Ep. 22: Unraveling Long COVID: A Chinese Medicine Approach with Luriko Ozeki

0:00:04 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

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 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 substackcom 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 I am talking with my guest licensed acupuncturist, Luriko Ozeki, about how acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine can help people who are dealing with the effects of long COVID. Luriko has been practicing since 2008, and her practice, Iyashi Wellness, is based in Los Angeles and she also offers telemedicine services. Luriko specializes in pediatrics and also works with many long COVID patients. She's also developed a vaccine preparedness course to help both children and adults prepare their bodies to receive vaccines, including the COVID vaccine, and to minimize possible immunologic response to vaccines. We'll be talking about all of that today and I can't wait to dive in Luriko welcome. Thank you, hi, alexa Hi. 

0:01:48 - Luriko Ozeki

And hello listeners. 

0:01:51 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Yes, hello listeners. Thank you for listening. So let's start by talking about how you came to concentrate on working with patients with long COVID, because you've specialized in pediatrics for many years. Correct, and also caring for parents as a way of caring for children which is really interesting. I would love to do another episode on that topic because I'm fascinated by it, but today we're going to focus on long COVID. Sure, so did long COVID become a natural extension of your practice? Were you starting to see more parents and children with long COVID? 

0:02:23 - Luriko Ozeki

No, so what happened was in 2018-2019, I took a Chinese herbal dermatology certification, a year-long program, and in that program, the teacher Mazenokafaji did an incredible job of describing how disease enters the body and then manifests in this case, dermatology. But in Chinese medicine, the way how we see disease entering and manifesting whether it's dermatology or colds or flus or any kind of disease it's a very similar pattern. And so by understanding how skin diseases occur, from the very kind of what we say in Chinese medicine, superficial layers to the deeper layers of the body, being able to understand that when COVID hit then in 2020, I was surprisingly incredibly confidently ready to deal with COVID. And so, when we had to turn into telemedicine thankfully with Chinese herbal medicine, as long as you can get, obviously, the symptoms of the patient, what they're experiencing in their history, and then, in my case, I always asked for a photograph of the patient's face and the tongue to help me kind of finalize my reassessment of the patient I was able to start prescribing Chinese herbs to both COVID and long-haul patients, starting in summer of 2020. 

Wow, interestingly, yeah, my very first patient was actually my very first COVID slash long-haul patient was actually a long-haul patient. This patient was one of the very first patients to get COVID in March and even though she had some relatively strong COVID symptoms, it was the post COVID symptoms that really lingered for her and I happened to chime in to my local mom's Facebook group saying that you know I can help with Chinese herbs and so thankfully she took. She was willing to trust and kind of go with the flow of the situation and maybe perhaps she was also desperate, right. 

So she came to me via telemedicine. Do we start as telemedicine? I think maybe at that point I might have been seeing or I might have started telemedicine and then, once we stabilized her, she started coming in and so she was my very first long-haul patient. But since then I've definitely treated numerous COVID patients via telemedicine and now that COVID has been around for, you know, three years, I'm starting to get more long-haul patients who come specifically for long-haul, whether via telemedicine or in-person, or I'm starting to get patients, both adults and children, who come for whatever symptom. You know complaints that they may have. But as I dig into, when did this start? Why are you feeling this? You know how strong has it been. 

Many times it's COVID that either triggers the symptom that they never recognized it was because of their COVID infection, or it got worse post-COVID. And so then I link it for them saying look, this is what happened, covid. You may have had mild symptoms, like most people are getting now. In the last year or so You've had mild or almost no symptom, like one boy that I'm treating right now. He had almost no symptoms. He started with headaches and tinnitus ringing in the ears, and so I let the parents recognize that this started happening with COVID right. They're like oh yeah, you're right, and so I started treating that. So now I'm getting these patients who don't recognize that it's long-haul, and then I help them recognize it and I treat it with herbs. 

0:05:56 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Interesting. I want to come back to this topic of disease progression because I think that is probably a crucial part of understanding how we treat long COVID or COVID or other types of infectious diseases in Chinese medicine. So it's really interesting that you mentioned that. I want to put a pin in that for right now and we'll come back to the whole Chinese medicine perspective on disease progression and all of that I want to start by just talking a little bit about long COVID in general. This is a new disease. Our understanding of it is evolving. I want to share some basic statistics. It's estimated to occur in at least 10% of severe SARS-CoV-2 infections and I found an estimate that says it's estimated to affect around 200 million people worldwide, and those numbers are likely higher due to undocumented cases. 

