Ep. 14: Holistic Pain Management: Living Pain-Free, Naturally with Albert Vaca

Alexa Hulsey [00:00:00]:

Welcome to Notes From Your Acupuncturist, the podcast for anyone who's interested in acupuncture, complementary medicine, holistic, health, and self care. I'm your host, Alexa Bradley. Hulsey. If you enjoy this show, you can help other people discover it by leaving a rating or a review, by following or subscribing on your favorite podcast listening app, or simply by by telling someone about it. And if you'd like to support this show financially, you can become a paid subscriber on Substack for just a few dollars a month. Just head over to Substack.com and search Notes From Your acupuncturist or click the link in the show notes. And one more thing before we get started, just a disclaimer that this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a replacement for medical care from a qualified healthcare provider. Okay, on with the show. Hello, everyone, and welcome to notes from your Acupuncturist. I'm Alexa, and today my guest is licensed acupuncturist, Albert Vaca. Albert and I are going to be talking about pain, all kinds of pain, back pain, musculoskeletal pain, nerve pain, and how to have less of it. Albert has been in practice since 2007 and currently practices at the world renowned Tao of Wellness in Pasadena, California. He's completed advanced certification in acupuncture orthopedics and specializes in musculoskeletal disorders and helping people live pain free with Chinese medicine. He's also the author of the book Back to Pain Free Health secrets of Natural Healing for Back Pain. We have so much to talk about. Albert, welcome.

Albert Vaca [00:01:46]:

Hi. Thank you, Alexa. So happy to be here.

Alexa Hulsey [00:01:49]:

I'm happy to have you here, too. And I am especially excited to talk to you because I think that you and I literally met on the first day of acupuncture school.

Albert Vaca [00:02:01]:

It was crazy.

Alexa Hulsey [00:02:02]:

Yeah. It was many years ago.

Albert Vaca [00:02:04]:

What an amazing, whole new world we just stepped into.

Alexa Hulsey [00:02:07]:

I know, right? I don't think we knew what we were getting ourselves into.

Albert Vaca [00:02:10]:

And we came in the spring semester, too.

Alexa Hulsey [00:02:13]:

Yes.

Albert Vaca [00:02:14]:

Everybody else had a trimester on us already.

Alexa Hulsey [00:02:16]:

That's right.

Albert Vaca [00:02:17]:

Talking about these different concepts and theories, wind and damp and everything else, I'm like, what is going on here?

Alexa Hulsey [00:02:23]:

I know.

Albert Vaca [00:02:25]:

You just keep on going.

Alexa Hulsey [00:02:27]:

Right.

Albert Vaca [00:02:28]:

And you learn. You pick up a little more.

Alexa Hulsey [00:02:31]:

That's right. It worked out. So before you studied acupuncture, you practiced martial arts, is that right?

Albert Vaca [00:02:40]:

I did. I think I've been involved in some kind of physical activity for kind of as long as I can remember, from soccer. As a child, I wrestled in my teens. I got into rock climbing and hiking, which I still do to this day. I just love getting out there. And in college, I got involved in more Tai chi, but that kind of morphed into meeting different people in self defense. So next thing I was going to kickboxing classes and small dojos with like just it was fun sparring with these people that had been doing it for years and they saw me as like this little 19 2021 year. Old kid who was just kind of in there skinny and I was trying to do my stuff and it was awesome because they all fostered just a real love for what they were doing and taught me so much along with that, like, kickboxing. Then I did a little bit of Aikido, which I love, actually. I really want to get back into that at one point, because it's one of those things that it's more energetic in the sense of, like, you use the person's energy against them. For the last time, for the last while, I've been doing more krav maga, which is like, hey, punch you in the face and get out. That's kind of what krav maga is. And it's amazing. Self defense. It's super easy once you get the technique down quick, but it's very I've had my share with that style of stuff, too. I always go back to the Tai Chi and my roots and Qigong and meditation. That's kind of what got me that's what kind of got me involved. To start doing my profession now was all of that.

Alexa Hulsey [00:04:19]:

So martial arts led you to Chinese medicine?

Albert Vaca [00:04:23]:

It did, actually. I went to Sonoma State University. It's in Northern California College. And there I met Dr. Katie Haw. And Dr. Katie is like, she is bright, bright eyes, little gray hair, kind of very small, wearing her red robes. She's a Buddhist nun, white Caucasian woman, big blue eyes. And you just hear you're like, oh, you're just an amazing light being. And she taught us Tai chi. Signed up for a Tai chi class there at Sonoma State. And it was in this small little field they called a field house. It was a small gymnasium, basically. Lights were down, candles were on the floor. She had music and shakers and all this other stuff. I'm like, what is this we're getting ourselves into? And it was amazing because it wasn't so much teaching her, teaching us Tai chi, as in like, hey, let's move our bodies this way, that way, 90 degrees this way, 45 degrees this way. It was more about learning how to breathe.

Alexa Hulsey [00:05:28]:

Wow.

Albert Vaca [00:05:29]:

Learning how to center yourself. She'll go from playing Santana music really loud in the gymnasium, and then all of a sudden, she'll turn it off, and she's like, okay, stand. Hold the ball of energy in front of you. Breathe. Use the bumblebee breath.

Alexa Hulsey [00:05:46]:

Oh, wow.

Albert Vaca [00:05:47]:

Or do the snake breath. And we'll do that. And that would be sporadically pulled into the session that day. And so we learned how to just connect with our energy. And it was never about the form. It was more about playing with energy. And she'd say it all the time, you're just playing with energy. Here you go. And she had a very sweet little voice. The one thing I remember her always saying was, nowhere to go, nothing to do.

Alexa Hulsey [00:06:17]:

Wow.

Albert Vaca [00:06:18]:

You'd be standing there and you're like, yeah, what the heck am I worried about? A girl, a grade A test buddies, whatever it was, none of that. And so you come out of that after an hour, and you go back into the world, and you're like, man, that grass. And the quad just looks so beautiful right now. Like, there's blue skies, there's clouds, and everything just got easier.

Alexa Hulsey [00:06:41]:

Yes.

Albert Vaca [00:06:42]:

My studies got easier. My relationships got better. I stopped doing some of the stuff that was kind of put me down a little bit, and so it spritened everything up, and I met a great community in the process.

