[Danielle Balocca]: Hey Medford Bites listeners, last week marked the beginning of new stations opening on the Green Line extension and a vote in City Council regarding charter review. It's exciting to see some of the innovations happening in Medford, hopefully impacting residents and businesses just like the one we talked to on today's episode. Hope you enjoy. All right, thank you so much for joining me today. If you don't mind just starting by introducing yourself, so saying your name, pronouns.
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: Hi, yep, my name is Justine Myers and my pronouns are she, her.
[Danielle Balocca]: And so we're gonna just start with our normal questions. So if you don't mind letting us know what your favorite place to eat in Medford is and what you like to eat there.
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: Okay, yeah, I've got a few. So the first one definitely is Chili Garden, which is in Medford Square. And my family is like really into it. And we probably ordered from there like once every week or two throughout the pandemic. And I like all this Szechuan kind of food there. I mean spicy and not spicy. The next one would be El Vaquero which is a little Mexican takeout place in West Medford. It's about halfway between Acupuncture Together and my house so sometimes I will stop by for lunch in the middle of the day and it's really great. The tacos are delicious. And next door to us is Pikachi Ramen, and they have really delicious miso ramen.
[Danielle Balocca]: I walked here from West Medford Square and I'd never been to this part of Boston Ave, but we're sitting here in your business, Acupuncture Together, so I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about it.
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: Sure, so I opened Acupuncture Together in 2008 and it was in Cambridge at the time and we just moved to Medford last spring in May. It's myself and one other acupuncturist, his name is Andrew Cheever. And so we're both licensed acupuncturists. And just so folks are familiar with acupuncture, it's pretty highly regulated in Massachusetts. So we both went to acupuncture school. My acupuncture school was three years year round. I went to the New England School of Acupuncture and got a master's degree. I studied both Chinese style acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine. And then you take board exams, national board exams, and then you become licensed by the Board of Registration in Medicine in Massachusetts. So it's quite a process. And so I graduated acupuncture school in 2007, opened Acupuncture Together in May of 2008. and was really excited to move to Medford last spring since I live here and I had been looking for quite a while actually to move out of that space and find something different and the space we're in now has been a really great fit. I don't know, I guess I can talk about what we do, but yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: I'm curious, actually, if you've noticed any differences between being in Cambridge and Medford, if anything's changed with that move.
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, I mean, one thing that's really different is that the space we're in now is a nice little storefront. It's right here in the neighborhood, and in the space we were in in Cambridge, we were hidden away in an office building. So nobody could ever see that we existed. There was no foot traffic. And so it's just been really nice being here in the neighborhood. People walk by. We definitely get people who come in who say that they found us because they drove by or they walked by. They live in the neighborhood. And I just love knowing that we're serving people who are right here. And of course, there's people who come and find us from all other kinds of ways, whether it's like internet or a friend or family or doctor or something, but the neighborhood presence is really nice.
[Danielle Balocca]: So maybe a question that might help us kind of segue to some of the other things we want to talk about is like, I feel like people make a lot of assumptions about acupuncture. Like you started kind of qualifying like your credentials, right? And so I wonder what you, like kind of what you think about when you think about like assumptions or like ideas that people have about acupuncture that may or may not be accurate.