So that's a lot of people impacted by long COVID, and whether you yourself have it or maybe you're caring for a family member who has it or you know someone who has it. If you're listening to this, chances are you've personally been impacted by long COVID in some way. So I found another statistic that said Two-thirds of long COVID patients require a reduced work schedule or work working at all. This study was published in the Lancet. I'm going to put links to all of these studies. It's just really it has very far-reaching effects. So, yeah, so right now, this is the summer of 2023. What is our basic understanding of what long COVID is? 

0:07:44 - Luriko Ozeki

Okay, yeah, sure. So according to the CDC, first of all, let's define what COVID a long COVID is. So long COVID is a broadly defined long COVID excuse me is broadly defined as signs, symptoms and conditions that continue or develop after initial COVID-19 infection. This definition of long COVID was developed by the Department of Health and Human Services in collaboration with CDC. So people call long COVID by many names, including post-COVID conditions, long haul COVID, post-acute COVID-19, long-term effects of COVID and chronic COVID. The term post-acute sequela of SARS-CoV-2 infection is known as PASC is also used to refer to a subset of long COVID, and PASC is something you might hear more doctors mentioning or medical literature. 

0:08:35 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Are there specific body systems that seem to be more affected by long COVID than others? 

0:08:41 - Luriko Ozeki

Yes, so long, covid or, let's start even from the beginning, sars-cov-2, the virus that causes a disease of COVID-19. We've now come to understand and in Chinese medicine we knew this from the beginning because it's a toxic, novel virus is that it's a virus that affects the blood. It's a blood disease or blood level in Chinese medicine. And so even though most people when they get COVID, initially they might have the typical respiratory symptoms cough, cold fever, whatnot Because of this novelty of this virus, it passes very quickly from the respiratory system, if you don't treat it at that time, to then enter the blood system very quickly. And that's why now long haul is causing a myriad of problems in people. That's very multi-systemic, so it can include immune dysregulation, microbiota disruption, which is basically gut disruption, autoimmunity, clotting and endothelial abnormalities and dysfunctional neurological signaling, which basically means there's a lot of nervous system disorders happening. There's also we're seeing more and more reactivation of viruses such as EBV, which is the epsom beam virus, and these damages go from tissues to cells, to blood, to mucus membranes, and it provides or it creates a very immune mediated response and inflammation. So that's why it becomes this very systemic thing. 

So with children, one of the first things we noticed very early on in 2020, which is for a subset of children. Thankfully is they started developing something called MISC multi-inflammatory syndrome in children and this was where their entire system would basically really flare up with a lot of inflammation and it was an emergency room kind of condition and they had to get stabilized in the hospital. So now what we're seeing with adults is something like that and some people can have really severe multi-systemic inflammation, even in adults, but a lot of people are just having like shortness of breath, extreme fatigue, muscle and joint pain, digestive imbalances and dysfunction, cognitive issues where they can't focus, they can't remember. Pots is another one. Yes, osterol ortho something. 

0:11:11 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Orthostatic. Orthostatic Cardiac syndrome. Thank you. 

0:11:14 - Luriko Ozeki

Where laying or standing, they're just constantly dizzy. Especially the movement of going from sitting up to laying down, they get extremely dizzy, and so those are really coming out into the fore and thankfully, more and more doctors are recognizing this as long haul. But there's still many practitioners who say it's all in your head, unfortunately. So poor long haul patients are really suffering where they're getting recognized and just seeing that, oh, this is something in your head, right. 

0:11:45 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Yeah, I have observed that in my own practice too. Fatigue seems like a major symptom that is really impacting people's lives and quality of life, and fatigue is one of those symptoms that is, it's hard to quantify, it's hard to measure and it's hard to treat too. So a lot of these patients are left just trying to sort of figure things out on their own and not getting a lot of guidance. So you mentioned disease progression again in the blood level, so we'll put a pin in that too because, I want to get into that. 

There's so much interesting Chinese medicine theory to discuss. Going back to biomedicine, what's a typical biomedical approach to treating long COVID right now? Like what would an MD typically prescribe for long COVID? 