Alexa Hulsey [00:06:53]:

Wow.

Albert Vaca [00:06:54]:

Long story.

Alexa Hulsey [00:06:55]:

No, it's so fascinating because you talk about the self healing power of movement, and that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about. What does that mean? But you're already painting the picture of how you learned that early on.

Albert Vaca [00:07:12]:

Yeah, I think the breath work is a big one because I think what I see from my patients and even myself when I'm under stress, I'll start chest breathing, or I won't be breathing at all. I'm like, Wait, how am I even alive right now? I'm not even breathing. Instead of looking at a baby breathe, their bellies just expand and contract with every inhalation and exhalation. And so I look at that now, going, okay, if we can massage our internal organs by breathing through our belly, then that's a big one. And especially with back pain or disc pain, because we need to massage everything else that's going around in there, and we need to have the breath transform the circulation that's going through there and push things and squeeze and massage your own internal organs. So one of the things that I actually give my patients to do is I'll have them put your hands around your stomach, like putting your fingertips in the front and putting your thumbs in the back.

Alexa Hulsey [00:08:16]:

Okay, I'm doing that now.

Albert Vaca [00:08:18]:

Power stance. Right? And all you're doing is you're inhaling through your belly, and you want to feel that inhalation. Push the front of your fingers and push the back of your thumb.

Alexa Hulsey [00:08:31]:

Yeah, you have to think about it. You have to be intentional about it, because to really get it to push the back of my thumbs, I'm trying it right now. I really have to take in a deep breath to do that's.

Albert Vaca [00:08:44]:

A big one, because sometimes what people will teach abdominal breathing, right. Which I love, that's the basis of it, right? You fill up the sink, and it goes into everywhere else. But you breathe through your belly, but you're also breathing into the back ribs. That's creating more space. If there's more space, especially around the mid portion of your body, everything thrives, right?

Alexa Hulsey [00:09:09]:

Okay. I have so much that I want to ask you as follow up questions. This is fascinating. So you talk about massaging the internal organs with the breath. This is a fascinating concept. So talk more about how exactly that works. Is it just the movement of the air moving in and out that gets the organs to move around?

Albert Vaca [00:09:32]:

That's a big portion of it. What I think is when your body starts to get that movement going on, you're getting more blood flow and oxygen. And when you get more blood flow to the area, then you're getting more oxygen to the area, you're getting more nutrients to the area. So when the bloodstream is stuck, there's that TCM statement of fact that talks about when there's pain, then the chi is stagnant. So when the chi is flowing, then there's no pain. So that's the kind of concept you want to work with on this. Okay, so moving the blood brings more oxygen, gets rid of toxins, gets them flowing in and out of there, and you're getting more nutrients going along involved, too. But I think it goes back to the big point of the space factor, right? Because too much, especially if you're looking like a herniated disc or a bulge or a pinch going on, everything is compressed. So we got to have that space open up. I've hurt my back in the past, and I'll kind of get into that as the conversation flows. But one thing that I like doing is grabbing a bar and literally just hanging from it and letting my lower body just kind of relax and open up. And there's that space like an accordion and kind of opening up, and you're like, oh, I can breathe into that space, and it feels so good.

Alexa Hulsey [00:10:56]:

And when you're talking about the exercise where you have your hands on your hips and the thumbs are on the back, and you're trying to get the thumbs to move, which takes some intention, well, then I think about the kidneys, because the kidneys rest in the lower back, and that's an area that's so important in Chinese medicine. And that takes a little more effort to get the air moving around the kidneys and to open that space up. And the kidneys are related to the low back in Chinese medicine. So really getting that breath into the kidney area is so important.

Albert Vaca [00:11:33]:

Absolutely. And this exercise can also be done on the table. Actually, when I first introduced to people, actually, I actually push the top of the ribs onto push the top of the ribs downwards and have them push their ribs into the table. That's another way of seeing it, so they can feel that extra pressure going on. But you could do it at home while you're on the car, but you can put your hands behind your back, like flat if you're lying down and feel the ribs on the back of your hands and then inhale that way while you're lying down, your back. So simple things can be done just even before you go to bed at night. But I love the fact that you brought up the kidneys because yeah, in Chinese medicine, kidneys are all about longevity and bones and back pain and knee pain and aging.

Alexa Hulsey [00:12:16]:

Right.

Albert Vaca [00:12:17]:

More we can to stimulate those kidneys, it's only going to benefit us.

Alexa Hulsey [00:12:22]:

Right. So you talked about kind of how you start introducing these concepts to your patients when they're on the table in your treatment room and you lead them through some exercises. I want to talk about your practice and sort of what you focus on and how you approach treating pain. But first I want to hear more about your advanced training in acupuncture. Orthopedics first let me back up a little and talk about acupuncture education and training for our listeners who haven't been to acupuncture school. So acupuncturists are trained as general practitioners, and we all graduate with a foundation of a sort of general acupuncture medicine. And then some practitioners stay generalists, which is what I have done, and other practitioners like you will choose to develop more of a specialty, and there are advanced training and certification options for your specialty of choice. So talk about the advanced training you've done in acupuncture Orthopedics and what all did that entail and how do you incorporate that into your practice now?

Albert Vaca [00:13:34]:

Sure. Well, what's interesting is that nowadays, I think even Yo San does a track of body movement, pain clinics and so forth, they do a little more track that way. When we started, it was like it's very general and it taught us the basics. And one of the reasons why you chose Yo San to begin with is because of their chi development program. Yes, because when other schools were saying, oh yeah, take one class in Tai Chi or energetics, and that's what you got, and Yo San was like, no, you're taking twelve units here, pal.

Alexa Hulsey [00:14:09]:

Every semester.

