EFR 859: Surprising Ways to Get Rid of Acne, Anxiety, and Constipation Using Acupressure (At Home) and Other Chinese Medicine Secrets with Dr. Felice Chan and Heather Chan

00:00 - Chase (Host) Walk us through Chinese medicine. How would you define it? How would you describe it?

00:07 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Number one, it's acupuncture, number two it's herbs, number three is the foods that you eat and number four is the lifestyle. Thousands of years ago, acupuncture was discovered and there's meridians and channels that run through your entire body, that connect to every organ, every part of your body, from your head to your toes to your feet, and by activating these specific acupressure points, in which we use in clinic with acupuncture needles, you activate energy wells. And so there's specific acupuncture points, or acupressure points that are so good for whatever ailment, because it helps get to the root cause of why you have something like constipation.

00:39 - Chase (Host) Acupressure for anxiety. Can we really relieve anxiety by simply applying pressure to a few points on our body ourselves? Yes, absolutely.

00:50 - Felice and Heather (Guest) We can do it together. Do you want to use my wrist?

00:53 - Chase (Host) You guys got to tune into the video for this one.

00:54 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, I mean there's a few and, yeah, I've seen it work so wonderfully right, where even patients come in or people will be like, wow, I've had a panic attack for days and this is the first time I'm able to settle down, like even from comments or DMs, and it's so wonderful to see that people feel empowered and can help themselves. Hi, I'm Dr Felice Chan. Hi, I'm Heather Chan in the older twin, and welcome to Ever Forward Radio.

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03:16 Hello and welcome to the show. I'm your host, chase Schooning, army veteran and wellness entrepreneur, and today I'm joined by not only one but two outstanding guests. We're gonna be diving into some surprising ways that you, right here, right now, today, out of the comfort of your own home, can apply ancient Chinese medicine techniques through acupressure herbs and a slight twist on just your everyday wellness routine to relieve aggravating, annoying, unwanted health symptoms such as constipation, anxiety, acne and so much more. My first guest is Dr Felice Chan. She is a board-certified practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine and her and her sister, heather, in today's episode we're diving into the fascinating world of Chinese medicine. Her and her sister, heather.

04:01 Today's episode we're diving into the fascinating world of Chinese medicine, exploring how it's. Time-tested techniques like acupressure, herbal remedies and energy balancing are gonna make waves in not only Western culture as a whole, but your world here today. So if you're curious about natural healing and ready to ditch some of those annoying health issues or just wanna bring a little bit more balance into your life, you're in the right place. If you haven't yet done so, make sure to tap that follow button or subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. It does amazing things in terms of supporting the show over here, helping me get even more amazing guests like Heather and Felice. Also, it's going to make sure that you never miss another episode. So if you're ready to support the show and give me just a couple seconds of your time, tap that follow button, tap that subscribe button. I greatly appreciate it. And with that, welcome to Ever Forward Radio. Here is Dr Felice and Heather Chan, a video I saw, I believe, on your page about 8.7 million views now on this one video about acupressure tips for relieving constipation.

05:05 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I know it's a big jump here.

05:06 - Chase (Host) We're went from wildfires and detoxification to constipation, but um you know some things that just really caught my attention with your area of expertise and focus, particularly through Chinese medicine for wellness. What are these at-home acupressure methods for helping us with more frequent and healthier bowel movements?

05:22 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, um, and so when we I guess we can backtrack to share what acupressure is right or what these points are? And in general, thousands of years ago, acupuncture was discovered and there's meridians and channels that run through your entire body, that connect to every organ, every part of your body, from your head to your toes, your feet, and by activating these specific acupressure points, in which we use in clinic with acupuncture needles, you activate energy wells. These energy wells will then send chi, which is our energy, to different parts of the body, and so there are specific acupuncture points or acupressure points that are so good for whatever ailment, because it helps get to the root cause of why you have something like constipation, right.

06:01 - Chase (Host) I saw that one was more in the wrist.

06:03 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I think it started off.

06:07 - Chase (Host) So just by walk us through what's going on with her wrist and how can we activate energy channels there to help with constipation.

06:10 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, so that point is Sanjao six. You know it's four finger widths below the wrist, right in the center, over here underneath the wrist, between the two muscles and the point about the Sanjao channel and Sanjao six. Specifically, sanjao, it's a organ that is really connected to the fascia and the lymph system and fluids right, and so a lot of the times for constipation you are lacking fluids, and so this point first of all, sends all of the energy from where it starts on the fingers all the way down our arm and into our body to help this fluid movement, and so it's really, really great for fluid metabolism. Um, and then that point, I always left a pair with kidney six which is on the ankle, and it's also great for what we say. Fluid are the yin nourishment in Chinese medicine. Um, cause, when we think about constipation, a lot of people are like, yeah, I'm just not drinking enough water.

06:56 - Chase (Host) Um yeah, we're not talking like, if you know someone says they're constipated and I walk up and just squeeze that point. You know it's not going to have a little disaster pants situation right?

07:05 - Felice and Heather (Guest) No, it's like you know. Walk us through.

07:07 - Chase (Host) You know what is actually the process, the protocol, you know maybe frequency pressure type, like how can someone realistically do this themselves?

07:14 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, Um, well, consistency matters, and you know to massage it for three to five minutes, right, um, because ideally, if you go to a practitioner, you have a acupuncture needle that will activate it in a stronger way, whereas acupressure is equally as effective, but you have to activate longer. And I would say, you know, twice a day, um, consistently for a few days and see how it works. I remember my husband had, you know, was blocked up for a little bit and massage this point. He was like, oh, I really need to go to the bathroom now, you know, and um, it really helped him. Um, I mean, when we activate those points and I'm sure Heather knows too, whenever she does it, it helps just make you pass.

07:47 I don't have any problems with my bowels? I have a morning routine. Yeah, I have a good routine.

07:53 - Chase (Host) I'm sure, I'm sure we'll probably get to it. But, uh, just to kind of wrap up, this point is um, is this maybe something that someone can do once, uh, for you know, three to five minutes, and they should feel results, see results. Or is it something that maybe in general, if they have constipation or frequently getting constipated, they should consider rotating it into kind of just like a daily practice?

08:12 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, it can. I love to have it part of a daily practice. Um, it will help some people and it won't help some, right? Because these are just points that I love to introduce, um to the general public, of what Chinese medicine is. But again, everyone is individualized, everyone has a different constitution, right? Someone's constipation could be more related to emotions, then I would suggest a different point. But these points together, you know it's a synergy, we call them, you know, points that work together. Yeah, I hope that answered the question.

08:40 - Chase (Host) Yes, actually got me thinking. If let's say we are applying it and we're not getting results, does that mean we're not doing it correctly? Or does that mean maybe there's something, many, so many underlying causes to why someone has constipation?

08:51 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Um, but Chinese medicine is great because we can figure out by understanding who you are, your pattern, looking at your tongue, reading your pulse um to fully understand why you have it.

09:15 - Chase (Host) Okay, and actually before I get into my next question here, um, and then we're going to get into like the main portion of the interviews can all be around skin health.

09:21 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I know that's your area of expertise in a bigger way.

09:25 - Chase (Host) Walk us through Chinese medicine. How would you define it? How would you describe it? What does it really look like? How is it different from other healthcare systems or healthcare approaches today?

09:35 - Felice and Heather (Guest) So we define traditional Chinese medicine in four buckets, which we feel like is easiest to digest Number one, it's the acupuncture, number two it's herbs that you can take, number three is the foods that you eat. And number four is the lifestyle. So, within this lifestyle bucket, it's the movements, how you go your day by day, it could be meditation, it could be journaling, it's the mindfulness in this medicine, and I think that's what's so magical and powerful about this medicine is that it's a holistic medicine that also focuses on your emotional health and mindfulness. And so, as Dr Felice she is the acupuncturist focuses on the acupuncture side. But the medicine is more than just that.

10:16 It's a lifestyle change and it's something that we have grown up doing and, especially come to the US, have realized that we felt a little bit disconnected, not being in Hong Kong, and so you know, felice's way of reconnecting it is being a doctor, and my way is, you know, sharing it through skincare. Yeah, I mean, heather nailed it. I mean it's interesting, it's a holistic medicine, like whenever I see patients, for example, yes, the acupuncture helps boost imbalances back into balance, but most of the healing happens outside the clinic, right? And so then we target the three other facets right, the herbal medicine which can be prescribed or eaten as food and food is medicine. Eating whole foods, making sure that you're eating what your body needs at the moment, and a lot of the times it's warm, nourishing foods, because we're warm-blooded right, and so when we shock our system with raw, cold foods, it can't really process it and absorb the nutrients to the highest bioavailability.

11:05 And the last thing which Heather talked about is mindfulness, which I think everyone should find their type of mindfulness, yeah, whether it's journaling, qigong, tai Chi from a Chinese medicine standpoint but understanding that we need what we say, that yin, which is the quiet, the dormancy in our life.

11:21 Right, because, we're so yeah, we're so activated, right, we are go, go, go, we love to work. You know, we're kind of like a money making system here. It's a social construct, um, but we aren't really connecting back to the nature and us as nature beings. Yeah, and when you think about Eastern medicine and Western medicine, we're not saying that either. Or is better, they can come and coexist together, right, there are benefits to both medicines and the beauty of these both medicines that they can work together. Though when you think about Western medicine, it's more kind of like slapping a Band-Aid on a problem versus traditional Chinese medicine, eastern medicine where you're really going to the root cause of that issue. So it's more preventative based. It's preventative where if you solve that one issue, then the issues that come forward because of it will all be dissipated, right. So it's kind of like it's preventative, and so I think that's what's so beautiful about the medicine.

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15:24 At checkout at strong coffee companycom Something else kind of timely right now as Chinese medicine practitioner and, uh, you know, um, growing up with this kind of approach to life and healthcare. Right now, you know, we just went through a uh, you know, politics aside we just went through a major change, the ultimate major change in American leadership and politics. You know, new president, and there's this new thing called Maha, to make America health, make America healthy again, excuse me. And on this board and in this organization cabinet, whatever you want to call it in my opinion there's some pretty great individuals. Some of them I know and some have been on the show, others I'm getting new to. I'm not quite as well-versed with their philosophies and approaches to healthcare, but in my lifetime this is the first I've ever seen, in a presidential level, a focus on health not healthcare, but health make America healthy again.

16:26 Again politics aside as Chinese medicine specialists and advocates, are you excited for this? Do you see any potential there or overlap in your area of specialty that the rest of us can get behind?

16:37 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I especially see that there's a shift of more Asian culture you know Asian culture in the US of more Asian culture you know Asian culture in the U? S and Westerners accepting Asian culture and whether it is in the politics or whether you're seeing it on social media, whether you're just seeing it in the culture of Western medicine and and and the Western hemisphere, this introduction on alternative medicine and alternative health and thinking of ways to be healthier from the foods, from the lifestyles. I think more and more people, especially post-COVID, are finding different ways to be quote-unquote healthy, and it'll really depend on who you are and what this healthy, this quote-unquote health, means. But with this rise of that campaign, it'll give Americans just just better grasp on it. Yes, sorry.

