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The wellness industry is booming, but with all these new classes, experts and ways to heal, how do we know what's fact and what's just good marketing?
Welcome to Wellness, Questioned, a deep dive into our love-hate relationship with the weird and wonderful world of wellness, self-development and spirituality. How do you look after yourself in the age of anxiety? How can you tell what to believe and what's bullshit?
Join us, Katie, a yoga teacher and coach, and Annabel, a writer about wellness, as we explore the world of wellness and self-improvement and learn how to do wellness, well.
[00:00:00] Annabel Lee: Welcome to Selfie Development, a podcast about the weird and wonderful world of wellness and self-improvement.
[00:00:14] Katie Gordon: Each episode, we look at a different wellness trend or practice to find out what actually works and what's kind of a waste of time and energy. I'm Katie Gordon, a yoga teacher and coach.
[00:00:23] Annabel Lee: I'm Annabel Lee. I write about wellness. Come and find us @selfiedevelopmentpod on Instagram for more wellness chat.
[00:00:31] Katie Gordon: Hi, Annabel.
[00:00:32] Annabel Lee: Hi Katie.
[00:00:33] Katie Gordon: This week we are gonna be talking about acupuncture. Have you ever had acupuncture?
[00:00:40] Annabel Lee: I have had acupuncture a couple of times. I've had acupuncture for neck and shoulder pain, and I had some acupuncture when I was pregnant. I have had it, but I don't 100% understand how it works.
[00:00:54] Katie Gordon: Oh, I absolutely don't understand how it works, but I have had it, again, when pregnant, and I'm currently having it, not right now, but at the moment.
[00:01:03] Annabel Lee: We're actually doing this episode...
[00:01:05] Katie Gordon: Covered in needles! Yeah. Did you know that it's one of the most research alternative treatments?
[00:01:13] Annabel Lee: No, but I guess that makes sense.
[00:01:17] Katie Gordon: There's a lot of evidence and the person that we're talking to today, Joe Jennings, aside from being a lovely person and friend of mine, he is an acupuncturist and he's been practicing acupuncture and Chinese medicine for over a decade, and he takes pride in being able to make his work as accessible as possible.
He runs Holistic Health Oxford and the community acupuncture team. His clinic is the first carbon negative clinic and he takes interns and he also sits on the board of the Association of Community and Multi Bed Acupuncture Clinics. So he's really interesting, not just because he's an acupuncturist, but because he's got a really interesting business model based around trying to make acupuncture accessible to everyone reasonably priced. I'd love to chat to him about that as well as acupuncture and how it works with those needles.
[00:02:08] Annabel Lee: That sounds great because we've been talking so much this season about community wellness and accessibility of wellness practices. So really interesting to see how he's doing it and yes, learn what is going on when we get a needle stuck in us.
[00:02:23] Katie Gordon: Yeah, absolutely. Hello Joe, welcome to the podcast.
[00:02:28] Joe Jennings: Hello.
[00:02:29] Katie Gordon: So you have been an acupuncturist for, a decade or so.
[00:02:34] Joe Jennings: Yeah.
[00:02:34] Katie Gordon: What is acupuncture exactly? Can you explain it as though no one's heard of it before?
[00:02:41] Joe Jennings: Yeah. I guess nuts and bolts is, it is, yeah, inserting ultra fine needles into specific points on the body to try and elicit a response to get the system back into balance.
[00:02:53] Katie Gordon: Okay, and why did you become interested in it? Why do you practice it?
[00:02:57] Joe Jennings: I always wanted to do health of one sort or another, when I was younger, I also really wanted to go on a gap year, and the year I was finishing A Levels was the year before top-up fees. So I applied for a deferred spot in medical schools and they instantly saw through my ruse. I got one interview which didn't go so great, but went traveling anyway, picked up some books on Taoism. I was absolutely fascinated by it. Came back and did a year of business management, which was pretty boring. But yeah, there was so few contact hours that I ended up doing I think three nutritional diplomas and looked up. It just realized that my passion was still health. Did look at different options. I'd sort of toyed with homeopathy, naturopathy for a while. But yeah, I was just really drawn by the fact that acupuncture and what Chinese medicine is it? So in standalone medical theory really, and yeah, it's a whole health system that you can really look at the body, how it works and have these quite unusual diagnostic techniques like tongue and pulse, which are just yeah, it's still endlessly fascinating and the depth that it's got to in the, you know, thousands and thousands of years that it's going is just amazing.