Albert Vaca [00:14:10]:

Great. Every semester we're working with our bodies, we're working on the breath, we're working on movement. Sounds good to me. And honestly, I think it actually helped us get through the program, definitely. Because just that, hey, twice a week we're doing 30 minutes to an hour of Tai Chi or something of that nature. And I think just for our own mental stat, our own mental state, that was a great thing to do, have that incorporated as part of the foundation. So I digress. But the Acupuncture orthopedics program. So at Cedarsinae, Dr. Lerner was dr. Lerner is a chiropractor. He ran a part of the pain clinic over there at Cedar Sinai. So he developed a year long program where you would go there a weekend a month and for a whole year and you would go through the program. He basically broke it down into sections. So here we're learning about our here we're learning about the head and neck. Here we're learning about the rest. Here we're learning about arm, shoulder stuff. And he just broke it down all the way down to the very toes and ankles and everything else that went along with it. So every module was related to a certain area, and then he would bring in specialists so we would know how to communicate with certain Western practitioners on what's going on in these areas. Like, okay, why do you give a shot? What happens here? What happens in an actual surgery? What's the recovery like going on there, too? So those kind of questions we don't normally get to ask anybody because we don't have those resources.

Alexa Hulsey [00:15:35]:

Right.

Albert Vaca [00:15:35]:

Unless you know somebody in the family.

Alexa Hulsey [00:15:37]:

Or something like that. Right.

Albert Vaca [00:15:40]:

This allowed us to do that. And then he also paid particular attention to muscle testing. He paid particular attention to trigger points. He paid a lot of attention to imaging. So when it came down to talking about imaging, he would show us X rays, MRI, CT scans, and so forth, and that way we could see what the heck people were talking about when they talked about this stuff. We learned how to read reports. I remember he had a skill on this website. I think it was called, like, Aunt Millie or Aunt Manny or something like that. Or you could sign up for an account. It's like a free account, and you would basically go through a case study. And here's it is. This is the X ray. Here's what it was showing. And you're like, what do you think it is?

Alexa Hulsey [00:16:28]:

Oh, wow.

Albert Vaca [00:16:31]:

But it'd be a blast just to play with it and be like, okay, if I'm in the ballpark, cool. I'm getting the idea. And that was always the idea, something Dr. Lerner would always say, like, Be in the ballpark. You can get more specific, but if you're not in the ballpark, what are you doing here?

Alexa Hulsey [00:16:47]:

Right.

Albert Vaca [00:16:47]:

So that was a big thing I went through with a couple of friends and with that too. So it was a lot of fun doing that every weekend with them, too. So my second foray into this was with Don Lee. Don Lee was one of Dr. Lerner's pupils. Right. But Dr. Lee is like I don't think you'd mind me saying this. He's a big nerd. He will dive into anything, and he'd be like he will just totally dive and dissect it and then make it simple for you. And he paid a lot of attention to the practical hands on treatment portion because he's an acupuncturist. So for him, it was like, here's how you do this, here's how you feel, here's how you touch. Here are these different things, like orthobiogomy and cross neuroreflex and reciprocal inhibition and those little things. It's like I never even thought of those things. Yeah, if you flex something, the other side has to stretch. And that's just yin and yang of the body.

Alexa Hulsey [00:17:46]:

Exactly right.

Albert Vaca [00:17:48]:

So, okay, cool. Orthobiotomy is a way of touching somebody's skin or joints area, and then just gently pressing and gently turning, and you could take a lot of pain off of somebody's sacrum just by applying a little bit of pressure to it and doing a slight twist. If you feel along the edges of their outer bile right, the outer sacrum, you press them. You're like, Ah, that hurts, that hurts, that hurts. Okay, let me press the sacrum. Let me turn it a little bit. Which way feels better? This way or this way? And then they're like, okay, this way feels better. Great. Let me hold that for a second. And I recheck. And a lot of times, like, a good 30% to 50% of the pain from the trigger points are actually relieved. So I like to get my hands on people, and that's a lot of what I learned with Don Lee. So he was the Academy orthopedic acupuncture. I'm not sure if he's even offering classes anymore, but I think he moved to Columbia. But I really enjoyed his program because it was very hands on. I'm a very kinesthetic learner. I like getting my hands on people, so that's why I enjoyed it.

Alexa Hulsey [00:18:56]:

And that is one of the pillars of diagnosis in Chinese medicine, is palpation. And as acupuncturists, we're trained to palpate pulses and use that as a diagnostic method. But there's so much more to palpation than just feeling people's radial pulses, and you can gather so much information, and it sounds like that was really emphasized in that program.

Albert Vaca [00:19:22]:

Yeah, you run across different people. I say I was in Hawaii, and one of my favorite body worker, honestly, this woman named Dr. Nancy Fitzgerald. She's a chiropractor, but she does a lot of massage, a lot of art work. And I go in there and I walk out of there, I'm like, oh, I just feel so much better, because she takes in consideration all the muscles involved in the body and the back. I've had my share of back pain. And going in there, you start to realize, like, oh, all of these muscles are compensating and trying to help, but they're having trouble helping, and so they're trying to do this job. And the other person, this other muscle over here, is trying to do this job, and they're not talking to each other.

Alexa Hulsey [00:20:04]:

Right.

Albert Vaca [00:20:05]:

All of a sudden, my right hip is yanking forward. My lower back is tanning this way. My knee is now going inwards. I mean, it's a big mess. So having somebody learn those have those techniques in order to share with you has taught me a whole bunch along the way.

Alexa Hulsey [00:20:22]:

Yeah.

Albert Vaca [00:20:22]:

So I like to steal techniques from everybody I come across.

Alexa Hulsey [00:20:26]:

I do too. I mean, why not?

Albert Vaca [00:20:28]:

Of course.

Alexa Hulsey [00:20:29]:

Yes.

Albert Vaca [00:20:31]:

We're all better together as we learn.

Alexa Hulsey [00:20:34]:

Exactly. And it's in service of our patients, so yeah, I totally agree. Well, you talked about muscles sort of compensating for one another. In Chinese medicine, we're very big on finding and treating root causes. So let's talk about some sources of pain, because that's one thing that you do in your book, too, is you try to help people understand what are the sources of their pain. So what do you see are some of the most common causes of back pain and musculoskeletal pain?