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, so I think that a lot of people think the idea of acupuncture is scary because there are needles involved. And needle phobia is certainly something that a lot of people have, and it is legit and valid. I will say that acupuncture needles are much, much thinner than hypodermic needles like used for a shot. Like, for example, you could fit about, I've read, you know, 25 or 27 acupuncture needles into the tip of a hypodermic needle. They're super thin, they bend easily. If you're not an acupuncturist and you try to stick one in yourself or someone else, it would probably bend and it just, it takes actually a lot of skill and practice to know how to, put in an acupuncture needle properly because they're so thin. And what else? Acupuncture is just, it's, it treats a lot of health conditions. I think there are people who think that You know, I was just speaking, I just was wanting to say my credentials up front because I actually was having a discussion with an MD this past weekend who said, oh, you know, I've thought from time to time about referring people for acupuncture and I always go to the school because I want to make sure they're going to someone who's really train, and I said, oh, well, there's really nobody who can practice without being trained. It is very highly regulated. Which, I mean, is actually, that's a whole other sort of, I think, good and bad thing. which I may get into later, but that's, so that's the way it is. And then I will, at some point I would talk about what it's good for, but. Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: And so I'm glad you brought up the needle phobia piece. My wife actually was like suggested to her at some point in like the pregnancy, along the way with the pregnancy that like she tried it and she's like got a huge needle phobia. And so are you saying like, because of the size of the needle, it's like not painful or less painful than what we think about with a shot?
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: right so um i mean and i do treat there are definitely people who come in in here and are like you know it was really recommended to me to try it i'm really nervous about needles and i'm like okay no problem you know i have treated a lot of people who are nervous um and most of them are fine i will say i've had a couple people who just you know could not handle it but generally speaking most people are fine and actually surprised at how little they feel the needles. Sometimes when a needle is inserted you might feel like a small pinch or a bit of an achy feeling but it's not really painful it's definitely not at all like the sensation of a shot or a blood draw. That is much more intense and uncomfortable. I mean, it is painful having those things done. And with acupuncture, what we do is we put a needle in, and we just, once it's in, it sits there in the body for about, most of our treatments here are about 45 minutes. But you know, it could be a half hour to an hour at pretty much any place where you get acupuncture. And once the needle's in, you don't really feel it.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great. What else would you like us to know about that?
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, so here at Acupuncture Together, What we do is we do what's called community acupuncture, which is treatment in a group space. So we have six recliner chairs in here and people can go have a seat and people don't have to remove their clothes at all since it's a group space. So they will take their shoes and socks off. They can roll their sleeves up toward their elbows, roll the bottoms of their pants up toward their knees. And we do primarily what are called distal point treatments, which means most of the points we use are away from an area of pain or discomfort. So, for example, if someone has lower back pain, which is like definitely in the top five things we treat, might even be number one, we regularly use points in the hands and in the feet and ankles. very, very good success rate treating it. So you do not have to put a needle right where it hurts, which is one misconception about acupuncture. So we treat people in a group setting, and we have sliding scale pricing. The first visit is a flat rate of 50, but the follow-ups are 25 to 50. And when I first opened in Cambridge, it was 20 to 40. Yeah, the sliding scale was 20 to 40, and we had a $15 extra for the first visit. But then when we closed for the pandemic and moved and everything, actually before we moved, but after we reopened, because we had to close for three months in the old place, then we, I changed the sliding scale just a little bit, so now it's 25 to 50, because so many less people were coming, and so we had to make that decision. But the importance of the sliding scale is, you know, we do it to try to make it as accessible to as many people as we can. So, you know, anyone who needs to pay 25, that's totally fine. And if people are able to pay a little more to help, you know, keep everything rolling here and help make it possible to have that lower end of the scale for people, then that is a huge help. And we don't ask for any income verification or anything. We have some kind of guidelines and they're really just based on ultimately it's what people feel that they can afford.
[Danielle Balocca]: So making it more accessible. How does insurance work with acupuncture?
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, so we don't bill insurance and part of it's because we have a sliding scale and you can't do both. But the other part is that some plans cover some acupuncture for some conditions. So, like my actually, my health insurance plan doesn't cover acupuncture. So it'd be kind of interesting if I were. billing for that and not able to use it myself, but yeah. So the other thing is, so people will ask and if their insurance covers it, what we're happy to do is they can pay us, we will write them a receipt that they could try to submit for a reimbursement. But you know there are acupuncturists who bill insurance and there are Plans that cover it so if people really want that they can call their insurance company and ask sometimes there'll be a limit like you know 12 treatments a year which would be fine if you have something that is Not a long-term chronic condition, but that's another thing where we see a lot of people with long-term chronic conditions for example there's someone who comes here who has a chronic knee pain and you know she's like 70 and acupuncture has been great for her and it helps her to not have to take you know things like ibuprofen or acetaminophen but she comes like weekly almost all year or sometimes she skips a week here and there. And you know insurance would not cover that level of care.
