The Power of Integration: East Meets West in Modern Healing

Introduction to Acupuncture Mapping 0:00

Does that actually map out the points in your body that need the treatment, kind of like a roadmap for the acupunctures? It does. Although we've got another device that we'd had for a while that's been really well proven. I mean, because you can go to the hardware store and get an ohm meter to measure resistance and you could trace the Acupuncture channels because they're the area of maximum energy flow and the least resistance. And so if you get a point where the resistance is higher. We have a little different device that we check like 12 different points on the body and it'll give us a printout.

Hi and welcome to The Balancing Point. I'm Dr. John Needers and I am here to make traditional Chinese medicine functional medicine and integrative health, simple, practical, and fun. So you can restore balance, boost vitality and enjoy a healthier life every single day. Welcome everybody to a world of possibilities and educational podcast. I'm Phil Cisneros, your host for a World of Possibilities. And I have the honor of having with me today, to interview and longtime friend as well. So I really am, like I said, honored to have him here, Dr.

John Needers of Alameda Acupuncture in Alamita, California. Welcome, John. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. As you said, we go pretty far back. You're actually the person that inspired me to start doing talk radio.

Podcast Origins and Early Radio Days 1:35

And I don't know how long that's been, but it was a long time ago and I was on the air for about 10 years and loved every minute of it. Getting calls from all over the world, people asking questions, right? And it actually changed a lot about how I set up my day. So I would get up and from four to five in the morning, I'd read research because there were a couple of people that would call every week. And I swear, Phil, all week they studied to find a question to play Stump the Acupuncturist. So I always had to stay a couple steps ahead of them, right?

That's great. And once you know, when I first worked with John, Dr. Needers, I'm going to say Dr Needters because of his, he deserves that title. Really, you do, given your research and all the things that you've done. I first found him in the back of a chiropractor's office and he beautiful. He was everything in his office was impeccable and He he was like a bright light shining when I walked into his Office. I went wow This guy needs to be out in a world, you know Here he is in back up a Chiropractors office, and it's a small office that he had He needs to get out there, and it's exactly what happened.

And as a result, you know, he expanded and became a very well, in fact, is still known, very, well-known acupuncturist in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay area. Are you still doing talks with the Commonwealth? I haven't done any since the pandemic. I did one just before the Pandemic that I thought was one of my worst talks, Phil. You know, I came out and one, one my students was there and they said, so how was it? And I said I was really mediocre. And, you know I usually do pretty good talks. But I, said it was a really, mediocre and she goes, oh, don't be humble.

My wife goes he isn't being humble, it wasn't mediocre well that talk. Two weeks later I got a patient from Indonesia and one from Costa Rica on the same day and seven people called to schedule appointments. I've never had anything like, I don't do those talks to get patients really. But the talk just hooked them. And it was a great learning experience for me, because a lot of times when I do talks like at the Commonwealth Club, at one time I had the record over there, I probably don't anymore, but I'd do a talk on diabetes, for example.

And I always kind of start with the Western idea of, you know, this is what's happening and then kind go more naturopathic. At the end, a quick thing about acupuncture. Well, the talk that I did the last time at The Commonwealth club was, electroacupuncture for neurological conditions. And I knew that they wouldn't know much about acupunctures. So I went into the history of acupunture, pointed out that Utsi, the ice man that was, you know, pulled out of the Alps after being buried for 6,000 years, actually had the acipuncture meridians tattooed on his body.

I went, I took my son back to the Smithsonian and we saw the exhibit and where they talked about, you know, bringing doctors and acupuncturists in and sure enough, and the very conditions that he was, had, that they would have been treating them for. Those were the points that were highlighted. So who knows how far back this really goes, right? But I've had to go through all the theory and what's known about acupuncture and electroacupuncture. And electro acupuncture is a fascinating story, what people have come up with.

how different frequencies of electroacupuncture will stimulate the release of different neurotransmitters. So if I want to treat someone by activating their opioid system, I do two to four hertz. If I wanna activate their dynorphin system which is a different pain relief system I'd do a hundred hertz and so we're using the same points we would use in acupuncture but once we got that frequency stuff down it made just a world of difference.

From Back Pain to Chinese Medicine 5:40

So anyway, I talked about that and people started showing up. That's a great thing about Dr. Neeters. He's just a, great storyteller for all you listeners out there. And I would recommend you find his, your podcast called The Balancing Point. Yep. Yep. And really he's got some great stories, factual information that would benefit you. We're going to get into that as well as I want to have people know your background. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about what got you started in acupuncture and how this all came about.

So yeah, and here's the great thing. His wife, Jenny, is also in acupunctures and is in an acupuntures for the San Francisco 49ers, as well as the, was it St. Mary's College? At St Marys rugby team. We double-checked and during January, they had her travel with the team. They don't always do that, but for those, the big games they did, and she had two days off in January. So she's still recovering. And she was getting ready to go to Barcelona to teach a bunch of doctors over there about acupuncture.

She stays pretty darn busy. She's come a long way. She used to just be the office manager for Alameda Acupuncture. And, you know, Phil, I was the president of the Oakland Acupuncture School, the Academy of Chinese Culture. My mentor had been the President and before he died, he asked me if I would take over and I tried to get out of it for two or three years and finally he passed away and. I felt kind of obligated and honor bound to take it over. Well, was there one Sunday. doing a talk about acupuncture.

It was an open house. And, you know, I'm telling stories and getting people interested and going through some figures about what's possible with acupunture practices. She raises her hand and says, how do I sign up? She said, all these years I've been sitting in the back room, handling all the, bookkeeping. I want to get out there and have fun too. So that's how she got involved in acu-puncture actually. And it was interesting because she was planning, one of my degrees is in gynecological endocrinology, which, you know, I do endocrine function and it, was centered at that point around women and she'd always wanted to be a gynaecologist.

So that's what she thought she, she's going to do that. She was going, to work side by side with me. Well, the one, of the last, it think it the, last thing I did as a president. I insisted that they start upping their game in terms of continuing education. And we had this one guy coming in who's an expert in sports medicine. He started out at the 1980 Olympics, right? Treating sports medicines. I said, you've got to come see this guy, Jenny. This guy has stuff that is so simple and clear. You know, he'll even say, look, 95% of what I see with shoulder injuries is one of these four things.

