On the latest episode of The Glen Merzer Show, Glen sits down with Dean Mouscher, a licensed acupuncturist and author of The Complete Guide to Chinese Medicine Bloodletting. Together, they delve into the fascinating world of acupuncture, yin and yang, and the controversial yet intriguing practice of bloodletting.
Dean’s journey into acupuncture began with a deeply personal experience—his wife’s battle with severe eczema. Conventional medicine failed to help her, but acupuncture provided relief. Inspired by these "miracles," Dean dedicated himself to mastering Chinese medicine. Over his 24 years of practice, he’s unraveled the intricacies of meridians, microcosms in the body, and the surprising connections between seemingly unrelated anatomical structures.
So, what’s bloodletting? Far from the medieval practice you might imagine, it’s a method steeped in Chinese medical tradition, where small amounts of blood are released to relieve blockages, reduce inflammation, and balance energy. Dean explains that “everything in the universe is based on polar opposites—yin and yang. Health depends on maintaining harmony between these forces.”
This episode isn’t just for fans of alternative medicine. Dean’s insights about the interconnectedness of the body challenge us to rethink how we approach wellness. For plant-based enthusiasts, his philosophy aligns beautifully: prevention, balance, and treating the body as a whole.
Could bloodletting or acupuncture help alleviate chronic pain, digestive issues, or stress? It’s a question worth exploring. Tune in to hear Dean’s expert take and discover why more people are turning to ancient techniques to heal in modern times.
Catch the full episode on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform. And don’t forget to subscribe at The Glen Merzer Show to stay updated on thought-provoking conversations that inspire healthier living.
Listen to our other podcasts:
DISCLAIMER: Please understand that the transcript below was provided by a transcription service. It is undoubtedly full of the errors that invariably take place in voice transcriptions. To understand the interview more completely and accurately, please watch it here: BLOODLETTING!!!
Here's the transcript:
Glen Merzer: Welcome to the Glen Merzer show. could find us across all your favorite podcast platforms. You could find us on YouTube. And please remember to subscribe. And you can find us at RealMenEatPlants.com. I have a very special guest today because my friend Dean Mouscher I last saw 28 years ago. And we are renewing our friendship today asI interviewed Dean about his specialty. He is an acupuncturist. He is the author of the complete guide to Chinese medicine, bloodletting. You heard me right, bloodletting. And he has been a licensed acupuncturist in the Chicago area for 24 years. So he was not an acupuncturist when I knew him 28 years ago. Dean, welcome to the show.
Dean Mouscher: Thank you. Thank you.
Glen Merzer: It's amazing. been 28 years and both of us, think, only look about 14 years older.
Dean Mouscher: So, well, you look exactly the same. So I was shocked when you said 20, 20, 28 years.
Glen Merzer: Dean, I guess the first question is, why did you go into acupuncture? I don't remember you even talking about acupuncture at the time when I knew you. And then the second question is going to be why bloodletting? But let's start with the acupuncture. Why did you go into acupuncture?
Dean Mouscher: So about the time I last saw you, 1995, 1996. So my wife had a terrible problem. She had eczema from head to toe. And nobody could help her. She went to doctor after doctor. It was just awful. She was itching. She had enlarged lymph nodes from, you know, from her immune system reaction. And finally, the only relief that she was able to find was with acupuncture. So that opened my eyes. Acupuncture hadn't really been on my radar screen up until that time. But I went to acupuncture school. I was between jobs. I didn't really think that I would become an acupuncturist, but I was very curious about it. So I went to school and just sort of to learn more about it. And one thing led to another. And, you know, I was in school, I was treating patients and I kept seeing miracle after miracle and I just got drawn in.
Glen Merzer: Now, to what extent did the acupuncture help your wife overcome her problem?
Dean Mouscher: like 80, 90 percent.
Glen Merzer: OK, so to this day, she's 80 to 90 percent better on that.
Dean Mouscher: Yeah, yeah, she has remained better.
Glen Merzer: OK. And now sometimes doctors don't treat their family. Did you ever do acupuncture on your wife?
Dean Mouscher: I do. I do acupuncture on her. You know, I can understand if you're doing surgery, you don't want to do it on somebody that you're emotionally close to because it's a critical thing, but acupuncture, it's no problem.
Glen Merzer: Right. So tell us the principles of acupuncture, why you believe it works. you know, I know acupuncturists often very, very, very widely in their techniques. So tell us something about your technique.
