How Acupuncture Can Help with PCOS w/ Megan Joyce!

Are you trying to conceive when you’re in the process of baby-making, you don’t want to take a prenatal. That’s designed for a woman who’s pregnant, they get expensive and have ingredients you don’t need quite yet. Their needle core is a prenatal focused on women who are trying to conceive. It contains the active form of folic acid folly as well as 2000, I use the vitamin D also,

it doesn’t have any expensive ingredients that you don’t need until you’re pregnant. Their logics is prenatal. Their natal core is especially for women with PCOS who are in the process of baby-making check the link in the description for our 15% off code. Rob, let’s take a moment to correct our posture. Take a deep breath and have some pure spectrum CBD. Sure.

Hey sisters CBD can help with acne inflammation, anxiety, sleep, and so many other PCs symptoms. I personally take it throughout the day to help keep my stress hormones nice and low. Not to mention I sleep like a baby every night and I don’t wake up fatigued at all. Now open your mouth, please. So I can give you a serving.

Now, hold it for 60 seconds. Head over to pure spectrum cbd.com and use the code. The sisterhood one word for 10% of Can I stop now? Nope. You Got 30 more seconds. Dr. SIDS. My own hands. And Welcome everybody to another episode of a sister and her Mister today, we have Megan Joyce. She is the lead acupuncturist and founder of Joyce wellness.

She naturally reversed her own infertility due to PCLs. And as a result has two children who are her pride and joy. Megan believes the most powerful form of healing is achieved by addressing the person on energy level. Sorry, choosing the person on every level, mind, body, and spirit. She graduated Summa cum laude from emperors college of Oriental medicine and received advanced training in gynecology and internal medicine at the university in Hangzhou China.

She is a fellow of the American board of reproductive medicine and has helped hundreds of individuals and couples to grow their families. She works closely with doulas, midwives and OB GYN to provide integrated prenatal and postpartum care. Welcome Megan, you so much. It’s a pleasure being here. Yeah, we were so happy to you, especially someone with your expertise. And we’ve heard like of acupuncture having so many benefits.

And one thing that we’ve heard constantly, and especially I heard this from Tallinn, what their experience was, how much it helped with regulating her periods. I mean, I know we’re going to really get into acupuncture today, but I guess let’s start with, could you share your piece? She has a journey with us and what led you? What led you to acupuncture?

I would love to, I think my, my journey hasn’t necessarily been unique. I think a lot of sisters start off with a lot of confusion, right? I, when I was in high school and in college, I just was suffering. I was dealing with regular panic attacks and really severe depression. I had irregular periods or, or, or no periods missing periods for months or even years at a time,

I had really severe acne. I really battled with my weight. And so I was going to all of these different specialists. I went to a psychiatrist who put me on so many different medications and everything just made me feel worse or the side effects, the effect of the medication would be even worse than the anxiety. It would make me feel dead to the world.

And I saw my OB GYN who said, okay, you know, you, we just, you have, you’re one of the people who has irregular periods, you just need to go on the pill. And so I did, and I tried multiple different pills, ended up with a terrible clotting disorder, which was terrifying. I passed a tennis ball TMI,

but tennis ball size clot in the middle of a calculus final doctor was dying. And so it really wasn’t until I was 22. And I finally saw an endocrinologist who diagnosed me with PCOS. And she said, you know, look like this is something you’re going to have for the rest of your life. The only option is to go on birth control at that time Metformin wasn’t even really a,

this was over 20 years ago. So Metformin wasn’t even really discovered yet for PCOS. And she said, and when you’re ready, you know, you won’t be able to conceive children on your own. So when you’re ready, we’ll just go to IVF for fertility treatments. And I was devastated so terrified and I have a little bit of a rebellious spirit.

So I was like, no, I’m not doing that. I wanna, I wanna do something else. And by that point, I had already switched from a pre-med major to a bio-psychology major and had already started doing acupuncture and just receiving it as a patient. And I noticed that my period started coming more regularly and it had been a couple of months since my last panic attack.