17:27 - Chase (Host) Different leaders too. You know new leaders and different figureheads to kind of just watch.

17:31 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I think it's, you know, a wake up call for people to be like okay, whoa, you know, make America healthy again. You know why there's a lot of people are just like I'm fine, you know like.

17:39 I'm eating processed foods, I'm eating this and it's just what I'm used to and I'm fine, you know, but I think people need to realize that it's not, and I think this is a really good way to segue into. Okay, what are adjustments we can make to our lifestyle and health? Because, yes, there's a whole healthcare system which is a whole. Nother conversation for another day.

17:56 - Chase (Host) There's a whole food system too, but you know by eliminating a lot of.

18:01 - Felice and Heather (Guest) You know high fructose corn syrup, for example, is going to be so great for liver health. There's so many kids out there right now that have fatty liver disease at the age of eight or 10. And I'm just like that's ridiculous. You don't see that anywhere else in the world. But it's also the accessibility of what is healthy, right. Of course, the cheapest foods are the processed foods. When you go to a supermarket and even in California, going to a farmer's market is is a luxury. It's expensive, but it's how we're supposed to eat. So there's always a there's almost a backward system of how healthcare is where it's like. You know you treat someone when you're sick, but how can you work on preventing all of that, right?

18:30 - Chase (Host) This isn't going to affect the systemic healthcare change that America radically needs, which I don't disagree with. But I do kind of have to advocate for again politics side, this inherently can't be a bad thing.

18:46 At least just having something at the top level of leadership in America whether or not it actually amounts to anything just to get that awareness, just to be that drop in the bucket, I believe maybe I'm just too optimistic. It has to be a change for good or a start in the right direction, Would you agree? Or is this just? I definitely agree.

19:04 - Felice and Heather (Guest) It's the first step to inhibit a good mindset or just a change, completely agree. Yeah, I mean I think you nailed it when you said the awareness right it's.

19:13 I think you know, being in LA and New York, for example we're in a bubble of health and wellness where so many people yeah, Right, and everyone we talk to is aware of it, but there's so much of the country that isn't in tune like a city like Los Angeles, right, Because you're surrounded by so many people talking about health and wellness and also exposed to alternative health and hearing all angles of what health is. So I mean, for someone so high up right and leadership, people need to hear it that way, because how else are you going to get to them.

19:41 - Chase (Host) Yeah, yeah, love it, love it. I'll get away from politics, it's definitely not my area.

19:45 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I mean us either.

19:47 - Chase (Host) We didn't grow up here, but it's okay, so I want to shift gears to something else that I saw very popular in your work, and that was a video around acupressure for anxiety. Can we really relieve anxiety by simply applying pressure to a few points on our body ourselves?

20:07 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yes, absolutely. I mean, when we think about anxiety, it's our nervous system that is kind of stuck in the fight or flight, right. And so the way that acupressure works with specific points is that it helps reset the nervous system. A lot of the points help target the vagus nerve, which is so important in switching that nervous system. And, yeah, I've seen it work so wonderfully right, when even patients come in or people will be like, wow, I've had a panic attack for days and this is the first time I'm able to settle down, like even from comments or DMs, and it's so wonderful to see that people feel empowered and can help themselves right, Because if you go to have a panic attack, you go to the ER.

20:40 They don't do anything, you know, they're just like write it off, or you can, you know, check yourself in an inpatient and we're going to close you off to anyone visiting for two days. It's just like no, that's going to make it worse, you know. Or here's a pill to take, here's a pharmaceutical to just kind of calm your system down, but again, that's a bandaid. So how can you really help reset that Right?

20:57 - Chase (Host) And breathwork does that to acupressure everything that hits that switch of the nervous system. Breathwork's incredible for anxiety and panic attacks. Speaking personally, Can you walk us through what does maybe self-administration of acupressure look like for relieving or working towards relief of anxiety?

21:14 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, we can do it together. Do you want to use my wrist?

21:17 - Chase (Host) You guys got to tune into the video for this one. Yeah, I mean there's a few. I was like or explain it. I might do something on the face and then go to the wrist, okay um, I think one of the best is yin tong.

21:31 - Felice and Heather (Guest) It's right in between our eyebrows. Okay, that's vagus nerve, exactly exactly um pineal gland too. It's amazing. Um, and just massaging it for two to three minutes and making sure you breathe deep into the belly, because the vagus nerve runs all the way down can you uh, for those aren't watching can you walk us, kind of describe what you're doing?

21:41 yeah, so I'm um holding actually I'd like to use my knuckles, because it's a little bit more firm and it's a more accurate and just hold it between my eyebrows and I'm moving in a circular motion, doesn't matter which way it's all destimulate right now exactly. You know we're kind of doing this and just closing your eyes and breathing into the belly, because the vagus nerve goes into the abdomen and we have to activate our diaphragm to really hit that um, and that's one of the most amazing Um, and everyone is like underneath the ears.

22:04 - Chase (Host) Okay.

22:05 - Felice and Heather (Guest) It's Sanjao 17 and you know the vagus nerve runs through the ears as well.

22:08 - Chase (Host) So what do we do then? We just take both hands, come down Um, I love to do it right underneath the earlobe, yeah exactly, yeah With the pointers and just kind of massaging the area.

22:16 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, exactly, and massaging for again, for you know two, three minutes walk us through, like the level of pressure um, I like to feel it's almost like a light massage, where it's firm and you can feel that sensation, um, and even sometimes, um, if you actually sit with it, you're going to feel a movement of energy through your body. Um, that means you're, you know, getting into the meridian system and the chi system.

22:36 - Chase (Host) Okay, yeah, one that I personally like is I'm a big yoga fan. And a child's pose yeah, but laying your head down on the mat and then kind of like gently rolling side to side you're relaxing that vagus nerve again.

22:47 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, um, in the back, yeah, on the base of the neck. You're releasing that?

22:50 - Chase (Host) Yeah, okay, I love that Random question before we get into skin health. Um, I saw a pop up in a bit of your content as well. I'm big in using functional mushrooms as part of Chinese medicine and one that I personally love. And I've seen probably the most clinical evidence behind and the longest running, like thousands of years of use, is reishi, it's called the queen mushroom.

23:13 And I I'll have to look this up and maybe find a link or something, but I remember reading a long time ago that this was actually considered. They call it the queen mushroom for a reason. It's considered royalty, In fact for royalty, and I think even in certain Chinese empires it was reserved for the emperor and his family and it was almost like a private reserve, or even currency, if you will. Why is reishi mushroom held in such high regard and what was going on thousands of years ago with it that we can now apply today?

23:39 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, oh my gosh, absolutely. I mean, mushrooms are so powerful and in Chinese medicine is actually a Chinese herb. Um, that in the category it calms your heart, right, and helps your spirit, and what that translates to is that, um, our heart, um, as a portion of our body, holds our soul and our spirit, and when we're anxious, it means our spirit is up here, right, it's not able to level out or ground, and so it's awesome for anxiety, it's awesome for fatigue as well. It's also a chi booster and a blood booster, meaning it gives you energy, um, and just because of its holistic benefits, um, it's you know, prize is one of the best herbs or mushrooms out there.

24:16 - Chase (Host) I've also heard this term used to describe ratio and that's immunomodulator. What does that mean? Can you walk us through that?

24:23 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, it's, it's almost I like to think of it as um, almost like adaptogenic too, right? Um, where it can help you where it needs to help you and it'll bring down what needs to bring down right, For example, the anxiety part of it, because it can calm the heart and the spirit. It's going to bring down your anxiety and ground you, Whereas if you need that boost of energy, it's also going to bring that boost up. So it you take it, it's going to kind of read what the body needs energetically and then give you that boost to either level you off in some way I mean that's the point of the word functional right it. It it will affect your body in different ways based on what your body needs and is lacking.

24:58 - Chase (Host) Yeah, yeah yeah, reishi for me, um, I always describe it as an internal hug. I use it predominantly in the evenings. The past year or so I've introduced it more like earlier in the day and throughout my day for just stress management. But in the evening I love it Kind of. Mix it in with some like hot cocoa or cacao. It's like the Reishi moment.

25:19 - Felice and Heather (Guest) It's just like ah, it feels like this nice internal hug, yeah, and everything's calming, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's one of the best for insomnia too. And just like I mean again, um, housing our spirit, right Cause when we sleep, our spirit's supposed to be resting with us. Um, but insomnia is when the spirit's up here, it's where the dreams are intense. You know you're waking up a lot. Um, if that makes sense from a Chinese medicine standpoint To hear that everybody, if you're struggling with insomnia.

25:42 - Chase (Host) You need to talk with your spirit. Love it All right now. Let's shift into skin health. Now a lot of your work is around skin health introducing, you know, practices, products procedures that can really amplify skin health internally and externally. So what do you think is the number one thing most people are currently doing in their skincare routine that is more detrimental than beneficial.

26:03 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, I think we want to share with the world the powers and magic of traditional Chinese medicine, and share that. Okay, what we are, what you can ingest internally from an earth's perspective, from reishi mushrooms to trimela mushrooms to to anything that you eat can also be very, very beneficial for you from the skin health perspective. And it is a gentler version and a natural version, a more effective version that can help with your skin health, and so, in my opinion, what people are doing too much is just trying.

26:34 The skincare market is so extremely saturated and it can be so overwhelming at times and it takes time to educate yourself and educate oneself on on what is good and what is bad for you, but really it's, in my opinion, managing and creating a very simple routine. A simple routine that can create a strong barrier, because a strong barrier will effectively help your skin from any other active ingredients that could be very, very harsh for your skin as well, like an active ingredient, for example, vitamin A or vitamin C, that won't do any power to your skin unless your barrier is strong. So I would say simple routine, try to cut out things that you don't think are going to help your skin health and just start from the basics, start from a very minimalist routine.

27:24 I mean, and for both of us, for example, when there was a huge vitamin C craze and we never really use it, we're like, let's use it, um, but it made us break out because it was too active Right and also that kind of went back to okay, maybe our barrier isn't strong enough.

27:35 So how can we take a step back, not find, you know, the um really really intense power version of vitamin C, but how can we back off to find something natural that is isn't as um active, but gentle and still as effective right.

27:50 Orange peel it's the actual peel of the orange and in in Chinese culture we would put this in our foods and our stir fry. We would put orange peel in our soups for that flavor and that gives you that vitamin C and that gives you the nourishment that you need. But it's also an effective way and a more natural, gentler version of vitamin C for your face to help brighten your face and has the same effects.

28:11 - Chase (Host) And we're getting it in whole foods, which is always a plus.

28:14 - Felice and Heather (Guest) And we always love to say to eat your skincare, right. So everything you can put externally, you should be able to eat as well. You know it's natural. We're going back to the nature beings we're supposed to be, yeah, so I want to go back, Sorry if I missed it in there.