0:12:41 - Luriko Ozeki

So what I found research wise is they kind of throw several different medical medicines to address the different systems that the patient is suffering from. 

So what I've heard is, or what I've read is off label use of metformin, paxilovid. 

Paxilovid obviously is the drug of choice right now for when you catch COVID, but they're also using it post COVID because it's an antiviral medication. 

But I'm understanding that paxilovid is kind of getting out of use, so to speak, because they're noticing that it's not as effective for the current strain. They're also using anti-inflammatory drugs like low dose naltrexone and beta blockers to slow heart rate and lower blood pressure, because that's another thing, right, there's a lot of this tachycardia, fast heart rate going on in that dizziness pots, that type of stuff. But then if these don't work, or in conjunction with these medications, what long haul patients are getting in terms of support biometrically is there's hospitals and clinics popping up throughout the country where they focus on long haul and specialists then do specific exercises. So they'll assess and target specific symptoms of the patient and ask experts from those fields, like neurologists, pulmonologists, cardiologists, behavioral health therapists, speech language pathologists and so forth, to provide either hands-on treatment, like certain exercises to do, and practices, perhaps dietary recommendations and then those medications that they hope target the systems that are affecting the patients. 

0:14:28 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Interesting. Well, it sounds like that sort of approach is really what's needed, right? Something multifaceted and incorporating a lot of different treatments, including acupuncture and Chinese medicine, and I would love to see our medicine incorporated into some of those clinics. 

Yes, well, let's talk about the Chinese medicine perspective now. You talked about disease progression. So for folks who are listening, we have we have who aren't acupuncturists and didn't go to acupuncture school we have many, many sort of theories in Chinese medicine about how disease progresses through the body, and one of those theories that we utilize is sort of diseases moving from the exterior of the body to the interior and the exterior body diseases invade through the skin or through the pores, or through the mouth or the nose and then, if they don't get treated, they then progress deeper into, ultimately, the blood level which can have wide reaching effects. And so it sounds like this is this is really the disease progression that you're seeing, with long COVID starting exterior and then somehow progressing deeper and deeper where it's harder to treat and it causes more widespread symptoms. Is that what you're seeing? 

0:15:53 - Luriko Ozeki

Correct. So this disease progression comes from two, two kind of like our Bible in Chinese medicine, two books called Chang Han Lun and Wang Bing. These are two theories of disease pathology, and Chang Han Lun is disease where we see what we call the cold pathogen that enters the body, versus Wang Bing is the disease where hot pathogen enters the body. So in Chinese medicine we understand that there's several different what we call pathogens that enter the body. There's hot pathogen, cold pathogen, wind pathogen, even damp pathogen, and then even emotions are a form of pathogen for us in Chinese medicine. So with COVID, this disease or SARS-CoV-2, the virus was very early on recognized to be a cold pathogen. In China they were doing, you know, all the Chinese medicine practitioners in China were carefully studying this and it matches the definition of a cold pathogen because the patient who then experiences the symptoms are a typical what we call cold symptoms. Right, the flu, I mean, excuse me, fever, perhaps headaches, you know, tight neck, coughing and so forth, and the symptoms are quite strong initially. Now it's because the virus is becoming much more widespread and it's weakening so-called. It's weakening, it's becoming more endemic, it's become weaker. So the symptoms are milder, but the way how this cold pathogen enters is like you were saying, alexa it enters the sinus, the mucus membranes right the sinus, the eyes, the mouth and then, once it enters, for any kind of virus that enters or cold pathogen that enters, we want to keep it, from a Chinese medicine perspective, in the head area right, the runny nose, the itchy eyes or not itchy eyes, that's allergy, excuse me, but the runny nose, maybe the headache, slight fever. What we don't want it to progress is then enter the respiratory system right. That causes the deeper coughing and the difficulty breathing and so forth. And so with COVID-19, a lot of people would go, the symptoms would go directly into the chest and then spread. If that isn't stopped or the body doesn't know how to stop this progression, then it's spread much more multi-systemically throughout the whole body. 