So I'm going to teach you those four. Things so that you can go out on Monday and be able to do it. The other 5% go learn some other way. You just don't see it enough to take up a full class with. so she came. Was so impressed. She became the West coast liaison for him. became an assistant to him. And I think she's probably done about 50 of his classes and she now teaches that, uh, class. So that was, it was kind of a roundabout way, but she really, really got there, which is really cool. When I was like president of the school and I.

The big honcho doing radio show and stuff. You know, my son, of course, always loved his mom, but I was kind of the cool guy. Well, now that she's with the 49ers and sometimes he gets to go on house calls, I'm no longer the Cool Guy. Right. His mom is it out of way, dad. Yeah, exactly. And his friends go, you really go meet the 40 Niners? And he, You Know, Of course I do. So I go with mom. My mom she is the great. And then back to how it got here, I got her the way most people my age did. We had problems, medical problems that Western medicine was not fixing.

And so we tried, or I tried everything pretty much until I found acupuncture and. So I went down to Santa Barbara. I'd been a high school athlete, played four sports, two of them badly and two them pretty well. And, uh, I, went to down Santa Barbera and became a couch potato. Basically ate potato chips and drank beer for several months, right? And then I got up with some friends and had a rousing game of ping pong. literally ping pong, I blew out a disc in my back, right? I sat down in the chair, could not get up.

They actually had to carry me to the car, take me the student health. And he said, well, we can't do imaging, but I'm sure it's a, you know, it was a blown disc and he gave me a second, someone to get a Second Opinion from. So I went in and said oh yeah, You got a totally blown disk and you got some damage on another one. You have to have surgery or you won't be able to walk in a few years." And I said, oh, okay, I guess, that's the way it is. And so I came home. And most of my friends really were jocks.

We played a lot of poker, did a lotta gambling, and played alotta sports. But I had one friend who just didn't really fit, his name was Stuart McClay. And Stuart was the president of the chess club, the President of The Physics Club, right? He was just a brainiac. And so one day, I don't know why we got along so well, but so, one we're sitting on the floor in his house and I told him I needed surgery. He said, huh, why don' you try acupuncture? And this is the early seventies, right? I said what the heck is acupuncture.

And he said remember the Kung Fu TV show where they stick little needles in people? some of the stick needles in me. And he said in a very calm manner, Oh, I see. So you're going to let a surgeon take a scalpel and carve up your spine. I said, huh, maybe I'll try that acupuncture stuff. so I went to a brilliant, brilliant herbalist and martial artist in Berkeley, actually Albany at that time. And he talked to me for a while and he said, you don't need surgery. This will heal. You just have to, and you gave me a whole dietary plan, told me all the things to leave out, all of the thing to do.

He said and I want you to start doing my Tai Chi and Qigong classes because that will train you move properly and build more core strength because you've gotten lazy and lost all your core strengths. And then Phil. At the very end, in this very strong accent, he said, and one more tang, no sex, even with yourself for six months. That's like, whoa. Right. And so I was a good boy. I followed all of his instructions. And knock on wood, I'm 74. I have zero back pain. None. And I had friends and people that I know that got surgery at that time.

Of course, the surgical techniques weren't as good as they are now and they can barely move. They can't barely function. So thanks to Stuart McClay. That got my interest and I started studying Tai Chi and Qi Gong. I wasn't a very good student at that point, but he was also a brilliant herbalist. So I started studying herbal medicine and that was around 72 or 73, 1972, 1973. And so I did that. Then a few years later, I was driving down Telegraph Avenue And, uh, there was a martial arts studio with huge, huge windows, so you could see what they were doing and they we're doing weird stuff.

I had never seen anything like this. So I was fascinated. Turns out they are doing Xing Yi and Bagua, which are other internal martial artists. But it intrigued me because on the sign, it said, Peter Ralston, world martial art champion, 1978. At that time, there was one world tournament. Now there's a world, tournament every weekend on TV, right? But at that, time that really meant something. So he went to China, beat whole teams of people over there, and then came back to teach because he wanted to show people the power of contemplation.

And of controlling, you know, being present, I'll say. And so that's mostly what he taught. Now I studied with him for over 10 years, did a lot of martial arts, started teaching a lots of his classes, but we would do some really intense contemplation. Four day, every few months, and then a 13 day once or twice a year. It was just magnificent. I have to tell you. never once hit Peter. I would box with him several times a week. And if he didn't want me to, I could not hit him and neither could anybody else.

In fact, in several of his fights when he was in China, the first guy was a Korean guy. What I heard was that the guy watched Peter in the ring and Peter wasn't doing anything. He was just standing there. I'm not going to get in the ring with him. He'll kill me. I know this guy had been training his whole life, but he wouldn't fight. And so in that next three fights, nobody touched him, finally the last guy hit him a couple of times and then Peter won. It was actually fairly close, But he wanted to teach the power of contemplation and of Tai Chi.

So that got my interest. Uh, I did that. But then along the way, I started getting these really severe gut pains. I mean, literally I'd be walking down the street and it felt like someone stuck a hot poker into my gut and I would just fall to the ground. And so. I went to the doctor, they didn't do much. Uh, then I was playing poker for a living at that time. And this was a little bit before Peter, but I playing for living, at the time and I up in Reno and my dad came to visit me. It was the only time he ever came up to me there.

And suddenly I started going into anaphylaxis. He rushed me to the hospital. They said 10 minutes later, I probably would have died. So I go to a GI doctor down here several times.

Training, China, and Clinical Growth 16:20

You know, again, it was quite a while ago, so they didn't have as sophisticated a testing procedure as they do now. But after a, while he said, okay, we're going to do surgery. And I said, oh, good, you know, what's wrong. That's great. And he said well, no, not really. Uh, it's exploratory. We think you could have a tumor in your small intestine. I'm going to go back to my Chinese acupuncturist and see what he says. The doc said okay, if you want to kill yourself, do that. Right. So I went back.

To this guy. You can never eat wheat again. Now you got to understand this was not after the wheat craze started, right? But going back in Chinese medicine to the 1200s, there were doctors that said, for some people, you can't eat wheat. It wasn't a blanket thing, but they said for people you just can eat it. And so I stopped eating wheat, he also told me I had to stay out of the casinos. He said the off gassing, they replace the carpets and the furniture all the time. They don't allow enough fresh air in.

