If you are reading this, it is likely that something does not feel exactly as it should during your current pregnancy, or you are hoping to avoid problems that arose in a previous pregnancy.   

It can be scary to trust a medicine that works so differently than the biomedicine we are all most familiar with.  Here is a sort of primer on the use of Traditional East Asian herbal medicine during pregnancy.

I am in my 7th year of practice (at the time of writing this), and throughout my education and practice, I have been most interested in helping people whose signs and symptoms add up to gobbly-gook in conventional medicine, or are unable to be diagnosed, or are diagnosed but don’t have a solid treatment plan, or have a treatment plan that require medications with difficult side effects, or whose only solution in conventional medicine is surgery. 

If you have ever tried to piece together a diagnosis or a treatment plan from Reddit, then you might know something about not being sure of what is wrong with you, or not liking your treatment options.

My sickest patients often have this question – Do I treat their illness?  They need to know that I can help before taking the leap of investing money, time, and that even-more-precious resource, HOPE! into another strategy. Here are some real life examples from my practice of what this can look like.

I want you to have a healthy pregnancy, delivery, and child who is easily able to procreate down the line if that is what they choose to do.  So often we get caught up on conception, forgetting that it is just the first station on the road.

If you are eager to reach this destination as soon as possible, here is what I recommend.

I love noticing patterns in clinic as a sign of what is happening in the larger world.  

Last month I had a trend of patients who wrote on their intake forms things like: “rotating sicknesses”,  “I have gotten sick 3 times in the past 5 weeks”, “feel like I am always sick,” “rest does not help sicknesses,” and “lingering cold”.

I recently shared a house with a group of my lady colleagues; we had all gathered in a different city to study with one of our teachers. We had a lot to talk about, including our opinions on all the buzz around PERIMENOPAUSE. 

When I first started studying Traditional East Asian medicine, it felt like if I studied hard enough, I could access the secrets of the universe. 

Did you know there is also mommy back, mommy shoulders, mommy neck?

Here in Los Angeles I treat a lot of adult patients taking Spironolactone for acne.  None of them suspect that this commonly used medication is the reason behind their need to come and see me.

All forms of Earth life move in waves. Our menstrual cycles are no different.

My favorite things to treat are those that

• Make a big difference to someone's quality of life and healthcare

• Have limited treatment options in conventional medicine

• Leave no doubt about whether or not treatment has been successful

One question I get a lot in the clinic is what exactly is the best way to time insemination?

Now that we are 4 years into the pandemic, I have noticed some patterns that come along with each Covid wave. After the acute infection, there are other lingering signs and symptoms easily treated with acupuncture and herbal medicine.

Here is my list:

If you bring your young child to a pediatric acupuncturist, you will often get homework — some sort of bodywork to do at bedtime. Here are some simple ideas you can try at home…

I’ve had a few pregnant people describe to me their aversion to meat, even in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters when I become more concerned about their appetite. 

For those of you who might not know, I lived in Spain for 6 years.  This is a dish I learned there, and the way of cooking rice is central to many Spanish dishes, including paella. 

“I was hanging by a thread, and then I fell.”  —A real live patient describing her last postpartum experience

“I didn’t even realize I was depressed until 5 months went by and I looked back.  I remember sitting in the dark, alone, scared to move because I didn’t want my baby to wake up and start crying again.”  —Another real life postpartum experience described to me by a loved one. 

I remember my midwives saying that there is no such thing as oversupply.  At the time, that made sense to me, but if I had known then what I know now, I could have saved myself years of feeling unwell and likely have prevented a few miscarriages. 

You may have consulted countless doctors, sometimes getting a diagnosis and sometimes not.

There's at least one point every year where patients start coming in telling me that they ate a [insert here the last thing they ate before getting sick] and got food poisoning.