28:24 - Chase (Host) But to ask directly again do you think for most people, for just general skincare routines, is there something that people are doing that is actually, in your opinion, more detrimental than beneficial?

28:35 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, adding too many steps in your routine. Too many steps, okay.

28:39 - Chase (Host) Yes, Just because you see somebody else have a 30-step process doesn't mean that you should as well.

28:44 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, and understanding your skin type right? Yes, I think people will damage their skin barrier if they're putting vitamin C plus retinol, no sunscreen and going out in the sun. Right, you're just kind of incinerating your barrier, you know, and for someone to really explore what works for them it's trial and error at this point because there's so much out there, you know, unless you find a great esthetician who knows your skin well. But even with a relationship with an esthetician or someone knows your face, you're- also still working with them.

29:10 - Chase (Host) It's trial and error right yeah. Okay, what about? What is one? Most overlooked item in your opinion and an item or a step in a healthy skincare routine for most people.

29:23 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I think okay. So I have two things. The first is sunscreen. That's a must. We grew up putting on sunscreen. Since we were eight years old, every single day, our mom, before going out to school, she would say put on sunscreen on your face.

29:36 Two, this comes from a more holistic standpoint. But your skin is a manifestation of how you treat your body and what you ingest. So what is the most overlooked thing that we believe a lot of people are not thinking about is how you're treating and nourishing your body. So it's the foods you eat. So that then goes and stems back to traditional Chinese medicine. What foods are really causing skin health? For example, acne? It's kind of like, you know, heat rises. It's kind of like heat rises in the air as in heat rises in your body. So when your body is inflamed, that'll then result into heat coming out to your face, which could result to acne. And especially in US culture there's a lot of fried foods, there's a lot of oily foods. So avoiding these types of very heavy foods that can inflame your body will really help nourish your skin. So I think that's very overlooked.

30:30 Yeah, I mean you nailed, I mean with diet, right, and also, as I mentioned before, eating your skincare. There's so many foods you can eat that are great for your skin, right? For example, tremella mushrooms it's something we used to put in our broths all the time and we'd eat it after because it's so high in collagen. We would drink goji berry and jujube dates because it's so boosting for your blood, and when we think about you know, beautiful, glowy skin, you have more blood flow through it, right? So there's a lot of what was in traditional chinese donuts and we did as kids, um, that were just like, oh, this, this makes sense. You know, if your skin is dry, I'm going to eat something that nourishes, um, and, you know, provides more fluids.

31:04 - Chase (Host) Yeah.

31:10 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, I'm not just going to put yeah, yes, for example, like in dim sum, we would. We would eat dim sum on a weekly basis with our family and we always had chrysanthemum tea that we drank with dim sum because it's very cooling. When you think of chrysanthemum, it's extremely anti-inflammatory and so when you drink that and when you drink that with the very heavy foods of the carbs and the oils from dim sum, that will then level your body.

31:30 - Chase (Host) That's a great point as well, so it's not always just about adding or eliminating something If there is a consistent or even you know air quote here healthy food that you're consuming you might just need like a balancing agent of sorts. Exactly, okay, it kind of reminds me, felicia, a point you said earlier about. You know, sometimes we can shock our system with like really cold foods but sometimes I'm hearing you say you know we need these kinds of cooling foods, so how do we know?

31:55 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Okay, so I love this question. Um so, cooling foods does not mean that it that physically it feels cold, like ice drinks, raw foods, salads they're physically cold, right.

32:06 - Chase (Host) Right, okay.

32:07 - Felice and Heather (Guest) But let's say I say something like peppermint, which in nature the temperature of it is cooling, but it doesn't mean you consume it cold, right, we consume it in a tea warm. So every food, truly everything we eat, has a temperature to it. It doesn't mean the hot and the cold we feel, it's the energetics of it.

32:27 - Chase (Host) So how do we know the energetics, the temperature of the food?

32:30 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Well, I mean that you know this was years and years of studying, and there's amazing books out there that show you what temper you know. For example, beef and lamb is very warming, you know um fish is very cold, like when you think of fruit. It's so interesting because mangoes. Our mom avoided it growing up because it's so, it's so hot that she was like when you eat mangoes you're going to get acne.

32:51 So don't get skin issues, yeah, or or eating crab, for example, when we grew up eating crab is so cooling, and so after eating crab, as a family we would drink ginger tea because that's warm, so it balances your body but to know which food is cool and hot.

33:07 I think just takes time. Yeah, I mean it was ingrained in our culture. But even after going to school and being a chinese medicine doctor, every food has a temperature right, and for me the chinese specific foods and herbs are easier for me to understand. But when someone's like, but if I go out to an american supermarket, what can I find right? And there's, I mean, everything from like green beans to celery to kale.

33:24 - Chase (Host) All of it has a temperature to it, right okay, walk us through um what you would imagine the standard american or slightly above standard american refrigerator might look like yeah, we just did our grocery hall. We've got some dairy products and vegetables, some meats, some fruits yeah maybe some eggs, things like that. If you just picture a slightly above average standard American grocery haul, what do you think someone could look at and go all right, yeah, these are some cooling foods, these are some warming foods. Just kind of begin to understand and parse those out.

33:54 - Felice and Heather (Guest) It's so interesting because I would love to say vegetables are cooling and meats are warming, but within the vegetable category, within the grain category, there's warm and cooling, right, and so it comes so down to like the nitty gritty. Um, I think the best advice I can give is eat with the seasons right, because when you eat with the seasons and eat food that is actually produced during that season, it's trying to tell your body that, oh, I need this food at this point of the year. For example, in the summertime, it's hotter and hotter outside, and so we need cooling foods. And, um, it's easier to find watermelon. Watermelon in itself is really really cooling. It's great to hydrate you. Cucumbers, for example, is really cooling, great to hydrate you. I think that's the biggest advice I can give, because otherwise we could.

34:33 - Chase (Host) You know, I have to open up a textbook to be like this Sure, so we can boil it down to. You know, ideally eat seasonally.

34:38 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yes.

34:39 - Chase (Host) Fruits, vegetables, things like that, things like that, correct Things that grow. Yeah, okay, exactly. What is the best age to start a skincare routine, and at what age is it too late to start to order, excuse me, to start in order to really see any benefits.

34:54 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, I think what's been happening recently is a lot of kids and Gen Z's are starting to use skincare too early in their routine and your skin doesn't mature until you're 13 or 14. So ideally, before you're that age or before you're 13, wash your face and just put a moisturizer. You don't need to put all these, like you know, all these in ingredients like niacinamide hyaluronic acid, you name it vitamin C, vitamin A on your skin because your skin is still maturing. And if you put all these different types of ingredients in acid, you name it vitamin C, vitamin A, on your skin because your skin is still maturing. And if you put all these different types of ingredients in your face when your face is not matured, you're just going to, you know, you're just going to harm your barrier. And so, growing up, we honestly just washed your face and put on moisturizer until we hit this preteen phase where you know we had acne and there's a lot of oil and then you're just trying to figure out the hormones and the imbalances in your body.

35:45 So once your body balances out, that's when you can put on skincare, right, and I think it really depends on your age and the type of skincare that you can look for, right? I would say, you know, eight to 15, don't even think about it, right, you know.

35:59 - Chase (Host) I would say just splash some water on our face.

36:02 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yes, because your, your body is still changing.

36:08 - Chase (Host) You're still maturing, you know, and as women, there's a whole complexity of your hormone health trying to develop too, right.

36:11 - Felice and Heather (Guest) And I would say, like you know, we really got into skincare when we were in our twenties. Right, because you're maturing and you're seeing differences in your skin. But then, when you hit a certain age let's say like 30 plus, like you were focusing on skincare that helps with anti-aging. It's ultimately like it. It's ultimately your skin is a way to make you feel better because it's a vanity. It's a vanity, right, you want to look young and everyone wants to look like their best self and feel their best self, right. So in different ages, skincare can be. The purpose of skincare is very different. But I would say don't start skincare until maybe 15 plus. That's in my opinion. What do you think?

36:48 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I mean I have nothing to add.

36:49 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I mean yes, a thousand percent. And there are skincare brands out there that are so focused towards these preteens right, that are so gentle for the face, and they make the products so gentle that it doesn't harm their barrier. Okay, yeah.

37:03 - Chase (Host) I've heard you mentioned barrier, skin barrier a couple of times now.

37:05 - Felice and Heather (Guest) What do you?

37:06 - Chase (Host) mean by that, and why is it seems so important for skincare?

37:09 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, Like when we think about barrier. Um, it's almost. I mean, it's what your skin is supposed to do. It's supposed to protect the outside environment from your internal environment, right? Um, and I mean we can get nitty gritty to the science of the dermis and epidermis and how strong that is.

37:26 But let's say you overuse products, you're ruining the really top part of your skin and that's when irritants will start to occur more, right, like you're going to have maybe redness or eczema or patches or even breakouts, because you completely stripped off the first barrier that protects your skin from the outside world.

37:45 - Chase (Host) So let's say, hypothetically speaking, um, there might be some other issues going on, of course, but if we're experiencing those things like you just described, could that be a telltale sign that we're doing too much?

37:55 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yes, oh, for sure. Um, I always say you know if you're using a product and it makes you break out more obviously, it could be clogging your pores. But are you stripping your barrier too? Right, and I think I had my own acne journey and acne issue too, um, and I tried everything. Right, I was using benzoic acid to clear the acne Cause. That's what you know, um, derms told me to do. They're like this is great, but it's so drying and so stripping, and I learned that my acne got worse after using that. They're like oh, but you have to.

38:23 - Chase (Host) Um, because we kind of hear, especially with acne or more severe skin complications. Oh, it's got to get worse before it gets better, kind of thing yeah.

38:29 - Felice and Heather (Guest) And they're like, oh, it's purging. I'm like sure, but at the same time, like I had to learn and I was thankful for Chinese medicine, right? I'm like, okay, if my acne is more cystic today, why is it right? And we is cystic, is more damp. Damp is something in your body that is caused by what you eat. Right? It's the cold foods, it's the fried foods, it's the processed foods. That all causes dampness and stagnation and that's why it's more cystic. Right? If my acne, for example, was redder and more inflamed, it's the heat that's coming up. So, am I eating too many spicy foods? Am I eating too much like red meat?

39:10 - Chase (Host) Oh, I lost my place, excuse me. That's okay, I'll jump here. So with skin, I think, Heather, you said it, you know it's really want to put our best face forward when it's all about feeling our best. So is skin health? Is skin care really about looking or feeling?

39:26 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Feeling 100%. Yes, there's the aspect of looking, and everyone at some you know everyone to some extent cares about that. But it's the feeling looking and everyone at some you know everyone to some extent cares about that. But it's the feeling and and that's what we're trying to share right With our skincare brand as a traditional Chinese medicine inspired skincare line, it's all about the emotional health and the wellness that comes behind it. Right, it's? It's about putting on your skincare and finding a routine about it. It's about putting on the skincare and writing in your journal. It's just about the type of routine that you can feel with with the skincare, and that's what we're really trying to share.