And so that's poisoning you. So I followed his instructions. I stopped eating wheat. Stayed out of the casinos. All my symptoms went away. And to this day, they've never come back. That kind of convinced me by then that there was something to. But the thing that really, really threw me over the edge. Now I had wanted to go back to acupuncture school, but I owned a real estate company. I have a wife and three kids and it just wasn't a really practical thing to do at that point. Then my dad called and said, he wasn't feeling too well.

He was going to the doctor. And would I come back and go with him? Now that's a strange request from my Dad. and so I went back. I was broke. It had to take the Greyhound, which actually turned out to be a fun ride. So I get to his house. he can't even get out of the chair. Basically, I had the help him out his chair and we go to. The doctor and the doctors said well, Herman, you have throat cancer and it's starting to spread up into your brain. And he said, so how long have you been smoking? My dad said I don't smoke.

He said well I've never seen this type of cancer in someone that doesn't. And I said Pops, I started going to the store and getting you Copenhagen snuff when I was about eight years old. You've been chewing your whole life. The doctor said yep, that's exactly where that would fall is right where the cancer is. So I drove him back out here. Oh, you'll like this. It was McCluskey, North Dakota, about 200 people in this town. And so while he was gone, I'd learned to play, you know, a little bit of guitar, enough to sing with it.

So I took my guitar back and so I was playing my car out in the yard and he lived right on the edge of town one night. The next day I'm walking through town and it's about a maybe two block long, maybe a block, long business district. This woman who looked like she was at least 80 years old. stepped right in front of me, said, now who are you? And I said. I'm John Needers. And Herman's son. She said I thought you might be, and I heard you sing real well. Right. But then when people in the town found out about it, we started basically having hoot nannies every night.

People come over and we were singing everything. Within two weeks, I started feeding my dad better, but within two week he was up dancing. Wow. Yeah, amazing. So I drove him out here. Now I wasn't licensed at this point, so I took him to the school that I later became president of, took them in and they made up the foulest smelling decoctions you can ever imagine. We couldn't even go in our house for an hour after we cooked these herbs for him, but he took. Felt really good. My sister took him up to his army reunion in Oregon and then drove him back to North Dakota.

He went in to see the doctor. They did some imaging and they said, and he said Herman, this is amazing. Your tumor has reduced by over 50%. And so my dad told him was what he's doing. And the doc said well, that wouldn't make any difference, but you need the surgery anyway. Any died from the. Right. So that was the thing that just flipped me. It's like, I didn't have the authority and I. to really talk to him about it in a way that he could hear. So that's what really got me going in terms of deciding to go back and study traditional Chinese medicine.

And you went to China, didn't you go there to study for a while? A couple of times. I went in the nineties, which was some, someday over a beer, I'll tell you a couple hours of stories because at that point I was, followed everywhere, everywhere. I couldn't go into the hotel room with somebody unless I kept the door open. I mean, it was a very interesting time. And then that was in my master's program. Then in doctoral program, I went over and I I was a member of the cohort that did the first integrative diabetes protocol.

And they treat diabetes so much more effectively than we do in the U.S. It is astonishing. So I wasn't a members of American Diabetes Association. I get all the journals and very rarely do they ever use the word cure. They always say control, you've got to control the diabetes. In China, they say cure, right? Your property of the state, and we're not going to spend money on you. You have to get better. We need you to work. Yeah, exactly. And the things that they do are so dramatically different than what's done here.

So yeah, that was quite an experience. It was, it was awesome. Uh, a lot of people got homesick cause we were there for several weeks, over a month. And, uh, but I took my son, Johnny and my wife with me. So what they would do is there was a podcast coming out of Shanghai and they. Listen to that every morning and every day it. Was a different topic. Like let's go to the supermarket or let go the silk market or whatever. They would go do that, whatever that was in the podcast. And by the time we left, my son could do a pretty good job of ordering food and things.

My wife can still hold conversations just from that short time. So it was great. We had a great time! It's quite, quite fascinating when you get there. Like in my, I was on a gynecology. And so they will do, so I've done a lot of fertility work, polycystic ovarian syndrome, et cetera. And what it takes six to seven months to get to in the United States, they literally do it in one half day. All the testing, all the diagnostics. You go in in the morning, you see a doctor in a morning without an appointment because they keep churning out more doctors.

Where here we've got this choke point and as the population grows, the number of doctors isn't growing to keep up with it. Over there, they just turn out more doctors. They open new universities. And so they are so much more efficient. Now, there are things, a lot of things that we do better. You got really serious illness, you need heroic medicine, but in terms of diagnostics efficiency and cost, their light years ahead of us. I've seen a video of somebody who was over there getting medicine at a hospital and it's all automated.

I think the whole time it took for them to give her the prescription, go to the machine, and then have the prescriptions dispensed was 17 minutes. Yeah, yeah. Well, I went over and I had some time off one day and just for the heck of it, went down and went to the doctor and they said, hey, can I get ultrasounds done? And he said sure. And they wrote up the order. I walked down the hall. Had about a 10 minute wait, right? No appointment. This PhD MD with 20 years of experience did nine ultrasound on me.

My carotid arteries, my femoral arteries my liver, you name it. Like my kidneys. And it was $27. And she wrote the report while I was there through a translator. She didn't speak very good English, but $ 27. But Phil, I come home. I go to see my doctor. And I tell her, hey, you know, I've got kidney stones. I got two really big kidney stone. And she said, how do you now? I said well, when I was in China, got an ultrasound. She said we don't trust anything they do from China. Okay, and I'm peeing blood and having horrible pain.

Are you? That's what you're going to put in your notes when you order my ultrasound! So she orders the ultrasound, it takes six weeks to get the It was done by a tech who not that good at tech really, but they found exactly what they've found in China. But I think it was, it, was seven or $800. So that's kind of, that what we're seeing in terms of scale. Right. Well, this is really great. Cause I remember when. You had opened up your office in Alameda and you were also on the board at the Chinese School of Herbal Medicine and Acupuncture in Oakland there.

Right. And you had really gained a reputation through several subject matters that you are treating at Alameida Acupuncture. You want to talk a little bit about that and anything that's evolved from that. Well, as you know, Phil, I used to change careers frequently. I did remodeling and then I was a professional poker player and I had real estate companies and a real-estate training company. I as a general contractor along the way, because I'm always wanting to learn new stuff. But it turns out I like what I am doing so much, I've been doing it for almost 30 years now, but I have to change my focus so that I go out and learn more new things.