And so, by understanding how disease enters first in this mucus membrane layer, we have a lot of Chinese herbs that treat this mucus membrane layer, so to speak, which tend to be antivirals, herbal antivirals that are more the leaf and twigs and finer parts of a plant, because it's lighter in nature than, let's say, a huge tree trunk or a root, and if you think of a tree, those roots is what really plants deep into the ground and those types of root herbs are something you can use for digestive problems or even some in the chest, because the way how the lung lobe if you ever looked at a lung, it almost looks like roots that are going into the chest. So some of these herbs that are a little bit more, while we say deeper into the body, the root type or the deeper trunk type of herbs, are really great. But yeah, so we have these herbs that really address these different layers of much more superficial versus a little bit interior, to like deep into the organ systems. 

0:19:19 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

I love that aspect of Chinese herbs, just that it's so intuitive Once you, once you really think about it. Like you said, we use leaves and twigs to treat the lighter, more exterior parts of the body. I remember reading very early on in the pandemic that Gui Zhi Tang was being used as a formula to treat SARS-CoV-2. And Gui Zhi Tang is cinnamon twig decoction. It's a classic formula and the primary ingredient is cinnamon twigs and it has a warming effect and it expels the cold pathogen from the body. So it makes absolute sense that we would use that classic formula. Even though SARS-CoV-2 is a novel virus. We can use those theories that have been in place for thousands of years and they still work. 

0:20:09 - Luriko Ozeki

Yes, the two main formulas I used for that kind of antiviral aspect of COVID even today is something called Sha-Chai-Hu-Tang or Chai-Hu-Gui Zhi Tang. So Sha-Chai-Hu-Tang and Chai-Hu-Gui Zhi Tang both work on a layer of the body in Chinese medicine called Xiaoyang level. And it's this ability or this level, this pathway, where disease either so it's almost like a crossroads in the body the body can decide do I have the energy to push it out of the body completely and this person gets better, or do I not have the right resources to fight it, and then it starts to enter deeper into the body. So it's almost like a door where you can pivot inside or outside. And so these two formulas really address this very nuanced layer of disease where you want the body to be able to recognize this virus and fight it off completely so that it doesn't either linger in this kind of no man land or that it enters deeper into the body. 

And Chai Hu Gui Zhi Tang is a derivative of Gui Zhi Tang, the cinnamon decoction, and one is used. Chai Hu Gui Zhi Tang is used more for people who are a little bit of a weaker constitution, who tend to sweat too easily, who are of a thin stature generally speaking and just overall like a sensitive constitution, where someone who is more robust, larger in size, who have these much more stronger cold like symptoms. Chai Hu Tang is a great formula so, based on the patient coming to me, I would choose either Chai Hu Tang or Chai Hu Gui Zhi Tang, and then an addition of different formulas if they're having, let's say, digestive symptoms like that throwing up or diarrhea, or a lot of the loss of smell and taste that people were having early on with COVID and even now with long haul. 

0:22:04 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Yeah, that Xiaoyang layer of the body is really interesting, and I feel like a lot of modern diseases that we help patients with fall into that category because they're hard to treat and they're hard to diagnose, and it's this disease that sort of gets stuck in this in between phase. And so I think about things like like Epstein-Barbaryis, which you mentioned, or fibromyalgia, or any number of digestive syndromes or autoimmune conditions. These are diseases that don't quite go away and they sort of hang out and then they'll flare up and then they'll calm back down again and then they'll flare up again. And our approach with Chinese medicine is to harmonize, and the way that I think of that is like is that we support the body so that it can then deal with this pathogen that's stuck in this in between phase. 

0:23:11 - Luriko Ozeki

Correct. 

Yeah, the way how I see long haul is, yes, it's a multi systemic condition, but I really treat it as an autoimmune disorder because it mimics so many of these autoimmune conditions out there, right, the chronic fatigue syndrome, thyroiditis, whether hyper or hypoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and MASC all those types of very inflammatory, systemic inflammatory conditions. 

And when you think about it, long haul is really where a pathogen came into the body and the body never got rid of it and so it's lingering in there and causing whatever symptoms that you're having. 