And so at that point, I totally switched gears and ended up going to emperors college for a traditional Oriental medicine or traditional Chinese medicine and study and study holistic medicine. And so for me, it was really empowering. It was confusing a long time, cause I didn’t have a lot of guidance, but, but I really changed my entire life. Not only in terms of career,

but in terms of how I was able to engage with my body in a way that I didn’t feel burdened by my body. I didn’t feel imprisoned by this body that was making me sick. Like I really learned how to utilize PCFS as a way of moving forward and facilitating health and peace. So yeah, it ended up being a blessing in disguise. That’s amazing.

I mean, Eastern medicine does have a different, it combines a lot of different ways to like, you know, help with your health that sometimes Western medicine doesn’t really look into, you know, like a lot of diet, lifestyle approaches, a lot of herbal medicine, a lot of these things that I believe, you know, Western Western medicine overlooks sometimes and more goes towards more,

you know, prescriptions and things like that. So I really, I like, I love how you study more bad approach to help Eastern medicine approach to really help with health. You know, what an interesting factoid is that, you know, this medicine is three to 5,000 years old. We’re not exactly sure, but in, you know, in the olden days,

the physicians were only paid as long as their patients were. Well, if the patients got sick, then that was kind of considered a failure and they had to use interventions. And so what did they do to keep their patients sick? They used the three pillars of health, which are movement. So exercise and different energy movements like cheek gong or Tai Chi,

they nutrition, which is I think the foundation of everything and the meditation. And so those were the three pillars to keep people healthy. And then if someone got sick, then we had, these are other interventions like acupuncture, herbal medicine. And then, you know, throughout the generations, it’s evolved to also include, now I utilize a lot of supplements and I utilize a lot of Western testing to kind of see what’s going on,

but then holistic approach to treat it. Yeah. I mean, those three things sound simple too, but to like be really good at movement, be really good at diet and then be really good at, with meditation. If you can do all three, I feel like you’d be, most people would be super healthy just overall as a being, you know,

but of course, you know, life gets more complicated. Sometimes we can’t meditate. We can’t move as much as we want to. But just to, I feel just to encapsulate those three things into your life as much as possible can really help. Absolutely. And it can’t be perfect. I mean, we do live in a very complicated world where there’s just a barrage of overstimulation and a lot of stress and a lot of toxins in our environment and toxins in our food.

And if we worried about everything and tried to be perfect about everything, then we would stop before we even start. So I, I really take a very gentle approach and try to just meet each person where he or she is at and really just make incremental changes so that it feels good rather than overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, acupuncture being one of those amazing lifestyle changes let’s launch into that.

So a lot of the women listening right now, maybe haven’t tried acupuncture and are probably intimidated by it. Like I was when I was looking into it before I had started. And so my questions before I started acupuncture were typically, does it hurt? What is it, how does it help? Like, can you demystify acupuncture for our audience? Yeah.

And I think most people like, like the, like the late person may think, oh, just the needles going into the skin. Right? Like that’s what most people picture in their minds, but we love to really know like, what’s like what more is happening and Stuff. Yes, absolutely. So, I mean, I think that the, to answer your first question,

does it hurt now? I’m sure it does not hurt the needles that we use really shouldn’t be called needles. My husband’s like you guys need to rebrand them as stimulators. Oh, good point. Because they’re really tiny surgical steel at disposable. So it’s very, very safe needles or probes or stimulators, but they’re about the thickness of a hair on your head.

So, you know, the needles that we know of in terms of injections or blood draws, we can fit usually about 10 of our needles inside just the little tiny hole within a hypodermic needle. So they’re tiny and what they’re doing well, to explain what they’re doing. I might back up a little bit just to give a little bit of the basics of Chinese medicine,

which is that, you know, thousands of years ago, they were trying to figure out, okay, well what’s going on when someone gets sick. And what they noticed was that, you know, they noticed that our bodies are really governed by energy. And so the energy is what connects all of our organ systems. It’s what connects the different parts of the body.

And so usually if things go awry, the way that we could adjust that is by adjusting the energy between the different organ systems cause everything has to work harmoniously. And so if the energy either gets stuck or if it’s too deficient or if it’s moving in a way that it’s not supposed to, then they wanted to address that. And so what’s a great conductor of energy,

well metal. So they would use these tiny well at the time, actually they weren’t that tiny, but now we use these tiny little, little needles that are electric conductors of energy, and it helps to move that energy so that it can allow that communication between the different organ systems. It allows that free flow of cheap cheese, the term for energy that we use.