Dean Mouscher: Yeah, acupuncture and Chinese medicine in general, it's such a huge subject. I mean, you could never get your arms around all of it, you know, in a lifetime or several lifetimes. But I'll talk about a few aspects of it. It's not one thing and the whole idea that there are points and there are long meridians. I mean, that's a very small part of it, actually, so one, probably the first, type of acupuncture that I got involved in, you can call it distal acupuncture because if the pain is one place you, or the symptom is one place you put needles someplace else. And the basis of that is, I don't know, some of your listeners, I'm sure are familiar with, foot reflexology.And in foot reflexology, the idea is that the foot is a microcosm of the whole body. And if you have, let's say a stomach problem, you massage the part of the foot that corresponds to the stomach and acupuncture, the type of acupuncture I'm talking about is along those lines. So if you look, if you start looking, you'll see that there are these many redundancies in the body. And so for example, probably the simplest one is the arms and the legs. So if you look at your arms and your legs, you see they're very similar. You have 10 fingers and you have 10 toes. If you do an x-ray of the wrist, you have all those little bones that looks very much like the ankle, the anatomy of the foot is very much like the anatomy of the hand. metacarpals in the hand and metatarsals in the foot. And then the lower leg is very much like the forearm. The elbow is a joint that you can go until it's straight and no further, just like the knee. The arm is connected to the torso with the ball and socket joint, the shoulder. the leg with the ball and socket joint, the hip, and they're very similar. if, for example, and you can use that clinically and it's very effective. so for example, if somebody has a pain in their wrist, I can help paint around their ankle. And if I find a tender point and it's, it will be remarkable. They won't even know the tender point is there, but when I press it, they'll jump. And if I needle it, the risk will be immediately better if they have a problem in a certain, you know, let's say in. Let's say in their thumb and this joint in their thumb, then if I put a needle in the corresponding joint in the big toe. That thumb joint will immediately feel better.
Glen Merzer: Now, and let me interrupt you there. Do we have a theory? mean, that makes sense you know, in an abstract way, but do we have a theory why a needle in the big toe helps my thumb?
Dean Mouscher: Well, supposedly, embryologically, it made sense that embryologically, these tissues formed at the same time and in the same way and in some way that makes sense. To be honest, I haven't spent much time thinking about the why. Just clinically, since I'm an acupuncturist and I have patients coming in, I'm mostly just spending my time clinically trying to see what correlations work and for what types of problems. Doesn't work for every problem, but most problems it does. And if you start looking around, you'll find these correlations everywhere. so maybe now would be a good time to share my screen and show you some of those slides.
Glen Merzer: Okay, go ahead and do that. Let's see the slideshow. All right, so let's see. All right.
Dean Mouscher: Are you seeing the slideshow?
Glen Merzer: Seeing the slideshow.
Dean Mouscher: All right. And do you see my cursor as I'm moving around? See?
Glen Merzer: Okay, very good. Very good.
Dean Mouscher: Okay. So here, this is a presentation that I did for acupuncturists actually showing how you can needle the ears for the pelvis. And so if you look at the spine, If at the top of the spine, you have a bony structure and then you have two ears hanging off of them. And then if you go to the bottom of the spine, there's another structure, bony structure, the sacrum. And look, you see that there are two big ears hanging off of it. And it's significant in acupuncture because the skull and the sacrum share a... Direct yin yang for elation So I'll just talk about yin and yang for a moment so yin and yang is the basis of Chinese medicine and of all Chinese philosophy and it's based on the idea that Everything in the universe is based on Polar opposites so that nothing can exist without its polar opposite. There is no high without low. There's no good without bad. There's no cold without hot. There's no inside without outside. And this goes on forever. So the closest thing to anything is its polar opposite because they're two sides of the same coin. And that whole concept is summed up in yin and yang. So the Top of the structure is the yang and the bottom is the yin. And so these are related. I had a great professor, teacher of Chinese medicine named Dr. Tan, and he talked about how the groin is very much like your face. You have two eyes and the groin you have two ovaries or two testicles. You have a protruding nose. You have a rectum, which is there's a direct yin-yang relationship with the mouth, right? There's a tube and the two ends of the tube are the mouth and the rectum. So all of it, you know, it all fits together in Chinese medicine. I know I'm throwing a lot out at one time. but anyway, if you look at these ear like structures, which are, you know, which is in the pelvis. If you look at this area in the circle, you'll see, looks a lot like the lone rangers mast. Here's the lone rangers mast. And so for example, if somebody comes, so this area right in here is the pubis. synthesis and in pregnant women, pregnant women very often have pain in the pubis synthesis. So I find that if I palpate between their eyes, like right here, I will often find a very tender spot and I can needle that and this pain will be better. There's also in Chinese ear acupuncture, So if you look at this is the ear and this is the earlobe. This is the eye of the mask. And in fact, the middle of the earlobe is the Chinese acupuncture bot for eyes. So let me move on. Any questions about this so far?
Glen Merzer: No, I'm following along.
Dean Mouscher: All right, so here's some more another look at the at the pelvis and how this looks like the ear. So let me go back. So the next slide is a different view. So imagine that you move the ilium out to the right here. And let's say there's a camera right here looking at the inside of this ilium. Oops, sorry. That's my… And look at how much the ileum looks like the ear. You have the same, the curvature here, the curvature here, the opening here, the opening here. So anyway, you can treat pain in the hip by recognizing these correlations and treating those the corresponding anatomy in the ear.
Glen Merzer: you might place needles in the ear and relieve people's pain in the hip.
