Prevention > Diagnosis: A Better Way to Care for Your Body

In this episode, we’re shifting how we think about healthcare and when to actually get support. Most people come to acupuncture and Chinese medicine after something is already wrong, when pain, a diagnosis, or a clear issue is interfering with day to day life. And while this medicine is incredibly effective there, that’s not where it works best.

Traditional Chinese medicine is fundamentally a preventative medicine. It’s designed to catch patterns early, when symptoms are still subtle, and guide the body back into balance before things become bigger problems.

We talk about what prevention really looks like in practice, why it’s often overlooked, and how this approach can actually save time, money, and energy long term. This is also a conversation about what people are really looking for when they seek “functional” or “integrative” care and how Chinese medicine already offers that depth of listening, pattern recognition, and personalized support.

In This Episode:  

• Why most people only seek care after something is already wrong  
• The difference between treating symptoms vs. maintaining health  
• What “preventative care” actually looks like in Chinese medicine  
• Catching symptoms early: sleep changes, digestion, tension, cycle shifts  
• How ongoing care can shift from weekly visits to seasonal tune-ups  
• Why prevention is harder to prioritize (and why it matters anyway)  
• What people really mean when they ask for functional or integrative medicine.
• The role of deep listening, pattern recognition, and personalized care  
• A real example of how the system often requires you to be “sicker” to get care.
• Why how you feel every day matters more than just lab results.
• The “Thursday afternoon” baseline and what it says about your health.
• Why fatigue, pain, and poor sleep are not things you have to accept. 

You don’t have to wait until something is officially wrong to get support. The earlier you listen to your body, the easier it is to maintain balance and feel well in your day-to-day life.