[00:04:06] Katie Gordon: Do people actually know how it works? Like the mechanics behind how it works,
[00:04:10] Joe Jennings: We're getting there, I think is the fair answer. Anywhere you put a needle, there will be an acupuncture needle. Don't go, not any needle in your skin. Yeah. No. No. It's the fact that it does. A tiny bit of damage, just like a microtrauma, some people would say and so you're always gonna get more blood flow into the area of sort of positive immune response and the release of some of the body's natural pain killers.
So kind of, anywhere you put it, you're gonna be able to help with pain. Which is why there are all these sort of new medical spinoffs, like medical acupuncture and trigger point therapies, things like that, and they get reasonable results for pain. The bit that I suppose is a bit trickier to fully comprehend of acupuncture and like we're still there on all the biomechanisms, is that each different point has different outcomes associated with it. One of my favorite still to this day is Zúsānlî, which I think translates as, I'll probably butcher it with something like three extra mile point. And it said that back in the day when they were moving armies across the country they'd sit down for a while, rub that point, and then they could walk three extra miles.
[00:05:16] Katie Gordon: Oh, I could do with that. Where is it?
[00:05:17] Joe Jennings: So it's a palm width below the knee, the base of knee, and then a little pinky width away from the bone there, and you can feel most accupoints. There's a little dip to it. But more interestingly than that, I think, is that the piece of research I think is the most fascinating is that it's an anti-aging point on the genetic level.
[00:05:35] Katie Gordon: My gosh. Okay. Okay.
[00:05:36] Joe Jennings: So it's incredible how they actually managed to work this out, but it reduces the reduction in the telomeres, which is the sort of bit of genetic code at the end of chromosomes that when it gets too short, replication sort of fails or gets cancerous, goes a bit weird up, and then the cell line is destroyed or cancer develops. But yeah acupuncture slows down that reduction and on one of the biggest theories is, and on the genetic level is an anti-aging point, but it that point also increases the body's biggest natural antioxidant, and the other main theory on aging is free radical damage. It's kind of...
[00:06:14] Katie Gordon: Does everything!
[00:06:14] Joe Jennings: It's it, yeah and that's just that one point, like all of them will have slightly different biomechanisms associated with them. So actually, once you've got the complete picture, and I suppose the failure that's been developed, Behind Chinese medicine, you can then actually be really quite nuanced in how you approach the system and what you do with it and why such essentially a relatively simple technique like you're just stabbing people, a lot can be applied in such a beneficial manner, like such a variety of conditions.
[00:06:44] Katie Gordon: How do you even research that though? I don't. How do you go? I know...
[00:06:48] Joe Jennings: it was on mice. I'm afraid, one of them was on. Yeah, I, you can't just have sort of cell lines to do that kind of research. You have to see how it's reacting in a whole body. So
[00:06:59] Katie Gordon: mm,
[00:07:00] Joe Jennings: Commonly it's with mice for those kinds of studies
[00:07:03] Katie Gordon: Okay.
[00:07:04] Joe Jennings: Yeah, I think there's been other ways to find different biomechanisms, but yeah mice isnt uncommon. Okay. Yeah. Or animal studies.
[00:07:11] Katie Gordon: and acupuncture is one of the most researched alternative medicines, isn't it? If that's what I've.
[00:07:17] Joe Jennings: Yeah, and aside from sort of pharmaceuticals, it's the fastest growing area of research within medical things. So faster than physio, osteo kind of even the more mainstream ones. Yeah. The research is growing at a pace. Yeah.
[00:07:31] Katie Gordon: And can you also tell us a bit about the evidence? I know you've mentioned some already, but what is the evidence?