40:00 - Chase (Host) Yeah, what about your approach to a men's skincare versus women's skincare? Do we really need to draw a line in the sand and just go? Skincare needs to be different for both sexes.

40:10 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I think and and fleece, like you, definitely have more thoughts to this too, but women go through so many different changes in our hormones that it's a your skin is a reflection of your hormone health as well, and so we just go through so many stages and so many different journeys on a day to day, on a month to month with you know our moods, our energy levels.

40:33 So, yeah, I feel like skincare. That's why skincare is so pertinent to women as well, but to men it's still also very important, and I also think it has to do with culture. Our dad has a skincare routine. We grew up in Hong Kong. A lot of Asians and a lot of Asian men has had the skincare routine because of how they feel, but also how they look, right. So I really think it's it's it's culture and and and what society really presents in front of you, and I'm really hoping that maybe in 10 years time, like men, do have this skincare routine because it can be very good for you, but I'm I'm also saying that you know men don't need it. They really don't prefer it, right?

41:13 I mean, I mean there's. There's also difference. Of most women wear makeup, most men don't Right.

41:17 - Chase (Host) So there's the aspect of needing to like get it off Exactly.

41:21 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Right, and I mean now there's a shift where makeup is, you know, so much less toxic. Right, but when we think about 10 years ago, you know there was so much toxicity in makeup and was causing again all the skin barrier issues. And I think we have to, you know, really think about that too. And the lifestyle you know. For example, my husband has never washed his face in his day, never used any, I mean with a cleanser like face cleanser Like he will just hop in the shower, won't?

41:45 - Chase (Host) really touch his face, just water.

41:47 - Felice and Heather (Guest) He doesn't use any skincare products and his skin is flawless. So is that really crazy or does it? Is crazy Someone who doesn't need it? Perhaps both, to be honest. But also his barrier is so strong. Nothing is getting through them no toxins, no environmental factors and poisons are penetrating through that skin, you know. And so it's so healthy because he never did anything to strip it, right. But he also is in a woman with fluctuating hormone levels throughout the month, right. So it's interesting. I mean, he's just you know. I look at him like, okay, you're just lucky, yeah.

42:18 - Chase (Host) I've got a friend that way and yeah, he never washes his face. He just in the shower, just throw some water on it, calls it a day, not never, really even at night, and has no you know, perceived obvious physical concerns. Yeah, like obvious physical concerns, um, like dryness, oiliness, breakouts, things like that. But what?

42:37 - Felice and Heather (Guest) about from like a longevity standpoint.

42:38 - Chase (Host) You know, let's say I'm a guy. I am and I don't have any major skincare issues that I want to focus on now convince me to develop a skincare routine that is going to be beneficial for my skin health in the long run.

42:52 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Well, question for you is that do you care about having wrinkles on your face? Because skincare can also help with anti-aging. Right, there's so much science backed behind that.

43:00 - Chase (Host) Yeah, fair point Okay.

43:02 - Felice and Heather (Guest) You know, I think there's also a trend in skincare where, where men and women are wanting to look more natural, right, avoiding more of the you know, the injectables and the Botox, and that's where skincare can come in, right To help with your anti-aging and for you to feel and look good. So, yeah, that's a question for you, do you care?

43:19 - Chase (Host) about wrinkles, sure, yeah.

43:21 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Right, I think you know most people would. And again, you know, tying back to where that comes from. And longevity, right, yes, the skincare routine is so important to help with you know dark spots or you know sunspots that occur. Right, because there are specific things you can put on your face. And from a Chinese medicine for psychos, such as pearl powder, that helps brighten these areas. Um, but when we think about longevity and how we age, and again, our skin being reflection of the inside of our body, we need to change the way we eat. We have to reduce the inflammatory foods. You know, the alcohol, the gluten, the dairy, the sugar.

43:55 - Chase (Host) We're going to get there. I want to go into those key areas as well.

43:58 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, I mean it's, it's all about that right.

44:00 - Chase (Host) You know.

44:00 - Felice and Heather (Guest) And figuring out your diet. You know your culture.

44:06 - Chase (Host) what makes sense? How does it fit into this Western world? Right, I want to go back to the male female aspect here. Women go through a monthly cycle here. Uh, women go through a monthly cycle. Should women be focusing on different skin care routines and or products based? On where they are in their cycle. That's so hard I mean to be honest.

44:24 - Felice and Heather (Guest) No, I think that's just way too overwhelming for any women to ever approach um like if I'm in luteal phase versus anything else.

44:31 - Chase (Host) You know, should I be focusing more on hydrating or detoxification or scrubbing?

44:37 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yes and no, but again it goes back to the person and individual, right, I think it goes back to menstrual cycle. A lot of people will have PMS symptoms, whether it's irritability, mood, breast tenderness, whatever it is, but that's an indication showing that your body's off of balance somehow, you know. And skin again, if you break out before your menstrual cycle. What is happening in your body you know it's less about. Let me change my skincare routine every single week to match my menstrual cycle. But what can I do to get to the root of all of these issues and figure out why I'm breaking out, why I have these mood swings? Right, because once you get to the root, then all those cascading symptoms start to dissipate.

45:10 - Chase (Host) So, if I'm hearing you correctly, it might be more of what you're doing lifestyle and nutrition that just happens to manifest during a particular phase of your cycle. Correct Not necessarily unique skincare need during the cycle yes, okay. There's something else I wanted to go back to with the men versus women. I should have made a note.

45:33 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Give me one second, that's okay and uh, that's where I should have. Should have made a note everything one second that's okay. Well, if it comes back, we can always hop back into yeah, yeah, it's gonna bug me um should we guess?

45:47 - Chase (Host) oh, I even was like mental note chase yeah, ask the ask the cycle question and come back um. Yeah, okay, if it hits me, it's me, I should deal with women in their cycles.

46:02 Let's stay on track with the skin just put out the skincare needs for them. I don't know, um, okay, so I think we kind of covered. Another question I had was do men and women have different skin care needs? Yeah, let's jump into. Let's jump into actually a couple of like things that I think are pretty common people do under the perceived benefits of skin health improvements. So walk me through. Collagen what is the Chinese medicine approach to collagen?

46:58 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Is it worth it? Should we be ingesting it? Rubbing it on Is of broth soup that our parents would make every single morning and would boil it for three, four hours, where they would put meat and also bone in the soup.

47:08 - Chase (Host) So that's high in collagen, that's really high in collagen.

47:10 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Exactly the tendons, the ligaments, the bone, correct Everything they would dump like a whole chicken in there and like dump, like you know, the quote-unquote bad parts of of an animal, because chicken feet right, yeah, like what is that high in collagen?

47:23 and so they would. That would be the base of the soup, along with the herbs that we've talked about, right, and the vegetables that are also so nutritious for you, and we would drink this every single day and this effectively, like, helps line your gut, but is also so nourishing that it effectively also, you know, affects the appearance of your skin sure yes.

47:42 So yes, I mean yeah I mean to answer the question yes, there, the buzz around collagen, I think is accurate, but understanding why you need it, and I mean incorporating it into your diet more so, rather than like taking a supplement right and, and maybe a supplement is needed because you never had the food um. You know, when you were younger and it's really interesting, especially stepping from Eastern culture into the Western world and you know there's all this buzz about supplementation, you're lacking this Um. But why is there a lack? First of all, you know and it goes, it ties back to how you eat right Um. But why is there a lack? First of all, you know and it goes, it ties back to how you eat right Um and the emphasis. And I feel so grateful that we grew up in a culture where the emphasis of nutrition was number one.

48:22 - Chase (Host) So, uh, what are maybe if? If we're going to go nutrition to introduce more collagen into our diet, what does that look like? Give us maybe top two or three. We kind of hit on a couple. But then also if we want to go supplements, there are a lot of different supplements and a lot of different collagen supplements out there. I've got mine that I go to and use and recommend. But I'm curious, if I want to look at nutrition for increasing collagen to boost skin health, I don't look at supplementation. What are the best couple of areas in both?

48:47 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Ooh for food. I mean Heather talked about it High collagen meats, right? Um, I think it's the best right through bone broth. Like I, we make our own broth every single day, whether it's bone broth, and I think in Western culture there's this craze of bone broth now, um, which is taken from Eastern culture, to be very honest. Um, and making sure that's part of your diet regularly.

49:06 - Chase (Host) What about for vegetarians? Exactly, I was going to go there.

49:08 - Felice and Heather (Guest) If you don't eat that there's so many high collagen um vegetables um or mushrooms such as tremella mushrooms.

49:17 - Chase (Host) It is one of the best for the skin.

49:18 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I wish I brought. It looks like a sponge, and a lot of the times you get it dried in Chinese markets and you throw it in a broth and a soup, you soak it overnight or for a few hours and you can eat it and it's so good, wow.

49:26 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I didn't know that. It's so yummy too. Yeah, and what about when looking at supplementation?

49:32 - Felice and Heather (Guest) You know, from a supplement standpoint, like there are very good supplements out there, I wouldn't like I'm not going to say a certain brand, because there's actually so many good ones.

49:41 - Chase (Host) When I dealt with powders, liquids, capsules, injectables, when I dealt with really bad gut issues.

49:46 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I would put a scoop of collagen powder in my coffee or tea every single morning. That would help line my gut. So that was a way that I took collagen. So I mean it it's so subjective, right? So my recommendation is to find find ways that you can implement collagen, that where you can actually feel a difference, whether it's it's in pill form, whether it's in powder form, whether it's in food form. But all of all the above is can be very helpful.

50:13 - Chase (Host) Yeah.

50:14 - Felice and Heather (Guest) And I think, again leading back to whether you need it. I mean, to be honest, I've never taken a collagen supplement.

50:19 - Chase (Host) Really Um? Is that by why?

50:21 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Um, I just never thought I needed it Like I my. My body, I feel, has found its balance, um, and I eat my collagen, okay, Um. I eat in foods, and I think that's the best way our body can process it Right.

50:33 - Chase (Host) I get it 15 grams every day. I was telling you the coffee, strong coffee here. 15 grams of collagen, grass-fed hydrolyzed collagen, like probably five, six days a week for seven, eight years now.

50:43 - Felice and Heather (Guest) How does it make you feel? I guess it's hard Cause you're. Yeah, that's amazing.

50:47 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I actually.

50:49 this is where I get into this dilemma of certain things that I, you know, we all have our like habits and hacks but, um, you know, it's definitely part of my ritual, my morning routine, particularly this, this brand, this product, strong coffee company, and, um, I, anytime I have coffee that's not strong coffee, first it throws me off because I do feel a dramatic difference because the collagen, the MCTs, the healthy fats, the L-theanine, so it's got a lot of other adaptogens and functional elements in there. So there's a noticeable change in my state of being and state of mind. Um, but now I'm kind of at the point where it's just part of my routine so much and like if I know that I did something different if I had, like an espresso or went out for coffee, I'm like this is different. So I don't feel it, but I don't know.