And so it's the Xiaoyang inability to push out fresh, fresh force, the pathogen, pathogen that's been kind of lurking, hiding, doing its thing in the body. And so if we can give the body the necessary signals via anti inflammation, getting rid of mucus and phlegm which blankets the immune system, so you can't, the body can't, recognize a lot of the viruses that are lingering, and then if tonification you know strengthening the body's required, you add some of those herbs and by clearing out the body of a lot of the inflammation, then the body starts to get smart again because it's not bogged down with all the inflammation and the mucus and the phlegm and whatnot. And so these herbs really help to clear that out and gets the body to do what it's supposed to do, because our bodies are innately super intelligent. It's just with inflammation that it forgets many times what to do, and we're really great at doing that is helping the body recognize how to be healthy again. 

0:24:48 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

It's interesting that you mentioned mucus and phlegm sort of blanketing the body and the immune system can't recognize what's going on. I haven't really thought of it in that way, but it makes total sense because mucus and phlegm also cloud our breathing our vision, our mental clarity, yes. So of course it's going to cloud the body's own ability to recognize a pathogen. 

0:25:15 - Luriko Ozeki

Yeah, so a lot of the herbs I use for long COVID patients as well as COVID is a lot of these what we call draining damp, clearing flamm, resolving phlegm and mucus and even just by giving something like that, a formula, for example, like a urchin tongue or mentan, patients just like so much better, feel so much better afterwards. And then I start fine tuning what may still be lingering, and so I'll then combine, like whether it's Chai Hutang or Chai Hukuejutang or Xiaoyang formula, with these phlegm clearing formulas to see what's really at the bottom of why this patient is suffering from long haul. And we know that most of the people who get COVID thankfully don't turn into long haul. It is well 10%, as you said earlier in the in the episode. We surmise that it's 10%, although we think there's actually larger, because a lot of people either don't recognize it or they don't report it. But there are people who do get COVID who completely recover and never get long haul. So the question always we have to ask is why is someone getting long haul versus someone who is not, when they both have COVID? 

So one of the things we like to do in the long haul COVID world here in the Chinese medicine world is really important to look at what state of health was this patient when they first got COVID or before they got COVID, because everyone says I was so healthy and now I have long haul. So from a biomedical point of view they may have looked very healthy, but from a Chinese medicine point of view, we we are much more nuanced in how we see health and so we can see the imbalances and the weaknesses in the patient. So inevitably these patients that come to me with long haul is they have, for example, a slightly weak digestion, or they already were prone to asthma, or they had what we call kidney deficiency or they had what we call liver deficiency. So there are these kind of weak points in the body. Sometimes a patient will then also say, when they recognize that this is long haul, they go oh yeah, you know, when I was a child I used to have asthma. Or when I was a child I used to have a lot of you know, let's say, food sensitive sensitivities or digestive problems. Right, and we have to be to love, so attack the weakest link. 

So we have to then, in treating Chinese with Chinese herbs and Chinese medicine, is to first, like I said, address that inflammation, get rid of the inflammation, get rid of the phlegm a mucus and then goes away. Then we have to treat the infrastructure that was weak to begin with with herbs that then strengthen, whether it's that lung system, the digestive system, you know, kidney, kidney system, so forth. So we really try to patch up not only patch up but really fortify the infrastructure of the patient so they never get long haul again, because getting coven now is kind of going to become a reality of life, if not once or twice or multiple times and then really strengthen the body that it can resist these really lingering, many times devastating long haul symptoms. 

0:28:04 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Wow. So something else that you write about that I that I think is related to everything that you're saying is the concept of a latent pathogenic factor. So let's talk about latent pathogenic factors. For what is a latent pathogenic factor? How do I know if I have one and what do I do about it? 

0:28:26 - Luriko Ozeki

Yeah, so latent pathogenic factor, LPF, it's basically like long COVID, like these autoimmune conditions. So the way how I treat LPF or the way how I recognize LPF is, a patient will come to me and they'll say I have this symptom, I'm suffering from this symptom, and so of course I'll do history taking and they'll kind of meander and they'll tell me this and that, but there's nothing really fine pointing that tells me ah, it's this reason. So then I dig deeper and I say did you ever have a strep throat? Did you ever get sick when this started or soon after your symptoms started? Where you sick, did you have the stomach flu, food poisoning, you know that kind of some kind of infection. And then they'll think, and they'll think of oh yeah, I did have a cold, or yeah, I had a stomach flu. So, or even a vaccine, right, I think, if they had a vaccine, whether COVID or otherwise. And so for me that's the telltale sign of an LPF Some kind of pathogen entered the body and then, whether because the patient was weak to begin with or because this pathogen was too strong, like SARS-CoV-2, the body doesn't know how to fight it. 