[00:07:39] Joe Jennings: Again, getting there. Yeah. The biggest data set we have is, was produced by Vicars, and is a meta-analysis of, oh gosh, I forget how many different randomized control trials, but enough that they built a data set of 21,000 people and was primarily looking at chronic pain, but also headache, migraine and there was a certain amount of anxiety and depression in there as well, and that's a big enough data set that you can now say with complete certainty that acupuncture is beyond placebo, which is nice.
[00:08:14] Katie Gordon: Yeah.
[00:08:15] Joe Jennings: That was surprisingly challenging hurdle to come over. It's, yeah, very effective for. Pain, chronic pain, headache, and migraine and there was enough evidence to say that it's looks like it's good for depression and anxiety, but the dataset needs to be a little bit larger. There wasn't quite enough to pull out differences between different styles or different protocols within acupuncture. But yeah, that's the biggest one and that's the one that's allowed us to have be on the nice guidelines for chronic pain, and we're pretty much the only active treatment, yeah, for chronic pain now that the NICE guidelines recommend.
[00:08:51] Katie Gordon: What does that mean in, in layman's terms?
Um,
Uh,
[00:08:54] Joe Jennings: So NICE is the national Institute of Clinical Excellence which recommends protocols for the NHS to adopt.
Doesn't mean they will become the protocols, but they should be considered, and it does mean that in certain areas acupuncture is starting to become. More available on the NHS for chronic pain conditions, and headache and migraine in some instances, but it's very patchy, and it's mainly coming out of, there's new sort of enhanced access funding, which is basically to do evenings and weekends and doctors just don't really wanna do that.
[00:09:26] Katie Gordon: Fair enough. Yeah.
[00:09:28] Joe Jennings: Yeah.
So yeah, there's been, I think, four different. Places across the UK now that have opened those, I was one of them in Oxford. It lasted all of six weeks before the commissioning group decided they didn't want to fund it.
[00:09:43] Katie Gordon: Oh, is that social prescribing then? Or is that something different?
[00:09:46] Joe Jennings: No, that was with me anyway, it was the GPs commissioned essentially the primary care network. So it was three GP surgeries in east Oxford,
[00:09:57] Katie Gordon: Right.
[00:09:57] Joe Jennings: And that's the kind of way they're going out. I think social subscribers can recommend, but. Because there's no sort of free at the point of service. Like usually they're more, I think as far as I understand, they're recommending more to like community and sort of charity projects where people can just join in for free and they've got, they've drawn down sort of funding so that, that's the next step, essentially trying to draw down funding pots so that then the GPs are happy to refer people to me.
Yeah. But yeah. Sorry, I'm going back to your question, that's yeah, for chronic pain conditions we're really there. The research is, I'd say very promising in terms of fertility, mental health, insomnia. It is pretty broad, but the wider you look, the fewer studies and certainly the fewer systemic reviews on metaanalysis where they've got a collection of studies and sort of pulled the evidence there and I think if you look on the Cochran collaboration, which has sort of, I guess the, sort of the final word in terms of medical research where it, most of them are saying that there needs to be more research or better quality research. If you look at the un, I think there's 159 conditions they recommend acupuncture for.
So it's, yeah, and it's starting to get taken up more and more so internationally. Yeah, and some pretty dark ways. Another really exciting bit of research was acupuncture, again, on the pain side, was not only. You know, safe it's always been proved to be safe, when you compare to some medical procedures is important, obviously, cost effective, but for pain it was as strong as morphine, faster acting. Safe. None the side effects.
[00:11:34] Katie Gordon: Wow.
[00:11:35] Joe Jennings: Which led to battlefield acupuncture being a thing. So US military have developed a branch of acupuncture whereby they'll have acupuncturists on the field, or at least people trained in acupuncture. They can administer acupuncture to the soldiers, and because it's not morphine, they can then leave the soldiers. Otherwise they'd have to stay with them. So it can be much more efficient and there's cheaper, and also a chance that because the pain effect is Strong, the soldiers might be able to get work, so...
[00:12:04] Annabel Lee: Wow.
[00:12:04] Katie Gordon: Get them back on their feet and fighting!
[00:12:06] Joe Jennings: So yeah, probably not what acupuncture was originally developed for, yeah.
[00:12:10] Katie Gordon: No, probably not.
[00:12:12] Annabel Lee: Is acupuncture, do you call it an alternative therapy or is that problematic?