Dean Mouscher: Exactly. Exactly. So.Here's a picture that shows how similar the ear and the kidney are. I mean, you find these redundancies everywhere. I haven't actually used the ear to treat kidney disease, but it's something that could be explored. let me go back here. All right. So here's, here's another, if you look at this, you look at this picture, this picture actually is from a, it's from a poster for a TV show called, any dreadful. And when I saw this, I was really struck because if you look, it's two things, right? First of all, the first thing you might see is a skull. So here's the skull, here's the eye, the left eye, here's the right eye. Here's his skull, bald skull, the top of his skull. This would be the bridge of his nose. But if you look, you also see that this is a person bent over. Here's his arm and his hand, arm and hand. Here's his hair. This is the back of his neck. And I use this image to treat a lot of neck pain, shoulder pain, and back pain. How do I do that? Well, if somebody comes in and they have a pain in the back of their neck, so look at the neck on the person, then if I halpate the bridge of their nose, I can usually find some very tender points. And then if I needle those tender points, the pain in their neck will get better. When people have a acute, when they come in with acute low back strain, I will typically find ender points in the back of their scalp, which corresponds to the low back in this picture. So this is a very good acupuncture image. And when I thought, I wasn't sure if this was a valid image or not, but I've since validated it clinically many, many, many times. All right, so let's see if there's anything else. So there's something called ear acupuncture, auriculotherapy. If you go to Europe, most acupuncturists are doctors, physicians, and these.
Glen Merzer: Most acupuncturists in Europe are also M.D.'s?
Dean Mouscher: Yeah, more so here in the U.S. and every every state has a licensing law by now and acupuncturists are licensed in many European countries. They don't have a licensing law for acupuncturists. And so. There are acupuncturists, but they're kind of operating in a gray area. There are, I would say, a much higher percentage of physicians in Europe who do acupuncture. And most of the acupuncture they do is called auriculotherapy, and it's just the ear. And the reason for that, I think, is because of a French physician by the name of Paul Nougier, who died, I a few years ago. And in the fifties, he by accident discovered ear acupuncture. He found, the first thing he treated was cyanide.
Glen Merzer: He discovered it by accident? Was he sewing and a needle went into his ear?
Dean Mouscher: No, the story is that he was working in an area that had a lot of Vietnamese immigrants. And he noticed that many of the immigrants had a scar in a certain part of their ear. And he asked them about it. And it turned out there was a Vietnamese woman. was an acupuncturist who was not only needling them there but actually cauterizing that area. And it was the sciatica area. So she was treating them for sciatica. So Norgier became very interested in that. And so he started to experiment and he found that if he just needle, he didn't really need to cauterize it and scar it, that if he needled it, if he stuck a hypodermic needle in there, it would have the same or similar effect. And so he started working on it. He was a young physician at the time and he was drawn in. So he spent the rest of his life elucidating and mapping the ear. And he developed ear acupuncture. And eventually he realized that the basis of this is that the ear is actually in the image of an upside down fetus. So you can see the head is here.This is the spine. goes to the leg. And Here's the eye. Remember I said earlier that this eye corresponded to the eye of the Lone Ranger's mask? So here it is, the eye. It's right there in the middle of the earlobe as predicted. And I think as a result of Nogier's influence and the fact that he was an MD, so it became very… incredible amongst MDs in Europe and that's continued to today you still see not all MDs certainly but In the US you're almost no MDs doing acupuncture.
Glen Merzer: I had an MD in LA who did acupuncture. Okay, that was rare
Dean Mouscher: California maybe more especially because of the high Asian population California was the first state in the United States that lifed acupuncture. So that would make sense. Okay. So that's all I have to show you about that. we can talk about that. go ahead and end the screen share. And then later we can talk about, I do have one more slide where I show a video on bloodletting, but we can get to that later.
Glen Merzer: Well, that's the next question. Well, let's go back though for the acupuncture. You become an acupuncturist and was your practice just about the needles? Because I went to an acupuncturist in LA for some leg pain that I had and I said, I want to try this, see if it could, it was probably sciatica, see if it could relieve the pain. And he said, okay, but I don't use the needles. And I said, isn't that what an acupuncturist does, use needles? He said, yeah, I don't believe in it. Well, what do you do? And he took my hand, my fingers, and he would press them and he would write down something. And then he was giving me a Chinese tea. That was the whole thing. He gave me a Chinese tea for a couple hundred dollars and it corresponded to pressing my fingers and I don't think that worked for me. So there are different acupunctures with different techniques, but most use the needles, right?
Dean Mouscher: So, well, you know, there's acupuncture and there are herbs and those are, you know, they're both Chinese medicine. I wouldn't call herbs acupuncture. Herbs are Chinese medicine. Now herbalism is, it really operates according to different principles. Herbalism operates according to the eight principles. The acupuncturist or herbalist will look at your tongue and take your pulse and determine if your condition is... There are four things. So is it internal or external, excess or deficient?Yin or Yang, Hot or cold. And based on that, it'll give you herbs. So if you have an internal hot condition, it'll give you herbs to expel heat. I think, you know, typically that's for chronic things like, know, internal problems, like I just have problems. if you have a musculoskeletal problem like sciatica, think you're probably better off going to somebody who does acupuncture acupuncture and that's with needles, there are also accessory techniques to acupuncture. So Everybody knows cupping by now. Everybody's seen the Olympics, you know, the swimmers with their big round purple marks and that's from cupping. There's also Gua Sha, which is where you take a Chinese soup spoon or some instrument and you sort of scrape along the back and it can turn very red and that's the red is heat and heat is inflammation and that's the inflammation coming up.
Glen Merzer: All right.So when you started acupuncture, it was just the needles, right?