51:31 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, no, it's so interesting, especially because now so many coffees or supplements have like 10 things in it, right? So what is it actually that's making you feel?

51:37 - Chase (Host) better.

51:38 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Is it the combination? Is it just one of it? Yeah, but I mean it's great, I believe in strong coffee.

51:42 - Chase (Host) That's just me, but I'll sing his praises all day long. I love that. So another thing I see is red light therapy. You have these wild, crazy masks that you put on or in front of a panel or going to a spa, a med spa. Is red light therapy really worth it for improving skin health?

52:04 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, I mean right now, there's so much research around red light therapy, right, that it does improve collagen, that it does reduce wrinkles and fine lines. It does take consistency. I think it's amazing. However, I don't think that's the only alternative, right? I think, um, I mean again, we're Chinese medicine users. You know where we live the lifestyle and I'm a doctor Um, there's ways that are more effective. For example, cosmetic acupuncture right, where you actually insert needles on the face and they're so thin. People are just like this looks so scary, like why would you ever do that? You don't really feel it. You know if you can fit 30 acupuncture needles into hypodermic needle like you rarely feel them.

52:36 They're just used to activate certain points of your skin and the best thing you can do for your skin health is increase the blood and what we say the chi, or energy flow to the face and also to increase collagen. And that is the best way, because you're causing the microtrauma you're getting into you knowermis layer um with these needles and so your body's going to produce more collagen in those areas. It's why you know, let's say, someone with wrinkles or fine lines, you know, will put some really really really tiny needles you can't even see them, sometimes on a forehead line or on, you know, crow's feet, on the eyes, and over time, with consistency, they start to dissipate because it makes collagen um, I mean, it sends all the inflammatory cells there and that's where it kind of fills it out.

53:15 - Chase (Host) Um, it's so amazing.

53:17 - Felice and Heather (Guest) But, that said, it's like all these solutions out there, you know, choose what works for you because there are so many different alternatives like alternatives Like we do cosmetic acupuncture, but we Felice, and I also- say red light therapy yeah. Like you know, in studio I'll do cosmetic acupuncture and then put red light on top of the patient right like why not, they're great together, yeah kind of going back to our earlier examples of, you know, the diy at home acupressure experience exactly is there anything we can be doing ourselves?

53:42 - Chase (Host) acupressure wise to simulate collagen blood flow improve?

53:46 - Felice and Heather (Guest) skin health.

53:47 - Chase (Host) A thousand percent sounds kind of counterproductive right by, like touching your face all the time with your fingers, but is there acupressure we can do at home to do this A thousand percent Right.

53:56 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I think a lot of people are introduced to Chinese medicine beauty through gua sha Right. My wife does this all the time. I mean gua sha. The reason why it's so good is because it increases that blood flow to the face.

54:07 - Chase (Host) And gua sha is a Chinese medicine?

54:08 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yes, it's a Chinese medicine method. So a thousand years ago gua sha was used mostly on the body to release toxins. Right, gua means to scrape and sha is a word to describe the redness that comes out. So there's a lot of videos out there where you know someone will grow. Show their back, and I do it in.

54:25 - Chase (Host) I'm in clinic so pretty gnarly.

54:27 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I've seen, yes, massive inflammation and it looks pretty wild yeah, but I mean the thing is you don't need to stimulate that much, like someone might just have have so many toxins they have to release. So it's one of the best therapeutically to get rid of the inflammation or the toxins in your body. Um, but now there's a um trend of just using it for the face Right, and it is great because it increases the chain blood flow. But you have to be careful because if you're scraping something in your face every day, it's going to thin your dermis out. So how are you doing it? What points are you activating on your face before gua sha happens?

54:57 And this is where acupressure happens, right, and there's so many amazing points, right, you know. I'll just point some out. You know, right outside large intestine 20, by your nostrils, over here Between your eyebrows, yeah, between your eyebrows, on the side as well, these are all recommended.

55:10 - Chase (Host) Gua sha points, yeah and yeah.

55:12 - Felice and Heather (Guest) And we have some tutorials on it too right, like every part of the face. I mean, there's hundreds of points on the face that are wonderful, and there's ones that I love to target that are around the eyes, the nose, that are around the ear and the jaw, because it's also where all the lymphs are Right and we also want to drain the lymph and the inflammation.

55:30 - Chase (Host) Is lymph drainage really the ultimate? Win here or guasha-ing.

55:36 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I think that's the Western understanding of what guasha is right. When they guasha along the cheeks, down the neck, they're activating the lymph system completely and reducing all of that puffiness and also bringing more movement to the face. Right, because we need to be touching our faces like how we massage our shoulders or our backs. Right, Because that increases all the blood flow.

55:56 - Chase (Host) Um so Gua Sha really is a form of acupressure.

55:59 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Essentially, but more so um, it's just the scraping Like I wish I could show a video of like. This is what it looks like traditionally in.

56:05 - Chase (Host) Chinese medicine.

56:06 - Felice and Heather (Guest) But you don't want to do that on your face. You know it's too intense for the face. It's going to thin your dermis for the face. It's going to thin your dermis, it's going to ruin your skin.

56:14 - Chase (Host) Um, so should we be? Should we be using a Gua Sha tool and using the Gua Sha method daily?

56:18 - Felice and Heather (Guest) You can gentle, of course, cause you don't need to do a deep, but I think what a lot of people miss in their routine is activating the acupressure points before Gua Sha. Okay, because activating the acupressure points are connected to the rest of your body.

56:30 - Chase (Host) And those are the ones you were pointing to earlier Over here. Yeah, and then we can do the jaws the? Ears.

56:35 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I mean, they're everywhere, you know honestly, if you put your hand on your face, you're going to hit an acupressure point, you know. But they all have different channels. They're going to go to different parts of your body. For example, we have stomach points here and here.

56:58 - Chase (Host) And massaging these points. Sometimes when I do that on a patient would be like You're moving my gut. I'm like, yeah, because it's all connected Interesting.

57:02 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, okay, well is there a uh acupressure approach that we haven't talked about? That is your go-to, your favorite, for skin health? Yes, I was like it's interesting because there's so many acupressure points. First, and I guess an approach is understanding what part of your skincare routine and what part of the face you feel like you want to work on right. Um, whether it's specific to the tight jaws or you have acne somewhere in your face, it means there's stagnation there, right? For example, the other day, sorry, a tight jaw.

57:26 - Chase (Host) that common tension I hear a lot of people comment on that from anxiety, tension, getting headaches and even, you know, teeth grinding at night or even clenching your jaw during a stressful situation. Walk us through that more, please.

57:36 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Of course, I mean you know, we know it as TMD, right, tendo, must I mean anyways that TMJ, tmd, right, I mean the J is the joint, but then the D is the disorder of where it actually gets tight. And of course it's all tied to anxiety, because we hold so much of anxiety in our jaws and our neck and our shoulders. So tight jaw most likely means you have a tight neck and shoulder as well, and it's so synergistic to stagnation. Let's say so. If you have a tight jaw it means things aren't moving here, right, the flow of energy through the stomach channel this is stomach five and six.

58:10 It's the points, and the beginning of the stomach channel starts in the face. It's getting's getting stuck here, right. So the flow of the stomach channel isn't actually going into the stomach itself, and so a lot of the times that could be. You know, when you release that, when you release the muscles from gua sha for massage or from acupuncture, right, you get needles in the muscles. It releases so much tension and then someone's digestive issues get better, right? Um, I mean it's all tied to stress how, when people get stressed, they have stomach mean. It's all tied to stress how, when people get stressed, they have stomach issues right. It's all that balance, everything's connected.

58:38 - Chase (Host) Walk us through the difference between acupressure and acupuncture.

58:43 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Acupressure is topical. Where you massage points, acupuncture gets into a deeper level. Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it Right. Ideally, if you can get acupuncture, go get acupuncture right, because you're working with a practitioner who knows the exact location and they're able to activate these pressure points with needles. Because you have to get a little bit deeper. We have a meridian system that runs underneath our skin and these needles will get into that system. For example, not to say acupressure doesn't work it's amazing but it does take more activation, more time to massage. Um, and it's really powerful for a lot of times, like, for example, with kids or teenagers that I see. Acupressure is so effective for them because we say that their chi runs more superficial and they're so responsive to that um, which is fascinating, and most of the time that's what they prefer because they're scared of needles. Um, but it's just. You know two different modes of medicine, um, but acupressure makes it accessible to everyone.

59:44 - Chase (Host) Everyone can do it Right. I hear a lot of acupuncture being used when people have problems. Yeah, myself included, I've been. I've used acupuncture and acupressure a lot, a lot more acupuncture when I was going through my military injuries and back pain and recovery and all of that. It's just like another pain management modality. So is acupuncture really for people only when they have a health problem, such as pain, or why should we consider acupuncture for just daily, regular wellness?

01:00:06 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Well, before you go, felice, because this is your expertise. But we want to debunk the myth that acupuncture is the last result to do things. It's the last result if you can't find any alternatives. Right, we're trying to share that. It can be the first solution that can help then prevent all the other problems that you have. Right? I mean Chinese medicine. In a nutshell, it's a preventative medicine, right? If you went back thousands of years, you would get Chinese medicine and acupuncture or herbal medicine to avoid certain ailments. Right, because we're so used to. Okay, you are sick, you are coined sick, you have PCOS, you have arthritis, you have whatever. That's the Western diagnosis of it, but on a balanced scale. There was so much time in between this part of where you were diagnosable that you could have brought yourself back into balance where none of these ailments would have happened, and that's the premise of it, right? So in a perfect world, in the future, I would love to see acupuncture and Chinese medicine as a part of someone's wellness routine, on a weekly basis at least, right?

01:01:06 - Chase (Host) Or on a monthly basis. To quote quote tune your body right. You can go on a monthly basis.

01:01:10 - Felice and Heather (Guest) You can go on a weekly basis, even if you don't think that you have issues that are so apparent. It will help balance your body back to that balance form, yeah, where you can heal to the most optimal level, right, because sometimes people will come and be like I don't need acupuncture, I'm really healthy, I'm like great, I'm glad you feel that way. But let me look at your tongue, let me feel your pulse, like let me show you where you're wrong.

01:01:30 - Chase (Host) I mean it's and it's less about you're not healthy, it's more so.

01:01:33 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I'm going to share with you some imbalances, right, whether it's your gut, whether it's your sleep, and we can try to fix that so it doesn't get worse in the future, right.

01:01:40 - Chase (Host) And that's a huge part of wellness and being proactive about your health in general, it's just because you might quote unquote, not have a problem, now that doesn't mean there isn't something underlying, you know people don't just all of a sudden have a heart attack. It's a lot of telltale signs, symptoms, biomarkers, feelings that you know if you get a pulse on literally, then you can get ahead of right.