[00:12:20] Joe Jennings: We certainly come under the branch of complementary alternative therapies. I think it's a bit unfair given that it is its own standalone medical practice, and I hope, ultimately it will move towards integration because it just makes sense. Like acupuncture is, yeah, safer, faster, more cost effective than certainly some treatments on the NHS.
[00:12:43] Katie Gordon: What would integration look like though, do you think?
[00:12:45] Joe Jennings: would definitely have to be in community clinics, so multi beds, where to keep cost effectiveness up, whether it would be sort of, In-house or referred out, I don't know. Probably the oldest example in the UK is the Gateway Clinic in London, which I think has been going since mid to late eighties and that's for conditions anxiety and depression which would be referred by GPs, and then you can also self refer if you're in recovery from drugs and alcohol. I think they also help cancer patients as well, but more around this dealing with the symptoms effects of the chemo. Yeah. So there were notable examples out there, but again, this is super patchy. Yeah. So...
[00:13:28] Katie Gordon: What we've talked about a lot on this podcast is how everything is designed to make money in wellness. So I'd really love it if you would talk a bit about your business model and why you decided to do a community acupuncture clinic.
[00:13:42] Joe Jennings: Yeah, I joke that so when I first came out of uni, I was able, back when there was still funding to do four years on a drug and rehab service. Two different ones actually that it changed, who won the commissioning halfway through and it was free at the point of use for the service users and yeah, I joke that kind of broke my career. It made, it is probably a fair way look at it, but, or yeah, it was very hard then to go to sort of charging, you know, 45 or the market rate per session.
[00:14:13] Katie Gordon: Because of your personal morals or just...
[00:14:16] Joe Jennings: I guess because of that experience. But yeah, I do wholehearted believe that healthcare should be human rights, that acupuncture is effective and cost effective and safe healthcare and so should be included in the NHS as that basic human right.
So yeah, I suppose ever since then I've been striving to get back to that, and then starting, yeah, the community clinics, I think it was about eight years ago now. Was that step towards that? Initially it was just sort of, a half day, but it's now I'm doing four days a week and we've got four other clinics with four other practitioners across Oxfordshire and then there is a sort of national network of community acupuncture clinics that we're trying to roll them out even further and then, yeah, the Bridge Acupuncture Council now sort of actively looking at how we can get into the nhs. So we're definitely trying to make it as, accessible as possible, but that's certainly been my mission, varies of wholeheartedly in the last 10 years and sort of definitely ticking over in the background.
But yeah I suppose the way a community or multibed works is that there are just multiple beds in the room. So you'd have probably most commonly three or four patients an hour. So 15 to 20 minutes with the patient. It's getting the needles in and then because with acupuncture, you leave people to almost there's different ways to practice. Say but's, predominantly people left with the needles. To rest for about half an hour to 40 minutes, you can then move on to the other two people, on the other two beds, and yeah, go back to the initial one. needs out. Go for the next one.
[00:15:39] Katie Gordon: Yes, I've been to one and I prefer it because you just get that lovely little half hour nap before you have to take the needles out.
[00:15:46] Joe Jennings: Yeah, and actually in America they do it where you can just stay as long as you want.
[00:15:51] Katie Gordon: Oh really? Oh, careful.
[00:15:52] Joe Jennings: I had a patient from Boston and at one point and he was like, yeah, I just fell asleep and woke up two hours later and I was like, oh, I guess done, maybe take the needles out. It's more of a stripped back version and they just sort of doing recliners. I potentially argue the benefits might not be quite as good as full body acupuncture there, or more extensive approach, but, that's more from my experience than really having data to fully back that up.
[00:16:17] Katie Gordon: Mm.
[00:16:17] Joe Jennings: But yeah,
[00:16:19] Katie Gordon: And the big question I know that we both talk about a lot is how do you make it financially sustainable operating like that?
[00:16:27] Joe Jennings: Yeah, so I have a sliding, most community clinics have a sliding scale rate of somewhere between sort of 15 to 40. Mine operate at 19 to 35 a session. So actually at least if you are fully booked, you probably end up earning a bit more at community clinic than you would as one to one and then depending whether you are, I suppose renting clinic space or you've got your own, it tend, we tend to, at least with the community clinics, be in community centers. So actually the overheads, the room particularly is a lot lower than the sort of private clinics you could be in.
