http://www.asaom.edu/faculty/stevenson-s.php

If you go to this link, you will see the CV and picture of the guy I have started going to for acupuncture. As many of you know, I have been trying to lose weight for a long time now, and it seems that no matter what I am doing, I don't lose a single ounce. This is totally beyond depressing to me and I was talking to one of the trainers at the gym about it and she recommended that I see this guy since he had helped her with several issues. I figured, why not? It can't hurt. I had my first appointment on Wednesday.

It was fascinating. I knew a little something about oriental medicine and I knew it was going to be a strange appointment -- certainly nothing like visiting a western medical practitioner. It was very interesting and he asked me questions that I have never been asked before such as whether I ever fell asleep in the afternoon (duh - all the time). He felt that all of the things I was having trouble with --- no weight loss, puffy hands and fee, and a couple of other things -- were all related. His diagnosis was "excess dampness" and he gave me a prescription for some herbs to deal with the this. He also said that in his experience, people that had control issues (who me?) and bottled their emotions up instead of dealing with them directly, tended to develop a larger vessel (a quote) to hold all these bottled up things in.

He popped in a few acupuncture needles. It was strange, but it didn't hurt at all, except one. The one in my left ankle did hurt and then when he twirled it around, I felt this strange pulsing up my leg to above my knee. Then it stopped and he left me there to percolate for a few minutes. Then he prescribed sepia and a Chinese herb mixture for me and that was that. I headed out to let the babysitter off.

The strangest thing was that this morning, when I stepped on the scale, I had lost 2.5 pounds. Very weird -- guess I am getting rid of my excess dampness!