Dean Mouscher: At first, I was just doing needles and I was just doing distal needles, like needles that were away from, you know, according to the principles I just told you. Right. Now, along the way, I picked up other techniques. I started doing Gua Sha. I started the scraping I just told you about. I started doing cupping. And I also started doing local acupuncture, which is sometimes called dry needling, which now a lot of physical therapists do it. And it's also acupuncture. Calling it dry needling is...I mean, it's partially a legal thing. mean, there were states where, you know, physical therapists were not licensed to do acupuncture. So then they started calling it, but they wanted to do it. So they called it dry needling. And, and this was something that's been hashed out over the last several years. I think now in most States, there are laws that permit physical therapists to do needling, but when they do needling, And when I do needling sometimes, depending on the problem, you put a needle right where the pain is. And the idea is you're looking for trigger points, which are, you know, this is more of a Western anatomical approach where you're looking for these trigger points, which are sort of micro knots. And you put a needle in them and maybe do some stimulation like a tens, you know, with some gentle electrical current. you can release that.
Glen Merzer: All right. Now, at what point do you say, hey, it would be a good idea to make my patients bleed to get into bloodletting?
Dean Mouscher: So, I'll tell you how I got into bloodletting. This was, I guess, about 10 years ago, maybe 12 years ago. So, there's an acupuncturist named Master Dong. UNG, pronounced Dong. And Master Dong was rabidly anti-communist and he left China to go to Taiwan. And shortly after Mao took over, he fled to Taiwan and he had an incredibly busy practice. He saw hundreds of patients a day and he was very famous and he was, you know, the greatest, everybody recognizes that he was the greatest acupuncturist of modern times.
Glen Merzer: Is there an acupuncturist Hall of Fame?
Dean Mouscher: I don't know of one, but he would be in it definitely. He actually, his system is... It's a little... The origins are a little murky. But I mean, if you go back a few thousand years, certainly even a few hundred years, I mean, today you have TCM. Traditional Chinese medicine and what everybody believes is that this is acupuncture and this is the way acupuncture is taught and this is the way everybody does acupuncture but the truth is you know, that's actually a creation of Mao and what is called traditional Chinese medicine is actually sort of a made-up thing that was created by committees to standardize acupuncture after World War two prior to what
Glen Merzer: it's not a thousands of years old thing.
Dean Mouscher: it is thousands of years old. but thousands of years ago, hundreds of years ago, it wasn't one, you know, set of points that everybody agreed on. You would have it was practiced differently in different parts of China.
Glen Merzer: So Mao codified tradition.
Dean Mouscher: Correct. That's very well put. How codified tradition.
any kind of conflated herbs and acupuncture,
Glen Merzer: which is a that confused my acupuncturist in Los Angeles.
Dean Mouscher: Well your acupuncturist, it sounds like, was really an herbalist. mean people find it's so big acupuncture that you know based on as you're going through school and you have your first few patients and You take some seminars after graduating and you find what you gravitate to and what works for you, you start to specialize. And you're a guy, it sounds like, started specializing in herbs. And you know, when you have a nail...Or if you have a hammer, then every problem starts to look like a nail. His hammer was herbs. He apparently didn't like the hands on. He liked taking pulses and looking at tongues and figuring out the, you know, the eight principles and probably sciatica is not the best indication to respond to herbs, but that's, that was the hammer he had.
Glen Merzer: And he had a bad attitude. I said, come on, give me the needles. And he said, OK, I'll give you the needles, but it's not going to work.
Dean Mouscher: Yeah. OK. Well, there you go. know, it's funny. He may have had a few patients early in his career and he needled them and it didn't work. And, you know, it's a terrible experience for a new acupuncturist. You know, you have somebody come to you and they're in pain and they pay you money and you can't do anything. You know, you're. I just say, well, enough of that. And then he gives herbs to a few people and it works. You know, he's done with needles. He's he's an herbalist now.
Glen Merzer: Right. So let's get back to why you decided to start bloodletting.
Dean Mouscher: Yeah. So Master Dong. So I'd say, you know, about the time that I became an acupuncturist, about 2001, Master Dong became all the rage and every end. So he he Getting back to what I was saying, so he did not use the, I think it's 361 points, the points that we all learn, that are supposed to be the standard acupuncture points. He had a completely different system that he learned from his family. And these things were handed down from father to, I guess, to son usually, and they kept secrets. Acupuncture was practiced differently by different families and differently in different areas. And nobody before Mao could say, you know, this is acupuncture and this isn't acupuncture. This is the right way. This is the wrong way. It was, it was not that standardized. So anyway, Master Dong had his own system, his own points, and people started learning it and getting really good results nobody could reproduce the results of the great Master Dawn himself. And I kind of got interested in Master Dawn and I was reading a book by, he had a… an apprentice who just died a few weeks ago. And he was living in California. And he wrote a lot of books on Master Dong. He really was responsible for keeping his legacy alive. And in the introduction to one of his books, he was just talking about how you can recognize a competent acupuncturist. And I said, I'm a competent acupuncturist. Let's see. But one of the things that a competent acupuncturist had to be proficient in was bloodletting. And I thought, bloodletting? Seriously, bloodletting? I didn't know anything about bloodletting. I didn't learn it in school. But the way he talked about it, I thought, I'll bet that's the missing link, bloodletting. So I started to look into it. I just started experimenting. I started bleeding every patient. And the very first patient I bled, You know, like, like your acupuncture is probably the first people he did acupuncture on. didn't work. So the universe was sort of telling him acupuncture isn't for you, buddy. The first patient I bled was this guy who came in with like the worst sciatica. He could barely walk. I had him lie face down and there he had these spider veins on the back of his knee, which is the area that you're supposed to bleed for sciatica. And I was scared to death and thought, it's now or never. I just pricked this guy a little bit and boy, this black blood came out. And I mean, my heart was pounding. I was terrified. The guy was in no danger, but I'm not sure I knew that at the time. I'd never done this. This guy is bleeding. And I'm thinking, God, I hope he doesn't bleed.