[00:17:01] Katie Gordon: Is it not more intense though if you're treating four people, or do you find it, is it just normal to you now?
[00:17:08] Joe Jennings: I guess it's normal to me now, and I, since having a second child, I'm doing three people an hour rather then four. So I've got loads of time!
[00:17:18] Katie Gordon: Time to spare.
[00:17:19] Joe Jennings: At the same time. I'm now up to probably the most patients a week. I think you do have to be cautious and definitely, yeah, if you've got kids or just other things going on or for whatever reason, if your energy is, I definitely have to self regulate, self-manage, and I've regularly got some herb Chinese herbs on the go and some supplements and just things to kind of, yeah, keep me going. But no, for me I'm used to it and I've been doing it long enough. It's fine. But I've definitely seen other practitioner say that it's, is a bit of more of an intense way of working. I guess for me, having that experience in the rehab clinics especially the last two years where it was harm minimization, I grew a thicker skin.
[00:17:59] Katie Gordon: Uh, right.
[00:17:59] Joe Jennings: There were people that have just tried to commit suicide the day before or just really tricky in harrowing cases. So I don't tend to get too emotionally attached or triggered. Obviously I care for my patients. I really want them to feel better, but it doesn't have that sort of, it doesn't tax me, in the same way that perhaps things used to and I think some practitioners still get that if they have lots of sort of intense interactions with people and some argue, and I think that's fair to say that. Yeah, because you've got less time with the patient, you can't sort of be a sort of talking therapies as well, you just have very quickly get a list of symptoms, do your diagnostic questions, the pulse, and then kind of move them on. Yeah, although the, you know, physically you're more busy, I think in ways its easier. Yeah.
[00:18:48] Katie Gordon: Okay. That makes sense.
[00:18:50] Annabel Lee: That's really interesting cause I know some things I've read around the wellness industry in general, or maybe more alternative therapies rather than kind of integrated therapies is around that people want, like sometimes people are going to something because they just want someone to they, they want that therapy.
[00:19:07] Katie Gordon: Yeah.
[00:19:09] Joe Jennings: Yeah.
[00:19:10] Annabel Lee: it's interesting that actually, but I guess with acupuncture, the thing is you are sort of receiving a physical thing, aren't you? You are aware. It's like it's happening. It's so you, you're kind of getting something.
[00:19:22] Katie Gordon: can feel needles usually.
[00:19:25] Joe Jennings: Yeah it's the needles that's gonna be the benefit. So yeah, I, you know, sometimes if people are in a really emotional state, I'll almost try and moand move them on aaster so they get more time with needles without trying to obviously be callous in any way. But yeah, I think you definitely do get people that just need some compassion, need a bit of care, sort of time of...
[00:19:43] Katie Gordon: Yeah. Yeah. You get to chat to someone and lie down and, you know, have a bit of physical touch, even if it is just through a needle. Yeah. I wonder if that is part of why it works. I don't know how you can separate that out in a study.
[00:19:57] Joe Jennings: I was joking about that with a patient the other day. I don't think you could and pass an ethical board. Yeah. I think you'd have to get them on a jogging machine or something with needles in, which is...
[00:20:07] Katie Gordon: Or just be rude or something.
[00:20:09] Annabel Lee: Yeah.
[00:20:09] Joe Jennings: Horrible. Yeah. I think if they still lay down, cause definitely the relaxation adds to it and we know bedside might not adds to it and the experience of the room, ours is, I love it, bits, but it's a pretty sketchy, scratchy room with a bar hatch and a dartboard in, and so it's not the most beautiful. Some people do want that pampering experience and will pay hundreds, even thousands for that, a bit more spartan in that way.
But we I'd say definitely get similar results, actually, I don't think there's much of a drop at all compared to the one-to-one patients that I do.
Again, more in my experience, but a decade off rather than active data,
[00:20:50] Katie Gordon: Yeah. So that might suggest that it's...