[Danielle Balocca]: And you mentioned that like back pain, knee pain are some of the common ones. What are the sort of major treatments that you do?
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, so I would say in the top most common things would be any kind of pain, joint pain, back, knee, elbows. any kind of pain really, and then a lot of headaches and migraines, also a lot of stress and anxiety, insomnia, and a lot of fertility, and also just female reproductive health in general, menstrual and menopausal type issues. conditions, digestive conditions, and also allergies and asthma. I'd say those are the most common, but all kinds of people come in with all kinds of stuff.
[Danielle Balocca]: I feel like we talk about acupuncture as an alternative medicine, as a way to divert, or if other medicine hasn't worked. And I guess I'm wondering how you see that play out here. Are there certain types of people that you see come in, or is there a general story that describes a lot of your clients?
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: It is very mixed. I mean, there are people who, there are definitely people who come in who are sort of at the end of their rope and at the end of their options. They have had cortisone shots in their joints and they have had physical therapy and they have had massage and they have seen a chiropractor. You know, they've done all these things. And I will say that it is harder to treat someone when they have a very longstanding and severe condition than treating someone who has something that is newer or less severe. Usually things that are newer and less severe respond pretty quickly and the long-standing things can take more time. to improve. But yeah, I mean, it's quite a variety. I mean, and there's also people who come in because their doctor or their therapist had suggested that because they're really having a hard time with something like anxiety or stress management. Or just a family friend said to them, oh, it helped my knee, why don't you try? And so they come in because someone told them.
[Danielle Balocca]: Can you describe a little bit about how it works? So you're putting needles into different parts of the body, but how does that actually work?
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, well, so there are certain points that are indicated for certain conditions. So part of the time, you know, a lot of the time spent in acupuncture school studying what points affect what area of the body. And so those are kind of known in a more sort of empirical sense of that this medicine, you know, it started over 2,000 years ago. The first classical text of Chinese medicine, the Huangdi Nejing, which is called the, which is translated to the Yellow Emperor's Classic, is from roughly 200 BC. But at that time, they had recognized that certain points could be used for certain conditions and sort of laid out this whole map of the way that the body works in a certain sort of system. And so we approach it from that standpoint, we being acupuncturists, but we also know that there are certain things in the body that happen when you insert a needle, such as like that it improves circulation in an area or it decreases inflammation in an area or that there's Sending signals to the brain, you know There have been studies where you put a needle here and it lights up in an MRI Like an area of the brain that's connected to a certain part of the body so like for instance there was a study on carpal tunnel like that a few years ago where they could see a that the needle in a certain place lit up that part of the brain. So there's that neurological response, too. So there's a lot of ways.
[Danielle Balocca]: So it's kind of you're, in a way, tricking the brain or redirecting the signals of the brain to the pain center?
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah. I mean, with pain, particularly chronic pain, there's like this signal that just keeps going off and it just keeps going and going and going and going even if you're not actually, even though you had that maybe injury a long time ago and it just keeps happening. And so the back puncture needles help to kind of like quiet that area down. Interesting.
[Danielle Balocca]: Part of my training is in substance use disorder and the ways that we interpret pain. And learning a lot about the opioid epidemic, how we've been trained to think about pain as a vital sign. And when you go to the doctor, you're asked, how much pain are you in? And the expectation is no pain. So yeah, I guess it's interesting to think about how our associations with pain dictate some of these treatments.