Glen Merzer: And how much blood came out?
Dean Mouscher: It seemed like a lot, but you know, it was probably I mean, if it was a tablespoon, was probably a lot. But is it the blood's coming out and I'm terrified and I'm saying the silent prayer that the guy doesn't like pass out on my table. He says to me, I don't know what you're doing, but whatever it is, don't stop. That tightness is really coming off my. And that was it. I was hooked. I had never had a result like that with a guy, you know, this far gone with sciatica. And when I was done, you know, he was all smiles. He walked out with a big smile and I thought this is it. So from that day forward, you know, I was hooked and I, I just experimented and experimented and experimented and, you know, weren't many people. I didn't have much competition. There weren't many other people doing it.
Glen Merzer: And eventually you wrote the complete guide to Chinese medicine bloodletting, which is available on Amazon. And I have read the Kindle version of this. It's fascinating. How many bloodletters are there in America? Do you have any idea?
Dean Mouscher: Well, there are a lot more now than there were.
Glen Merzer: Have you helped? popularize this technique?
Dean Mouscher: I have to say I have, which is very gratifying. I've sold a lot of books. I have a Facebook group called Chinese Medicine Blood Letting, which is limited to people. It's not for the general public. It's for acupuncturists or MDs if they want to join. are a few. Anybody who has a license that permits them to legally people with needles and let blood can join and there are 9,000 numbers. And, you know, I do seminars and webinars. So there are definitely a lot more people doing it now than there were, you 10 years ago.
Glen Merzer: when I I got hired to write my first episode of television, it was for Sane Elsewhere and went in to meet with the producers and they said they wanted me to write an episode about the use of leeches in surgery, an episode where some guys getting surgery and leeches are going on the patient. And I said, all right, I'll do that. And I went home and the next day, the New York Times had a front page article about the use of leeches in surgery. So I thought, somebody's helping me here. Wow. And that is a real thing. I think it's still going on today. What is the theory behind the use of leeches in surgery? Because I don't remember anymore. And what is the theory behind why it's good to let your blood flow? A little bit, not all of it. You don't want all of it going.
Dean Mouscher: Yeah. So the reason In Chinese medicine, they talk a lot about blood stasis. The main things that acupuncture, so what does acupuncture do? guess we should go backward and back and talk about that. Two things really, relieve blood stasis and relieve chi stagnation. So in other words, flow is good, chi is energy or function and...or also perhaps nerve conduction. And when she is flowing, that's good. And the same with blood. And if they're not flowing, you have pain. So it's different from herbalism. It's different from the eight principles. So bloodletting is the best way to relieve blood stasis. I really, at this point, I wonder how an acupuncturist can practice if he or she doesn't use bloodletting because there are so many things that they could treat easily and effectively with bloodletting that without bloodletting, they're just not going to be able to treat them. Certainly not as well and maybe not at all.
Glen Merzer: And do leeches serve the same purpose?
Dean Mouscher: So leeches serve the same purpose. Leeches in their saliva have a miraculous blood thinning agent that cannot be synthesized by man. It's better than anything that we have, any drug that we have. And so, boy, I have a picture. Too bad I didn't put it in the slide presentation. I have a picture in a book on, I have some books on leaching and typically plastic surgeons use leeches to restore blood flow to tissue that is not getting perfused and is getting gangrenous. And I have a picture of a kid who was bitten on the cheek by a horse. He has a horseshoe shaped scar.
Glen Merzer: It's interesting that a horse would create a horseshoe shaped scar. Talented horse.
Dean Mouscher: There you go. It's there's there's those redundancies again. I don't know horse, not a human. So and you can see very clearly that outside of that flap, it's you know, the skin is pink and inside it's pale and the blood is not getting there and it's becoming gangrenous and. Apparently the plastic surgeon let the leeches loose on that area and blood flow was restored. And I show a picture of them a year later. You don't even see really, you can barely see that there's a scar there. Yeah.
Glen Merzer: And that's because the leeches on top of it.
Dean Mouscher: Yeah. And, I wouldn't be able to do that just by bleeding that probably it probably has to do with both the, the bleeding relieving the blood stasis, but also that leech saliva.
Glen Merzer: Right. Now you've never used leeches, have you?
Dean Mouscher: I have never used leeches.
Glen Merzer: All right. So in your book, I learned that the apex of the ear is a top bloodletting spot. Why is that and how did you discover that?
