Ask Michele
Q: How do I choose a qualified acupuncturist?
This is a very important question and one I can answer in detail, if you are looking in South Orange County or anywhere in the state. In California, a licensed acupuncturist has earned a Master’s of Science in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, completed a supervised clinical internship where diagnosis, needle safety, and technique are directly overseen, and has passed the California Acupuncture Board exam. California is the only state in the country that administers its own licensing exam, and it requires at least 3,000 hours of training. Weekend certifications in dry needling or similar techniques are not the same training, even when the tool looks identical.
Credentials get you a safe practitioner. The right practitioner for you is the one who inspires your confidence. At your first visit, you should be asked about your health history and your goals, and you should hear how they plan to approach your specific concern before any needles are placed. Ask what conditions they commonly treat and how many sessions results typically take. You should leave feeling like you were heard, not rushed.
Every acupuncturist practices in their own style. My clinical training was under a supervisor who emphasized precision, and it shows in how I practice: shallow, exact needling that patients often describe as gentle.
Q: What are the benefits of combining acupuncture with massage?
I’m a licensed acupuncturist and a certified massage therapist, and I was a bodyworker for over a decade before I began needling. So when I combine the two, it isn’t two services stacked together. It’s one treatment plan working through both. My hands read the body and the needles address the pattern underneath, and each informs the other during the session.
The combination starts with acupuncture. Your first visit establishes your traditional Chinese medicine pattern and treatment plan, and massage is added when it serves those goals. In my practice that’s most often stress and anxiety, neck and shoulder tension, back pain, and recovery from injury. Depending on what your treatment calls for, bodywork can be woven into your 60 minute session, or added as a dedicated 30 minutes after a full acupuncture hour.
Massage is also available on its own, and some of my acupuncture patients first came to me as massage clients years ago. But when I combine the two, it’s something I offer during your treatment when your presentation calls for it, and I’ve found it’s a welcome addition.
Q: Can I get cupping or gua sha with my acupuncture treatment at your Irvine office?
I often use a combination of acupuncture and cupping or gua sha in my treatments, especially for muscle tension, shoulder and neck pain, or recovery from overtraining. In traditional Chinese medicine, cupping and gua sha have long been used to relieve tension held in the muscle layer and move stagnation, which is part of why they are paired with acupuncture for these kinds of complaints specifically. Today this local release is understood as increased circulation and fascia mobilization at the treatment site. Cupping and gua sha have also long been used in traditional Chinese medicine for their anti-inflammatory effects. Modern research now offers insight into why this works, the petechiae created during treatment are reabsorbed by the body, a process that releases histamine and appears to support the anti-inflammatory response. Whether these treatments are added to a session is decided based on what each patient’s presentation and constitution calls for that day.
Q: Can acupuncture help with stress and anxiety?
Yes, and this is one of the most common reasons people come to see me. Modern research points to acupuncture’s ability to calm the nervous system, shifting the body out of fight or flight.
I love to introduce my patients to the traditional Chinese medicine way of thinking about stress and anxiety. I believe it offers real insight, something you can reflect on that reframes what’s happening.
Our emotional states manifest in the body, and in distinct ways. In this system of medicine, anxiety is associated with the Heart, traditionally the seat of the mind. A disturbed Heart often shows up as racing or agitated thoughts, but can also manifest physically, as heart palpitations or heat in the diaphragm. Stress belongs more to the Liver, whose qi is meant to flow smoothly; under stress it stagnates, and you feel it as being stuck, wound up, pressurized. Two different patterns, treated differently sometimes in the same patient.
One thing anxious patients notice: some points you barely notice, and sometimes a point is what my patients call spicy. Often spicy is telling us something. Anxiety can make the body more reactive, so points feel more sensitive. Imbalances in the channel we are treating can show up as spicy points. These sensations are generally well tolerated, and the treatment can be adjusted if needed. Many patients fall asleep on the table by the second or third visit.
Acupuncture works with cumulative effect, so consistency matters. Most people feel lighter and calmer after the first session, and the deeper shift builds over a course of treatment.
Q: Can acupuncture help with gynecological issues?
Absolutely, and I am passionate about this. I came to this medicine while in the middle of my own gynecological struggles. Acupuncture and herbs helped me with painful periods, heavy bleeding, and PMS, to such an extent that my own transition through menopause was easier than I expected. It’s a story I find myself telling over and over, and it’s how many of my massage clients became my acupuncture patients.
I most often see patience with painful periods, heavy or irregular bleeding, PMS, and perimenopause and menopause. Fertility work deserves focused, dedicated care, and there are acupuncturists whose entire practice is built around it. If you’re seeking fertility support, I encourage you to find a practitioner with extensive experience in this area. In my own practice I’ve seen quite a few pregnant women, and it’s lovely how acupuncture and massage can ease the aches, nausea, and sleep troubles that come with pregnancy.
My patients usually arrive with their own goals for treatment in mind, many working with their gynecologist as well.
Here is a real example of how this medicine can help a woman understand her own body. A patient came to me while working to get off birth control, wondering how acupuncture could help her through the transition. We started where the worry actually lived: the heavy periods and cramping that led to the prescription years ago, and the very reasonable fear that they would come back. Together we got her cycle regulated and she was equipped with herbal prescriptions and at-home strategies to make her periods as smooth and pain free as possible.
The beauty of traditional Chinese medicine is literally in the details. For a person who’s menstruating, the quality of bleeding, the kind of cramping, when in your cycle it arrives, all of this points to your specific pattern, and your acupuncture treatment and herbal prescription are tailored to it. For a patient in menopause, we look at how your particular cluster of symptoms adds up to a pattern of its own, one that makes sense of this transition and shows us how to support you through it. I spend real time on this, because understanding your own body through the lens of this medicine is part of the treatment.