So it enters the body and doesn't have the proper and strong immune response to kick it out of the system. So then it enters and borrows into the kind of hiding spaces of the body right, like the lymph nodes, right. So a lot of patients will have swollen lymph nodes if they have LPF or autoimmune conditions. And then whenever your immune system then is depressed because of stress or some kind of trauma, it reactivates and causes these autoimmune flares right, and Long Hall is one of them. When they seem to start to get better, they're like oh, I'm starting to be able to walk more, or now I can breathe better. So then they like they don't do a marathon, but they push themselves a little too much and then boom, their symptoms flare up again. And that's what LPF latent pathogenic factor likes to do, is it likes to show its ugly face when the patient is weaker. That's how you know that you have an LPF, if you had either a vaccine or some kind of infection that started it all and you've never been the same since. 

0:30:42 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

And so your approach is first of all making sure we clear out the pathogenic factors and then supplementing the patient. 

0:30:51 - Luriko Ozeki

Yeah, yeah, we can supplement with herbs, we can supplement with acupuncture, we can supplement with something called moxibustion, which is the burning of a plant called mugwort, and this burning is more like radiant heat. So it's almost kind of like if you're sitting under one of those red lights and rotisserie chicken. You know, it's kind of like that radiant heat, right Infrared heat that warms the core of your body, because many times with autoimmune conditions and these LPF symptoms and conditions is the patient is actually, even though they're very inflamed internally, they're actually very deficient and cold is what we say in Chinese medicine. And when you're cold think about it in the winter, when you're cold, you don't want to move, you're kind of very sluggish and even bears hibernate right to try and kind of save those their energy. And so that cold energy that's very kind of inherent in someone who's highly inflamed doesn't allow the immune system to recognize the inflammation properly and keeps inflaming. 

So, warming up the body internally via like moxibustion, like herbs, maybe even sauna, some gentle exercises like Tai Chi or Qigong, when you can create this internal heat, then the body starts to literally start to wake up because you're no longer ice and frozen like in the ice ages, right. And then when you get out of it, it's like springtime ah, now I can see, kind of thing. And then the body recognizes oh look at this inflammation that's been going on for years. I got to tamp that down and get rid of it, right, so there's a lot of herbs eventually. Initially, when you get rid of this very obvious inflammation, then you set many times have to start warming up the body with supplements, with tonification and these warming techniques. 

0:32:35 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

And that gets back to the original type of pathogen. When we're talking about SARS-CoV-2, it's a cold pathogen. Cold pathogen, yes, and then the cold just penetrates deeper and deeper into the body, even though it produces, sometimes, symptoms of heat. That's what I love about Chinese medicine. One of the many things I love about Chinese medicine is like we can look at all these seemingly paradoxical symptoms and we can make sense of them. 

Yep, absolutely yeah there's cold and heat coexist in the body. Right, it's not one or the other Right. Yeah, so you mentioned a few things acupuncture, herbs, moxibustion, some warming techniques, any other modalities that you recommend for treating long COVID or maybe any exercises like qigong, any nutritional recommendations? Sure. 

0:33:32 - Luriko Ozeki

So you know, obviously I would love for our listeners if you're suffering from long haul or if you know a loved one suffering from long haul, please seek trained Chinese herbalist and or acupuncturist, because we really know how to treat long COVID. Unfortunately, china has had many epidemics over its thousands of years of existence, so Chinese medicine developed an exquisitely complex and sophisticated understanding of disease, especially epidemics and infectious disease. And so for those of us who've trained in understanding this, we know how to take a patient from the that initial, very obvious, strong symptoms that are really debilitating the patient, to then get rid of that but ultimately walk them out completely strong and healthy and even healthier than when they first started before COVID. And so I would definitely say seek you know, if you can a Chinese herbalist, acupuncturist near you, whether in person or in telemedicine. And if that's not available or if you want to include other things, you can also do cupping, which is great. It's something you can do at home. When COVID first hit, what I would do a lot for my COVID patients is I would so called prescribed cupping sets to my patients and give them a particular link and then they'll purchase it through Amazon and then the adult if they're willing to be in the room with the patient, or if they were already sick, right, for example, they would cup the patient, or after they're no longer COVID contagious. Then the parent or the adult would then cup the so-called sick patient, recovering patient and cup their back. And what cupping does and many people are becoming much more familiar with cupping now is those red marks or dark marks that you see in a lot of athletes and celebrities. 

