#362 Unlocking the Secrets of Ancient Healing with Cupping with Dr. Tom Ingegno

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I am joined by the amazing Dr. Tom Ingegno, clinician, speaker, and bestselling author of "The Cupping Book." In this episode, we dive into the world of cupping and acupuncture, exploring how these ancient practices boost blood flow, enhance lymphatic drainage, and support overall health. Dr. Tom shares fascinating history, emotional benefits, and practical tips for safe home use. Discover why consistency is key and how these therapies can elevate your self-care game! Tune in for a lively conversation that blends ancient wisdom with modern wellness, and let's get less stressed together! 🎧✨ 

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• How cupping and acupuncture enhance circulation
• How cupping improves lymph flow
• Safe and effective ways to use cupping at home
• How cupping effects physical and emotional well-being
• Regular therapy sessions lead to better, faster results

ABOUT GUEST:
Dr. Tom Ingegno, DACM, LAC, is a clinician, speaker, and the best-selling author of The Cupping Book: Unlocking the Secrets of Ancient Healing.
Dr. Tom owns and operates Charm City Integrative Health, which provides a multidimensional approach to reducing inflammation, improving circulation, and regulating the immune system to help people thrive.
In addition to a quarter century of clinical experience, Dr. Tom has taught at two universities of East Asian Medicine and served as Chair of the Maryland Board of Acupuncture. His professional passion is to help patients and like-minded practitioners develop no-nonsense practices to allow people to maximize their health.

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://www.charmcityintegrative.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ccintegrative/ 

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: ****https://www.christabiegler.com/links

EPISODE SPONSOR:
A special thanks to Jigsaw Health for sponsoring this episode. Get a discount on any of their products. Use the code lessstressed10

Transcript

[00:00:00] Dr. Tom Ingegno: any increase in blood flow is also going to increase lymph flow and working with bigger areas. Normally we tend to see them, we think lymph nodes, here, and then, under the armpits and, in the inner thigh or the kind of the big major areas, if we're doing kind of lymphatic massage, but Increasing circulation, releasing tension in the muscles.

[00:00:19] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Of course, you're going to see an uptick in lymph flow.

[00:00:23] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host, Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On this show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

[00:00:52] Christa Biegler, RD: One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

[00:01:10] Christa Biegler, RD: Today on The Less Stressed Life, I have Dr. Tom Ingegno, who is, I hope I said it right. We've just been going over this. 

[00:01:17] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Perfect. It's perfect. It's beautiful. You did it better 

[00:01:19] Dr. Tom Ingegno: than 90 percent of the other hosts I've been on. You're already winning. 

[00:01:23] Christa Biegler, RD: Love it. Love it. He's the clinician, a speaker, and bestselling author of the cupping book, unlocking the secrets of ancient healing.

[00:01:30] Christa Biegler, RD: Dr. Tom has taught at two universities. of East Asian Medicine, served as a chair. Other things he owns and operates Charm City Integrative Health, which provides a multi dimensional approach to reducing inflammation, improving circulation, and regulating the immune system to help people thrive. His professional passion is to help patients and like minded practitioners develop no nonsense practices to allow people to maximize their health.

[00:01:54] Christa Biegler, RD: And I love that statement. So welcome to the show, Dr. Tom. 

[00:01:57] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Oh, thank you. I know this is going to be a good one. 

[00:01:59] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, I know too. I was telling him off air that we get a lot of pitches and sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're not that good. And I like copying as a part of our family culture. And and I've never.

[00:02:14] Christa Biegler, RD: I've never obviously interviewed someone on cupping because, it's a specialty item, but so good. And honestly, it's time for a specialist on cupping. It's time for a cupping book. And so I was already sold, but then I opened up an interview and he's got a great beard. So here we are. It was an instant.

[00:02:28] Christa Biegler, RD: Yes. Instant. Yes. 

[00:02:29] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Thank God. Something's helping me out with my looks. Thanks. Thanks. Bye. 

[00:02:34] Christa Biegler, RD: Let's get that beard on this video. 

[00:02:37] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I feel like I should have 

[00:02:38] Dr. Tom Ingegno: gone to the barber and got it trimmed beforehand. I knew this was going to be a focal point here. 

[00:02:43] Christa Biegler, RD: I have no judgments or any, I've got nothing to compare it to.

[00:02:47] Christa Biegler, RD: It's a great, 

[00:02:48] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Oh, okay. 