Dean Mouscher: So I discovered it. Well, initially, I mean, it is known in Chinese medicine to be a top bloodletting spot. And then for any problems of the head, the mouth, anything from really, let's say, you know, the sternum, let's say the diaphragm up. And particularly, things having to do with nerve pain. So if somebody comes in and says, I have a shooting pain from my shoulder down to my fingers. That's something where I would poke the top of the ear and try to get some blood out and very likely it would help. And it's difficult. I mean, if you ask me, know, to explain in Western medical terms, why that works, I would have trouble doing that. I can tell you that, I do have a patient who is a professor of anatomy at a medical school here, and I do bloodletting on him. He became very interested in it. And so he, because it was working on him and he explained, so he came up with a theory and he explained to me that The superficial veins are connected to the deeper veins through, what do you call them? Anyway, there are veins that connect them. And so by communicating veins, and so by taking some blood out of, and if there's some ingestion, venous congestion in the deeper veins, then by taking some blood out of the superficial veins, it can relieve venous congestion in the deeper veins through the communicating veins. So that's the best I can do in a Western medicine explanation.
Glen Merzer: Right. Now in your book, I learned that there was a mainstream scientific study in which people who gave blood, know, regular good citizen blood donors giving to their local blood bank, had something like a 90 % reduced risk of heart attacks in a period of time after that. So apparently this hasletting your blood flow has positive effects.
Dean Mouscher: Yes, it does. And removing some blood has positive effects. yeah, that's a Finnish study was done and just amazing results. Mean, blows statins out of the water. If there was ever a drug that had these effects, mean, my God, everybody in the world would be on it. They'd put it in the water supply.
Glen Merzer: But I think we've established that the best thing you can do to prevent heart attacks is the low-fat vegan diet that my podcast is dedicated to and the occasional blood donation.
Dean Mouscher: And blood donation is a really good idea. if you look at, mean, women prior to menopause virtually are immune from heart attacks. And, you know, is it because they quote, give blood every month? Well, that's certainly one possibility. As soon as they go through menopause, They have the same risk as men.
Glen Merzer: Fascinating. So is most of your practice about relieving pain or do people come to you for other conditions that you find that either acupuncture or bloodletting works for?
Dean Mouscher: People do mostly come to me for pain, and that's what I like to treat. Sometimes people will come with things like know, digestive, upsets, diarrhea, constipation. But the main thing I treat is pain.
Glen Merzer: And what would you say your batting average is?
Dean Mouscher: Boy, that's so hard to answer because.
Glen Merzer: I guess some people you help a little and other people you help a lot, right?
Dean Mouscher: Yeah, some people I help quickly, some people not so quickly. But, know, with musculoskeletal it's. I don't know, 70, 80 % off the top of my head. mean, definitely I'm able to help. If I do everything, maybe even better than that, because if I do everything that I know how to do and they still say, know, there's no change. That's surprising to me. It doesn't happen that often. It does happen, of course.
Glen Merzer: And how much did your effectiveness improve about halfway into your career when you added bloodletting to your practice?
tremendously. I wouldn't even know how to put a number on it. Not only in the percentage of people who respond, but in the quickness that they respond. Because there are things that are impossible, like things that there is no practitioner of any chiropractic surgeon, physical therapist, massage therapist. Nobody can help.
Glen Merzer: What kinds of things?
Okay, I'll tell you in a second. With just a very small amount of bloodletting, you can relieve it. And I was thinking about this one and the analogy I came up with is it's like you're faced with a bank vault. And I mean, it's just impossible to get in there. But if you know the trick, you can open it with a hairpin. And that's sort of the way I see bloodletting. So for example, just a few days ago, I had a guy come in. And he had testicular pain, his left testicle. And he had been to a doctor and the doctor examined him and said, there's nothing. And he talked to a surgeon and the surgeon didn't think he could help them. I'm, I mean, this is the kind of thing that there's.
I probably nobody would be able to help him, including acupuncturists.
Glen Merzer: you bled the left ear. Am I right?
No, I bled his left leg. I'll show you later that clip I have of bleeding spider veins in the leg. And this isn't that patient, but what I did is very similar. And I talked to him. I said, give me a call in a week. I didn't even schedule a follow-up because I thought either this is going to work, which I thought it would, and he won't need to see me for another six months or a year or longer, or it's not going to work. There's one other thing I could try, one other type of bleeding. But he called me a week later and he said he has had zero pain since since the bleeding. So it's 100 percent success. you know
Glen Merzer: how long he had suffered in pain before he went to see you?
Like three weeks, I think he said.
Glen Merzer: So, and when you bled him, how long did that take?
I mean from the time he got on the table to the time he left, maybe 30 minutes, 35 minutes.
Glen Merzer: And how much of that time was he bleeding?
15 minutes.
Glen Merzer: So 15 minutes of blood just trickling out.
Right. Yeah. Yeah. You'll see in the the in the clip that I'll show you a little later what it looks like to do the blood. The clip is about six minutes.
Glen Merzer: OK. And we'll see that in a moment. And so sometimes, though, I've read in your book that sometimes the blood spurts out and you have to be prepared for that. So how do you prepare for that?