[00:20:53] Joe Jennings: I think the majority of the impact is I think, no, I think it does play a part, but I think the majority is the needles with this. Yeah.
[00:21:01] Katie Gordon: Can you tell us a little bit about energy in Chi? Because we were talking about this in an earlier podcast episode about EFT, which I believe uses acupuncture, acupressure, Yeah.
[00:21:15] Joe Jennings: Yeah, a couple different points a lot. A lot the face and on hands.
[00:21:18] Katie Gordon: Less evidence based than acupuncture.
[00:21:21] Joe Jennings: Yeah that's fair. I've heard good anecdotes. But yeah, it's hard to pull out too much from that. I should preface this with, I did all the maths and science at uni and that my brain kind of works in that way, so I struggle with the more sort of, fluffy and woowoo terms Chinese medicine. The way I look at chi is rather than some sort of, you know, ephemeral mist that we're it is more like the functions of the system. So we've got the way chi, which is the protective chi, which basically the immune system. We've got the Jang Chi, which is more the upright and a little bit more to do with digestion.
There's, it's, it is really interesting to look at and then I suppose of, in a way, cross-reference. Also look at comparisons. Chinese medicine. I think there's a beauty in a way, how simplistic some of the terminology is. So patients that have heat, you can kind of expect, they might be a bit more red-faced, they might have more inflammation, they might have some more skin conditions, you by saying sort of heat or cold or dampness, you can kind of. Get a bit of an idea of the sort of yeah, analogies that might allude to, but then the more you sort of study, the more you realize how sort of in depth and broken down into different areas that can become. There was some people suggesting that the chi does actually correspond to gases in the body, so the nitric oxide in the blood and how that dilates the blood vessels and helps with blood flow. It's said that the chi is in the blood and drives or guides. This has taken me way back to uni.
[00:23:03] Katie Gordon: Sorry.
[00:23:04] Joe Jennings: But yeah, there are comparisons there, but again, I don't necessarily know that we have. An exact answer on what the cheers, or what the meridians are. Again, probably the best theory on that is the fascia pathways, which is sort of the interconnective tissues, which we're starting to understand is so much more than just an inner skin like it... yeah. It's so important in movement and transportation and communication and the more understanding, the more, it kind of seems like maybe it could be the meridians, but yeah, we're still getting there on that front as well.
[00:23:40] Katie Gordon: Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:23:42] Annabel Lee: Something that's coming up a lot in this series of the podcast, we're talking a lot about like why is wellness so self-indulgent? Self-obsessed and that's like why we call the podcast. Selfie Development, cause it seems that so much of, kind of this space is about like self optimize yourself. We are really interested in thinking how can we, what do we need to do to shift some of this focus from self to community wellness? And I, yeah, I wonder if you have any thoughts on that.
[00:24:13] Joe Jennings: Yeah, I've read a really amazing book recently. I'm gonna forget who it's by now, but it was something like Inflammation, the Anatomy of Injustice, and it was looking at...
[00:24:23] Katie Gordon: Oh, I've heard of that.
[00:24:24] Joe Jennings: it's amazing. Definitely. Yeah. Especially the health practitioner, although it kind of, it makes our lives harder, but it's hard for me to not give a political answer to that.
[00:24:34] Katie Gordon: Go for it.
[00:24:36] Joe Jennings: You know, it comes down to sort of, you know, Thatcherite individualism that we, the whole society has just become all pervasive to the point that now we're doing it to ourselves. Yeah I think definitely more of a community shift and focus is gonna be important, and definitely these tools are really useful and obviously as what I've learned and know how to do.
But I think until we start having things like maybe a four day working week or better workers' rights or a living wage, and yeah, not in the middle of a crisis after crisis, it's gonna be tricky. Like people don't have the time, they don't have the money, and in a way that's partly why these things have become luxury and then they do work, but then the Gloop, for instance, things to answer for. Yeah. Gloop? Goop, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, that's a tricky level to operate at, but it would probably half my patient needs so much what I see as stress based, stress induced. Definitely saw that over the Corona crisis where there was a sudden influx of NHS workers and teaching staff and it was all mental health conditions or migraines just the stress and pressure that everyone was under. Yeah. We need a government that isn't sort of so wholeheartedly focused on ruining our lives.