[00:02:49] Dr. Tom Ingegno: All right. feel like my headshot though, it was a little bit more robust. I cleaned it up a little. 

[00:02:55] Christa Biegler, RD: As we all do sometimes, it's funny to me that I've been using the same headshot for the podcast cover art since 2017, which is quite a while ago. And I've tried to retake it.

[00:03:08] Christa Biegler, RD: It didn't look as good on the two retakes we tried. I didn't like it as well. And so we didn't replace it. And so I literally run into people and I'll be trying to share my podcast. I went to a conference recently. I tried to share my podcast and this lady said, Oh, I listened to this podcast. That's my face on that podcast.

[00:03:23] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm like, do I look that different? So anyway, we all clean up for just, 

[00:03:26] Dr. Tom Ingegno: The, I saw an AI app that's supposed to give you a really good headshot. So you put whatever photo up you want and it just makes you look like a completely different person. And then 

[00:03:35] Christa Biegler, RD: no one knows who the hell you are.

[00:03:36] Christa Biegler, RD: No 

[00:03:36] Dr. Tom Ingegno: one knows who the hell you are anyway. Yeah. 

[00:03:38] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Perfect. Okay. So what is fun. You are a doctor of I don't want to butcher it. 

[00:03:46] Dr. Tom Ingegno: yeah, so technically the degree and my field look there's about 10 different master's degrees and there's about eight different doctorates. And that's some internal conflict we're trying to work out.

[00:03:56] Dr. Tom Ingegno: But technically the doctorate is an acupuncture and Chinese medicine. Now that's funny to me because I do Chinese herbal medicine and a lot of the practices that they all originated in China. Yeah. But the style of acupuncture, our practice is Japanese. So it's like the letters don't even, Oh yeah, it's, it gets that niche.

[00:04:13] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It gets down to like family systems and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, for most patients, when you get acupuncture, I lay down, they put needles in me, I leave, I feel better. And that's like the overview that we want. But it gets very stylized. It gets very opinionated and it gets very like.

[00:04:27] Dr. Tom Ingegno: We'll take swings at each other in public. And I'm like no, no other medical field does that. Just save that for the back room. You don't argue about stylistic stuff, but we're catty. 

[00:04:38] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm just wondering how you got into this field. Did you go on a trip to? 

[00:04:42] Dr. Tom Ingegno: No.

[00:04:42] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Anytime I went to Asia, it was on vacation. To be honest. And to tell you the truth, a lot of people that come back with a little diploma on the wall that's in Chinese, they probably were there for two weeks. They saw the Great Wall. They went to a hospital once. Oh, great. Now I'm already swinging at people.

[00:04:57] Dr. Tom Ingegno: No, I was set to be an MD. That, that was like where I thought I was supposed to go. And just, there were a bunch of really random things that I know only make sense in retrospect events in my life. was pushing me towards something else. I always wanted to help people and I thought, no, you gotta be a doctor to do that.

[00:05:15] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And well there's thousands of professions that help people. Yeah. Yeah. And Between my grandfather who was a pharmacist who I remember counting out pills and him being frustrated with the cost. And this was back in 94 for somebody that was a, just getting cash at the end of a day, and he's this guy has a family to feed and he's paying this much for medicine.

[00:05:34] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And he said something like, I know there's a better way. You've got to find it. And that kind of got stored in my, somewhere in my memory. Then I was pre med in college, and I took an Asian philosophy course and a Tai Chi course, and that kind of warped my mind a little bit.

[00:05:49] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And then the kicker was intersession in my junior year, I got a postcard in the mail from an acupuncture school for an open house. And I went and I came home with the paperwork and I filled it out. And less than two weeks later, I was enrolled and never looked back. It was, 

[00:06:04] Christa Biegler, RD: had you ever had acupuncture before? 

[00:06:06] Dr. Tom Ingegno: No, isn't that crazy? Like the first experience I was a student and it was fucking horrible. Oh, why can I curse? I'm sorry. 

[00:06:14] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm sorry. 

[00:06:14] Dr. Tom Ingegno: You're going to get the true me. You're going to have to tell me to pump the brakes on the F word at some point. But within that yeah very true.

[00:06:22] Dr. Tom Ingegno: My first experience and it wasn't the student practitioner. It was the situation, right? The AC had broken. It was August. Our school was over a pretty major road. They had fans in the room is it Oh, until we get it cooler. But here I am laying on the typical massage table with only paper on it.