So that was the explanation E thousands of years ago. And it’s stood the test of time. Well, why, so now with functional and pet scans, we now know that it’s working on the nervous system by up-regulating the parasympathetic nervous system or the like rest digest and reproduce response. It helps to lower inflammatory cytokines. It helps to create a pain relieving response through what’s called like the gate reflex where the brain kind of gets stimulated to re to create more indogenous opioids or natural painkillers.

And I block the pain sensations going to the brain. It helps to improve blood circulation. It helps to improve metabolic activity. So these are all things, as far as PCs is concerned, these are all really beneficial for supporting general health. Right. But then there’s also great studies over the years. There’s a lot of specific studies for PCO S about what more specifically acupuncture can do.

So we can help specifically with improved blood flow to the ovaries and to the uterus, we can help to reduce circulating, circulating and androgens. So the male factor hormones like testosterone and DHAs, we can, it helps to reduce sort of the pro clotting behavior in, in women who have PCOS. So that, that happens by reducing for and different enzymes that are involved in clotting and excessive blood clotting.

So there’s a lot of different things that are very specific, like the general support of someone who PCRs, but then also very, very specific to someone who has PCRs as well. Yeah, I’d say especially blood sugar control too, to add that in, because I remember having a lot of insulin resistance and going to acupuncture and that really helping with blood sugar control and then as a result of all of these great hormonal health,

it health things that it can help with. It helped me lose weight too. It improved my metabolism and like promoted weight loss with PCLs. I remember you used to tell me too how it was helping me to like period cramps and like bloating. I was like, even if you were like a few days late, just going to acupuncture would just like help bring it on the next day or the same Day,

the next day. So, so that’s, what’s kind of cool is that we can work both with the, like the macro view of the body, helping with all these general things that help to support the body, to work and to heal itself. But then also by sort of manipulating certain hormones we can help to, we can help to bring on a cycle.

If someone is late, we can help to induce ovulation with certain protocols, definitely blood sugar control. And then also when people get, we also do specific protocols to support for fertility treatments when patients are doing that. But then also in pregnancy helping to reduce rates of miscarriage onto when they’re ready to have their baby to help induce labor. So there are a lot of really specific things that can be so helpful.

Yeah. So where you place the needles change? Well, when I went and they was different every time, it just like depended. Sometimes it was a front treatment, sometimes I’d lay on my front and it was the back treatment. How do you know like where to place the needles and like how that’s going to affect what hormone? I mean, I’m sure it,

you studied all of this, but can you break it down for us? Like sometimes it’s like more, she, she would put like moral all over my head or more all over my ovaries, like, or on my feet. I don’t know. So the, the way that I work in most acupuncturists is that we, when we do an evaluation,

we kind of figure out what your base constitution is, areas that your body is naturally weaker or areas where your body naturally stores excess. And so usually there will be a couple points that we will do to address that constitution at every single treatment. Now we have hundreds of points on the body. So we could say, for example, if we’re doing points to support blood sugar control,

there are points on the front of the body that we could do to do that. And there’s points on the back of the body that we could use to address that. And so, depending on where you are on your cycle, what acute triggers are going on, if you’ve been dealing with maybe an acute cold or you have an incredible amount of stress that you’re under right now,

or you strain your back while lifting something too heavy, we want to be able to do constitutional change in support, but also address where your body is at today or this week. And so we’ll address, we’ll adjust the points that we use. So for example, you mentioned like a lot of points on the hat. Well, one can imagine that the points on the head are probably going to have more to do with psycho emotional relief or things like headaches,

things that are, or sinus pressure, things that are going on a little bit more in the head. One of the areas that is different though in the head is the ear, which is a micro system for the whole body. So in certain forms of acupuncture where people won’t do any acupuncture points in any part of the body, because you can literally treat every single organ,

every single limb, every single part of the body, just using the ear. Wow. And that’s called irregular acupuncture and that’s used a lot more in emergency settings. So detox or rehabilitation clinics it’s used in battlefields. So for, for warriors in, you know, in war who are needing some immediate relief for some sort of injury. And so that’s,

that’s kind of fascinating. I think that the whole, the whole body can be influenced just by the ear because the vasovagal nerve, which connects the entire body basically is innovates the entire ear. Yeah. Oh, I had no idea. Pretty closely friend had vasovagal like overstimulation and she kept fainting from like anxiety or I don’t know, like randomly happened. And so she would have to really focus on de-stressing and being calm.