Albert Vaca [00:21:11]:

I would go from the very start, I would say stress is a big one. You think about it like when you're stressed out, you get the fight or flight thing going on. Your body gets a little tense. You get more blood flow kind of going out to your limbs and not necessarily to our torso anymore. So you're not digesting. Your heart rate gets a little higher, you're not breathing as much. Everything just gets tight, including like neck and shoulders. You're trying to protect yourself from that saber tooth, tire biting your neck, that type of thing. Crouching down a lot to kind of make yourself smaller, target, that type of thing. So that whole fight or flight thing, overall it's fine. It can be beneficial, but in a chronic, it can be beneficial. But when it comes down to us having that constantly now we're worried not so much about somebody chasing us as we are as an email coming through or how our message sounds to this other person or whatever's going on in the world right now. So we need to just breathe going back to that. But that stress response and cortisol is now being flushed in through your body. When the cortisol comes in, then you're having a lot more problems going on because that's creating more inflammation. The inflammation is pressing on things now. Now everything's getting tighter and it's harder to move. That's when muscles get more tight and your mobility gets more tight.

Alexa Hulsey [00:22:43]:

And then I see a lot in my practice of just a domino effect and one area gets tight or one area becomes stagnant. And then the body tries to help by diverting chi flow around the area of stagnation or moving the blood somewhere else or tightening up another muscle in response to balance out. That yin and yang. And sometimes I feel like muscle tightness just pinballs across the body.

Albert Vaca [00:23:17]:

Have you ever seen that? There's a picture where it shows what is your progression of pain, what getting out of pain looks like. And you think it looks like a straight arrow kind of going up to the top or starting right. If you're starting up here, the pain is here and you're like, okay, the pain should decrease all the way down, but it'll go like down, then up and then down and back around again. And it's not always so linear. And so we have to flow with all this. And that's where I think the stress response of the body, the more we can relax into it, the more we can be aware of what's happening, the faster we're going to recover. Because being under pain is stressful and too right, because then your head gets in the whole mix. Also, what is it going to do? How am I going to work? How am I going to sleep? How am I going to wake up in the morning? And then that just cascades into all other stuff. That's the biggest cost for me. But then you got, like age is a factor. As you get older, you don't heal as quickly. That can be a big one, right? Excess weight could be a big factor. If you have a lot going on, especially around your abdomen area, that can be tough. Sitting too long. I tell people all the time, you got to get up. You have to get up. You can't sit there all day long and expect your back to be happy with you.

Alexa Hulsey [00:24:37]:

Right.

Albert Vaca [00:24:37]:

Because those muscles, those sitting muscles, the hip flexors especially, get short. And if they're expecting you to be short all day long, they'll just stay short. So when you stand up and you're like, oh, I've got to stretch out my back and stretch out my legs, and that type of thing, think about how you feel after a long drive somewhere. Yes, get out of the car, you put your hands on your back, you lean backwards. That's the kind of thing we're talking about. You have to get up and move.

Alexa Hulsey [00:25:02]:

That's interesting how you phrase that. It's like if the body thinks that those muscles are going to stay short. And I just think it's so fascinating what the body does because it's always trying to help us. And it's not that the body is doing anything wrong. It's just that we are living in a way that is not harmonious with how our bodies are made and not harmonious with nature. If the body thinks we're going to sit all day and require the muscles to be shortened in our lower back, then it's going to be like, okay, let's do this. But it's not how our bodies are made to be used. We're made to move.

Albert Vaca [00:25:42]:

My seven year old kid, for instance, he can jump, climb, fall. He will fall all over the place. And we'll go on hikes with other families, especially families that have girls. And the moms will be like, Is he okay? Is he okay, dude, he's fine. Every single time. But kids are just so pliable, and they move in all these different ways and contort their bodies in all these different ways. And that's really where we can be if we allow ourselves to move. Yeah, especially for men, like opening up your hips. That's a big one. Opening up your hips. Doing lying down and stretching backwards, that can be a big one, too, because all the time we're leaning forward, we sit in a car, we sit in a cubicle or sit at your desk all day. Everything's kind of going forward is to.

Alexa Hulsey [00:26:35]:

Hunch over and eat dinner while you're watching TV.

Albert Vaca [00:26:38]:

Exactly. So all those big sun salutations and cobra, when you're doing yoga. All those things are so good for you. We have Qigong for back pain. We have a DVD at the Tao of Wellness and it's fantastic because it incorporates all these different movements from beginning to advanced. And it's like you could do things while you're lying in bed, little stretches. You could do things while you're sitting in a chair and do that. You can do things while you're standing up and just flow your body around and allow it to move. She made during COVID we were having much less patience, so of course we had to reach out to our patients more. We were making videos and I made a bunch of videos on like, young, what do you call it? And I called it young spine, young body.

Alexa Hulsey [00:27:24]:

Oh yeah.

Albert Vaca [00:27:25]:

If your spine is young, then your body's young. You're only as old as you're older. Young as your spine is pliable.

Alexa Hulsey [00:27:33]:

Yes.

Albert Vaca [00:27:35]:

Because the more rigid you get, the more old you get, the more old you feel.

Alexa Hulsey [00:27:38]:

Okay, so are those videos on YouTube?

Albert Vaca [00:27:42]:

They are on YouTube. And best way to find them is going to either YouTube because God wants us a whole bunch of videos on there. And you can search my name, you'll find it there. Otherwise on the Tau of Wellness Facebook page, Pasadena Facebook page is where you'll find a lot of my things on there. Everything that I write, everything that I all my YouTube pages and so forth.

Alexa Hulsey [00:28:08]:

I'll find that and we'll link to that in the show notes so people can find that easily. That sounds like an amazing resource. So why don't you walk me through sort of what happens when a patient comes to you for any type of musculoskeletal pain? What's your approach? Like what what could a patient expect if they schedule an appointment with you and they've got pain? What is the treatment plan that you're going to walk them through?

Albert Vaca [00:28:40]:

They'll come in and we'll talk. I want to know how it happened. I want to know when it happened. I want to know what the onset was like, what the pain quality is and so forth. Right. You get all the basics of stuff and then you're like, how does it make you feel? What are your goals? Sometimes they just want I mean, I've got one of my clients, 85 year old man, he could not play golf more than one time a week because it was hurting him. I want to play golf every single day. Okay, let's make that happen. So that was his goal. We got him to a point where he could actually do it. First he started with nine holes, like twice a week. Now he progressed himself up and now he can go out to his desert home and go play golf out in Palm Springs, like all the time he wants. So that was a great success story on this guy, but he also did everything that I told him. To do. And some of the things that we go through in the consultation, like working on an anti inflammatory diet and cutting out your coffee, dairy, alcohol, sugar, everybody hates me for saying those four things. So coffee, dairy, alcohol, sugar, cut them down or at least minimize them as much as you can. And it may be just for a shorter short amount of time while you're in this extreme pain. You come out of ten, out of ten and you're not willing to take those things out of here, then you got a bigger issue going on. Just cut it out for four days and see how you feel.