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: And with substance use disorder, actually, I'm glad you mentioned that because there's an actual, there's an acupuncture, sorry, an acupuncture ear protocol. It's on the ear lobe, and it's five points, and it's, there's this organization called NADA, which is the National Acupuncture Detox Association, and they, they train people to do these types of treatments, not only acupuncturists who can do these types of treatments, but other healthcare providers or other people, and it helps a lot with, as a support, as an adjunctive type of therapy, like something in your toolbox for addiction, substance use disorder treatment. So it helps people with reducing their anxiety, helping them improve their sleep, helping reduce cravings, And it's a nice, very basic, simple kind of a treatment. In fact, there's actually a bill that's in Massachusetts right now where we're trying to make it possible for non-acupuncturists to be able to administer that. like in a kind of group setting where people are needing treatment for that sort of thing. Wow.
[Danielle Balocca]: And you mentioned one thing I wanted to ask about is you mentioned you do sort of group acupuncture here. What's the benefit of that versus just an individual?
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: Okay, yeah, well, it is nice being in a group sort of space. I think a lot of people actually do enjoy that. You can come in with someone else and get treated at the same time. As far as making it accessible goes, we can treat more people at the same time. So here we can treat up to six people in an hour versus if you go to a private treatment that the acupuncturist might see somewhere from like one to four patients an hour depending on their setup and so it just makes a lot more appointments available throughout the day each day. Yeah, it really does improve on the accessibility piece.
[Danielle Balocca]: Makes me wonder about HIPAA. Are you bound to the same sort of standards of privacy and confidentiality?
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, so HIPAA is about electronic records, so it's not about doing something in a group or not doing something in a group. But the other thing is, in terms of privacy, whenever people are concerned about that, We, I mean right now it's silent in here, but we have a lot of white noise in the room and we have some quiet music and we also talk very quietly. I'll just, you know, be right up next to someone at their chair and I'll whisper, you know, how are you feeling today? And so people in the room might hear a but they don't necessarily hear the actual description. The other thing is that I am sensitive to people's conditions, and I don't always go into using the words about their condition, particularly if it's a more, what someone might consider more private. So I might use code words like, is your digestion too fast or too slow? And again, I would be whispering it. But so it really kind of covers up what's going on if someone were to hear anything. It's not something that people have ever complained about. Maybe I can talk a little bit about community acupuncture too and the history because that's actually really important here. When I was in acupuncture school, Community acupuncture, which again is treating people in a group setting and having a sliding scale payment or kind of a low price payment, was a relatively new concept here in the United States and in Canada. There was a clinic that sort of was, I mean, there could have been others that we don't know about, but the sort of origin that we all know about is out in Portland, Oregon. It's called Working Class Acupuncture. And they opened, I want to say, in maybe 2002 or 2003. And I was in acupuncture school, my last year was 2007, and there was a woman who had had an accident. been practicing community acupuncture out on Cape Cod and she came to speak at acupuncture school. Her name's Diana DeGioia. She has a clinic called Community Acupuncture on Cape Cod. It's out in Dennis. And I went and listened to her speak about it and I was really interested right from after what she had said. She had been doing private treatments for a long time, and she had people who had been struggling to be able to really afford to come as often for treatment as they needed. I don't know what she was charging at the time, but I will say the going rate for acupuncture at that time was probably in the $60 to $75 a treatment range. Nowadays, a private treatment is more, I would say, in the $80 to $100 range, which if you need to get treated weekly or twice a week or even three times a week and say for somewhere like you know, 8 to 12 treatments or more. Maybe you're one of those people who has a chronic condition and needs to come every you know, once every week or two, or maybe once a month, but just all year long. That really can add up, and it can make it really inaccessible for people. And so anyway, she, at the time, had switched her practice over to doing community, and she said there were a lot of people who were able to really come more often then, and weren't having to, you know, choose on what they were gonna be able to afford in their lives. And healthcare is important, and it's something that we have to, you know, that we need to do to take care of ourselves. And then at the time there was an organization called the Community Acupuncture Network, which now is called POCO, which stands for the People's Organization of Community Acupuncture. And so it was online and there were all these acupuncturists from around the country who were starting to practice community acupuncture and so I linked up with a lot of them and learned from a lot of people and also helped teach other people because it was really like a way of sharing the knowledge. And so it helped make community acupuncture more widely available, and there's clinics all over the place in the United States now, and in Canada, and in other parts of the world. In England, there's some. They call them multi-bed clinics. In Israel, there's some. The idea of it being in a group, in China, it's common, it's standard. If you go to a They have hospitals in China where there's a lot of acupuncture and they'll have people sitting around in chairs getting treated in large rooms. Or an interesting piece of history about acupuncture here in the United States is the, in the 1970s, the Black Panthers and the Young Lords used, they did the five-year needle protocol for, to help people detox from heroin. And that was in a group setting. That was before that NADA, the National Acupuncture Detox Association started. So it's not, I mean it seems rare here because of the way that our medical care happens here, which is that everything is so private, you know? But it's not actually, uncommon.