[00:25:58] Katie Gordon: That'd be nice. Yeah. If we all were doing a four day week, we would probably be less stressed and we would have more time to be in community and...
[00:26:07] Joe Jennings: yeah.
[00:26:07] Katie Gordon: other people a bit more as well.
[00:26:09] Joe Jennings: Yeah, and I think a lot of these traditions do come from a very community-minded spheres. It's just that the way they're being applied now is just, yeah, kind of antithetical. With yoga, yeah, it, it's a real shame. There should be more projects to make them more available, but I just think people that need them the most are those with the least time and money.
[00:26:32] Katie Gordon: Yeah, it's really hard though, isn't it, because as you know, practitioners also don't have a lot of time and money, so it's tricky to find out how you can make that work and keep everyone well and healthy.
[00:26:42] Joe Jennings: Yeah, and some modalities, I think it kind of is impossible unless you're able to draw down funding. Like,
[00:26:48] Katie Gordon: Mm.
[00:26:49] Joe Jennings: The only reason I've been able to do the community clinic is because you leave people with the needles If it's sort of massage or something like that, where it's still one-to-one, but you have to be with them the whole time and give them enough time to be useful. It's just not possible.
[00:27:00] Katie Gordon: Yeah. You can't just give them a theragun and leave them on their own
[00:27:05] Annabel Lee: Yeah.
[00:27:05] Joe Jennings: Yeah, Yeah. It'd be nice to see more initiatives out there that do try and address, yeah, how we can help people more. I, again, sort of more integration with NHS I think would be great. But again, and it's, that's, that is political and yeah, it's tricky. Really tricky.
[00:27:26] Katie Gordon: No easy answers for us there. Joe. disappointing got a whole plan how we do it.
[00:27:32] Joe Jennings: Don't wanna run for government
[00:27:34] Katie Gordon: No, thank you. Thank you so much. That's been fascinating. I really great to hear so much about acupuncture and how it helps and bit of the quite complicated evidence. But yeah, thanks for trying to explain it to us!
[00:27:47] Joe Jennings: Pleasure. No, thank you.
[00:27:50] Katie Gordon: So what do you think about acupuncture now?
[00:27:52] Annabel Lee: I thought that was really interesting. I thought the stuff that Joe said about how it works was really helpful for understanding it, and I thought that I loved his approach, that it's not about sort of, you know, like broad, just like how you feel, it's specific, I love the use cases. I love the example about battlefield acupuncture.
[00:28:19] Katie Gordon: Oh God. Yeah.
[00:28:19] Annabel Lee: Fascinating, and it also really made me think about how we treat a lot of wellness modalities that quite often they are lumped in as alternative therapies, and I think that the evidence behind acupuncture and sort of that shifting more kind of middle ground and then hopefully to a completely kind of accepted therapy or healthcare was brilliant and I think that all the evidence behind it and the research that's gone into it is wonderful and it really, I think there's probably a lot of other modalities that, you know, hopefully might follow that same path because the benefits seem for some of those cases where it's used like pain and stress and mental health stuff like wonderful outcomes. So I, it really helped me understand it a lot more.
[00:29:11] Katie Gordon: Yeah. I think it's interesting, isn't it? Cause we, I've, we tend to regard all forms of wellness practices as the same, and obviously some are gonna work better than others and there happens to be a lot more evidence in acupuncture than is on most other ones, which might be just because it is better or it might be just because the other ones haven't caught up. I think we've talked about some that are a bit more dubious, but yeah, I found acupuncture to be really helpful and I. I have always slightly questioned, is it just like that I'm being after half an hour and like having a lie down and someone's being nice to me and asking me how I am, and I think that's probably part of everything, but it does seem to be that isn't why it works is the needles and the practice itself.
[00:29:57] Annabel Lee: Yeah, and I think this comes up quite a lot. I know, certainly when I've been researching topics that I wrote about, there'll be like one study that's been done on this thing, and a lot of wellness is really under researched, sometimes because it's just a new thing or there might really not be any evidence. There might be kind of debate as to the effectiveness of it. Yeah, and also some wellness practices, like a soundbar for example. The benefits that you're getting there is literally because you are lying down and you listening, you know? And that is kind of part of the treatment. Although, you know, we know that does things to your brainwaves, it helps you relax, but...