Alexa Hulsey [00:30:09]:

Four days is doable. Anybody can do four days.

Albert Vaca [00:30:12]:

Yeah, just try doing that throughout the week and see how you feel. The one thing I try not to tell people is if you're having like two, three cups of coffee, don't go down to zero. You're just going to have headaches and hating headache city. Yeah, don't do that. But start to minimize those things. Watch out for night shade vegetables, right? Your potatoes, your tomatoes, your eggplants and bell peppers. You got to watch out for those things because those night shade vegetables have a little toxin and they give you a little toxin kick that will irritate and create more inflammation. And of course, junk food and all that kind of stuff. And even too much red meat can be hard for you. But then you go into all kinds of other stuff like have turmeric, have rosemary, have cumin, have mint in your diet, have all the fish oils and good fatty fishes in there. Eat your nuts and seeds, have sweet potatoes and onions and avocados and all your antioxidant berries, that type of stuff. There's plenty to eat. Yeah.

Alexa Hulsey [00:31:11]:

You're not even going to miss the sugar and the alcohol and the dairy with all the other stuff you can eat.

Albert Vaca [00:31:15]:

And listen, if you're going to start to feel better things out and add more stuff in, I'm more concerned about people eating the same thing all the time instead of having a whole variety.

Alexa Hulsey [00:31:26]:

Right?

Albert Vaca [00:31:27]:

Look, we're giving this abundance in the world of all this stuff.

Alexa Hulsey [00:31:30]:

Yeah.

Albert Vaca [00:31:30]:

So go and take it, explore it and play with it. Yeah, that's the anti inflammatory diets. So I'll talk to them about that. I'll talk to them about herbal therapy as well. I like to give my patients herbs because like you mentioned earlier, about the root of the cause. So we're trying to get the root of the matter. So sometimes if I'm feeling their pulses and their kidney pulse is very weak, well, they don't have enough power to even fight their current ailment. So we have to boost them up. We can't just go, okay, hey, let's put a bunch of blood movers in you, let's move this stuff out of there. Let's create less inflammation, let's create more blood circulation. That's all great, but if they don't have enough power behind them. They don't have a chi to float the boat, then that's a problem, too. We need to add some herbs into that. So I'll explain that whole process and what we do there. So after talking to them about everything, I'll get them on the table, and I'll do some tests. I'll do some muscle testing. I'll see how their SOAS is. I'll see how their quadratus lymborm, the two rectangular muscles in the low back around the kidney area, how they are stabilizing the body. I'll give them a straight leg raise, of course, to make sure that their body doesn't have a herniated disc of any sort. That's just we want to rule out the big stuff. I want to feel around their areas, around their pelvis, around their obliques. I love doing that one because I'll feel around their obliques and one side will be ticklish, or one side will be painful, really. It almost feels gummy around the pelvic arc. There gummy feeling. I use all the technical terms I can with my patients, of course, and I'll say, hey, feel this. Okay, cool. And then I'll do a little work with just trigger points or moving or shifting their pelvis around or pulling a leg this way or that way, just to see how things change. Nine times out of ten, we can get a little bit taken off the top pain taken off the top just by doing those things. Okay, cool. Now we've got a little bit of a clear pain field. Let's do some acupuncture with you. Now, sometimes we do acupuncture right on their back. If we're talking about back pain, sometimes I'll flip them over. They'll be face down. I'll do some acupuncture on their spine or next to their spine, or around the areas of the lower back, the lumbar, basically, or top of the butt area, those things that are all tense. And if they can't get there, then I'll treat them face up, or I'll treat them in a chair, and we just move the chi down. Because in Chinese medicine, the channels go from the urinary bladder channel, goes from the eye all the way to the pinky toe that goes right through the whole back. So we can do different points along the back, the legs, the top of the head in order to treat back pain. And along the way, we've learned these different things about distal acupuncture, which I love having as part of my toolbox. Some days I'll say, let's treat local. Okay, other strategies will treat distal. Today I'm going to treat your face up. I got to take care of all the muscles in the front now and not just the muscles in the back. So that's the type of thing that I love to do. Sometimes I use electroacupuncture. I think it has its benefits, for sure. To get more blood flow going through the needle into the fascia, right, we can get that tissue more relieved, then I think it's a great thing to use. Don't use it all the time. I think we don't want to shock too many people. Sometimes we got to push gently, steer them in the right direction. Let's get it out. Let's get it out. Yeah. So that's the kind of thing I like to do. And then I give them some exercises and I send them home, and I said, hey, where you are right now, this is how I want to treat you, clinically speaking, from what I've seen in these type of patients, in your case, this is what's going to get you the best results. So sometimes that can look at, like, hey, three times a week. Sometimes that could look like, dude, I need to see you the next four days.

Alexa Hulsey [00:35:24]:

Yeah.

Albert Vaca [00:35:25]:

Otherwise, yeah, I'll see you once a week, but you better take your urge and you better do all this other stuff if you can't. And we got to get them on board with me as well, because I could give them all the tips and all the suggestions, but if they're not going to do any of it, I got to kind of meet them where they are. When I was thinking about this, it's like, how do I prepare people for this? What kind of tips do I give people? And I could tell them, hey, go walk in every day, stretch every single day, do a little strength training and cut out your coffee. But if they don't want to do any of that, then I got to.

Alexa Hulsey [00:36:01]:

Meet up where they are, right? Yeah, exactly. That is okay. It's not to say that acupuncture is not going to do anything to help them, but acupuncture is one tool, and there are many, many tools that we can bring to bear on a situation like back pain or musculoskeletal pain. And that's really what you outline in your book too, right?