The first 10 years I mostly did gut problems, digestive problems. different kinds, and then I got my doctorate in gynecological endocrinology, started treating a ton of fertility patients. A lot. Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, et cetera. And we still treat those, but one of the things that I'm treating, a lot of now, are vaccine and COVID, lung COVID injuries. and we treat a LOT of those. You know, POTS, Postural Orthostatic Hypoten, I mean, tachycardia syndrome, and, you know, we're seeing still huge amounts of diabetes and cardiovascular problems.

So. We treat a little bit of that. Well, we treat, a lot of everything actually. Still my favorite is gynecology. We treated a a stroke victims. It has been a bad few years for stroke and we get actually really, really good results. So we're doing well. And I, you know, it's interesting. There are two very famous doctors from China. that are the stroke specialists. One guy named Shijue Min, and I apologize for my poor ability to speak Chinese, but he had the largest stroke hospital in all the world.

He was this, I don't know what his title was, the chairman something, But he's the one who created all of the Stroke Protocols for China. Now I had to hear this number four or five times before it really sunk in.

Expanding the Practice and New Treatments 28:20

His hospital. treated 10,000 stroke patients a day. A day, Bill. Because what they do in China, they'll have regional hospitals. So in a particular region, one of the hospitals will treat mostly liver problems. Another one will mostly treat cardiovascular. Well, his hospital treated neurological problems and primarily stroke. And I got to study with him here. And fortunately, at that time, I didn't know how famous he was because it would have scared the crap out of me working in his clinic with them.

Right. But I did work with him here. And then there's another fellow named Zhao Xunfa. Zhao created the scalp acupuncture system, which is now standard in Chinese medical textbooks. Well, there are very few things that change in chinese medicine, but this is the most recent one. He looked at the neurology, he looked the brain, and came up with a totally new system. I had studied with both of those people, but nobody came to see me for stroke because they didn't think about it. With the pandemic, people were really desperate.

We were open and they would, you know, it's easier to find information now. They plug in stroke and it see my name. And so we are treating a lot of stroke patients and a, a of other neurological problems. Wow. That's incredible. It's really great. and then of course you've expanded with the sports medicine or sports acupuncture with a with Jenny and, and she's don't tell anybody, Phil. But Jenny and I work brilliantly in parallel, but not so good in series. Like we don't go shopping together. It's completely different than mine.

Yeah. So it works so perfectly. We have she and some other acupunctures that. basically just do sports medicine. I mean, the other acupuncturists will treat, you know, headaches and migraines and things like that also, but it's mostly sports medicines. And then Katherine Black and I, Katherine's co-author with a couple of my books, we will actually work together with new patients. So I got the system so it works for me a lot better than it used to. We'll see new patients one day a week to keep, cause it's hard when you've got new patience and returning patients kind of overlapping.

Cause I never know how much care or time the new patient's are going to need. And we allow two and a half hours actually for a new. Patient and Catherine's here with me. She scribes, takes all the notes and then I create a treatment plan. Well, then when they return, I have someone else doing the scribing. And then Katherine does the acupuncture. So I pretty much sit behind my desk and it works really well. It's, it's such a trip though. My patients will often tell me things they don't tell their therapists.

And I know that because I've had therapists refer people to me and I'll say things like, well, you know, that childhood trauma when she was seven, That had to really make a difference. She goes, She had trauma at seven. She never told me that. Right. And so it's very interesting, but then they'll go in with Katherine and she'll spend more time with them while she's needling them and, and checking out their energy flow and they tell her things completely different than what they. Tell me, right. They tell me about their, their condition and their history, And they told her about her family and the relationships and stuff.

So it was really great. We get a really broad picture of it. It's the one thing I've experienced and just so I let the listeners know that I have been to Alameda Acupuncture and had treatment because I wanted to be a part of it and see what was the experience there. And if you want to call it bedside manner, I think that's a good term or context. in which you serve your clientele is that you become personal. You're connected, you're related, oh, present. Your present with them. And I think that's a really great characteristic to have in an acupuncture practice, that your actually being present before you even do the treatment.

Right. This is just really You know, when my wife was doing her doctoral program, a lot of her classes were on Mondays and Monday's my day off. So I would listen and she had a couple of great teachers and this one teacher was. practicing at the Osher Center at Harvard, right? And so they were doing a lot of integrated medicine. But he came in one time, and he's telling about a study they did. And they would put electroencephalographs on the doctor and on a patient. Now, obviously, you can't double-blind that, but they didn't tell them what they we're doing.

So they just went through their normal protocol, And the did it long enough that the doctors kind of forgot it was there. and then they compared the results. And so they were looking, and when the patient and the doctor got entrainment, when their brain waves started to match, a rapport, they got results twice as fast as the doctors that didn't get rapport. So we know bedside manner is important, but you can look at the science and it tells you it might be more important than we even thought. Right.

Right, because that connection is what allows for relaxation, ease, and clean up. Yeah. They're also more willing to follow my instructions. So it's like, oh, I trust you. I'll do that. That's great. And then in the expansion of Alameda, of course, you have the one office, and you've expanded your staff. Now, I've known you since, what, the early 2000s of 2003, 2004. And we, both of us have aged, right? You know, we've gone through a lot and et cetera. So anything you want to say about that in your career, in you're profession, and your commitment to acupuncture, health, wellbeing of people, what have you noticed as we age since that time when I found you in the back of a chiropractor's office?

I have hopefully gained a little more insight and wisdom, but I don't think quite as quickly as I used to. Someone asked me, you think you'll ever go out and play poker again? I said, no, your, thought process is slow down a bit. Even if you're really, really healthy and you keep your brain up and those split second instantaneous calculation of the odds gets harder when you get older. And you know, so things do slow. A little bit, I keep adding to my repertoire and I kept adding what we do to add value.

And to be honest, Phil, I like gadgets. I really do. Like we've got one called an oligo scan that was predicted in the case by a very, very famous doctor. And he said, you should be able to tell the mineral and vitamin content in people's bodies by doing a scan. He said we don't have the equipment now, but it's just like a spectroscope, right? You can tell what, what something's made of by putting it through the spectroscopy. Because it gives off different wavelengths and the wavelengths of light.