But I didn’t know it was an ear thing. Well, so it’s not necessarily an ear thing is that vasovagal nervous throughout the entire body. But for her, if, if I was treating her, not only would we do regular acupuncture, but I would do acupuncture in her ear. And then there’s also things called ear seeds, which are either little,

little seeds or little gold balls or stainless steel balls that are on a tiny, clear adhesive, like a bandaid basically. And so we can stimulate these different points to regulate for long periods of time. You can wear them for up to five days after a treatment. And so then that’s giving a little bit of like low dose acupuncture for an extended period of time using the air.

Oh wow. Because it’s metal. So it, it makes like energy. Yeah. Yes. And with acupuncture, you’ve probably heard of acupressure. So the idea is that these specific points on the body have specific energetic properties. And so we can activate it through acupuncture with the needles or just with pressure. And so we can use, you know, our hands or we can use an acupressure tool or in this case,

just the pressure of the little ball or seed on the area can stimulate the same effect. Wow. I’m so into this, we are coming next week. A lot of it is the very similar to integrity, integrative medicine. I always say innovative medicine because, you know, with that, it’s very clear that different organs, different muscles in the body affect other organs,

other muscles in the body. You know, like if one organ is not healthy, it’s going to affect other organs down the line. And it sounds very similar to your explanation of how, you know, the ear is affecting energy levels throughout the body. So it’s very, very interesting. I hope we get, we get to try this very soon and see for myself,

but I mean, talking about how you, how you treat differently. Like, so when a patient with PCLs walks in, well, what would be your main focus during a treatment? And like, how do you go about it? And like, what are the, what are some of the benefits that person would see, you know, after a day or so of that treatment?

Absolutely. So if I was doing a new patient visit with someone with PCRs, we would spend a lot of time talking. I mean, we’re just going through their whole medical history and you traumas what kind of symptoms they have and what lab testing has been done. I get a really full picture and I’m going to be looking at things both on the physical body,

but also on the mental, emotional body. So, like I said, either previous traumas or current stressors, cause I really want to have an idea of where she is at. At the current moment, all these things get taken into account. We would then do something that’s very unique to Chinese medicine. Part of our diagnosis is to look at the tongue.

And so we look at the color of the tongue. We look at the consistency of the coating on the tongue. We look at all of these different factors and it can tell us a wealth of information about how digestion is functioning. What’s going on with hormones. It’s, you know, a muscle that we can actually look at. And so we see how blood and body fluids are perfusing the muscles in the body.

So I’ll take really detailed notes about how the tongue looks and then I’ll also feel her pulse and post-diagnosis is different than in Western medicine. Cause usually we just pay attention to the rate. Is it fast? Is it slow? Is it skipping beats? But we actually do very detailed. Post-diagnosis where we’re looking at three different locations on each wrist in three different places,

three different decks. And it tells us different things about how the different organ systems in the body that how she or energy is circulating through those different organ systems. And then also the level of blood and fluids. And so I’ll do a really detailed post-diagnosis take good notes. And then depending on their comfort level, we’ll do, I’ll do like a little demonstration.

If someone is really kind of nervous about needles and then they’ll get to lay down, we have really soothing music. It’s very much like a spa experience, do a few needles. And then they get to take a nap for 30 minutes and needles and we call it cooking and time that it takes for it. Yeah, an entire circulation of energy throughout the body.

It’s approximately 28 minutes. And so during that time, people usually fall into a deep sleep. I will often come in and people will be snoring. It, it creates a really deeply meditative state, which allows for deep rest, a strong increase of that parasympathetic nervous system, like I mentioned, and then also that anti-inflammatory response or really regulation and a communication between the different organ systems.

And so usually once I come in and I, I pull them needles, people are relaxed and we’ll walk out what we call act, getting Accu stoned and just listening to this, I feel in the dark. And then I wake up with, I’m like, oh, I already feel relieved hearing It’s it is deeply relaxing. And I think that that’s what people don’t understand is they think it’s going to be painful.

