assistance is very difficult.
32:55
Speaker 1: There just aren't enough funds to go around. And I
32:57
Speaker 1: know how it feels to be invisible. Uh. People at
33:00
Speaker 1: my work have no idea that one of their own
33:02
Speaker 1: employees was homeless, and they still don't. And it's not
33:05
Speaker 1: something I like to broadcast. It's really very embarrassing. Just
33:08
Speaker 1: know that homeless people may be working, but they won't
33:11
Speaker 1: say they're homeless because of embarrassment. Better get back to work,
33:15
Speaker 1: I would say so too, so you can keep that child.
33:18
Speaker 1: Thanks for your great podcast, and thanks for listening to
33:20
Speaker 1: me as well. So that's a great example of one
33:23
Speaker 1: of the many emails we got. It is it is
33:26
Speaker 1: very thank you very much, Blank, And I had to say,
33:28
Speaker 1: I'm conflicted because we've spent a large part of the
33:30
Speaker 1: Homelessness podcast like railing about how they shouldn't be treated
33:34
Speaker 1: as anonymous or invisible and grow and said, don't use
33:37
Speaker 1: my name. Let's see if you have a I don't
33:42
Speaker 1: want to hear about acupuncture. I don't want to hear
33:44
Speaker 1: about what do you want to hear about? Chuck something,
33:48
Speaker 1: keep us something good. It's been so long since we
33:50
Speaker 1: had something good. What about I was talking about American
33:55
Speaker 1: surgery horror stories. If you've ever known anyone that had
33:58
Speaker 1: like the wrong organ removed, Yeah, let's hear about that.
34:01
Speaker 1: That's good stuff. Uh, if you have a wrong ordinary
34:05
Speaker 1: removal story and we know someone out there does. Because
34:09
Speaker 1: we asked for sinking ship story got too plus a
34:13
Speaker 1: plain one. Yeah, um, you want to send it in
34:15
Speaker 1: an email? Right? Stuff podcast at how stuff works. We're
34:20
Speaker 1: so sorry about this one dot com for more on
34:26
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
34:29
Speaker 1: works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
34:32
Speaker 1: on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
34:34
Speaker 1: our homepage. The house stuff Works iPhone app has a ride.
34:38
Speaker 1: Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the
34:43
Speaker 1: reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you