E4 - Menopause

"I'm either dying or I'm going crazy, and nobody will tell me which one."That's what a patient told us at one of our community acupuncture events. She wasn't dying, and she wasn't crazy. She was in perimenopause, and nobody had told her.In this episode, I take on the transition that half the population goes through and almost nobody talks about: why medicine has historically filed menopause away as "minor and unavoidable," what Traditional Chinese Medicine has understood about it for over 3,000 years, and what treatment at Cedar & Sage Acupuncture actually looks like.IN THIS EPISODE* Cold open: so what does acupuncture actually do?* The bird's nest, revisited: why the important stuff is almost never volunteered* The quietest part of all: why menopause gets under-treated (and the ED-commercial vs. menopause-commercial problem)* The patterns behind the symptoms: yin deficiency (hot flashes, night sweats), yang deficiency (running cold, fatigue), Liver qi stagnation (mood swings), and Heart-Kidney disconnect (that 3am wake-up), plus why most people have more than one* What treatment looks like: how often you come in, why point selection shifts week to week, heat therapy, and treating menopause as primary care instead of an afterthought* The training pipeline problem: acupuncture schools closing, 8-hour weekend certifications, a parallel with nursing, and why depth of training matters"A weekend certification can hand someone a needle. It can't hand them thirty years of knowing which pattern is which."Check us out:Cedar & Sage AcupunctureJennifer Faigin DAc, Dipl. Ac., LAc.Scottsdale: Thursday–SundayMesa: WednesdaysBook online: cedarandsageacupuncture.comCall or text: (480) 754-9059NEVER MISS AN EPISODEJoin the Behind the Needles email list: cedarandsageacupuncture.com/podcastFOLLOW ALONGInstagram & Facebook: @cedarandsageacupuncture