PODCAST INFO:
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Tao of Humaning, where we explore the physical, energetic, emotional, and spiritual aspects of what it means to be human together. I'm your host, Dr. Christine, and I'm so happy you've decided to join me for today's conversation. In today's episode, I want to talk to you a little bit about timing and when is the best time to come and see a practitioner of Chinese medicine like myself. A lot of times people will come into the clinic and see me when they've already have an established diagnosis. A lot of times people will come in for pain is oftentimes an initial gateway for people coming into an acupuncturist and Chinese medicine practice. Women's health is another one. So cycle regulation, hormonal balancing, things like fibroids, PCOS, perimenopause, and menopause, anything having to do with trying to conceive or being pregnant or postpartum, all are fantastic times to come and see someone. And what I was thinking about in conversation with a patient the other day was this idea of prevention as a way of caring for the body. And I know it seems like such a simple, of course, concept. And really, I think traditional Chinese medicine has the most beautiful lens of looking at the body and care. And so at its very foundational root, traditional Chinese medicine is a preventative medicine. It really is utilized best when people come in before things have really established themselves to a point where there's a diagnosis in the body. And that's a tricky thing to get across in a short conversation with someone because a lot of times I'm meeting people that are already in pain or already have something going on in their body that they want support with, right? And then they come in and we can do a series of care, address what it whatever it is that they need support in. And then we're starting to have that conversation of, okay, this shoulder pain is resolved, and you know, we've been working on your digestion and your sleep, right? And then if we continue care for another month at a weekly basis, you know, then we can get you to a place where you're coming in maybe once a season for like a tune-up and to make sure everything's continuing to hold that pattern of being able to have the body operating on its own in the way that is most optimal. Right. So a lot of times we start care after things have already been established as a pattern in the body. It's not bad. Acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine can certainly help with those things. And really starting to use Chinese medicine as a preventative tool can really help to ensure that the body is going to be as balanced as possible. And it can correct for things, you know, like we talked about in an earlier episode, you know, can correct for things when there's still a whisper. And, you know, when you have a little bit of shoulder tension, right? Before it becomes like a a fully strained neck, for instance, or shoulder. Or, you know, when your cycle starts to go out of balance, or, you know, when your sleep is really, you start noticing that you're waking up in the middle of the night and it's always at two o'clock, right? Like that's significant for a practitioner of Chinese medicine. And we can help, we can step in at that point, right, and restore restfulness and restore full flow through the meridians of the entire body so that there's not stagnation and pain. And yeah, I think there's several reasons why people don't think of this. One, I think, is that it's not talked about as often. It's also really common to, you know, when you're putting yourself out in the world as an acupuncturist or doctor of Chinese medicine, you're wanting people to think of you for a certain thing, right? So prevention obviously is not going to be super marketable in the sense of coming top of mind for people. But I think it's becoming more so. I think what I what started me wanting to do this episode was some conversations that I've been having around, you know, a lot of people are looking for functional medicine or integrative medicine. And those are two things that people will search out, you know, asking friends and family, like, hey, do you have a good functional medicine practitioner? And then I'll say, Well, what do you mean by a functional medicine practitioner? And they're like, I don't know. Sometimes they're like, I'm not sure. I want them to do, you know, some different kinds of tests. And I want them to, at the end of the day, what I think they're saying is, I want that someone to look more deeply at what's going on in my body. I want someone to listen to the symptoms that I'm experiencing in my day-to-day, which is Chinese medicine perfectly, um, because we do want to address sleep every session, digestion. We're looking at energy and mood. All of those things are very front and center for a Chinese medicine practitioner. But I think when people are looking for integrative or functional practitioners, what they really want are those key things of like someone to look deeper, someone to listen, and someone to make sense of what's going on in their body, and then for someone to give them a plan. And to me, we'll talk about this in another episode in more depth, but to me, this is like Chinese medicine bundled up into one thing, into one description, right? Like that's what we do every visit. Um and yeah, I think some of it is that educational piece. I think some of it is financial. I think it's hard for people to think about prevent preventative care when things are going really well in their body, right? When they feel really good, you're less likely to think, like, oh, it would be a great idea to go help maintain this goodness, right? And I was thinking about today's conversation, and you know, it really is caring for our body is easier to maintain a healthy state in someone's body than it is to correct something that is um out of balance. And what that looks like long term is actually less money spent because you're correcting things at an earlier stage, right? And usually treatments are going to be less intense. There's just so much goodness to taking care of our bodies on a regularly maintenance kind of a way. Um, I was thinking about cars, and I was thinking about how, you know, it's common knowledge that our cars need oil changes every, you know, three-ish months. So kind of once a season, right? Depending on your driving, of course, but about once a season, we know we're gonna have to bring our car in, we're gonna have to get it tuned up, essentially, right? Our bodies are the same. If we want our bodies to be functioning, functionaling, functioning optimally, we don't want to wait until it's running on empty and really in a lot of pain and discomfort before we start to course correct, right? And some of it is education. I want to talk more about how these things are possible and specific examples and things for you guys to understand and see. Um, but I think today I wanted to set this, you know, kind of a bird's eye view and having this conversation of there is a different way. Like we don't have to wait until things are super wrong in order to get care. And I was thinking about a patient the other day who, for example, was expressing their frustration with their insurance provider and being able to get the care that they and their doctor had determined was the best care for for this person. They were looking to get on a GLP one, and you