[00:06:39] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I'm sweating through that. The window in the room is open. And it's over this highway that these trucks are just blowing through. So here I'm getting diesel fumes. The guy keeps putting in needles and he was good. He was a great practitioner. I wish I remembered his name. But I'm sitting there in a pool of my own sweat going, Oh shit.

[00:06:59] Dr. Tom Ingegno: What did I just sign up for? And then I met my mentor and I had one of his students treat me and it was a completely like magical experience and it was just Oh my God, this hit so many different parts of me. It wasn't just the physical stuff. It was, I was so relaxed. I was so calm. For certain people, like not everybody, but they'll feel things with the needles in and not in a very unpleasant sense, but warmth and movement and all these kind of things were happening.

[00:07:28] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And oh my God, I don't even know how to describe it. And it was that thing that I think. We're looking for, we call it she, we call it energy. And really because we don't have a better explanation for it. We, we've studied acupuncture so much, we know all these methods of action, and then there's something that's like less tangible, less, you can't measure it.

[00:07:50] Dr. Tom Ingegno: That happens and that's the magical part, and I don't like dressing it up. I'm not too wishy washy. I'm not too woo, but there is just something that like, and I think it speaks to our core humanity. That it's just it keeps me engaged and involved and in love with the medicine, 

[00:08:06] Christa Biegler, RD: Another tagline for you could be acupuncturist for non woo people, which I feel is like a bridge because you're describing, you were like, Oh, I had this magical experience and I wanted you to elaborate and you already said a little bit, like you had these kinds of like very calm, peaceful feelings.

[00:08:22] Christa Biegler, RD: And I 

[00:08:22] Dr. Tom Ingegno: think 

[00:08:22] Christa Biegler, RD: something I'm really interested in, but I Working on how do you make this sexy and marketable in a positive way because it's really about reaching people who need things the most, right? Because if you come in with all your acupuncture lingo, you're only going to appeal to people who already understand that.

[00:08:40] Christa Biegler, RD: So when you come in, so I was thinking about how disconnected we can be. Yeah. I have this one client who's doing a beautiful job describing this to me right now. She's yeah, my head and my body have just been super disconnected for so long. I just didn't even realize it. And so this is helping me reconnect because I'm starting to see a difference.

[00:08:53] Christa Biegler, RD: And so I almost want I'm just curious about how that was maybe at play for you or even that first magical experience. Like what else? So you hit, we're at peace. Yeah. Calmness. Anything else that came? Yeah. 

[00:09:04] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. Just these weird sensations, right? It's, it doesn't feel neurological. It doesn't feel muscular.

[00:09:10] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It's an awareness. Some people will say, even on the table, they'll say, I feel something, but I don't know the words to describe it. And sometimes it's you put the needle here, but I feel it here right now. Oh look at the chart. Oh, that's the channel. And that's exactly where it goes.

[00:09:25] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And you're really on the money with using the lingo, right? It's the system is so eloquent. It's such a beautiful way. To describe changes that we couldn't measure back then that we didn't have x rays and we didn't have blood work and these kind of things. They developed this system that just, it talks about the cascade of effects that happened physiologically during acupuncture.

[00:09:48] Dr. Tom Ingegno: But when we use that lingo. Especially here in the West, people's eyes glaze over. They're just like, I have no idea what the hell this guy's talking about. Yeah. So when we talk a little bit more Western, when we put it in terms that are more marketable, I hate using that word with medicine, but that's what we have to do.

[00:10:04] Dr. Tom Ingegno: You have to sell the thing to people. 

[00:10:07] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. How do you appeal to the person who needs it the most? That's my thing. It's like the integrity is there. It's really, let me connect you to this thing that will make your life 100 percent better. Yeah. 

[00:10:16] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. 

[00:10:16] Christa Biegler, RD: And that's my interest. And so I'm always this is what I think about behind the windshield is like how do I make that like more resonant?

[00:10:22] Christa Biegler, RD: Because I, and part of it is because I was that person. I wonder if that, you're able to, I would imagine touch more. Very masculine looking men with beards who wouldn't necessarily go to I am 

[00:10:32] Dr. Tom Ingegno: the softest dude over 200 pounds. God, I'm like, people look at me and I'm like, No, I'm not that guy. I'm somebody else.