They think it’s something that they’re going to have to like suffer through for the benefit. And it’s the exact opposite. It’s really restorative. And we try to also meet each person where they’re at. So if someone has no issues with the needles, they’re feeling great, we might use more needles. Someone is a little bit nervous. I might start with only four points in a treatment,

let them comfortable. It’s enough to, to see the effect, get some benefit, but also just give like the psyche and the intellect a little time to catch up with what’s happening. Yeah. I would feel like I went to heaven and came back like during the appointment and like, I’ll never forget the way I would fall asleep or not. Like I wouldn’t fall into like a deep slumber.

It was like a half sleep, half awake type of thing, but like floating on a cloud in heaven type of thing, secretly alpha state, it’s a different level of consciousness that is very meditative and also very healing. And so sometimes people will get these really beautiful images or visuals and they’ll have like a moment of reflection that will be like an aha moment.

Like, oh, this is what I’m doing wrong at work. Or, oh, this is something that I’ve been having. You know, this is an issue that has been a problem with my husband and I’m now seeing kind of a way forward or a way to talk to him about it. And so it’s, it’s yeah, it’s, it’s very much a mind body medicine in that way.

Yeah. And wouldn’t you agree that the first time isn’t always like that, like we’ve explained. Cause I felt like it was the second or third appointment that really got me on the cloud, you know, stone or whatever. So the, one of the things that I like to liken it to is diet and exercise, or let’s just, let’s just say exercise.

So if you were to decide like, okay, I want to go on a weight loss plan or I’m trying to be more healthy. I’m going to, I’m going to exercise. I’m going to exercise one time and then the next morning you go on the scale and you’re like, it didn’t work. I didn’t lose weight. It’s something that is cumulative because one,

it’s a very gentle approach. We’re not using a, like a, a medication that is taking over your physiology. We’re gently supporting the body’s natural physiology. And then, and the body’s natural desire to heal. I really believe in that. And two it’s synergistic. So the, the treatments build off of each other. And so often, you know,

it’s not that often that someone will fall asleep the first time. Usually it’s like after the, you know, third, fifth time, 10th time, and they’re getting into these deep meditative states and that’s also when the shift starts to happen. Yeah. And also I’m sure the first time you were a little bit tense, you’re not, you’re not as comfortable.

It’s, you know, changes weird and kind of, it’s kind of scary. And so like, people are more than, yeah. Yeah. I think I can almost relate it to a floating, a float tank, you know, like those water tanks you go in, in the dark and you float inside because we did the first time we did it,

it was like really hard to relax. The first it was one hour, it was so hard to relax the first like 55 minutes. And then the last five minutes was amazing. Like very relaxed as, so the next time you go, you like, you start being relaxed from the get-go and just like knowing how to get into it and be comfortable.

So I’m sure it’s similar to Yeah. Yeah. We stopped getting in our own way. You know, he has a wonderful, powerful tool, but it also, it will get in our way. And so sometimes we need to get really comfortable before the brain will turn off and we can just be in an experience and really benefit from it. Yeah.

Afterwards it almost felt like the problems that I had before the acupuncture session were distant and like the anxieties were like, well, it’s not that bad anymore. You know? Like it was an amazing mindset shift of anxiety of restructuring your mindset around something that can trigger anxiety and just feeling like it’s 10 feet away instead of right in front of you. And you’re like that,

not a big deal. I think the experiences that people have can be surprising. So the first time when I, when I first tried acupuncture, I was still in pre-med. I wanted to be an OB GYN. I was very clinically and Western medically minded. And so I was dubious and my mother bless her, was like, just try, just try it.

And so I had actually been studying for a final and was so stressed and I slept on my neck wrong and I woke up and I could not move my neck. And so I got in with an acupuncturist to treat this neck pain and I burst into tears on the table. I just burst into tears. And I cried probably for 20 minutes on the table.

And it was just this relief of all of this emotional stuff going on in my personal life. I was in the finals and it was just this release. And I walked out of there and I was like, whoa, I was not expecting that. And that’s also one of the things that I love about this is that sometimes it works in ways that you’re not expecting,

like you go in just expecting for, to regulate your periods or to help with hormone dysregulation due to PCLs. But then it also creates these other benefits. Like all of a sudden you realize, oh wow. I didn’t even realize I was having daily headaches. They were great. And now they’re just gone. And now I realized, or I didn’t realize how bad my sugar cravings were.

