​When cholesterol in the blood increases, cholesterol is accumulated on the wall of the blood vessel, causing stroke or heart attack.
 
Cholesterol level can be checked by blood test, but you don’t go see a doctor so often.
 
But you can check cholesterol level by checking the thickness of Achilles’ tendon.
 
How to check whether cholesterol level is high or not
 
(1) Sit on a chair and cross your leg.
(2) Pick the thinnest part of Achilles’ tendon with your fingers.
(3) Measure the length between fingers (Fig. 1).
 
If the thickness of your Achilles’ tendon is more than 1.5 cm (0.6 inches), there is a possibility that you have high cholesterol.
 
Why is Achille’s tendon checked for cholesterol?
 
Achille’s tendon tends to store cholesterol. Achilles’ tendon is located at the lower part of the body, so the weight is always on Achilles’ tendon and Achilles’ tendon is easily damaged. To restore the damage, cholesterol is soaked out from the blood vessel nearby. Cholesterol is originally fat to restore the damaged tissue, but if the cholesterol level is high, Achilles’ tendon becomes swollen (Fig. 2).
 
According to a research, one of ten people who had heart attack had more than 1.5 cm thick of Achilles’ tendon.
 
Mona Lisa had high cholesterol?
 
When you look at around the eyes of Mona Lisa, you can find a fatty deposit (Fig. 3), which is called xanthoma (Fig. 4). If you have this kind of fatty deposits, there is a possibility of high cholesterol.

​I like to use acupuncture points on Abdomen recently.
 
I was using points on the head more often, but in the case that the pain is located lower than knees, it is difficult to hold a needle with my right hand and check whether or not the pain disappears with my left hand because I’m not inserting the needle but just holding it on the skin.
 
I can hear that you are saying I should use acupuncture points in the leg or foot and I can reach both easily.
 
That is right.
 
If I can’t remove pain with a point apart from the painful area, I use a point close to the painful area.
 
But a point apart from the painful area is more effective as long as the pain is not caused by acute injury.
 
“More effective” means the effect lasts long (I’m not the only one saying so but famous masters of acupuncture are saying).
 
That is why I like to use the points on the abdomen, which are reachable and apart from the painful area.
 
A patient came with pain from his right buttock to his right foot.
 
The pain around the right buttock and on the right thigh disappeared after touching a point on his right low back, but the pain on the top of his right foot remained.
 
I touched a point on his abdomen where energy could arrive at the painful point on the top of his right foot.
 
The painful points located between his big toe and the second toe disappeared, but the painful points between 2nd and 3rd toe remained.
 
I touched another point on his abdomen which was about ¼ inch away from the first point, pressed the painful point and asked the patient whether it was still painful or not.
 
There was no pain on the top of his right foot and no pain with any movements which had been causing pain from his right buttock to his right foot before the treatment.

​Cozy Acupuncture is located in Witch City Mall in Salem, MA, specializing in pain management such as knee pain, low back pain, sciatica, neck pain, shoulder pain, menstrual pain, etc.
​
Call today to set up your appointment: 617-584-8703
Book now Online

If you don’t have a bowel movement for a long time, the stools in the intestine get rotten and toxic substances get spread all over the body, causing rough skin, edema or other symptoms.
 
In addition to that, rotten stools block the intestine and in the worst case, the intestine bursts.
 
The causes of constipation can be that the intestine’s strength declines with aging or that the intestine doesn’t work properly due to stress, but there is another unexpected cause.
 
What is the difference between people who have regular bowel movements and people who are constipated?
 
The difference is the movement of the intestine.
 
In the intestine of people who are constipated, peristalsis occurs, which is a contraction and relaxation of muscles, and push stool forward slowly. This movement occurs 24 hours regardless of whether you are sleeping or waking, but this movement only can push stool forward slowly, causing constipation.
 
On the other hand, in the intestine of people who have regular bowel movements, mass-peristalsis occurs, which speed of pushing stool forward is 200 times faster than peristalsis.
 
Mass-peristalsis occurs only a few times a day.
 
How can you occur mass-peristalsis?
 
The required condition is only one thing.
 
Don’t eat anything between meals for 8 hours.
 
It seems difficult to eat nothing while awake, but it is not difficult while sleeping. If you don’t eat anything after dinner until breakfast for 8 hours, you can make mass-peristalsis occur.
 
Why does mass-peristalsis occur if you don’t eat for 8 hours?
 