So what cupping does in a nutshell, it's kind of like giving someone a hickey. I mean, I joke that way, but it really gets right. It's this cupping action is what is causing it's sucking, creating suction underneath this cup. And by creating suction, whether it's the phlegm , the mucus, the toxin, the inflammation is brought forth to the top layer of the skin. And when it's on this, what we call the superficial skin layer, the body can better recognize it, because our immune system, even though it's deep in our gut as well as in our skin, our skin is our strongest organ, I mean, is our biggest organ in our first layer of defense. So if we can bring these toxicities and infections and inflammation to the skin surface, the body can either sweat it out or eventually poop it out right, or possibly even vomit it out. 

Those are the three ways Chinese medicine tries to heal diseases by sweating it out, pooping it out or, a little bit more hardcore, but vomiting it out Like if you have food poisoning. 

One of the best ways to get rid of it is vomiting, right. Yes, and so when it's in the deeper layer of the organs, in fascia, it's harder for the body to recognize it, because it's just trying to stay alive. Right, it's trying to stay functioning. But if it's on the top layer of the skin or not layer of the skin, but if it's in the top layer of the body, the body is much more alert to say, ah, there's something going on here that I need to get rid of it. So cupping is a great way to bring that forth to the top layer of the skin, and then the patient can start to either sweat it out, like I said, or that kind of red mark so the dark marks is a sign like, oh, there's, it's not bruising per se, but it's this inflammatory response that the body then can properly process it via the lymphatic system and the pooping and the sweating. 

0:37:06 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

So lots of, really lots of practical tools out there for folks who are suffering from long COVID. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about something else that you do in your practice, which is helping patients prepare their bodies to receive vaccines and mitigate the side effect of vaccines, and this can apply to childhood immunizations or adult vaccinations, including COVID vaccine, and you've designed a course for that. So tell me a little bit about this vaccine preparedness course. 

0:37:34 - Luriko Ozeki

Sure. So when COVID hit and the EUA's came and so many schools throughout the country was mandating children to get vaccinated, I knew there was a lot of fear and anxiety for a lot of parents because it was an EUA right Emergency youth authorization. Naturally, parents are concerned, so I wanted to alleviate a lot of this anxiety and fear that parents were having for their children, or even for themselves, to get vaccinated, because we didn't know, there wasn't enough data to understand what this vaccine could do. And because I've been treating children, doing pediatrics since 2010, I've treated a lot of children, either preparing for vaccines or post vaccines, or sometimes, you know, vaccine reactions right. And so since I had a lot of this clinical experience treating children, I decided to turn my knowledge into a class so that any parent who wants to or needs to vaccinate their child or themselves can have tools to help them prepare their or their child's body properly in a way that when they get the vaccine, the body can be alert to deal with the vaccination. 

So kind of going back to this whole Shanghain-Lung disease layer thing is normally when we get sick, it goes through the mucus membrane, then perhaps the respiratory system or the digestive system and then, if worse comes to worse, it becomes multi-systemic, right. 

But there's layers where the body at all times knows how to properly fight an invading pathogen, but when you do a vaccine it bypasses that and goes straight into the blood and muscle layer. 

So for a lot of people the body doesn't has a hard time recognizing it and so for most people they get the typical cold flu symptoms right the body aches, the fever and whatnot. 

But for some people, unfortunately, they do have a much stronger immunological response to the vaccine. And so this class, what it does, is I teach patients or parents of what to do, like a week before the vaccine, to prepare the child's body, and then what to do, what to take, what to eat on the day of the vaccine and then for about seven days after the vaccine, so that you're getting the body as strong and healthy as possible leading up to the vaccine. On the day of the vaccine, the body knows how it recognizes what it's being, what it's getting in the body and accepting the messaging, so to speak, of the vaccine, but allowing the body to then get rid of any side effects or toxic reactions, and then supporting the body six to seven days later to make sure that there is no inflammation that continues. So that's the course I decided to provide for patients out there so that they can take it. 