So we have one that we just. do people's palms and it gives us a readout on their heavy metals, on there other minerals that we want them to have, calcium, potassium, et cetera, and their vitamins. It's about eight vitamins that it will test for. And so it's really pretty trippy. The trippiest thing though is the highest mercury level we have ever found was on me. Wow. I grew up with a mouthful of fillings. I used to go fishing with my dad out on our boat in the Carquina Straits and those striped bass were full of mercury.

So I accumulated a lot of Mercury. Wow. I'm still working to get it out, to gently chelate it. That's fun. We've got another new device that Catherine bought. Uh, that's basically using the principle, principle of Curlian photography, you know, which the Russians were big on in the sixties and seventies, but this Dr. Korotkov has created these AI programs that would trip you out, Phil, it will, It's been pretty well proven that every organ in the body has a different ideal voltage like the voltage of the energy through the heart is a little different than the Voltage in The liver and if you can balance that out It sounds really woo woo, but the science is pretty solid for it.

There's a guy named Jerry Tennant who wrote a book called Healing is Voltage and there's good research. And then this is crazy. It will map out the health of your chakra system, and then it will math out your acupuncture meridians and give you whether they're high, low, or imbalanced. I have no, I, no way to prove whether it works or not, except that it almost matches a hundred percent with what I would expect to find. So anyway, we're just, We just got that and we were just playing around with it.

In fact, offered it free to anybody who has an appointment in the month of March. It's my birthday and I always like to give something away on my Birthday. Right. Last couple of years we gave away free labs, but this time we're giving this away. But it also gives us a chance to kind of get familiar with it and build up a little database for it. So that's what does that actually map out? the points in your body that need the treatment, kind of like a roadmap for the acupuncturists? It does. Although we've got another device that we'd had for a while that's been really well proven.

I mean, because, you know, what we're looking at, You can go to the hardware store and get an ohm meter to measure resistance and you can trace the Acupuncture channels because they're the area of maximum energy flow and the least resistance. And so if you get a point where the resistance is higher, We have a little different device that we check like 12 different points on the body and it'll give us a printout. It'll even give suggestions for herbal stuff, although they're pretty simplistic so we don't use them.

But sometimes the acupuncture points are very fascinating. You know, I might. I'd have thought a nine of 10 of them, but sometimes that 10th point is quite fascinating and we get really great results. And so by taking all of those things, and, we don't do all them on everybody, there's some people I would never begin to tell we were going to test their chakra system, right? They'd walk out. But then by comparing that with functional medicine, that's what really made a huge difference for me. I got dragged kicking and screaming, I think 1999, to a class.

This person I knew that I was a study partner for me for the state board exam said, will you please go with me? And I said oh God, okay. And it was on leaky gut. Well, in 1999 if you said leakey gut around a doctor, they would call you a lunatic. And now, you know, the term is used all the time because it's true. Now they have specific tests that can prove very quickly and very accurately if your gut is actually leaking. Um, you know, so I went to this class and within about two hours, Phil, my tail was wagging.

I was so excited, right? It's like someone put a treat out there and said, come on, John. You know when I got the magnificence of being able to pair traditional Chinese medicine with brilliant Western lab testing. You know, a lot of just standard tests, but a of them that doctors weren't running, you know. Advanced stool tests. You test for your different ways of testing for hormones and things. And what I loved about them is they were both individual person centered. It wasn't about some, statistical anomaly.

it was you, Vilsus Naros. what needs to be done with you. And so they both were coming at it to the same endpoint, but from different directions. There are some things from functional medicine that are just brilliant to understand. Like I would know that someone had intestinal dysbiosis or gut problems, But now you can tell which of the thousands of microbiome bacteria is out of whack, right? And, so it's like, that's kind of cheating, Right? But I'll take it. And so then you pair that with traditional Chinese medicine, particularly with pulse and tongue diagnosis, which MDs get bono.

Functional Medicine and Diagnostic Tools 41:40

I got, I was interviewed a few weeks ago by a very bright MD and he kept asking me about pulse diagnosis. And then at the end, he said, can you send me some names? I want to study that. and so he did. He found this pulse, diagnosis teacher and went off to studied, uh, cause he says I can use that in my clinic. Right. So to get to me, it's a perfect marriage. It's, you know, tell a story of when you and I used to meet and, uh, I went over to your house before we'd go over. You always took me to a great Chinese restaurant in Berkeley.

I can't remember the name of it, but before you went. He said, well, we're going to go in and have lunch over at the restaurant. And prior to going there in a couple of days, my stomach had been really weird. Every time I ate something, I had a pain in my. Stomach. I just couldn't figure it out. You know, the typical over-the-counter petto-bismo and the weird stuff that we shouldn't be doing. But that's all I have access to. And so when I shared with you that and I said, you know, I don't think we should go.

You can go ahead and eat and i'll be with, and we'll talk. And you said well, would you mind if I fixed you up a little Chinese herbal medicine for it? You had the herbs right there in your hound. And I said, sure, I'm game, anything to get rid of this. And so you did and it was a tea and you had me drink it. He says, okay, we'll go ahead and go have lunch. That's what you told me. How do you know this is going to work that quick? And he goes, don't worry about it. Just eat, you'll be fine. That's what he told me, I remember.

And then we got to the Chinese restaurant and had great Chinese food. And there was, my stomach didn't act up at all. You know, it was no pain, you know? And I went, fantastic. This is really great. And so we had a good lunch and then we went to a used bookstore afterwards. Oh yeah. Yeah. I remember this distinctly. John has made an incredible impression in my life, Dr. Neater's here. We went to the bookstore and I don't know if you know this about me, but if I go into a bookstore or a library, it's automatic.

I can have anything flushed out of my body. It just acts as a natural relaxer. But I was looking through some books and I went, Oh, I got to go to use the restroom. You know, so I took off of the rest room and boy did that took care of whatever was in my stomach. It was gone. And I felt so much lighter and better afterwards. So Dr. Kneaders, you know I've was cured at that point of Chinese herbal medicine, of taking care things in your body rather than doing the usual. I hope I didn't. cause any disturbance about the companies that I mentioned.

No, I think you're fine. Okay, good. But it really, it was fast. It really felt healthy. I didn't feel any effect of it. So I wanted the listeners to know that, you know, that wasn't a believer of Chinese herbal medicine. And I don't even know what effects it made. From then on, if I've had anything, I had gone to Chinese herbal medicine acupuncturists who knew both. So that's one thing that you influenced me on. Well, Phil, tell you a story kind of like yours, but I have one friend that I'd actually hired her to be a commercial, commercial real estate agent for me.