And now I just like, I, you know, I haven’t even really been thinking about it. So that’s, that’s a really fun part of it. Yeah. Yeah. Releasing the tension. That’s building up day after day that you don’t even see like from work from school, it just builds up. And then one day you go like you did,

and then you just like release it all you cry. It feels good. It was one time where I went and I was super stressed out. Like the most stressed I’d ever been. And it, I actually like it relaxed me and that relaxation feeling was so unfamiliar to me at that moment. Cause I had been so stressed out for so long, but it,

I felt like I was going to die. Cause that was like relaxing. Finally, you know, that feeling, I don’t know, like my mom said it happened to her too. This was around the time we were wedding plannings, which is so strange. We thought we were gonna die on the team. We both told each other after the appointment,

but it wasn’t because like it triggered anxiety. It was cause it relaxed us and we were already so high up pumps, the stress level, get used to it. We get used to it and then anything else can feel so uncomfortable because it’s different. Yeah. I get that. So before we, before we finish up, I just want to ask how can other people find you to work with you one-on-one or maybe find you online?

Do you have any resources for people to share you? Oh, sorry to, to find you at. Yes, Of course. So my website is Joyce wellness.com. My last name J O Y C E wellness.com. And I’m on Instagram at Joyce wellness group. Facebook is Joyce wellness and yeah, we, we are currently doing a combination of in-person treatment for acupuncture,

but then also because Chinese medicine incorporates so many other things like herbal medicine supplements, helping to support things like what you guys are doing with a gluten-free and dairy-free lifestyle. I mean, it’s, that’s hard for us, for some people to do, but it is, it is transformative. And like I said, it’s part of the three pillars of health.

So that piece is really huge. And so I, I help coach people through that as well. And so that can also be done via telemedicine COVID. Is that something you talk about with your patients as well? Going gluten and dairy? Yes. Okay. So diet is a huge part of my, it’s a huge part of my practice and I have a couple of different pieces of that puzzle.

I’m I’m a really big advocate for cycle sinking. So choosing different types of foods at different phases of the cycle to get the micronutrients that you need for your menstrual phase, your follicular phase, which is before oblation Abila Tori, and then the luteal phase, which would be after ovulation. So I, I, I do I do that work with patients.

I, yes, gluten and dairy free is, is huge. Both for blood sugar regulation also for the anti-inflammatory property with, you know, we in Chinese medicine, if, if you come in with PCO S that is in the back of our head, but we’re still doing a holistic diagnosis. And so five different women with PCs could have completely different constitutional diagnoses.

And so I tailor the nutritional guidance to each person, but most of them, if they can go gluten and dairy free, I really, really push it because for all of those different body types and constitutional types, gluten and dairy are typically going to be triggers. And so it’s going to be so much harder. We can do all the acupuncture in the world.

You might see some improvements, but you’re really not going to see the transformative change until the nutrition is there. And I will say, cause I know you guys are all very strictly gluten and dairy free for the people who are maybe struggling. Cause I do work with a lot of women who have histories of eating disorders. I bottled with eating disorders through my teens and twenties.

And so sometimes if I go too big into restriction in the beginning, it can feel very disagreeing. And so one of the things that I have found to be a good, like kind of way to cut corners in the beginning, if you’re really struggling is to at least cut out care, cow dairy, but keep it a little bit of sheep or goat milk dairy that can make the transition a little bit less triggering for those that might be struggling going full way.

But yes, it’s a big part of our practice. That’s awesome. And I’m a registered dietician. So when patients came, when I did one-on-one I wouldn’t suggest it for every single patient because if you do have an eating sort, it might not be for you and just given the nature of our brands and how we’re on Instagram and stuff. We can’t filter who’s following us.

