Acupuncture for GERD session #3

Today’s session is full of new and exciting things! I allowed electricity to be used and I had some cupping done! FOR SCIENCE!

I’d been having an odd thing happen for almost a week. I was getting a tingly/zingy feeling in my left hand going up the thumb and forefinger. I told Dr Li about this and she said, “Oh, yes, that is your colon meridian. It’s talking to you!” How cool is that? My body is actually TELLING ME what’s up!

Most of the work we’ve done so far has been the colon meridian. As Dr Li puts it, “Things need to move down. They are not moving down.” I would agree! Ever since VSG, my entrails have not worked right. With the PPI, I had diarrhea most of the time and when I stopped that, I have constipation most of the time. So, YEAH, things need to “move down”. AGREED.

Today she brought up the electricity again and I balked. She insisted that it is NOT like anything that touches the skin, because it does not touch the skin at all. I thought that I should give it a go myself to see how it is for SCIENCE. So I did. And, she is 100% correct: it is nothing like on the skin. At all. It just feels like a pulsation. I’d still say if you’re new to acupuncture, probably get used to the needles first, then move on to electricity. The reason she was keen to do it is because I’m not getting past these colon issues, and adding electricity to the acupuncture makes it MUCH more effective. We shall see, I guess. She told me that the electricity is used on the abdomen, but rarely the spine, due to the sensitivity of the spine. Makes sense. Here’s what it looks like:


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Acupuncture for GERD!

I have taken my own advice and started getting acupuncture for my GERD. These will be in the bariatric section of this blog since my GERD is caused by VSG and also under Health.

I’ve had the first appointment and it went very well. Not very painful at all. I could feel a couple of the needles, but in a zingy kind of way, not a hurty kind of way. I can’t explain it any better than that. The needles are tapping into your energy meridians in order to stimulate Qi, so if you think of these meridians as electrical circuits, you can imaging what a zingy feeling could be like. It’s interesting.

Dr Jiang Li is an AMAZING Chinese doctor here in Atlanta whom I HIGHLY recommend if you have ever wanted to explore Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and acupuncture. I saw her years ago for compressed disks cause by some asshole “trainer” who had zero clue what he was doing. The acupuncture session then was terribly painful the first time and somewhat better the second, but my back was completely better in just a few days. Read about the first session here and the second here – I am very specific with needle placement for the second session, so read it for info! (I have no idea why I stopped going after only two sessions, but it is SO like me to do that. Sigh.) This time is VERY different!

Anyway, I’ve been recommending Dr Li to people forever and it suddenly occurred to me that I should take my own advice and seek alternative treatment for this damned GERD. So here we are. Continue reading “Acupuncture for GERD!”