That's very rare, very, very, very rare, but I do mention it. It happened to me maybe three times, twice with the same person and then with one other person. Very, very rare. But I always have a paper cup at the ready. And if somebody starts bleeding, the feet, you, you don't want to stop the bleeding artificially because it's liable to get to start again later when they're at home. And that's going to scare the hell out of them. So you just, you want it to just, you know, bleed out until the pressure is gone. but if you're, As an acupuncturist, if you watch this blood spurting out, it's scary because you don't want them to lose too much blood.
Glen Merzer: are you wearing goggles?
No, I don't wear goggles. I wear gloves, of course, but I don't wear glasses. I guess that would protect me somewhat. But anyway, so the paper cup trick is important because it spurts. And the trick is to catch all of the blood in the cup. And then that way you can see how much blood they've lost. And the stream is actually very thin. And you find that one patient spurred it for about seven minutes. And this is one patient out of thousands. It's very, very rare. but after seven minutes, maybe she had lost. 50, 60 milliliters of blood. Now when you donate blood, it's 500 milliliters. It's a pint of blood. It's almost 500 milliliters. So this was one-tenth of that. So being able to look in the cup and see that it wasn't really that much blood gives me the confidence to be able to just let her bleed until it stopped on its own.
Glen Merzer: All right. So why don't we do that screen share again?
Okay.
Glen Merzer: Show us the video for those who are listening to the audio podcast. You know, if you could narrate it a little bit and tell them, of course, watching it on YouTube will be best. But go ahead and do the screen share.
All right. This is not.
Glen Merzer: So for those of you listening on the audio podcast right now, Dean Mouscher, author of The Complete Guide to Chinese Medicine Blood Letting, is looking for his video. And so we're going to give him a little time to find that video.
Somehow my mouse disappeared,
Glen Merzer: so your mouse disappeared.
Yeah, I the cursor disappeared. so I'm. here it is. OK. OK. Let me start this.Okay. All right, so there we go. All right, so I'm going to start this. So this is a patient named Linda. She is in her seventies. She is a substitute teacher at a school. She still work and she has peripheral neuropathy, which is a numbness in her lower legs and her feet. And as she'll say, you know, her numbness was so bad that she actually, she went to the emergency room once and they found glass in the bottom of her foot and she didn't even feel it. So anyway, this is typical of bleeding of the lower leg and this is what I did on my patient with testicular pain and also works great for hemorrhoids and for also for peripheral neuropathy. So here we go. Are you having audio too?
Glen Merzer: No, I don't hear any audio. so I can hear you, but nothing from the. OK, we're seeing what we're bleeding now.
Yeah. OK, so I'll just I'll just narrate it then. Yeah. So I'm looking for... I'm looking for spider veins. I see some spider veins there. so I just take a hypodermic needle, very, very superficially, just a millimeter or two deep. And then I keep it going by swabbing it with alcohol. I want it to keep going. And so it stops on its own. And you can see at the very beginning, it was very dark. So dark blood is, that's the color of blood stasis. And if the blood comes out bright red, then I know this is not going to be effective because there was no blood stasis. If it's dark like this, it's already starting to lighten up a little bit. it's much more likely to be effective. So here's, I'm going to do another one. You can see the dark spot. There's a, there you go. Okay. All right, so I'm going to fast forward this so you can see I'm going to do her other leg.
Glen Merzer: for those listening on the audio podcast, Dean is using a needle to to bleed the patient in a few different places on the leg and the blood sort of oozes out. It's a dark color and it gets lighter over time.
All right. So here's here's for other lead and you can see a of spider veins,
Glen Merzer: spider veins.
Right. So those dark today. And These are the ones that I like or like where you just see one spot like that. And so you can see here's that one spot. One dark spot. know there's going to be a lot of dark blood coming out of there. dark blood. Very dark. So that's blood stasis. I know this is going to be effective. I know that she's going to feel better after this. So let's see.
Glen Merzer: You wipe the blood and it keeps flowing and as it keeps flowing, it gets lighter. Right. All right. So does this work for for aesthetic purposes, too, that the spider veins diminish?
They do. Yes. I mean, it's not. So there's something called sclerotherapy where they inject something into the vein that makes the vein just shrivel up and disappear. I don't recommend that because I think it just drives blood stasis deeper into the body. Whereas if you do this, you actually relieve the blood stasis. It doesn't make the spider vein disappear completely, but it fades it a lot. So I'd say that most of the women I treat are very happy with their cosmetic results. So that's all I have. can stop the screen sharing if you like.
Glen Merzer: All right. So do you get patients who come to you for cosmetic reasons with the spider veins?
I don't think so. I mean, maybe patients mention it. They come for something else and maybe they mention it, but I've never had somebody I don't think come.
Glen Merzer: You could set up practice in Beverly Hills and that would be a lucrative practice, my friend. I'll bet. I'll bet Gwyneth Paltrow would be my first client, right? She would spread it amongst all her friends and-
Does she have spider That's a plan. I don't know if she does or not, but she's into Chinese medicine and naturopathic approaches to cosmetic problems.
Glen Merzer: Now, that episode of saying elsewhere that I wrote, my first meeting in Hollywood was in her late father's Bruce Paltrow's office. And I actually made a, I guess an enemy for life when I wrote that episode. Should I tell you the story?
Yeah, yeah, that's very interesting. All right.