Albert Vaca [00:36:28]:

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's so many different modalities out there that can be helpful for you. Right? I mean, the Qigong being one of them. The stretching is a big one. The anti inflammatory diet, all the movement that's available there, too. I like chiropractic. Some people don't. I like getting spurts. I think it's one of those things that's, like, sometimes the body just needs the big shift. We take care a lot of the little ones, because acupuncture can be is amazing. Acupuncture is amazing to take care of soft tissue and fascia and movement, blood flow. Sometimes it doesn't move the structure fast enough, right, to get somebody out of pain. So it's a great opportunity to refer somebody and have somebody I mean, I refer to my chiropractor all the time just to get them out of pain. And she's great at referring them right back to me and go, okay, cool, here you go. So it's a great opportunity to network with different people, physical therapists and doctors and pain management people and so forth, because sometimes they may need that cortical steroid shot.

Alexa Hulsey [00:37:35]:

Exactly.

Albert Vaca [00:37:36]:

Sometimes they may need that surgery. But our job is to clear the playing field so they make the surgery a lot easier. So they can make the recovery a lot easier.

Alexa Hulsey [00:37:45]:

Yeah. So let's talk a minute about that because sometimes, I don't know if this happens to you, but sometimes I'll have a patient sort of sheepishly say, like, oh, I decided to get a steroid shot in my shoulder. And I'm like, that's great because that is going to bring your inflammation level down and then it's going to make my job easier as an Acupuncturist to keep your chi flowing as it should. And it is perfectly okay to take a sledgehammer to a problem. Sometimes acupuncture reduces inflammation, no doubt about it. But it doesn't reduce inflammation in the same way that a steroid shot does.

Albert Vaca [00:38:29]:

Right.

Alexa Hulsey [00:38:30]:

And there are benefits to both types of approaches and there are limitations to both types of approaches too. And I think about the same thing with surgery. I love treating patients pre and post surgery. Their recovery time is just so much faster. They feel so much better. Like you said, it clears the field. It helps the body recover and prepare and heal.

Albert Vaca [00:39:00]:

Absolutely. I just had a patient who 85 year old woman just fell in her kitchen and broke her and fractured her elbow and her hip. The poor woman had to crawl to the door to let the 911 folks in. And so she called me and she's like, albert, you need to come to my house and take care of me. Okay, cool. So I came to her house and there she was on the couch just still all bruised up and everything else and no function. She could not get up. And so it was just a matter of healing her much faster. And so when it came time to get her stronger and get her moving again, everybody was saying, oh yeah, it's going to be a period of months in order for you to stand up again, you're going to need X, Y and Z. You're getting home care. It's been about less than, less than five weeks. And she stood up and answered the door for me the other day. Normally I was like, walk in. I'm like, oh my God, I almost started crying. I was so excited that she just got up there and she was like she had the biggest grin on her face like she was the capidate, the canary, I bet. I think that we can help people heal in half the time. A lot of times.

Alexa Hulsey [00:40:16]:

Yeah.

Albert Vaca [00:40:19]:

Again, just moving blood flow, getting rid of all that toxin out of there, moving the inflammation out, all those things are very helpful. Really good.

Alexa Hulsey [00:40:26]:

Yeah. And I feel like acupuncture and all of the other methods that you're describing too, it just naturally moves the body in a direction that it intuitively wants to be in the body, wants to be in a state of balance and in a state of minimal pain. And it just needs some suggestions. Getting there sometimes, absolutely.

Albert Vaca [00:40:53]:

I mentioned that high back pain. Being active all my life, I would always especially physically active like this. Things would come up, I'd get a back pain here, shoulder injury there. Actually, the first time I tried acupuncture, I was with USA wrestling, and we were actually traveling to we traveled to Moscow and to Kazakhstan and different places.

Alexa Hulsey [00:41:11]:

For two oh, wow.

Albert Vaca [00:41:12]:

In the springtime when I was 17 years old. Well, out there, they're big on their wrestling. And so I have 14 year old kids that were monsters. They were just, like, stacked, and they were super strong, and they had been practicing wrestling for since they were, like, four years old. Kids were so good. And I thought I was like I was a little cocky, and they would just drop me on my back and drop me on my shoulder, that type of thing. Wow. And so, yeah, that was the first time I got a big stinger. I couldn't lift up my arm. I'm like, oh, no, my whole wrestling trip is ruined. And that was the first time I tried acupuncture. He's like, my coach said, hey, take off your shirt. Life based down. This guy's going to do acupuncture on you. I'm like, Whatever you say, Coach. They don't use at the time, this guy was not using those very fine needles that we use. He was big, Russian, heavy handed. I don't know what size these needles were, but they did not feel thin. Hurdy. And they were painful. But a couple of treatments and I was back out there.

Alexa Hulsey [00:42:16]:

Wow.

Albert Vaca [00:42:17]:

That was my first foray but two years ago, I suffered with a herniated disc. Okay. So my whole back was locked up into spasm. I was getting pain going all the way down to my feet. The one thing that really scared me was my upper thigh. It was a small section about, I don't know, like five x five. Actually, it's not that small of my leg was numb on my upper thigh. I was like, I can't feel this when I scratch my upper leg. This is not good. And so I immediately went in to get imaging and so forth. I knew what it was, but you have to get the extent of what it is because especially if you know kind of what you're doing, you don't have to have all that imaging. I had a guy who was in his 40s that came into me. He's like, I don't have insurance, who walked into me like, one. He was bent from size. Come around. I'm like, I know what it is. Let's work on it. He's like, great, let's work on it. And he got better. For me, it was one how we talked about the stress response and how it was scary and oh, my gosh, I got two kids and they're super active and I love being active. How am I ever going to do this? X, Y, and Z again. And I still worked. I was, like, working on people, holding my core as strong as I can to support everything. But I'm telling the story because I got better. Ultimately, I got better because I incorporated all the things that I learned. The first thing I did when it started happening was I started doing my Qigong movements, and I could barely move. My pelvis could not move back and forth. So I started doing all the anterior posterior tilting. I was like, it could not go anywhere. But I kept working at it and I kept working, and I was breathing, doing all the anti inflammatory stuff. I would get some chiropractic help. Dr. Dow would come over and treat me every now and again. He's like, Come to Santa Monica. I'll treat you every day. If you want. I'm like, I can't drive 45 minutes to Santa Monica and spend the time in the car on the way back because my back is just killing me. But thank you. So we got it all involved. I'm telling you the story because I hike, I climb, I mess around my kids all the time. We're always fighting a wrestling and all this other stuff. And you can get better, but you have to be patient with it, and you have to do the things that will push you towards a pain free life little by little.