So this is back early in the 1980s and she was horrible at it, but she went into lending and he was the best lender I've ever seen because she had no patients, none at all. And she would get loans turned around faster than anybody I have ever. But she didn't have the patience to do the long haul of being a Commercial Real Estate agent. You know, it can take years before things come to fruition. Anyway, I was at Reggae by the river. And she came up and said, Hey, I want to introduce my. I can't remember how she said it, but it was like fiance.

You know, she was clear. They were going to get married and he looked bad. He looked, he was kind of green and just kind a lot going well. And he said he's, He's got a stomach ache. It's really bothering him. Well, do you want me to help? And he said, he was a total non-believer, right? General contractor. You know, you put the nail here. Right. And so I said. I don't mind trying to help you. So he's standing there and I reached down on his legs and there's a classic stomach point down there called Zhu Sanli.

and, I pressed really hard on that and massaged it. He got the funniest look on. His face went over in the bushes and threw up. Oh my God. And then he came back and said, that was too weird. I said how do you feel? He said I feel fine. We became friends. Yeah, it's great. Really great You know, I think there's a whole world of, that's an opportunity for people to look at besides, and there is nothing wrong. That's what I love about you, Dr. Needers, is that you don't make traditional medicine wrong in the hospitals.

You have it be more of a partnership, depending on what the case is. Yeah. No, you know I've had my life saved by Western medicine. Right. I have my lives saved, by traditional Chinese medicine, right? I would guess that, well, most of my family members, you know, had medical treatments that prolong their lives, right? So, they each have their own strengths and their weaknesses. I mean, one of the beauties of Western medicine is when you go to a cardiologist, intense, intense training. The problem is they're looking through a very small window and so they don't see anything outside of that.

It's like cholesterol, right? Well, the cholesterol levels that you see were set by doctors who were trying to event cardiovascular problems. And even then, the ones for women are off. They studied men and women, they didn't like the women's results, so they applied the men's result to women. It's pretty much what happened. strictly cardiovascular levels of health, then the ranges that you see published are relatively accurate. But when you look at overall mortality, from cancer, from infection, and from all these other illnesses, the sweet spot for women, post-menopausal women is around 235, but doctors are trying to get them under that 200 level.

Now, if you're a cardiologist and someone has a heart problem, that can be good, You know, more people are going to die. And so for me, you know I base a lot of my decisions on mortality curves, not so with traditional Chinese medicine, but our books, The Sweet Spot and The Sweetspot 2, I looked at hundreds and hundreds of research studies and found the ones that were very clear, had the best graphs, and that's what the sweet spot is. So on any mortality curve, almost all of them are U-shaped. Some of em are J-shape, most are And the very bottom of the curve is where you're going to find the lowest mortality risk.

And if you go up or down, you are going have a higher mortality. Right? And so that's what we based that on is you want to be healthy, do you wanna live a healthy long life, then you should stay in the sweet spot. Now, what MDs are doing is seeing if need to go into the hospital, basically. You know, and if your outside of ranges that they're using, Then, okay, that is fine. you may need an intervention. Right? So it's like picking the best, best spot. And that, Phil, that's why I do now several times a week, I Do discovery calls where people can call and just pick my brain for 15 minutes for free, you know, cause a lot of times they don't know where to ask, or what to Ask.

I mean, This isn't generally something that comes up, but for example, if someone has a urinary tract infection and it burns when they pee, I'll treat them. If it's kind of moved to their bladder, i'll, treat. Them if it moves to the kidneys, they're going in for emergency treatment because that can kill you, right? And so do the antibiotics, do them exactly as they indicate, and then we'll clean you up afterwards. Right. And, so it, kind, of knowing, you know, when, Right. Well, when do, how do they get to these question shows?

Yeah, go to alamedaacupuncture.com and there will be a box to click for a discovery call and then schedule the calendar will come up. And, you know, I do like about four a week typically. And I like it because I get to meet new people and sometimes I tell them, you know, You should come see me or another acupuncturist. And sometimes they tell him you should go see a cardiologist for that. Right? And so it just gives them a place to start. You know? That's great. Yeah. I'll put that link on the, when I post the podcast.

So when they read the bio of you and that I put on there so people can click on a link. Well, thank you, Phil. I appreciate that. And the books, The Sweet Spot and Sweet Spots 2, where do people purchase those books? Those are on Amazon. Okay. Yeah. Those on are Amazon I'm working on a third book right now and the working title is Never Ever Ever Give Up. That's based upon my adventure in December of 2023. Time's a little hard. This is kind of a typical example, I'm gonna say. So I've had atrial fibrillation, you know, missed heartbeats since about 1985. And I was able to control it with Chinese medicine really well.

Then it got to a point where I just had massive stress in a very short period of time, and I couldn't control them so well, but I actually took a medication for a while. It didn't really help much, But then I was in Trader Joe's, Katherine and I stopped on the way home and. I passed out. And I got to give credit to my many years of martial arts training. Apparently it looked pretty funny because I went completely unconscious, but I rode the shopping cart down kind of in slow motion and didn't hurt myself at all.

There was something wrong when I looked right in front of me is a jar of hummus. So, so I, you know, being a child of the sixties, when if you got hurt in a football game, it didn't matter, right? You'd go to this, get your bell rung, go the sideline.

Personal Stories, Recovery, and Lifestyle Changes 53:20

And the trainer who I don't think had any training experience would say, how many fingers am I holding up? And he'd hold up four and I go two. And you say okay, who's the president? I'd go Abraham Lincoln. You go, oh, you're fine. Get back in the game. Right? So that's my training in life. So I popped up and was ready to leave and they said, no, we've called the ambulance. We need to go in. They took me to little Alameda hospital here. which is usually not very busy, but this was crazy. There was one doctor on duty and he looked like a deer in the headlights.

there were 11 rooms that were occupied. I was sitting in a hallway and someone else was in that hallway. And the only thing that saved him was this ancient powerhouse of a nurse that would come over, take him by the arm, literally, and take them to a room. Say, this is probably a stroke. I'll come get you in 10 minutes. And she would, she'd go drag him out of that room and move him somewhere else because he had 11 rooms going, right? So, you know, they did what they should do. They, did film studies of my brain to make sure I didn't have a bleed.

and they didn' an EKG to check on my heartbeat. And I'm there for about an hour and this young physician's assistant comes up to the doctor and she shows him the strip from an EKG. And they look at it and they both looked up at me. He said, okay, I guess that one's about me and he looked at her and shook his head. I said oh, guess I am okay then. So I get my medical records two days later. I was in atrial flutter. That's where your heart is beating so badly. My upper chambers of my heart, the atria were beating at 288 beats a minute.