01:02:01 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, I mean, it even gets back to, you know, cancer patients too, which you know is such a touchy subject because, I mean, it's such a horrible disease and it's so sad, but there's so much time before it does develop, for the most part, right, whether, um, and you know, for the most part it develops later in your life, and that's where I where I'm talking about it, and there's so much imbalance there, and again goes back to the imbalances caused by how you're eating. But also emotions, right, the emotions are the center of how our body changes. Physiology, right, our physical body responds to every emotion we feel. Um, and that's something we have to address. And what acupuncture? Chinese medicine is great for too.

01:02:39 - Chase (Host) Okay, I'm gonna stay here for a little bit longer. Um, through the lens of chinese medicine, how would you describe, or how would you kind of clinically define, this emotional approach to our health care?

01:02:51 - Felice and Heather (Guest) such to like the western health care system right now. Yeah, yeah, I mean cause.

01:02:55 - Chase (Host) Think about it. Let's say, you know the person listening watching right now. They go to their doctor, whether it's for an acute issue or just their general physical annual checkup, which you should be getting an annual checkup Everybody. I believe they're going to hear their doctor talk about certain things.

01:03:10 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah.

01:03:11 - Chase (Host) I doubt if they go to a traditional MD or even you know nurse practitioner out there. Uh, their typical primary care provider is not going to go. So how are you feeling?

01:03:21 - Felice and Heather (Guest) You know once a person you checked in with your emotions, your spiritual side but, I'm hearing that in Chinese medicine this is pretty forefront.

01:03:29 Oh yeah, I mean, it's the first thing I ask. You know, if I get a new patient, I'm like you know, tell me what, what, what you know if I get a new patient, I'm like you know, tell me what, what, what you know you want help with. And then, after we chat a little bit and we break the barrier, I'm like, okay, I'm going to ask you and something you don't have to answer, but like, how are you doing mentally and emotionally? Like are you experiencing frustration?

01:03:49 - Chase (Host) grief, like I want to know it all, because it's everything.

01:03:52 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I always ask this question. Felice is also their therapist.

01:03:55 - Chase (Host) Oh my gosh yeah.

01:03:55 - Felice and Heather (Guest) We, we have great conversations and I sit there sometimes for 45 minutes just listening because people I realize you know they don't they're not given the floor to speak about their health a lot of the times, especially when they're confused. You know, you go to Western doctor, you're in for 50 minutes to do whatever you know and then you leave even more confused.

01:04:10 - Chase (Host) You typically don't really talk about it. You don't talk about your emotions. They really I mean they dismiss it, but it's.

01:04:15 - Felice and Heather (Guest) It's not that western is bad, it's just more so. It's a different outlook of what medicine is. They're very compartmentalized, right. They're very much like your lung is, you know, unhealthy, your heart's unhealthy go go see a cardiologist, you know, go see an ent. Whereas chinese medicine we look at your body holistically. We look at everything as connected and in order to do that we have to address all aspects of our mind, body and spirit, because otherwise we don't get a full picture.

01:04:40 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I want to ask a couple questions around. You know only your Chinese medicine approach to what I think are some common ailments out there. So what would you do if someone presented you know I've got heartburn. What's the Chinese medicine approach to dealing with, alleviating, even getting rid of, if possible, heartburn?

01:05:00 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, I mean heartburn. I always go back to where is that coming from? It comes from the gut, right? I'm not going to just look at the heart, for example, because it's something that is causing it. So the gut and emotions.

01:05:10 And in Chinese medicine we see heartburn as a pattern called rebellious stomach chi, for example. Um, and the energy of the stomach is supposed to go down, right, we digest the food and it goes down into our intestines. We absorb it or we, you know, defecate it out, whatever it is. But if we can't do that and there's some energy that is stagnant in our stomach, it's going to come back up. Right, it's the heartburn, it's the burping, the vomiting. So what here is causing that? Right, it could be the way you're eating. Of course, it could be imbalances in stomach acidity, um, which chinese herbs are great for. But again, going back to emotions, I'm like, are you really stressed? Like, are you stressed before you eat? You know, are you sitting down and regulating your nervous system before you have food? Because try that, you know, it could completely eliminate it, which you know a lot of times is the cause what about headaches?

01:05:51 - Chase (Host) I suffer from frequent headaches, mig migraines. What does Chinese medicine hold in store?

01:05:56 - Felice and Heather (Guest) for me, so many root causes. Headaches, right, person A versus person B with a headache will not be the same root cause. It could be an excess, for example, like someone who's eating a lot of spicy foods, someone who's very angry we say like liver anger they have a lot of outbursts right and they have a headache that way and their face usually is red versus someone who could be a woman. You know, they're a little bit anemic and there's a deficiency. Headache right. They get headaches after their period. You know, every month it's again finding the root cause and of course, in Western medicine and Advil will help dissipate it, because it's you know a painkiller and essentially, but why is that happening?

01:06:32 I think is really important. I think it would be helpful if you, if you share it's like okay, if someone doesn't want to take Advil or a pill to help with headaches, what's the alternative? I mean the alternative is, you know, speaking to a holistic doctor you know, obviously, chinese medicine doctor to find the root cause right. What are the triggers to it, what are you not doing right? You know? For example, the other day I had a patient who's vegetarian, you know, starting to dabble into eating meats again and had debilitating headaches and I said, hey, you know, to be honest, it's a deficiency type. You don't have enough iron, you don't have enough B vitamins. Can you have a bone broth, you know, every day for a week and come back to me and you know, headaches just started to dissipate because it's from a deficiency level. Um, so you have to understand why, why that is happening.

01:07:17 But I mean that goes back to the point on on the biggest barrier to getting Eastern medicine is that you have to be very patient with medicine, yeah Right, and a lot of people are very impatient where they want to have that quick fix. And so if you're willing to take the time to find the under, you know, the underlying issue and the cause then then take that time because it'll ultimately help you going forward.

01:07:43 - Chase (Host) You know, and True healing is a commitment, exactly, of course. I mean.

01:07:47 - Felice and Heather (Guest) It's a journey as you know, I, as as you know, much as I wish, as you go in for one acupuncture treatment, you get better. It's never the case, right? It's your body trying to adjust to a new baseline and that will take time, but it's worth the journey, right yeah?

01:08:03 - Chase (Host) So a lot of what I talk about on the show has to do with fitness and nutrition, and more so back in the day we're now. Yesterday was the birthday. Actually we had eight years.

01:08:12 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Congratulations. Thank you Thank you, thank you.

01:08:13 - Chase (Host) So a lot of the show's origin topics and guests were around. How do I lose weight? How do I gain weight in terms? Of body composition, body composition restructuring, losing fat, gaining muscle. Is there a Chinese method approach, chinese medicine approach to losing weight, weight loss, healthy weight loss, and is there an approach to getting more fit exercising?

01:08:41 - Felice and Heather (Guest) bulking up, adding muscle. Yeah, do you have anything to say? Yeah, I, from a Chinese medicine perspective. We avoid any type of diets. We aren't believers of the keto diet or, you know, no carbs diet. We really believed, we really believe in a balanced, just a balanced holistic type of approach to food. Right, because if you, for example, take out carbs for a month, your body just won't be able to understand it when you then bring it back into your body. Right, so we're all about very balanced eating as well as balanced movement. Right, and it depends on the movement. Felice really loves yoga and pilates. I I go to the gym and I lift three, four times a week. Right, so it's a type of movement that works well for your body. But avoiding all types of diets and just eating very consistently and healthy, yeah, clean, nourishing and, I think, going back to, like, losing weight, gaining weight.

01:09:34 Why, in the first place, are you gaining weight? Right, and in Chinese medicine, it's really tied to our spleen organ. The spleen is the first organ that receives our nutrients, and the function of the spleen is to transport and transform food and fluids. Right, and when you gain weight, it means your metabolism is slower. It's your spleen qi, the energy is a little bit dampened and weaker. And why is it? It goes back to everything you eat you know for years. Before someone you know is gaining weight, they're doing something to their body where their metabolism is off. Or maybe it's someone who you know was born and they were, you know, having trouble losing weight. It's again a deficiency in some of their organs and you can tonify that right with acupuncture, with herbs, the food you eat, that are all spleen tonics, for example, um, and tonify the energy of it.

01:10:16 - Chase (Host) Um, what would be an example of a spleen tonic? Yeah, as delicious as that sounds, I mean it's back to food.

01:10:22 - Felice and Heather (Guest) One of the best is sweet potatoes. I would say Right, um, but the way we would make it is to steam it. Right Cause when you bake the sweet potato, the dehydration process of an oven is pulling all the fluids and the yin and nutrients from it, but we want to keep that, so steaming is the best. You know a lot of our food.

01:10:37 So it's better to not bake, or even would you say roast vegetables, or just talk about sweet potato here, um sweet potato, but in general, we either quickly stir fry and it's so fun, like even with Chinese medicine the way that you cook it adds a certain benefit to it, like if you stir fry with ginger, for example, it's more hot and invigorating. It's great for winter months because it's warming, right, um, where you, you steam or boil something or you know, put something in a broth, it has a whole different component in how it's giving energy to your body. Um, yeah, but we love steamed potatoes. It's a spleen tonic, yeah, it brings you up. And another one, for example, is ginseng, which we all know, right, as a super food. Um, it's great for our digestion, it's great for energy.

01:11:20 However, it's not something that someone should be taking in a capsule form every day, um, because it's the temperature of it is warm and can be too hot for some people. So people would be like, oh, you know, I started feeling certain ways, I started getting heart palpitations, um, you know, from too much ginseng? Yeah, for too much ginseng right, because again, everything is a balance, you know it's my of supplements or Chinese herbs.

01:11:38 You need it because you need it. It shouldn't be taken on a daily basis because you see a trend online. Is it the right thing for you? Don't take anything and everything in excess, right? It's, for example, like probiotics. I needed it at a certain time and a certain point in my health journey and at this point, felice and I were talking about it a couple weeks ago but I felt like the probiotics were actually doing more harm to my imbalances in my body, and so I stopped it why?

01:12:03 - Chase (Host) what did that feel like or look like for you?

01:12:05 - Felice and Heather (Guest) um, it came with acne on my forehead because I have I just have like ongoing gut issues, right, and and that came as tiny dots on my forehead and I found that when I then canceled out these probiotics, my skin got a lot better.

01:12:19 - Chase (Host) Which sounds kind of counterculture. You hear a lot of people, I mean pushing a lot of postbiotic, probiotic. You know gut health in general, so I'm hearing it kind of had the opposite effect on you, yeah, and I mean, as you said before, when you needed it, you needed it.

01:12:33 - Felice and Heather (Guest) right, like you take all these supplements and in order to boost something, your body is missing. But it right, like you take all these supplements and in order to boost something, your body is missing, but in reality, after that, your body wants to start to produce it by its own right, like a healthy body. You don't need anything, you don't need any supplements right.

01:12:45 It should be at its most healthy state, but most people aren't like we aren't even right. We live in a modern world and we're full of external factors and stressors and whatnot. So how can we find that balance? Like, I also needed probiotics when I had my acne. Journey was kind of an indication of, Ooh, my gut health is a little off. Let me start this again. But I took it for a little bit and I haven't taken it for years and it's been fine.