When you eat something, the food goes to the stomach and is digested taking about 3 hours and then it goes to the small intestine and is digested taking about 5 hours.
 
So 8 hours later since all the digested food goes to the large intestine, the stomach and the small intestine become empty. At this moment, mass-peristalsis occurs in the large intestine.
 
But if you eat something before 8 hours pass after a meal, the stomach and the small intestine don’t become empty so that mass-peristalsis doesn’t occur.
 
Recommended schedule
 
If you start eating dinner at 7 pm and finish it at 8 pm, go to bed at 11 pm.
 
It is important to finish dinner 3 hours before going to bed to digest the food before going to bed. If you don’t digest food before going to bed, you can’t have relaxed sleep. Relaxed condition leads to mass-peristalsis more easily.
 
At 4 am mass-peristalsis starts to occur and the stools in the large intestine move close to the anus.
 
When you get up, drink a glass of water.
 
Stimulation to the stomach by the water is transmitted to the large intestine, the large intestine starts to move actively, resulting in the encouragement of bowel movements in the morning.
 
Experiment
 
7 women who had been suffering from constipation tried this method for 1 week and 6 of 7 women had improvement.

There is a patient who visits my practice every two weeks.

She came with knee pain last time. After the treatment, the knee pain disappeared, but I judged that one treatment was not enough to heal her knee and told her to come back in a week instead of two weeks.

​She came back in a week.
I asked her a usual question, “How do you feel today?”
She said, “I forgot why I came last week.”
“You had knee pain last week.”
“My knee is all better.”
 
It is good to hear that her knee was improved so much that she forgot what her symptom was.

​Cozy Acupuncture is located in Witch City Mall in Salem, MA, specializing in pain management such as knee pain, low back pain, sciatica, neck pain, shoulder pain, menstrual pain, etc.
​
Call today to set up your appointment: 617-584-8703
Book now Online

After each acupuncture treatment for the patient with pain in the lower body such as low back pain, knee pain, ankle pain, etc., I usually ask the patient to stand up and move the body to check the area where has been painful before the treatment.
 
At this point, if the patient feels tightness, uncomfortable feeling or a little bit of pain, I touch a point on the abdomen with a round-tip needle with the patient standing. After a few seconds of touching with the needle, I ask the patient to move the body again. In a lot of cases, the pain or tightness goes away or gets better.
 
Before I had found this abdominal point, I asked the patient to lie on the table again and tried to find tightness or painful points and gave a treatment to remove them.
 
But now I don’t need to have my patient lie on the table again, so I feel this abdominal point is very convenient and effective for touch-up treatment.

​Cozy Acupuncture is located in Witch City Mall in Salem, MA, specializing in pain management such as knee pain, low back pain, sciatica, neck pain, shoulder pain, menstrual pain, etc.
​
Call today to set up your appointment: 617-584-8703
Book now Online

​Acupuncture is a medicine to regulate energy flow in our body. If energy reaches the place where you have pain or tightness, the pain or tightness will be relieved instantly. That is why acupuncture is interesting and mysterious.
 
When I was treating a patient who had pain from right low back to right buttock and right thigh, after removing the painful points along the spine and right buttock, some painful points with pressure remained behind the hip joint and on the IT band. To remove the pain on these points, I decided to use an acupuncture point located on the side of the abdomen called GB-26. I located and touched GB-26 with a round-tip needle, and confirmed energy was coming to the painful points with my left hand. The pain along the IT band instantly disappeared, but the pain on the point behind the hip joint remained. I changed the location of the needle by 1 mm and asked the patient whether it was still painful or not, pressing the point. This time there was no pain. I took off the round-tip needle from GB-26 and then pressed the point again to confirm there was no pain.
 
Only 1 mm difference of the location of the needle made the difference of whether the pain was able to be removed or not. This always happens, but the benefit of needleless acupuncture is easy to change the location of the needle without damaging the body because it is not inserted in the skin or muscles.

​Stumbling and falling can cause the fracture of the femur, leaving a disability in the lower body or shortening healthy life expectancy by bedridden life.
 
Based on previously established common sense, declining of the lower body was the cause of stumbling and falling.
 
But the weakness of the muscles in the lower body was not the only cause of stumbling and falling.
 
How to check whether to have another cause of stumbling and falling
 
Check your stride when you usually walk (Fig. 1).
 
If your stride is shorter than your height multiplied by 0.45, you may have another cause of stumbling and falling.
 
A person whose stride is short has the deformed spine.
 
A healthy person’s spine should be S-shaped, but the person whose stride is short has straight spine.
 