0:40:15 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

That's great, and that's available on your website, correct? Yes, Okay, we'll put links to that. I'm so fascinated by this and I'm gonna take your course when it's time for me to get my next COVID vaccine, because I've had reactions to every COVID vaccine and had the fever and the chills and the night sweats and the body aches and headaches and all of that. My body has reacted pretty strongly every time, so next time it's time for my booster, I'm gonna definitely take your course and looking forward to that. 

0:40:46 - Luriko Ozeki

But you know, that's actually a really good sign that your body does fight and have that reaction. You want your body to have any reaction when you have a vaccine. It's just how severe of a reaction? Right, because if you do get the fever, the body aches and so forth, your immune system is doing what it's supposed to do because an infection came into the body via the vaccination. Right, if you had no symptoms, your immune system is either too weak or too perhaps bogged down with damp and flood that it couldn't recognize it. And then that's when these flares and strong side effects, or even like what's it called the Ghirlane Bar syndrome, can happen. Right, that's happened a lot with the COVID vaccine and other vaccines. So we do want people to have some form of immunological response because it tells us oh, your immune response is doing what it's supposed to do. We just don't want it to be super strong, super debilitating and lasting, and my team helps to keep your body primed and aware, to have the proper response without these long drawn out, possibly severe symptoms. 

0:41:48 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

That's great, and so it can help your body to sort of make the most of the vaccine. Yeah, that's great. Well, before we wrap up, is there anything else that you would like to add? 

0:42:00 - Luriko Ozeki

I would love listeners to consider Asian medicine, chinese medicine, really seek us out because we can help you all the symptoms that you're having, even if it's not COVID or long haul, if you're having more internal organ system stuff. Acupuncture is known for like pain right Back pain, headache, knee pain, that kind of pain. But our medicine is literally thousands of years old and Chinese people had to treat people before the advent of biomedical medicine coming into the world or into China. So we have a huge library and knowledge of treating internal medicine conditions, both adult and children. And so if you do have cardiovascular issues, respiratory kidney issues and for children, adhd, seizures, cold flu, tummy ache, food sensitivities, neurological the gamut we know how to treat that using very gentle non. Well, acupuncture is invasive, but not surgery type of invasive. We have non-invasive, gentle, natural medicine that if you seek a trained professional like acupuncturist, we can help you. 

And what I always like to tell patients is it's not either or or. It's not just Chinese medicine, it's not just biomedical medicine. If you can combine the two you get the best of both worlds. And many times my patients will say that when they started doing Chinese medicine, their biomedical treatments whether it was drugs that they were taking or the therapies that started to work better, that they eventually needed to use less and less of the medicines or visit their doctors less frequently, until eventually they were able to wean off their medications, or only on a need by basis, and then just kind of touch up with Chinese medicine. 

0:43:41 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah Well, the RICO, if people are interested in learning more from you or working with you via telemedicine, because you are seeing patients via telemedicine that's that correct. So where can people find? 

0:43:55 - Luriko Ozeki

you, yes. So my website is www.iyashiwellness and let me spell that it's I Y A S is in Sam H I wellness, w, ell and ESScom. I have an online scheduler that you can link. You can book appointments for telemedicine, whether for adults or children, and again, this can be for COVID, long haul or any other you know internal medicine conditions that you need help with. I'm happy to help that way. 

0:44:24 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

And for people who want to see you in person. 

0:44:27 - Luriko Ozeki

You're in Southern California correct Los Angeles and the same website with the same scheduler online is where you can book appointments, and so if there's an opening, please find yourself a slot and I'd love to help you. And so, like Alexa was saying, I treat primarily moms and children. That's my specialty. I'm not, honestly I'm not super great with orthopedics, pain, that kind of stuff. There's other people who are trained for that. But for internal medicine for moms and for children, I'm your gal. 

0:44:55 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Excellent. Well, Luriko, this has been such an enlightening conversation. I just really appreciate you joining me and educating me and our listeners all about how Chinese medicine can help folks with long COVID. Thank you so much. 

0:45:10 - Luriko Ozeki

Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure speaking to you. 

0:45:17 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

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 sub stack, 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 sub stackcom 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. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page