01:13:07 - Chase (Host) Wow, years that's. You don't hear that too often. Speaking of, let's kind of jump into saying in the world of skin health here, but the Chinese medicine approach to acne, let's kind of, you know, keep that lens on.

01:13:20 - Felice and Heather (Guest) We're talking about acne and skin health. What do you think?

01:13:22 - Chase (Host) is the number one biggest contributor for most people for developing acne, and what are the different types of acne that we might experience?

01:13:31 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Emotional and what you eat. Yeah, I think it goes back to that. I mean, I think there's two buckets, right, a lot of people who suffer from acne if they're younger teenagers, but I'm going to segue into adult acne. Right, there's a huge population of most women and men who develop acne in their late twenties. And why is that happening? Right?

01:13:49 - Chase (Host) Yeah, you typically think acne is going through puberty. Yeah, which I'm just like you, know what it makes sense. Their bodies are trying to get used to it. But you, yeah, which I'm just like you, know what it makes sense, their bodies are trying to get used to it.

01:13:56 - Felice and Heather (Guest) But you know a whole other conversation of what medication they put on, whether on birth control. But I'm going to shift to this adult acne, which I experienced myself right Post-birth control. For a decade I was like I need to get off this. My mind and body have to communicate again and I am in a happy relationship. I'm stable, I don anymore and I feel grateful to be in that position. But the biggest contributor was emotions, right Stress, and in Chinese medicine, stress impacts your liver, your liver detoxification, processing and it's so important right. Acne is some type of stagnation, something that your body can't purge out, and it's getting stuck in your body and it's literally coming out your skin to get rid of.

01:14:36 - Chase (Host) It's the inflammation that's happening in your gut and in your body that isn't rising, yeah, and it's just trying to escape out of you, right? And?

01:14:41 - Felice and Heather (Guest) again what Heather said before with heat rising. That's one common cause and route that I see. Right, it's heat rising, and a lot of the time it's emotional related, like if someone is so stressed all their emotions are stuck inside, like you can physically feel it. They're like, oh, I feel it in my chest, in my diaphragm, and so when energy is stuck here, heat's going to rise, right, and they usually have cold hands, cold feet, but, you know, hot face, hot body, um, yeah, and we need to, you know, suggest or share, you need to figure out how to move all of this stuck emotion.

01:15:10 You know whether it's breath work, whether it's mindfulness, whether it's movement, yeah, but I mean the type of acne that she's talking about, right, and the solutions is the cystic acne, the more long-term acne that takes months to heal. When you talk about, like you know, acne that rises, that appears on your face, that you can then settle after a few days, right, that can also be caused by skincare that does clog your pores, right? So then again it becomes a subjective decision on what kind of skincare helps and doesn't clog your pores, right? So then again it becomes a subjective decision on what kind of skincare helps and doesn't help your skin Right.

01:15:43 So there's so many different types of acne that you need to think about short-term, long-term. But really we feel like the solution is how you, how you treat your body from a holistic standpoint, yeah, I mean. And back to again, like the quality of acne, whether it's a long-term right Like whenever I see a patient I look at the color of it whether it is cystic or not, because not all the time it is cystic, because cystic indicates some dampness in the body.

01:16:07 Where on the face are you breaking out to right? Because every part of your face again is connected to an organ and channel you know the cheeks a lot of the time is the lung and the liver, literally the points.

01:16:16 - Chase (Host) That's why I said my forehead, then connected to the gut.

01:16:18 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, it's got exactly um, yeah, the jaw line. You know a lot of it's connected to the uterus and kind of the lower part of her body.

01:16:25 - Chase (Host) That's why people like it's hormonal related right yeah, I hear that a lot, especially in females kind of like around the jaw and mouth line. Yeah, um is always like oh, my hormonal acne, hormonal, yeah, yeah um, I mean so.

01:16:35 - Felice and Heather (Guest) It's fascinating from a Chinese medicine perspective. You know there's face mapping and face reading of acne. What happens and you know for me when I developed it was my cheeks is my lungs and liver and I wasn't able to detox of that. You know my immune system was lower I was. It was post COVID as well. You know I got COVID.

01:17:01 - Chase (Host) I got sick and then I had acne. Um, so you know is happening in your body. I can't see inside your body, but what is the external part of the body showing me? Is there a different approach, or would you take a different approach to, let's say, if someone is?

01:17:06 - Felice and Heather (Guest) trying to um heal their facial acne versus acne somewhere else on their body shoulders. Chest back things like that.

01:17:11 - Chase (Host) Cause you can have one without the other or both. Unfortunately, Um is there a different approach for depending on where it is on the body yeah, I, I definitely approach it differently right back versus chest versus face.

01:17:22 - Felice and Heather (Guest) It indicates what organs are imbalanced, but also the quality of it, how long it's been happening, you know. So it's pretty nuanced, but it's very informative pretty, uh, pretty easy approach there.

01:17:33 - Chase (Host) So it'd just be uh, where is it? And then you would kind of develop a unique approach. Sorry if I kind of I don't know if I was looking for more. No, it's okay. Oh, I'm sorry about that.

01:17:41 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Um, yes, I mean it's. Where is it? But I mean a lot of the time. When someone comes in for acne, we chat for 30 minutes. I'm like what else are you doing? Like what other imbalances?

01:17:54 - Chase (Host) are right, do you? Yeah, what are you eating?

01:17:55 - Felice and Heather (Guest) habits. Um, yeah, I mean, and I I guess it is more complex. Um, I can't really give. Oh, if you have back acne, you know it's related to gut issues. If you have forehead acne, you know it's gi issues. Um, because it's a little dependent on who that person is um you also said something about the uh, the color, um.

01:18:15 - Chase (Host) So what does the color of our acne tell us about best protocols to treat it?

01:18:22 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, I mean, for example, when it's more red and inflamed, you know something that just looks more painful. It indicates more heat and that can translate as inflammation in the body, right. If it's bigger, deeper, more cystic, you even see like the white heads of the pus in it, which is also very painful. It's also indicating, okay, there's too much damp in your body and a lot of the times it's a combination of different imbalances in the body and the best way that I can say to clear. If it's more red, you know, drink a cooling tea, like peppermint tea, but drink it warm. You know, don't drink an ice cold drink, because it's going to make it worse, it's going to set your body off balance more. And if it's more cystic, for example, do things and stop eating foods that are damp inducing. It's dairy, it's gluten, it's fried food, sugar, right. And that's why when people adjust their diet, their skin gets better.

01:19:11 Typically yeah, yeah so maybe the solution is just not eat anything in America. No, it's the whole foods right, it's just focusing on whole foods, cooking your foods, instead of, you know, finding something that's already made. Make it yourself, right, like a pasta sauce. Go make your pasta sauce with tomatoes, you know. Make your own soup instead of buying a soup in a can.

01:19:29 - Chase (Host) This has been fascinating. Thank you all so much for your expertise and shining lights on different parts of our health and wellness, um through the lens of Chinese medicine. I have one more question before we get to the final question. And so you know, nowadays you know, myself included I've gone to clinics, I've done at-home blood draws, labs, biomarkers. You know whether it's through just annual physical or biohacking or whatever it is just to kind of get that next layer of looking under the hood so to speak.

01:19:52 I want to get my A1C, I want to get my cholesterol, my testosterone, vitamin D, omega-3s. I've even done full, exhaustive genetic testing where it's a 40, 45-page report.

01:20:03 - Felice and Heather (Guest) And we go through it for hours.

01:20:05 - Chase (Host) Very eye-opening stuff. Now that is all pertinent to your personal goals and why you're looking, what you want to work on, but is there something that we can be looking for in terms of a biomarker? Would you ever recommend someone getting labs, blood tests, if we want to approach, let's say, you know skin health, or is there a place for that in Chinese medicine at all?

01:20:25 - Felice and Heather (Guest) It's interesting because I don't think lab results and I do look at it sometimes will change how I would help someone from a Chinese medicine perspective, right.

01:20:34 I mean it's completely two different medicines. I mean Western is amazing because it's compartmentalized and it's nitty gritty. You get down, you kind of, you know, dissect it with a microscope, but Chinese medicine looks at your body holistically right, and so, yes, perhaps I'll get a lab test that says you're low in iron. It's going to match the theory and the pattern of, okay, you're blood deficient in Chinese medicine, so I'm going to treat you the same way. It's more of a okay, maybe it's solidifying the pattern that I have figured out or we've found out in Chinese medicine, but it doesn't change it Right, it's again, you know, two different modes of medicine that run parallel. But they can integrate, um, but it's not necessary.

01:21:10 - Chase (Host) So I'm hearing you say it's really kind of just two different ways of telling the same story.

01:21:14 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, exactly, yeah.

01:21:15 - Chase (Host) So if I wanted to, if I got labs drawn in my. You know I showed a high A1C. You know my three month average, my blood sugar, which is a precursor most likely to someone becoming type two diabetic or a lot of other metabolic disease just kind of paint that picture for everybody is, um, you know, my doctor or my health coach, or even myself, I would go about a certain protocol based on a high A1C, lowering sugar, lowering carbs, maybe, you know, introducing a longer fasting window certain things like that.

01:21:44 What would you do? You know how would. How would you know, maybe without getting my A1C biomarker, that I should go about similar things?

01:21:52 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, so A1C is all tied to metabolism and again I'm going to bring up the spleen organ again because the spleen is so important.

01:22:01 - Chase (Host) The spleen is a hot mess express it sounds like. For a lot of people it's an organ we talk a lot about in Chinese medicine.

01:22:03 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, I think you need to explain what is the spleen in Chinese medicine.

01:22:05 - Chase (Host) That's been coming up quite a bit yeah. Because, it's different in Western. Yeah, I mean I.

01:22:15 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Where it's so important for metabolism and processing, but in Chinese medicine is the first organ that receives food and so when some get our insulin exactly exactly.

01:22:23 So when someone has A1C levels that are, you know, imbalanced or off of normal or a little bit too high. I'm already going to, you know, see a patient and they're probably going to feel fatigued. They're going to probably already be bloated, you know they're going to feel lethargic. Their energy levels aren't there. You know they're probably not eating a good breakfast. They're probably not eating three times a day or a protein rich breakfast. You know there's a lot of these telltale signs already where I can see someone's spleen is deficient. They might have water retention in the legs, they might have other issues related to digestion, even brain fog, right, all of those are signs that the spleen organ is weaker and again, the lab results are just going to be a confirmation that, yeah, you know that's what's happening, but again, won't change how you approach it from a Chinese medicine standpoint.

01:23:07 - Chase (Host) But not everyone feels those symptoms when they are running a high A1C or a high fasting blood sugar. And unfortunately, in those situations, that's when people just wake up literally one day and they're like they're diabetic or they're pre-diabetic- so if they're not, symptomatic with those things you just mentioned. Just to kind of go a little bit deeper yeah no, thanks for asking that.

01:23:29 - Felice and Heather (Guest) To be honest, I don't think they're asymptomatic. I think they have. You know, people aren't learning to understand what symptoms or what patterns in their body are showing off.