Because the spine is S-shaped, when we jump, walk or run, the spine absorbs the shock from the movements like a spring and prevents putting a strain to the body.
 
But as we age, the front side of bones and disks around the low back are worn down, making the spine straight (Fig. 2).
 
The straight spine makes a slouching posture, contracts the abdominal muscles and extends the back muscles (Fig. 3). If the condition continues for a long time, the muscles become tight and don’t return to the original state, and the deformation of the spine gets worse.
 
Why does the straight spine shorten the stride?
 
When you slouch, your pelvis gets tilted backward and you need to bend your knees to balance your body. That makes lifting up your legs and waling forward difficult so that you need to shuffle with short strides.
 
How to improve a straight spine
 
(1) Fold a towel 3 times and roll it.
(2) Secure both ends with rubber bands.
(3) Put the rolled towel at the buttocks’ side on a chair (Fig. 4).
(4) Sit on the rolled towel with the posterior half of the buttocks (Fig. 5).
 
This makes your pelvis tilted forward and makes it easy to straight your back (Fig. 6).
 
If you continues this sitting method, your abdominal muscles will extend, your back muscles will contract and the S-shape of your spine can be recovered.
 
Experiment
 
A 56 year-old male who slouched and whose stride was less than the referenced value tried to sit on a rolled towel for a week. His posture became straighter when he walked and his stride was improved by 4 inches.
 

I’m treating a patient with hearing loss by acupuncture. She has had a hearing loss for a few years. She wants to talk with her grandchildren without trouble when they visit her.

I treated her 3 times for hearing loss. After the second treatment, she said that she could lower the volume of TV and could hear more clearly when she talked with her friend.
 
At the beginning, her left ear had weak hearing, but in the last treatment, hearing of her right ear was weaker. Hearing loss is an ear problem, but I’m not treating around ears though I treat around ears in the case of ringing in ears (tinnitus).
 
I hope that her hearing will be improved more by continuous treatments.

Cozy Acupuncture is located in Witch City Mall in Salem, MA, specializing in pain management such as knee pain, low back pain, sciatica, neck pain, shoulder pain, menstrual pain, etc.
​
Call today to set up your appointment: 617-584-8703
Book now Online

​The liver is the biggest organ in our body.
 
According to a research published on a medical journal in Europe, people whose liver function is declined have about 2 times the risk of heart attack and stroke, and in the case of men, have 2 times the risk of colon cancer and in the case of women, have 2 times the risk of breast cancer.
 
So it is important to keep the liver healthy to extend a healthy life expectancy.
 
There is nutrition that stops the aging of the liver and rejuvenates the liver
 
The famous foods good for the liver are turmeric and freshwater clam (Shijimi).
 
The liver has more than 200 functions such as detoxification, synthesis of nutrition, etc.
 
The most important characteristic of the liver is the ability of regeneration. The liver can be restored within a couple of months even if the two third of it has been removed.
 
Fibrosis of the liver
 
The function of the liver is to produce the contents of blood. The nutrition required for the body is produced in the liver and is delivered all over the body. But if inflammation occurs in the liver for some reason, the liver forms fibrous tissue to restore it. Fibrosis is like a scab so that the liver gradually becomes hard, the liver function declines and can’t deliver nutrition all over the body, causing symptoms like tiredness, heavy feeling or swelling.
 
Fibrosis of the liver occurs regardless of drinking alcohol.
 
Fig. 1 shows a healthy liver that is red and smooth.
Fig. 2 shows a liver that fibrosis is progressed, which is rugged like a stone.
 
Fibrosis of the liver has 4 stages. Stage 1 has 1.6 times the risk of death and Stage 4 has about 7 times the risk of death. But if the stage is less than Stage 3 that has 3.5 times the risk of death, it can be restored to the soft condition by taking “A Nutrition”.
 
Major causes of fibrosis of the liver are overeating and lack of exercise
 
Overeating and lack of exercise increase visceral fat and the amount of the liver fat is proportional to the amount of visceral fat. The fat stored in the liver produces substances to cause inflammation. If this condition continues for a long time, the liver becomes fibrous.
 
Nutrition that prevents and improves fibrosis of the liver
 
The nutrition that stops the aging of the liver is Vitamin E.
 
The food containing a lot of vitamin E is an almond.
 
Vitamin E is one of nutrition that is expected to suppress the aging of the body. Vitamin E suppresses the inflammation caused by the fat in the liver and the ability of regeneration is recovered.
 