Wow. And my ventricles were. Beating at 72 beats. A minute, so four to one. And, you know, I know he didn't have a lot of time, but someone could have said, excuse me, sir, we found a little irregularity in your EKG. You should go see a cardiologist. I mean, that's a 30-second conversation, right? Right. They didn' t say a word. taught a brilliant guy, wonderful guy. He scheduled a catheter ablation. That's where they put a wire up through your groin up into your heart. And what happens with atrial flutter, you have cells producing electric signals that shouldn't.

It's like a, a bad distributor on an old car, right? And so it's, it Took him a long time. I think there was a lot more going on than he realized. I'm fine. Next day I am watching a movie with my son and my wife. Johnny was home for Christmas vacation and suddenly I have trouble breathing and it's getting worse and worse. Now I didn't want to go back to the ER, but it finally got to a point where honey, take me to summit, which is a much better cardiology unit. And so she drove me and felt, you're a great musician.

You'll maybe appreciate this. A lot of people don't know who Warren's Yvonne is. He wrote a lot stuff for people in the seventies and eighties, and I loved his music. But before he was, when he found out he wasn't going to die, he got a of his buddies in there, Bruce Springsteen and all these people, And he did his last album. and one of the songs on it I couldn't stop singing on the way to the hospital. I was trying to sing it under my breath, but it's like... The shadows are fallen and I'm running out of breath, keeping in your heart for a while.

And that, I couldn't get it out in my head, right? So I get there. They said that I had pneumonia because my lungs had collapsed and congestive heart failure, which in a 72 year old is not a good thing. So they put me in there, they gave me great medical care. I was only in their for four days and it recovered. Then they said, okay, you're good. What should I do? Well, you might want to check in with your cardiologist, but they didn't give me any orders of any kind. So I went home and ran all the cardiac testing that I knew they should have done.

And sure enough, I would have been back in the hospital within a couple of weeks because I had so many things out of balance, so much inflammation, inflammation in my heart. I took care of that and I was okay. But while I'm lying in. In my hospital bed. You know, and you're a, a master of, of vision and intention. And so as I'm lying there, it's like, Whoa, I have fulfilled my purpose. Yes. I can't die right now. Yeah. Got things to do. Then it all came clear that I'd been neglecting my health, which is what got me into this situation.

Right. So I made a promise, created the intention that it was going to completely change my. Within 120 days. I started going to the gym in the morning. And so it's great because Catherine lives about a quarter of a mile from me and she walks her dog over and her dogs will stay with our dogs. Then we'll go to gym and then to work. So I said, Catherine. I really need to work out. Will you, will you come too? And she said, yeah, okay. So we started going to the gym five days a week and Phil was a slog.

Every day, every day. But then I kept digging deeper and deeper into new exercise routines. I started getting Arnold Schwarzenegger's weekly blog, which is actually pretty funny by the way. They have great research articles. And so then. going back into what I know about Chinese herbal medicine. And I knew I needed to greatly increase my testosterone levels. supplement regimen to get my testosterone levels up and my growth hormone levels. And I think I was doing a total of about 15 exercises. I would split them up into upper body and lower body.

In 14 of the 15 exercise I doubled my strength in four months. When I started, I could barely get out of a chair. My thighs were so weak. And so it completely turned it around in that four months. So since then, I've been Sunday mornings is when I make my food for the week and I get everything together. And, so I don't have to make that choice on the morning and. One word that had always bothered me my entire life, and I don't know why it bothered, but it did was the word discipline. I just didn't like that word.

And so what I do is I have a ritual, right? And I'm okay with the ritual. Right. What I found as I get older is that. My energy goes down substantially at the end of the day, which I used to consider myself a night person. But now I'm up at four in the morning, get my research out of way, getting all my stuff done, go to the gym, see patients, but I am done by two o'clock. And so my life works so much better. It's just amazing. That is excellent. In March you're going to be? 75. March, you're going to be 75. I'll be 70 in August.

But it's so great because I really associate with everything you said. And I started working out as well at the, we have a fitness center nearby, so I go there and, but it requires that kind of focus. We are not those young kids that we were, you know. And it, I found that it was a lot of my own past images of myself. that I had that, I should be going on, you know, four hours sleep, because- Oh my God. Yeah. And now I can actually take a nap in the afternoon and not have to worry about it, or I do, take about a half hour nap, which energizes me towards the evening.

Wow, Phil, we are so on parallel courses. I will get home, feed the dogs, I do most of the cooking, so I'll kind of prep something and then I take a nap. And then when Jenny and Johnny get home, I just pop it in the oven. Right. Then I'm awake enough that I can actually have conversations with them. Whatever we're going to do. So it's finding out what works for us. Yeah, I remember you. I still tell Phil Cisneros stories all the time. Now, a couple of them are probably too crude to put on the air, but there was one.

And I come home and this one, when I had the real estate company. Oh no, this was when, had I was already doing acupuncture, But I'd come and I have a to-do list, right? And it's like, Phil, you know, 20 items and only got four of em done. What's wrong with me? You need a mantra." And I said, Phil, I do not need to darn mantra. I got plenty of mantras. And he said no, and you said. No, you need. Sit down and he took me through some breathing exercises. He said okay. Now in front of you, You've got your list and this is what you say.

You said a little more bluntly, I did what I, and I didn't do what, it's good enough. I'm telling you that changed my life. That was the end of the list. And then I do a weekend workshop with you. You know, and there are things that we know but we don't really know. Right? We don' really put them to use. And I did a weekend workshop with you and I still have my I'm never doing lists. You've got all these things, you know? And so I don''t keep to-do lists anymore. I plug things into my calendar. If they're not that important, I''m not doing them now.