[00:30:35] Katie Gordon: It's harder to measure as well. It's all like self-reported. Yeah. So it's harder to measure some of these things as well, cause it's how do you feel better now or afterwards and That's not so scientific, it? It gives you a level of understanding, but not necessarily like we can measure that the baseline was this and then improve by however many percentage.
[00:30:57] Annabel Lee: Yeah. And also because why are you going into it for what you going into it for? Is it because you're going into acupuncture because you've got chronic migraines and you can't work? Yeah. Or are you going into a practice because you want to? Stretch out your calves a bit or there's different use cases aren't there and I think it certainly feels to me from that conversation that acupuncture is kind of occupying, like Joe said, a kind of integrated kind of middle ground, and I think that's wonderful.
[00:31:25] Katie Gordon: Yeah, definitely.
[00:31:27] Annabel Lee: And I loved hearing what he's doing in terms of community care.
[00:31:31] Katie Gordon: Yeah, it's great, isn't it? I wish we could do that across all wellness practices, but it's just, it's trickier.
[00:31:37] Annabel Lee: I guess the more we see that and the more people, because I think people do get into wellness because they wanna help people, and it's just how can you do it practically? The more examples there are of it, the more opportunities there'll be for other people to learn and yeah, think about how we can do these things.
[00:31:56] Katie Gordon: And more funding hopefully as well.
[00:31:58] Annabel Lee: Yeah. More funding from, you know, because that's the thing. It's not just up to individual people or practitioners to do it, where that can come from. I think that's, yeah, brilliant, I loved hearing about that, and that's one example, and I think what would be great is to, you know, we'll look for more and tell us if you know of anybody doing wellness in a different way or care.
[00:32:24] Katie Gordon: We'd love hear about that. Yeah, any community care examples would be great.
[00:32:28] Annabel Lee: Because that is I still think going into this series we wanted to explore that more and I think we've, that there are certainly examples, but I think it is, and it is interesting cause it does get quite political and we've had quite sort of political conversations this series, but I think that is a part of wellness. It's not all self, it's not all about yourself, that's gonna maybe make you less, if you're just thinking about yourself all the time.
[00:32:54] Katie Gordon: It's a balance, isn't it, of self resourcing and self-regulating like we talked about in the Mum Rage episode, and also having community care and community resources as well.
[00:33:04] Annabel Lee: Yeah, and being a part of it. Being a part of the community. We have come to the end of season two of selfie. Development!
[00:33:14] Katie Gordon: I can't believe it. How?
[00:33:15] Annabel Lee: I know it's flown by!
[00:33:17] Katie Gordon: I've really enjoyed recording this season.
[00:33:19] Annabel Lee: It's been great. We've had some amazing guests on, I think we've gone deeper, we've learnt more.
[00:33:25] Katie Gordon: Yeah, I love chatting to you, but it's been really great having people who are, you know, experts and then I think we've got a few ideas percolating away for season three.
[00:33:36] Annabel Lee: But let us know if you've got any requests, if there's topics that you want covered. Yeah, come and find us on Instagram. We're at selfiedevelopmentpod on there. We will pick up any messages, say that's thee best way to get in touch, and we'll be back.
[00:33:52] Katie Gordon: In the autumn,
[00:33:53] Annabel Lee: The autumn. Yeah,
[00:33:54] Katie Gordon: That's the plan.
[00:33:55] Annabel Lee: Season three.
So in the meantime, please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. We'd love any shares of the podcast. If you think any of your friends would enjoy it too.
[00:34:05] Katie Gordon: And if you could give us any five star reviews, five star reviews only, please, that would be fantastic thank you. Thanks for listening.
[00:34:12] Annabel Lee: See you soon!
[00:34:15] Katie Gordon: Thanks for listening. Come and find us on Instagram @selfiedevelopmentpod. If you enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review.
[00:34:22] Annabel Lee: We recorded this podcast at Story Ninety Four. Thanks so much to Nick and Matt for editing and production.