Glen Merzer: So I had been in Buffalo before moving to LA and everyone in Buffalo said, you're moving to LA? Call Tom Fontana. I didn't know who he was, but they gave me his phone number. So I called him and I hear Tom Fontana's office saying elsewhere. he was a writer on saying elsewhere. So I said, tell him Glen called. Everyone in Buffalo said to call. So he was nicest guy in the world. He called me back over the weekend, talked to me for a long time, asked me to send in some writing, and he hired me to write the saying elsewhere. So I go in to write the same elsewhere, my first assignment in Hollywood, and I'm figuring, hey, I'm a grown up now. I'm a professional. I had a suitcase, not a suit. I'm sorry. A briefcase, a briefcase, you the kind of thing lawyers have. And I thought, I'm a professional. I should bring in this briefcase. I have no idea what I was thinking. What did I put in the briefcase? I don't know, a notepad and a pen. I don't know. So I go into the office at Sane Elsewhere, Bruce Paltrow's office, with my briefcase. And there were three producers there, writer producers. There was a guy named John, a guy named Channing, both very nice guys. And the other guy, I won't say his real name, but let's say he was Joe Smith. Right. So I say hi to John, say hi to Channing. And then I extend my hand to say hi. to Joe Smith and he doesn't shake my hand. He looks the other way, walks out of the room, slams the door. So I say to John and Channing, did I say something to offend Joe Smith? They say, no, no, no, no, no, don't take it personally. That's just Joe. He's having some problem. Don't worry. No, it's got nothing to do with you. Don't take it personally. And then they tell me to write the episode with the leeches. So I go home for two weeks or so, write that episode, send it in, come back to meet with them. I see John, I see Channing shake their hands. I see Joe Smith. I go to shake his hand. He doesn't shake my hand. Storms out of the room, slams the door. And I say, what? Again, did I say something? No, no, Glen, has nothing to do with you. No, don't take it personally. He's got some things going. No, don't forget about it. So then they give me the notes on the episode and I do a rewrite and I send it in. And that episode aired as my first television episode with the leeches. They changed everything else, but it had the leeches in it.
And then about a year later, I was hired by a TV writer, a very famous TV writer named David Milch. He hired me to write an episode of a pilot he had. And he said, you know, Glen, before I hired you, I read your episode of St. Elsewhere. And then I checked up on you and I called John and Channing and they said very good things about you. said, but could I ask you a question? He yeah, he said, what the hell did you do to Joe Smith? He hates your guts. So that was my first enemy in Hollywood. haven't I just said hi.
Did you ever find out?
Glen Merzer: No, he hate the hate. I think it was the briefcase. I think it was stupid to walk in with that briefcase. That's the only I only said hi to the guy.
Wow.
Glen Merzer: Yeah. So there's a guy you might want to bleed.You know, just a suggestion.
Well, I need to bleed the apex of his ear because that's for anxiety and emotional problems, apex of the ear is the way to go.
Glen Merzer: OK. Well, I hope to see you maybe in the spring, Dean, and maybe I'll have you bleed me. OK. I will keep some needles available. All right. Well, we'll put a link to the book. And if you'd like to your website in the show notes, the book is called The Complete Guide to Chinese Medicine Bloodletting. And one last question, how many people are doing this in the country? Any idea?
Bloodletting?
Glen Merzer: Yeah.
I really don't know. mean, it must be hundreds to based on the feedback I get. And, know, to what extent are they doing it? You know, the people who really do it a lot in their practice. I mean, there are the people who really do it a lot. They're the people who are sort of timid about it. one of the, mean, one of the questions that I get a lot is, well, how do I bring this up to patients? You know, how, like, and somehow acupuncturists have this idea that they have to explain to patients like what they're doing. And I actually, had an experience very early on in bloodletting. There was a Chinese guy who came in and I, and he had sciatica and I wanted to do bloodletting. And I start to explain to him, his English wasn't very good. And I'm explaining to him, well, you know, sometimes blah, blah, bye. And he's looking at me and looking at me. And then finally he says to me, okay, okay, okay, okay. As if to say, I'm in pain here. You idiot. Can you just believe me and shut up? So that, that, that made me realize, you know, people are coming for me to do the best acupuncture I can do. If that's bloodletting. So at this point, the less said, the better. You know, I just say, this is what we call blood stasis. So if I can take out a little bit of blood that can relieve the blood stasis and you'll probably feel better. I'm basically fine.
Glen Merzer: All right. Well, it's a fascinating field. And it sounds to me like you're doing a service by guiding fellow practitioners to consider engaging in this.
And yeah, I would say that, that, you know, prior, you know, if there, if there's anything that I've contributed, I think it's to make it easy. It seems, I mean, there are Chinese practitioners who do it in a way that most American practitioners would not want to follow. I mean, they're pretty aggressive. And it turns out you don't really need to be very aggressive. You saw what I did on that one woman and it's very mild and that's all you need. And I think, you know, I try to show people how to do it in a way that's
you know, easily accepted by them and easily accepted by patients. And I think that's, you know, that's helped it grow somewhat.
Glen Merzer: Right. Well, Dean, it's great to see you again. Again, we'll put those links in the show notes and hope to see you in person before too long.
Sounds good. I'll look forward to it.
Comentários