So, you know, if someone is struggling with an eating disorder, they should get one-on-one attention and that’s great that you ease them into It. Yeah. That’s basically how we like to do it to like ease into gluten-free first or there, if you’re first and if you’re doing more of the other, you know, do it one day at a time with specific meals instead of like trying to,

you know, jump into it all at once. So definitely. Yeah, because Some people can do it and other people know overwhelming, but then they just stopped before they even get started. And that’s, that’s one of my biggest passion projects is not making health and wellness so overwhelming or so perfect and not accessible to everybody. So I really believe that we can kind of meet each,

each person where he or she is at. Yeah, absolutely. Do you have a protocol for helping with adrenal fatigue? Cause I feel like in my early twenties, I really like just used up my adrenal glands cause I like to drink so much coffee and stuff in my early twenties. I was, this is one thing like in the future, if I can help heal that up.

Absolutely. So, you know, in Chinese medicine medicine, we would never call it adrenal fatigue. We would see it, we would call it liver cheese stagnation, or we have a very different vocabulary in Chinese medicine, but it all means something in Western medicine. I also have, I’ve also, I’m actually finishing my certification for functional medicine through the Kalish Institute.

And really we, the first thing that we look at with patients is the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis. So the HPA axis, which a lot of people call adrenal fatigue, but there’s different stages. So sometimes you’re in fatigue, but sometimes your cortisol levels are just through the roof. So that’s not yet fatigued. Yeah. So that is a big part of the way that we work.

And if, you know, because it’s, once again, customized each person is at a different level of HPA dysregulation, but if there were certain things that I would recommend that would work for everyone, consistency is really great. If your adrenals are dysregulated, those would be patients who would not be a good fit for things like intermittent fasting, where there’s irregularity in your,

in your eating. You want to be eating more regular meals sleeping at the same time earlier in the evening is better. So, you know, like 10 to six, 10 to seven, I’m not changing the times that you wake up. And then the other thing that is so amazing is just getting early morning sunshine. And so I think one of your previous guests,

Dr. Gersh, he talked about this a lot in more detail, but without going into the detail of the light receptors in the eye, just if you, if, if someone is recognizing that they’re feeling that wired and tired, they’re stressed, but exhausted. And then can’t sleep at night. That’s classic signs of HPA dysregulation. And so limiting the caffeine,

regulating everything, you can sleeping, eating exercise, and then turning off, you know, any sort of screens, a couple of hours before you go to sleep. And then first thing in the morning, get outside to a five minute meditation. You want as much of your body to be exposed to sunlight, to get that vitamin T but just first thing in the morning,

because when you wake up, you are cortisol is supposed to peak within about 30 minutes. And then it’s supposed to gradually decrease throughout the days, but it’s nice and low when it’s time for bed. And what ends up happening is that people are either like skyrocketing first thing in the morning, cause they’re getting on their phones and they’re getting an email that sends them into fight or flight at seven o’clock in the morning,

or they’re just dragging because their cortisol never really peaks appropriately and then stays kind of the same level. So that then at nighttime, when it’s supposed to be nice and low, it’s still at the same level, you have too much cortisol circulating at that point. So you can’t get good restful sleep, Amazing information. Amazing. Yeah. I love that.

And we talk about like the four types of PCs, you know, we talk about inflammation, instant resistance, adrenal fatigue, hypothyroidism. And we just, during this episode, we just talk about all the different ways I could puncture could help with all of those types. So absolutely. Yeah. It’s really, really information. I think for the sisters listening,

if you have any one of those types, you know, and you’re struggling to like reverse those symptoms, going to acupuncture like Megan oh, can really help. And yeah. I mean, this was amazing. I can’t wait to schedule an appointment. Your office is in Costa Mesa, right? That’s to Mesa. Yes. Perfect. And then just,

if you go one more time, share with us where people can reach you. I’m going to, we’re going to put it in the podcast description. So anyone interested please head there, but if you could just share with us one more time. Sure. It’s Joyce wellness.com. So J O Y C E wellness.com or at Joyce wellness group on Instagram are the best places.

Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much for being a guest on the episode, on the podcast, Having made so much fun. Yes. Thank you. We hope to see you soon in your office when we get our session done. Thank you for being with us. Thank you. Bye bye. Talk to you soon, sisters. Bye-bye see you next week.

Bye. If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, you have to come check out the sisterhood. It’s my monthly membership site, where sisters just like you are learning how to move through the stages of DCOS from Sage one cold and alone at the doctor’s office to stage five, nailing the PCs lifestyle collusion, and dairy-free get ready to finally feel in control of your body.