Alexa Hulsey [00:44:54]:

And that involves you being a participant in that.

Albert Vaca [00:44:57]:

Yeah.

Alexa Hulsey [00:44:58]:

And that's one of the things I love about our medicine, because you're describing all of these ways to help people heal. You're part of that. You stick needles in people and you prescribe herbs, but so much of it is what the patient does to heal themselves. And all of this is happening without side effects of medications. It's just like all natural and it's effective and there are no side effects. So, like acupuncture and Chinese medicine, there's just so many benefits and literally no drawbacks to doing it.

Albert Vaca [00:45:42]:

Yeah, I hear you. Absolutely. And they work well with others.

Alexa Hulsey [00:45:46]:

Yes. We play nice with others.

Albert Vaca [00:45:50]:

Absolutely. I don't think other practitioners of other fields should get threatened. I don't want to be threatening anybody else. I don't want to take anybody else's patients. We just want to do the best thing for the patient to heal. And sometimes we see where PT can be tough on a person. Sometimes we feel chiropractic can be tough on a person. Medical doctors, lidocaine shots, sometimes they cause harm, sometimes they don't work. Sometimes they work for a little while and that's great, but then they're stuck doing their same old thing again.

Alexa Hulsey [00:46:22]:

Right.

Albert Vaca [00:46:23]:

We're there just to help facilitate the process of healing.

Alexa Hulsey [00:46:26]:

That's right.

Albert Vaca [00:46:27]:

Yeah. And a lot of it is the body. A lot of it's up here too. A lot of it's mind and learning how to deal with our issues. I always tell people all the time, like if you are down in the dumps, no matter what you're feeling anger, sadness, fear, go into it a little bit. But give yourself a time limit. Go spend ten minutes and just be upset, be fearful, be cry as much as you want, wail, go for it and then get up. Okay, let's go. Yeah, because other times if you're in it too long, then it creates a pattern of chronic pain as well. And so you got to limit it, really feel it and move on. Because there's so many other things, beautiful things in this world that we can address that's right.

Alexa Hulsey [00:47:16]:

And do you feel like then that sort of when you make that switch from feeling it and being in it and being in your emotions and your anger and your sadness and your fear and your stress and then that moment of moving on, what is it that helps people flip the switch? I mean, something that immediately comes to mind for me is actual movement. Like I sit in my sadness or worry or whatever and then to get out of that, I move, do something physical with my body to actually move.

Albert Vaca [00:47:54]:

That chi emotions are moving. So it's not just the fact that, yeah, we're getting up after we do the task, we are doing the task and we're moving in that task. Right? So if I'm in there and I'm crying for ten minutes about stuff, then dude, I am just moving, I'm letting it go. I'm shedding. It is now circulating in me and I'm tapping into those other organs in my body that allow it to be more free. Because in Chinese medicine we talk about organs and we talk about emotions of the organs and how they play off of one another. A very simple one is like if I'm stressed for too much that can interact on my stomach, I can feel a little more gassy, I can feel a little more bloated, I feel that too. And so if we can incorporate those things, then the organs can all play nice with each other, playing nice a lot. It's important that we all play nice, including this internal little universe we have inside ourselves. The more we can nurture that, I feel like the better off we're going to be.

Alexa Hulsey [00:48:58]:

I agree. So something else Chinese medicine is big on is prevention. And you talk about prevention in your book. It's much easier to prevent pain than to treat it. So what are just some practical tips that you have for people to prevent pain and injuries?

Albert Vaca [00:49:19]:

I think the first one would be to reduce the inflammation from the get go. If you eat fried chicken, if you drink a lot, if you don't move, you're asking for it. Okay. Just in a general sense, because that's going to create more inflammation in your body. Getting proper sleep, I think, is a big one, too, because when we don't sleep or when we sleep, our body resets itself, and if we don't allow it to sleep, then that's going to create more issues going on there, too, because it never allows the body to reset. So reducing inflammation, reducing the stress, getting good sleep. Okay, those are the big three. And then we talked about movement, and I think the body doesn't get moved enough throughout the day. You hear about weekend warriors, right? They're working all day. They go outside and they play whatever, pick up basketball games on the weekend, or they go for a long hike or wherever else, go cycling 40 miles, and then they wonder why it's not enough.

Alexa Hulsey [00:50:23]:

Right.

Albert Vaca [00:50:23]:

It's not enough to be a weekend.

Alexa Hulsey [00:50:25]:

Warrior, and it's going from one extreme to another extreme extreme yin during the week of sitting all day and then extreme yang of cycling 40 miles on the weekend.

Albert Vaca [00:50:38]:

Absolutely too much. It's living a balanced life. That's where the prevention comes in, because I don't mind it, dude, fried chicken is good. Having a glass of wine or a beer, great, that's fine. But we can't do it all the time, especially as we get older. So body is not healing and processing as quickly. We can get away a lot while we're 20, but not when we're at past 40.

Alexa Hulsey [00:51:05]:

That's the truth.

Albert Vaca [00:51:06]:

Yeah. I'm 46 now. I'm healing slower than I used to be, but I'm also doing the things to take care of myself, and that's okay. So I think if we just spend five to ten minutes every day just doing something I mean, I have a meditation practice, so I think that's part of why I can do the things I do and feel good and then have a good outlook on things. I think that's a huge part of my life, having community around you. I think having community is a huge factor not only on our well being, but just our general health, because now we're able to talk to people, maybe we go do other things. Now we're out of ourselves. Maybe we have friends that do these things, friends that do these things, and we kind of lean more towards this. So I think the community is a big portion of health in general and.

Alexa Hulsey [00:51:53]:

Longevity well, and you talk about that stress piece, how stress can lead to pain, and community is a way to combat stress. It's so important.

Albert Vaca [00:52:01]:

Yeah, absolutely. Think about how when you're laughing and playing and having great conversation, you're not thinking about your pain.

Alexa Hulsey [00:52:08]:

That's right.