How much improvement of fibrous liver can be expected by taking vitamin E?
 
According to a research, the liver that was seriously fibrous was improved by taking 300 mg of vitamin E per day, which was 1000 pieces of almonds. If the liver is mildly fibrous, adding the foods with vitamin E to every meal is expected to be effective.
 
People with fibrous liver tend not to chew well. Increasing number of chewing deceases calorie intake, leading to not eating between meals.
 
Chewing 30 times per a spoon suppresses calorie intake.
 
Experiment
 
How much fibrous liver can be improved in a week by:
(1) Chewing more than 30 times a spoon
(2) Adding foods rich in vitamin E
 
Food rich in vitamin E:
Almond, mayonnaise, Japanese yam (Fig. 3: This amount contains the same amount of vitamin E as about 10 pieces of almonds), paprika, Sencha tea leaves (Fig. 4)
 
2 table spoons of Sencha tea leaves contain the same amount of vitamin E as about 30 pieces of almonds. You can take only little amount of vitamin E by drinking Sencha tea, so it is important to eat Sencha tea leaves that have been used for drinking tea.
 
A 76 years old female whose liver’s fibrosis was Stage 1 tried the above 2 things for a week. The result is shown in Fig. 5 and 6. Before the experiment, her liver was a little hard, which was Stage 1 and there were green portions that indicated fibrosis, but after the experiment, green portion in her liver decreased.

2.1.4  Yin and Yang (Taste) 

Let’s think about the Yin and Yang of tastes.

Sweet, sour and spicy hot belong to Yin taste. Salty and bitter belong to Yang taste.
​
Yin taste loosens up your body. Yang taste tightens up your body. When you feel tense, if you take something sweet, you can feel relaxed. When you cough because your bronchioles are tightened up, drink a glass of water with some drops of vinegar, and you will ease the cough.

You need to be careful about the spicy hot taste, because most people think it warms up the body. Yes, spicy hot taste temporarily warms up the body, but after that, it chills the body. Spicy hot is good to take in the summer, but if you take it a lot in the winter, it will be a cause of coldness in your body, resulting in various kinds of disease. That is why spicy food is usually eaten in hot countries. Korea is not a hot country, but Korean people eat a lot of spicy food; for example, Kimchee. Before red pepper was sent to Korea from Japan, their Kimchee was not hot. Since they started eating a lot of spicy food, it is said that Korean women have had a lot of gynecological diseases, because it makes their body cold.

In western medicine, salt is treated as a bad guy, but salt is very important for the body. What you need to do is take good salt instead of refined salt. It is recommended to take good sea salt, because good sea salt contains a lot of different kinds of minerals and will not cause high blood pressure. Salt contracts our body. If you are lacking in salt, you can’t move your body. Also, salt can stop bleeding. If you have a bleeding stomach ulcer, it is good to take sea salt and ground sesame covered by a cachet. Salt also has the power to sterilize. If you have a urinary tract infection, it is effective to put a handful of salt in the bathtub and warm your lower body.

Bitter taste has the function of neutralizing the taste in your mouth. If you eat spicy food and still feel heat in your mouth, you can take something bitter and the spicy taste in your mouth will disappear. Salt tightens your body and get rid of water from the body so it is not good to take salty taste too much, but bitter taste just tightens the body so there is no too much to take bitter taste.

I was talking about the Yin and Yang of the 5 tastes up until now, and I would like to talk about one more taste which is very important. That is astringency. This taste may not be familiar to you. When you eat a young persimmon, you experience this taste. Astringency has very strong Yang energy and has the function of contraction. Dried persimmons have even more Yang energy because water, which is Yin energy, has been removed. So when women eat persimmons after childbirth, their uterus and abdominal muscles get firm, resulting in having early menstruation. Persimmons are also effective for continual diarrhea. Even if the persimmons are not dried, as long as they are all natural, they are still effective. In the case of bleeding within the brain (cerebral hemorrhage), it is good to drink the extracted astringency of persimmons in order to stop bleeding. Astringency of a persimmon has the function of dissolving blood clots, so in the case of chronic cerebral infarction or hemorrhage, it is good to do the following:

Put ground persimmon (1 lb.) in one cup of black or brown rice vinegar (200 cc) and keep it over night. The next day strain and drink it by the amount of one quarter cup (50 cc) everyday.

However, you need to know that unnatural persimmons, in which astringency is removed by alcohol, have strong Yin energy. Therefore, on the contrary, they make the body cold.