know, kind of that ideally, you know, doing all the right things already, eating well, moving, healthy habits in this person, and their weight was still not lowering. And they had a lot of, you know, risk factors and things with their doctor, and they were like, okay, let's get you on a GLP one. Okay, great. Submitted to submitted it to the insurance company, and they were like, actually, we need you to do six months of this nutritional program that you can do through your insurance. We need you to do that first before we'll approve this. Okay, that's a reasonable request, right? And a cool service to offer for free. So they went and did that. They did six months of this nutrition program diligently and had similar results as what they were experiencing before, like felt good, and you know, their habits were not the problem to begin with. So they weren't seeing as much progress as they had determined was needed. And so they went back to the insurance and said, okay, it's been six months. Now it's, you know, time. Let's get this person the support with the medication. And the insurance company was finally like, okay, we'll do it. And so they got on it, they felt great for two months, and then this was the end of a calendar year, and so the insurance was resetting at the beginning of the next year. And what happened was they changed the BMI requirements for the GLP one coverage on their insurance. And so it kicked them out of that coverage range. And so now, even though technically on paper they were obese and they had risk factors and you know, all of these reasons why a period of time on a GLP one would have been really supportive for them, they weren't able to actually get that care anymore. And they were just, you know, coming in and sharing the frustration of like, oh, like I did, you know, it took eight months of back and forth to be able to get on this thing. And then I finally got on it and I was feeling great. And then ultimately they felt that they were being told that they had to be more sick in order to get this care that would actually prevent them from, you know, long term reducing it really would have reduced all cause all cause mortality, right? Reducing heart disease risk, reducing diabetes risk, reducing da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Right. Long term, this would have been less expensive for this patient to be able to get this kind of preventative care, right? To move them out of the obesity range and into what's considered a healthy weight for them. And, you know, that's something where I feel like our culture in general, like we tend to wait until something is really, it has to be, we we're trained that like something has to be really wrong. We have to have a concrete diagnosis of something before we can move forward and get care. And that's not always the case, but I do see that often enough that it has flagged something in me that I was like, I'm just like, wait, this is not how I was trained, right? And there, this system of medicine is really one that listens early on in your symptoms, and it really looks at how you feel every day and how your body is functioning every single day. And it, of course, we look at labs and we use that as a guide, right? We might have slightly different ideas of what's an optimal range than another provider. And at the end of the day, we're gonna keep going back to how are you feeling? Like, how do you wake up in the morning? Do you feel energized? Do you feel a little slower to start? Are you like can't count down the seconds or can't wait until you get the coffee right into you? Those are all useful data points for us in terms of caring for you and being able to get you to a place where you fall asleep easily. You stay asleep throughout the night, you wake up feeling relatively rested. All of these things for the moms listening are relative to the age and sleep of your children. And, you know, even within that, we want the rest that a young mom of young children, where the sleep is still a bit disturbed, we want that sleep that you are getting to be able to be as restful as possible, as nourishing as possible, right? And really looking at everything within the context of your particular life. So sleep is a big one. And then, you know, how you fall asleep, stay asleep, how you wake up, what times do you wake up in the middle of the night? Are you using the restroom in the middle of the night? All of those questions mean something different to us and create a pattern. Same with your digestive system. Like, I'll ask people, how is your digestion? And they'll say, What do you mean? They'll say, Well, everything, right? Like, are you how's your appetite? Like, do you get hungry? Do you crave anything in particular? Are you do you have a desire to eat? Because sometimes people will feel hungry, but there's no desire to eat, right? Um, do you have gas bloating? How are your bowel movements? We talk about poop a lot in my clinic. Or with your acupuncturist, you'll know we talk about poop a lot. We talk about periods a lot. And a woman's psycho health. Oh, we'll get into this more and more, but a woman's cycle tells us so much about her overall physiology. And in fact, I could ask a woman about her cycle, and I could probably predict with pretty good accuracy what her sleep and her digestion are like and what her moods are like, only by asking her about her period. And, you know, these are I always tell people, like, your life is like Thursday afternoon car line, right? Like how we feel emotionally, physically, mentally, how we feel on a middle of the week, middle of the afternoon day, like that's our life, right? And I see so many people feeling frustrated because they are getting their annual labs done and they're being told that everything is in the normal range, and you know, their fatigue and joint pain and back pain and all of these things that they're experiencing are just normal parts of aging. And I I would argue that that does not have to be the case. And so I think for today's episode, I really just wanted to stress that how you feel every single day matters. Of course, it's normal to have ebbs and flows throughout life and changes. And overall, there are supports for you to help you sleep better and to help you feel less affected by stress, to help you feel less anxious, to help you feel more resourced, to help you feel happy, grounded, and just all the things, right? Like there are resources before things become a diagnosis or before things become really cumbersome and heavy, you can get support to feel better before then. And so if you know someone who has been struggling, or if you yourself have been struggling with any of these kind of day-to-day things, finding a Chinese medicine practitioner is so valuable. And if you are around, if you're listening in and you're around Orange County, California, of course, I would love to be the one to support you. I also do offer telehealth, and all of the things are located in the show notes. You'll be able to find me if you want to send me a message. I would love to hear from you. And I hear, I get I see so many of you are listening in, and I am so grateful and appreciative, and it really, really helps my work get out to new people. If you hit subscribe and like or leave a comment, any of those things really do help the magical algorithm to send my work to new people. So I really appreciate that too. And look forward to seeing you in the next episode.