Albert Vaca [00:52:09]:

Yeah. Just doesn't come up unless you're what you guys always talk about. But even that yeah. You can still laugh about it. Yeah. My backstand killing me.

Alexa Hulsey [00:52:19]:

Right.

Albert Vaca [00:52:20]:

But even that's kind of you're sharing it now, so it's pinning it outwards, and maybe you're getting something back, because I think a lot of times when we're having those pain, and especially chronic and acute situations, we go inward, try to figure out all this stuff. And it's not always easy. So express it, move it, move your body, move your emotions. I think that's a big part of that.

Alexa Hulsey [00:52:46]:

Yeah. And once again, movement is self care. It's healing.

Albert Vaca [00:52:50]:

Yeah, for sure. I always say, like, some people will say, I don't have time to exercise. You like music? Yes, I love music. Alexa, play my favorite song.

Alexa Hulsey [00:53:01]:

Yeah.

Albert Vaca [00:53:02]:

And then you just dance around and move in your bathroom or in your living room, too. That's like three or four minutes right there. Odds are turns into three or four songs, because it feels good. Do things that make you feel good.

Alexa Hulsey [00:53:14]:

Yeah.

Albert Vaca [00:53:15]:

You don't have to go to the gym for an hour and a half a day. You don't have to go to your yoga class. You don't have to go there. You don't have to have all these different things set up for yourself. You can do little things throughout your life to do that.

Alexa Hulsey [00:53:25]:

Yeah. It's more sustainable that way, too.

Albert Vaca [00:53:28]:

Way more sustainable, yeah. And then that'll lead to other things that you like to do anyway.

Alexa Hulsey [00:53:32]:

Absolutely.

Albert Vaca [00:53:34]:

All that stuff feels good to do. So, I mean, I just get back from Hawaii, right? I was waking up with the birds in the ocean. I was meditating first thing in the morning for a longer period of time. I was playing on the beach. I was swimming. We walked to the jungle. We were hiking around in the jungle, just taking all that stuff in. And I came back, I'm like, oh, my gosh, I got to drive to work. I'm rushing out of the house again. I'm not eating as well as I was before. It's a big transition. I'm laughing at myself, going, oh, my God. I could see how I'm feeling just doing all those things versus not. There's one thing I like to add when I think about it, in regard to patients, patients that are here in this podcast right now with us, that maybe don't know everything about acupuncture. Don't be afraid to bring something up to your acupunctures, whether you think it can help or not.

Alexa Hulsey [00:54:29]:

That's great advice, because more times than.

Albert Vaca [00:54:31]:

Not, they may not know, they may not have the information what acupuncture can treat. And it's amazing how much it can treat. Yes, it's amazing how much you can treat. This is hurting me. Can you treat migraines? Can you treat toothache pain? Can you treat my IBS? My wrist is hurting, so forth. My eyes are having I have a little blurry vision going on. What's going on there? Yes, we can help that. Don't be afraid to bring that stuff up. Even the emotional stuff, too, because we can play with that. I have patients now. Come in. I have a patient the other day. It's like, I just feel angry. Can you work with that? Yes, we can.

Alexa Hulsey [00:55:08]:

Yes, we can.

Albert Vaca [00:55:10]:

There's a specific point for it. Absolutely. There you go. Yes, we can. I think that's a big one for layman.

Alexa Hulsey [00:55:20]:

That's such a great point. And an acupuncturist can help you make connections and see how those things are related, like how your anger is related to your migraines and your blurry vision. We can connect those dots for you. So absolutely. Tell us everything.

Albert Vaca [00:55:40]:

Exactly.

Alexa Hulsey [00:55:41]:

Well, Albert, if people are interested in working with you or learning more from you, where can they find you?

Albert Vaca [00:55:49]:

Easiest place is by going to tau ofwellness.com so tao of Wellness.com. There you'll find the Pasadena Clinic, the Santa Monica Clinic, because there's two locations I run the Pasadena office, and that's where I am in Pasadena, and this is California. Mind you. That'd be the best place to start because you can find our email. You can reach out to us from there. You can set up an appointment right there for people that want to just talk to me, that are out of state, that aren't necessarily coming into maybe not be able to come in to see me. We can do phone consultations, too.

Alexa Hulsey [00:56:25]:

Oh, great.

Albert Vaca [00:56:26]:

Telemedicine. Great. I can talk to them. We can send them herbs. I can give them a whole set of things that they can do great as well as follow up with them every bi weekly or so forth too. So that's a great thing that we especially started incorporating through 2020 because everybody wasn't coming in right. If you go to the Tableau's website too, you can see the Word store on the top of the navigation header, and that'll take you to where you can find my book, back to Pain Free Health Secrets of Natural Healing for Back Pain. That you can find on the website there as well. If you want a quick version, you can get it on Kindle, on Amazon. The best way to find resources, I guess, would probably be the Facebook page, the Towel of Wellness, pasadena Facebook page, because that's specifically all the stuff that I'm putting on there.

Alexa Hulsey [00:57:15]:

Okay.

Albert Vaca [00:57:16]:

So that way you'll find the YouTube videos on there, articles that I've written not just about back pain, but whatever allergies and fertility and endometriosis and all that kind of stuff too.

Alexa Hulsey [00:57:26]:

Well, we will link to all of this information in the show Notes so that people can find you and reach out to you and buy your book and learn from you.

Albert Vaca [00:57:36]:

Awesome.

Alexa Hulsey [00:57:37]:

Yeah. This has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining me.

Albert Vaca [00:57:43]:

Absolutely. It's been a pleasure. It's really great connecting with you again too.

Alexa Hulsey [00:57:46]:

Likewise. Thank you for listening to today's episode of Notes From Your Acupuncturist. If you liked what you heard, please follow this show, leave a rating or review, or just tell someone about it. And if you want to join the conversation, you can subscribe to Notes From. Your acupuncturist on Substack, where you can comment, ask questions, participate in discussion threads, watch videos and read more of my reflections on acupuncture and healing. Huge thanks as always to our paid subscribers for helping keep this work sustainable. You too can become a paid subscriber for just a few dollars a month. Just head over to Substack.com and search notes from your acupuncturist or click the link in the show notes. Until next time, this is Alexa Bradley Hulsey, your Acupuncturist, signing off with love and gratitude.