Or I' never do them. One of the best I never did was I had been thinking about going back to law school and cause I'd seen some just horrific stuff where people were getting censored about health things. And it's like, darn it, I'm going to go back the law. School. So it was kind of lingering right over here. Then after that weekend, it like I am never doing law-school. There's no energy leakage. It's not leaking everywhere. I want to thank you for those things Well, it's also that you don't hold that like an extra weight on your shoulders.

Like, when am I going to do the law school thing? When am i going do that nagging voice? when you put in never doing now it actually is it takes it out of existence for your daily work. Yes. Yeah. That's great. I'm so glad that that really made that impact. And I still use that mantra for myself.I did what I did today and I didn't do what i didn' do and that's the way it is. Thank you and good night. Right? Exactly. You know, I use those as examples for my patients. They'll be going through the same things and I'll say, okay, now this is very special, but I'm going to share my mantra with you.

Advice, Resources, and Closing Remarks 1:05:00

Can they look at me and then I tell them what is, and every time they laugh. And for a lot of them, it is actually a game changer. Excellent. Well, are you doing any more Tai Chi classes? Are you teaching Tai chi? I have not been. It got two. nighttime oriented because I didn't want to, I wasn't going to teach enough that I wanted to have my own studio, but every place I want her to. The popular times were always taken like, you know, five to nine in the evening and et cetera. So I would end up teaching like late on Sundays or, nine to 10 30 on a Tuesday and Thursday.

And so I stopped doing that and it's kind of sad because, because they don't teach as much. I don' practice as. In fact, I woke up in the middle of the night last night, which is kind of rare, but I'd gone to bed pretty early and I started watching some Tai Chi videos that people had done and thinking, you know, I need to start doing more Tai-Chi, because it just feels so wonderful to do that. Yeah. I've been looking at Tai chi, as you live in Santa Cruz and plenty of TaiChee classes around here.

I interviewed a retired medical doctor a couple weeks ago, and she specializes in helping post-menopausal women. And she's had talked about a lot of things. I said, so if you could just give one bit of advice. That's most important. What would it be? She said, avoid frailty. Avoid fraility. Hikes the thighs, particularly weight training. Yes. Right. To avoid that. So that was okay. That was excellent. Well, Dr. Kneeders, I'm just so glad that we got to get together and know more about what you're up to these days.

Anything you want to share with people before we end our interview here? I keep most of my podcasts, there's sometimes exceptions, but mostly they're about 15 minutes just to give people like a idea of something. Like we did one taken from a research study and it was titled how to prevent female heart attacks 30 years in advance. And they've been studying and found out that by running three tests, you can you can actually figure out the likelihood of female heart attacks 30 years in advance. And it's way, way more than cholesterol, but doctors don't do it.

One of the tests, which is low-density lipoprotein, most all doctors will order, But the key is lipoprotein A, which is a sub-fraction and is not treatable by statins at all. And so I think that's why doctors don't order it. It's like, I can't fix it anyway, so why order? And then high sensitivity, sometimes called cardiac C-reactive protein. That tells you if you have inflammation in your heart and arteries. So if you have that lipoprotein A and you having inflammation in your heart and arteries, you're going to form a lot of arterial plaques.

If you don't have inflammation, You're probably okay. So anyway, I did a little short podcast on that because I think it's so critical. Right. And people can listen to these podcasts on, are they on different platforms like Spotify, iTunes? Yes, it's on everything. I'm doing them through an organization called Dr. Talks, DR Talk, but it is also on our main site, which is the balancing point Okay, great. And also people can find you on Facebook and other social media places. Absolutely. What I love is on Facebook, I get to see Dr.

Needers in his little clips every time. And Catherine, and I don't know if you have anything to do with that, but man, you're doing a great job of promotion. Yeah, all I do is talk, Phil. Great to have a person like Catherine. Catherine is the brains of the outfit. That was one of my... I want to share this with you. I saw so much of you being out there in the public because of your experiences and your wisdom and knowledge that would open up people to this whole new world of Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture.

and different treatments, but that kind of person needs a support team. You really need people who are managing the office, managing appointments, marketing, promotion, and you have built this. And you've done a great job of building that, which allows you to go home at two. You know, great book that I read. And again, you know things, but sometimes you just don't really get it. I wrote a book called, Buy Back Your Time. This guy talks about, and you've probably read it, everything like that, about do what you're best at.

Hire someone else to do the other stuff, do only what only you can do or that you are really good at and when I got really sick, I really took that to heart. Right. Good. I think that's it also comes with the age as well, because we start going, I'm not doing that anymore. Give it to a young person with a lot of energy. And I have assistants that help me every once in a while with different things. Even have people who ever once while when I am forgetting the name of a book, movie, et cetera, and I go call them up and say, hey, listen, I can't remember the name of that movie where such as such happened, such and such.

They become my memory restore. Oh my God. When it comes to medical things, you know, cause we do so many tests and we'd do. So many supplements and sometimes those will slip, right? Or a patient, it's like, God, what was her name? And so Catherine is the brains for that for any other things. Like if I want to know. When I got married or if I want to know when my wife's birthday is right, that's Debbie at the front desk, right? Yep That's great or the name of a movie because she knows everything like that That's fantastic.

And your office is the same office in Alameda. Is that or did you move? I think we're in this. We're not on Lincoln. I thank you were at Lincoln, we are right across from the city hall now. Yeah, that's the one where you park in the back. Yes. That office. So we love it here because it's so much quieter. than where we were before. Right. And I remember the painting in the background. Oh, cool. Yeah. So really great and peaceful. Dr. Neters, thank you so much. I hope that people listening take advantage of the different places where they can hear you.

Even if you're in the Bay Area or, you know, if we want to travel and go to the bay area and make an appointment, I highly recommend it. It would be worth it and for your own health. And those around you who will benefit from you being healthy, that you take a visit to Dr. Neuter's office at Alameda Acupuncture. Wonderful to be with you. Phil, this has been such a treat for me. I remember why I love you so much, right? Well, we bring out the best of each other, and I think that's what's great. And I really appreciate you, Dr.

Naderz. I look forward to seeing you soon in person. Okay, Phil, thank you. Likewise. You take care. Thank you for joining me on The Balancing Point. If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review. Feeling out of balance? Most approaches just manage symptoms. Here we get to the root. So real healing, real clarity and balance can begin. Visit alamedaacupuncture.com. That's alamedaacupuncture dot com to learn more, explore our supplements or book a call.

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