01:23:38 - Chase (Host) Perfect answer. I love that answer, I mean there's.

01:23:40 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Your body is so responsive and it's so informative, Um, but we just have. I think a lot of people just haven't learned how to read their body and how they feel. I mean, it could be even something as nuanced as, um, you know, I always feel tired after lunch. You know it's so normalized, but your glucose levels are spiking in the morning and then they're dipping Right, Um, and they're just like oh, you know, it's just cause I'm tired, I have to drink coffee in the afternoon, and it's something they're like oh, everyone around me is like that, it's fine.

01:24:06 You know, and so perhaps they're not aware that their body's a little bit off of balance.

01:24:14 - Chase (Host) don't know what good feels like because of things like that because of it's your nature, nurture environment, just the way people do things. So you kind of just you've come to accept the way that you feel is the way that you're always going to feel, but when, in fact?

01:24:28 yeah, if you, if you really pull up that hard mirror or even just log feelings and activities and food throughout the day, not from like a manipulation standpoint, but just becoming more aware. And food throughout the day, not from like a manipulation standpoint, but just becoming more aware, yeah, getting to know your body is incredible. The body will always be your greatest coach.

01:24:44 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, greatest healthcare provider. Yeah, and I mean tuning into how you feel at different moments of the day. Yeah, I mean it's our greatest gift, right, you know we have this body. It's our temple and, yeah, I mean it carries us through our entire life and we have to treat it like we care about it.

01:25:00 - Chase (Host) It carries us. Sometimes it feels like I'm carrying it you know we got to help each other.

01:25:05 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yes, oh for sure.

01:25:07 - Chase (Host) Well, this has been very eyeopening, very informative. Thank you both so much for coming on and talking about a lot of unique and common healthcare concerns and just daily wellness habits through the lens of Chinese medicine. Where can my audience go to connect with you, to learn about you more? Everything's going to be in the video description box and show notes, but if there's one spot, where should we go?

01:25:28 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I would say, from a skincare perspective, we are very heavy and active on Instagram. So our handle on Instagram is moonbow underscore skin, m-o-o-n-b-o-w and then for more expert tips from a traditional Chinese medicine standpoint, it's definitely Felice's handle, feliceacupuncture and I mean, and both platforms share Chinese medicine where moonbow skin is more skin health right, you know, it's like teas you can drink, acupressure points you can press for skin health, whereas my channel is just kind of everything all bundled up to lifestyle and wellness where I pulled a few of these, these questions from the constipation one.

01:26:03 - Chase (Host) Yeah, exactly yeah. Here in los angeles, southern california, a lot of us are going through still really poor air quality conditions due to the just crazy wildfires. So in situations like we are now in here in Southern California, where the environmental air quality I say environmental meaning both inside your home and out.

01:26:23 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I think, at this point has been significantly compromised.

01:26:27 - Chase (Host) What should we do to protect our health and what are some things maybe you see people doing that actually have little to no impact?

01:26:34 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, oh, that's an interesting one. I think the two musts on my side is wear a mask, even if you don't think that it's protecting you, it is protecting you, um, especially when you're outdoors, and then air purifiers indoors. I think those are the two musts that everyone should have in LA right now. You don't know, I mean, all the toxins in the air are going to stay in the air for longer than people think it will. Yeah, and I think there's a difference between wildfires and urban fires, right.

01:26:58 - Chase (Host) How so.

01:26:59 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I mean, when you think about wildfires, it's burning through natural things, right, it's trees, it's grass, it's what's outside, but urban fires it's burning through homes, it's burning through plastic, it's burning through toxins.

01:27:10 - Chase (Host) I mean, when we think about you know a lot of everything in your home and Altadena right, it was built before the 1950s.

01:27:31 - Felice and Heather (Guest) There and Altadena right, it was built before the 1950s there was a lot of abestas, there's toxins in the paint, and so that's why it's different. Right, I think for the first time in a long time, la is experiencing air quality that is not necessarily just pollution or wildfire right, it's, but also how you can clear the toxins in the air in your home. But there's also so much you can do to protect your lungs. Right, and from a Chinese medicine standpoint, you can eat to protect your lungs and you can drink teas, you know, and in Chinese medicine, when we think about different organs, the color of the lungs is white. So when we think white foods mushrooms are amazing, napa cabbage, pears is awesome.

01:27:59 So for the past few weeks, I've been eating a lot of Chinese pears, making pear tea, you know. And in Chinese culture, we like to cook our fruit, you know, whether it's in teas or soup. So I've been drinking a pear and goji berry tea every single day and it's delicious and it protects your lungs. And the reasoning for that? It's cooling and helps detox your lungs as well, and in Chinese medicine, it's the first organ in your immune system. So if that's weak, then that's when you start to get sick.

01:28:22 - Chase (Host) I see a lot of people Well, I see a good amount of people on social media right now. This is also, I think, a good time for people to myself included really evaluate the channels that you are consuming News, social media, influencers, explore, page, whatever Because I do see quite a bit of, in my opinion fear mongering going on and just a lot of information but a lot of misinformation.

01:28:46 Yes, 100%, and I've seen some people go as far as say everyone should leave Los Angeles, we should get out for the next couple of weeks, or, you know, maybe you're not in LA right now, but just consider if your city has gone through a major natural disaster like this, especially a fire, is it really like we have to leave? Or can we stay and do things like you're talking about to protect our air quality in our lungs, indoors and outdoors? Are we just trading one evil for another?

01:29:13 - Felice and Heather (Guest) You know, I, I I mean, we come from a perspective where we grew up in Hong Kong and we spent a lot of time also in mainland China and the air pollution index was always above 100. It was very normal for us to play's like okay, how can we manage ourselves being in a situation in a city where the environment isn't to your advantage?

01:29:48 - Chase (Host) Because it's not realistic, right, exactly, and there's so much we can do to protect ourselves.

01:29:52 - Felice and Heather (Guest) right and if you have the luxury to leave, then you know you can. If you have, you know, some autoimmune disease and I think it really depends per person, right but if, if you can stay, there are ways to protect yourself. And I would say that's my opinion, Um, just so that, just so that you can't, you know you don't have to disrupt your day to day, but that's that's my opinion, yeah.

01:30:18 - Chase (Host) Let me get your take on some things that I've been doing, my wife and I and I've seen a lot of other people do and recommend as well, and that's really focused on detoxification. So, besides, you know, I've got a great air quality or, excuse me, got a great quality air purifier in the home, three actually, and I just got some here in the studios but beyond that we're increasing dosage and frequency of things like glutathione. Uh, increasing double my dose of NAC.

01:30:43 Uh and then now I used to do this kind of every once in a while, but now it's been a daily addition to my morning wellness routine, and that's hot water, lemon and Manuka honey Um are these? Are these actually doing anything for us in terms of detoxification, purification, protecting lungs, or is it just you?

01:31:00 - Felice and Heather (Guest) know it's so interesting, right, Because I think that's the information I see the most spoken about on social media. Right, like what supplements can you get your hands on and what can you start to take every day? Because I think it's the easiest to understand, like, oh my gosh, let, let me grab an NAC, because it's great to protect the lungs.

01:31:18 And I think there's you know high buzz about nac, glutathione, omega-3s yeah, nad, everything that in general, it's going to help the inflammation of your body and reduce inflammation, um, and there's certain things you can do to actually target detox right. And detox happens through the liver for the most part, and so there's detoxing teas you can drink, right, or even adding chlorophyll to your water, um, and detoxing teas could be, you know, nettle leaf, nettle leaf, chrysanthemum, or even um dandelion root, right. So these are all amazing teas, also in Chinese medicine, that go to the liver, like the energetics of the herb itself go to the liver and help detox and clear it Right. And when we think about inflammation, it's some type of um heat that's kind of stuck there, it's built up and you need something that's opposite in temperature, which is a cooling, you know, like peppermint, for example.

01:31:59 - Chase (Host) So peppermint would be good in a situation like this, when we're trying to detoxify.

01:32:03 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, exactly yes, because it goes to the liver, it's cooling and it's the opposite of what inflammation is, which is heat in Chinese medicine standpoint.

01:32:10 - Chase (Host) Okay, yeah, I see a lot of people amplifying their sauna. Use IR sauna dry sauna and even supplementing that sauna use with activated charcoal. You're looking for a good binder agent going into. Is that doing anything really in a situation like?

01:32:24 - Felice and Heather (Guest) this? Yes, I think so. I'm a big proponent of infrared sauna, or any type of sauna to detox the sweat out, though I have to say, the amount matters, right, you don't have to be doing it every day. I think for women, a few times a week or a couple of times a week is all you really need. Um, I've seen some patients where, um, they've gotten sicker because saunas make them too weak and, in general, their constitution is already too weak, right, we say, in a Chinese medicine standpoint, they're in a deficiency state. Um, and they've come in sicker after a sauna session.

01:32:52 - Chase (Host) Um so my last question this is great, I get two interpretations today, so ever forward. Every guest, every topic that comes on the show is meant to help me and my audience tap into unique areas of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, to remind us of things, maybe that we need to come back to or learn something. Learn, excuse me, or learn something new that we can apply, that we can test, to help move us forward in one of those areas of our life to keep living a life ever forward.

01:33:20 Heather, how would you interpret that I was actually?

01:33:23 - Felice and Heather (Guest) thinking about this during the entire podcast.

01:33:27 - Chase (Host) I gave you a little cue ahead of time, so it's, I have this.

01:33:33 - Felice and Heather (Guest) I mean, I'm sure that everyone can agree, but you overcome problems every single day, every single month, and it's how you overcome these problems and how's doing it with a very positive mind, because everyone lives with problems and overcomes issues, and life is a journey of problems. So how can you solve that? Do it with grace and do it with a positive mind I love that interpretation, thank you.

01:34:10 - Chase (Host) Life is nothing but problems. That's how we, how we manage them and how we overcome them.

01:34:15 - Felice and Heather (Guest) Yeah, it's so funny because mine is so different I mean, this is, this is the yin and yang and the twin relationship.

01:34:20 - Chase (Host) Well, this is the baby twin. Yeah, of course she doesn't have as much life experience.

01:34:23 - Felice and Heather (Guest) There's a minute less than you, I mean of course I'm going to tie it back to Chinese medicine, but this is my approach. So here it goes. You know, I see Ever Forward as movement right, which is the opposite of what I say stagnation.

01:34:36 She would say that right, yeah, and stagnation and stillness, I'm not surprised and being afraid of change. Right and just like in the body, with movement there's like an old saying in Chinese medicine is when there is movement, when there's qi and blood movement, there's no ailments, nothing will happen. But once there is stagnation, once things get stopped and blocked, ailments will come along. And I think that is a really profound saying that not only works for our body and health, but just how we approach life in general. You know, we again back to your obstacles and solving problems. We always have to just keep moving forward.

01:35:09 - Chase (Host) For more information on everything you just heard, make sure to check this episode show notes or head to everforwardradio.com