[Danielle Balocca]: It's interesting that you're bringing up the cost and accessibility and how I can imagine just the way that our medical system works, access to care for people can be tricky and so being able to pay what you can within this sliding scale, I can imagine, say somebody has come to this country and they came from a place where acupuncture was really accessible and commonplace and something that they relied on and then coming here, and I don't know, at least for me, the association with acupuncture and like chiropractics. It's like that's something that we have to pay for out of pocket and it's expensive and it's inaccessible and so something like this sort of really changes that.
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah and we've also worked pretty hard. I feel like I've tried to lower any possible barriers. I mean you do not have to find out whether insurance will cover it or not. We are here seven days a week between Andrew and I, so there's appointments every day. And you can just book your appointment online. If you need help, you can call and we'll help you. We used to have receptionists, but after the the close with the pandemic and the reopening, our number of treatments that we were giving went down so substantially that unfortunately we don't have them anymore. But we used to be able to help people a lot more on the phone. But anyway, the point is that we do try to make it really easy to get acupuncture, to just try to have as few barriers as possible to people getting care.
[Danielle Balocca]: And what's kind of brought you to acupuncture?
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, I mean, I always have been interested in health and health care, like since I was a little kid. It's been always something I gravitated towards. And I found that acupuncture is really just, I found it interesting and also enjoyable. My first experience with acupuncture was for the treatment of sciatica. I used to run a lot and I would get bouts of sciatica and acupuncture was really helpful for it. I'd done a bunch of other, I mean, mostly I'd done some physical therapy and with some milder results, but the acupuncture was quite helpful.
[Danielle Balocca]: So some personal experience with acupuncture, great. What's the best way for folks to get in touch with you to learn more about your treatment?
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, just if you visit our website, that has as much information I think as you would need. Our website is acupuncturetogether.com. You can also, if you want to just check us out on Instagram and Facebook, you can. That's not So much information that's more, I mean, tidbits of information here and there and photos and things. But yeah, our website is the way to find out all the info about what we treat, how much it costs, how to make an appointment, everything like that. Great.
[Danielle Balocca]: And what's the sort of time, like, so if somebody calls, how long do they usually wait till they can get in?
[XXXXXX00060_SPEAKER_13]: to make an appointment, like today or tomorrow. That's another thing. We have appointments pretty much every day. I mean, some days the schedule fills up a day or two ahead of time, particularly like Saturdays. But other days, usually there's availability.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thank you so much. This was really informative. Anything else you want to make sure I mention? No, thanks so much for having me. Thank you. Thank you so much to Justine. Links to Acupuncture Together's website can be found in today's show notes. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. And as always, if you have feedback about this episode or ideas for future episodes, you can email medfordpod at gmail.com. You can also subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Never Bites. Never Bites. Good job.