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Melanie Cole (Host): You may have heard about acupuncture for pain management, but have you also heard about cupping? Together these two ancient therapies can benefit patients in ways some practitioners have known for years. My guest today is Sheri McLellan Krauss. She is an accomplished acupuncture practitioner at Lourdes Wellness Center. Welcome to the show, Sheri. Let’s start with acupuncture. Really, what is it? What is it intended to do?

Sheri McLellan Krauss (Guest): Thanks for having me on the show. Acupuncture is part of a system of medicine called “traditional Chinese medicine”. So, it’s called “TCM” and acupuncture is a tool that we use to help move blood, stimulate blood flow, and, especially here in the hospital, it helps alleviate pain.

Melanie: How does it work? People hear the word “needle”; they’re not sure whether it’s something that is painful. Tell us about acupuncture.

Sheri: Acupuncture doesn’t have to be painful at all. That’s definitely the number one question that people ask. We have all size needles. There are small needles, medium size, big ones. My kids have had acupuncture and they didn’t even know they were getting it. So, it can be very gentle. I lived in Japan and I practice the Japanese style, which is pretty gentle. So, it doesn’t have to be painful. What it does is, it removes blockages. That’s the traditional perspective. So, when you have pain or one of your systems aren’t working, we think of that as having a blockage in energy or blood flow or fluid, and the acupuncture gets in there and stimulates things so that it starts to return to normal functioning.

Melanie: What kinds of conditions is acupuncture used for?

Sheri: Well, I love acupuncture for pain management. I like it for soft tissue injuries, either acute injuries, like you pulled your back, or chronic injuries. So, you were a college basketball player and you might have a creaky old shoulder that you want fixed. I think acupuncture gives you a little bit more stimulation than maybe a massage, and it’s a good place to go if you’re not ready for surgery. We’re that grey area in between.

Melanie: Tell us about the procedure itself. When people come in, what can they expect?

Sheri: Sure. A first visit takes a little bit longer, because we go through a health history form, and that’s a lot like the health history you go through when you have a new doctor. So, we go through the health history, we can learn about your condition, and then after that, we look at the tongue, we take the pulse, and then we check the body out. So, we palpate areas that are painful or tender or swollen so we can start to come up with a diagnosis. At that point ,we come up with a diagnosis and there are different treatment protocols, so we’ll follow a protocol. Acupuncture needles are placed, maybe 10 or 20 needles in an area. They can be all over the body. And it’s very relaxing; our rooms look like you’re going to the spa. So, people relax. They take a nap on the table. We retain the needles for somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes, and then, afterwards, included in an acupuncture visit could be something like massage or cupping or other kinds of manual techniques that lend themselves to what the acupuncturist is doing.

Melanie: What does the science say about the safety and side effects of acupuncture?

Sheri: The safety is very good. Our malpractice is low because there are very few things that can happen. The worst thing that can happen is nothing. So, there are very few side effects. Some people could get a bruise--that happens. Some people could be achy after the visit and that might last a day or so. Typically, people have good side effects. They may be coming in for knee pain but they notice that they are more relaxed overall, they’re sleeping better, their energy might be a little bit better because we’re addressing the whole body and not just the main complaint.

Melanie: Now, you mentioned cupping and we’re planning on talking about that. What is cupping? People hear about acupuncture for years, but not so much cupping. Tell us what it is.

Sheri: Cupping is one of the tools in our toolkit. Acupuncturists use cupping and have always used cupping for thousands of years. What it does, much like acupuncture, is it stimulates the circulation of blood. So, cupping—I use kind of glass, silicon cups--and what it does is create a vacuum-like feel because of the lack of oxygen and it sucks up some of the tissue into that cup. And that’s what stimulates the circulation of blood; it can break up adhesion and it creates a pathway for toxins or metabolic wastes to be drawn up through the skin, through the muscle and out of the body, because it returns to the blood and lymph system. So then, it can clean that out for us.

Melanie: What kind of cup do you use?

Sheri: I typically use silicone cups because they wash easy and I use a manual pump. There are different kinds of cups. Sometimes people will use cups and they use fire to create that vacuum. I use a manual pump to create the vacuum just because I don’t like to introduce the fire into the treatment room. So, I use the silicone cups. They’re a couple inches. They can be really small and they get up to a couple of inches big. They’re easy to clean and they’re very effective.

Melanie: Does cupping hurt? Does it leave bruises? Because we’ve even seen—this is very timely because even during the Olympics, we saw some aspects of cupping on the Olympics.

Sheri: Cupping can bruise, but it doesn’t have to. There are two kinds of cupping, one is called “sliding cups”, where you use the cup to create that vacuum that we talked about and you slide them. So, it feels like a massage, so it’s sometimes also called massage cupping. It’s really comfortable. You get all the benefits of increasing that blood flow, you can break up scar tissue that way, and you can cross friction tissue that way. So, it has some of the benefits of cupping and some of the benefits of massage. The other kind of cupping is called “stationary cupping”, and that’s where you get a really strong vacuum-like suck and you get those darker marks, or you can get those darker marks if there has been an injury. So, that’s a conversation you have with the acupuncturist. I tend to do the sliding cups because I don’t want to leave those kinds of marks on people. It’s gentler and I think it’s effective, but there’s definitely a place for those stronger cups.

Melanie: What have you seen from the results of both acupuncture and cupping?

Sheri: Oh, well, I feel like people have more mobility for sure. Acupuncture and cupping are really great at loosening up tight muscles. So, people right after a session, when you add in the cup can turn a stiff neck or move and wave that they weren’t able to do when they walked in the door. That’s something that happens with both of those things. But, I see increased mobility, decreased pain, a general sense of wellness. People feel relaxed and it engages that parasympathetic nervous system so that rest and relaxation response in the body and that would lead to healing and recovering. So, yes, we use it for all kind of conditions--pain and internal conditions as well for things like IBS or high blood pressure.

Melanie: How often do you advise people come in for acupuncture and cupping?

Sheri: That really depends on the condition. If somebody has a new injury, they just did a little too much yard work over the weekend and their back is stiff and uncomfortable, that might be just a visit. That might be one visit. Then, you have patients that were high school athletes and then college athletes and then continued to train at a high level, and they have a lot more pain--may be structural issues, like herniated discs, or torn rotator cuffs. So, those people also can get benefits of acupuncture and cupping, but it’ll take more visits. So, those people may come in weekly or every other week for a longer period of time, a month maybe.

Melanie: Wrap it up for us. What would you like people to know about these ancient therapies of acupuncture and cupping. What do you tell people every single day, Sheri, when they ask you about this?

Sheri: What I want people to know is that I love Western medicine and I’m so happy for it, but there’s something in these old traditions that is very useful and it covers a lot of grey area. So, there are times for surgery and there are times for injections, but sometimes your pain either doesn’t respond to those things, or your pain or any condition, you just need another option. So, what these do is they give you alternatives--some healthy alternatives with few side effects that are comfortable and could be very beneficial.

Melanie: Tell us about your team at Lourdes Wellness Center.

Sheri: Oh, Lourdes is great. I’ve been here for about ten years. There is a culture of caring that I don’t see in other hospitals, I’ve worked at other hospitals. Just today, I had a patient that told me about a cardiologist who was working on her grandfather, and he was very ill, took him for a walk out in the garden so he can get some fresh air. And, I think those are the kinds of things you see at Lourdes that don’t see other places, and it lifts us up and makes us all want to be better practitioners.

Melanie: How lovely! Thank you so much for being with us today, Sheri. You’re listening to Lourdes Health Talk, and for more information you can go to www.lourdesnet.org. That’s www.lourdesnet.org. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.