[00:10:42] Christa Biegler, RD: You can make this accessible because whether we like it or not people We have a natural bias or judgment toward people who look like us. So when you've got another man, a manly man in the room, it's now you're able to, 

[00:10:53] Dr. Tom Ingegno: yeah, I feel like 

[00:10:54] Dr. Tom Ingegno: you're trying to compliment me here.

[00:10:55] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And I'm like, I don't know what to do. 

[00:10:57] Christa Biegler, RD: It's okay. Don't overthink it. Don't overthink it. I do want you to make, we're going to get into cupping stuff. I have this bias that I think that a lot of great modalities and medicine are borrowed from Chinese or Asian, 

[00:11:11] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I would 100 percent agree with that. And even functional medicine has roots.

[00:11:15] Dr. Tom Ingegno: In East Asian medicine, so yeah, 

[00:11:17] Christa Biegler, RD: totally all most herbalism, right? Love for you to on in this vein, literally of making this sexy, let's make acupuncture sexy first. We're going to generally talk about cupping, but let's make acupuncture sexy first. Tell me by telling us about results that you've seen from doing acupuncture.

[00:11:34] Christa Biegler, RD: Cause that's the most sexy thing you can do. 

[00:11:36] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I think. It's something that if somebody comes in for a condition this is one of those things, one, you have to preface all that with this is a therapy, right? It's not a magic bullet. It's not a surgery. It's not a magic pill.

[00:11:48] Dr. Tom Ingegno: You're not going to do it once. And, but that's like having a salad and wondering why you're not feeling healthier. Yeah, oh, you had that salad the other day. Yeah, it's oh, that's great. Did you do you move your body? Did Did you wash that salad down with 32 ounce Coke, so you have to look at it in it's whole thing.

[00:12:06] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And, I mentioned humanity before and one of my favorite expressions from our, the yellow Emperor's internal classic, what we call like our acupuncture Bible is acupuncture is an expression of humanity, right? So we don't separate things out, right? Like psychology is different than the rest of medicine.

[00:12:25] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Because our thoughts and our brain, we know that affects everything else, but we don't treat it like that. I had a dentist once say that, the rest of medicine doesn't think teeth are part of the head. Yeah. Yeah. I know. And I was like, wow that's pretty interesting. And if you, if we look at it, something natural, like childbirth.

[00:12:42] Dr. Tom Ingegno: That's a medical condition. Yeah. And it's the way we package things. So Chinese medicine East Asian medicine is probably a better term for it because yes, it originated in China, but as it spread and during different timeframes, it evolved and changed and met the people there.

[00:12:59] Dr. Tom Ingegno: But that we say acupuncture is the expression of humanity is the phrase I was trying to get back to. And it looks at a whole picture. It's the 5, 000 foot view of a person, right? So you come in and you say, oh, this hurts here. And then we start going how are you sleeping? Why do you want to know how I'm sleeping?

[00:13:17] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Because I have a hunch that you're waking up between one and 3 a. m. And then they're like, how the hell did you know that? And it's we're talking about the liver channel. You're talking about this pain in the epic, in the subcostal area. And, you mentioned how frustrated you were in the, the energy of the emotional component of the liver is anger.

[00:13:38] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It's frustration. So you've basically told me all this stuff and then you go and, you put one needle in and they're like, wow that rib pain's gone. Yeah, and it's like, how did you know that? And if you look at it from the outside without that system, it looks unscientific.

[00:13:52] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It looks magical, but you have thousands and thousands of years of case studies and look, we're not hanging any diagnosis on one symptom. But what we see are these patterns and they keep emerging. And then you multiply that by 3000 years and millions of treatments and you come up with this really nuanced system that somebody said something to me today and I'm like, wow, you said that one thing, so I'm going to choose this point and she goes, how the hell did you know that?

[00:14:22] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It's we say this one thing and this controls the opening of the eyes and you said you feel like you can't open your eyes. And then she listed all four other symptoms that were like. Wow, that changed. This got better and that got better. And I'm like, wow, that was like, I could have just done that one needle and not wasted the other 10, but those are the things, right?

[00:14:39] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It's not this big things that impress me or when I'm surprised to, it's that still happens after 23 years of clinical experience. You're like, Yeah. I didn't think that was going to do that. That's amazing. I had a patient, this sounds so crazy.

[00:14:52] Dr. Tom Ingegno: We do a technique called Moxibustion, that's an herb that we burn on the surface of the skin, right? It's mugwort grows everywhere around the world. I believe it was like. Put here for a reason. A woman came in, she said, I have a sty in my eye and I go, look, I get really good results with this.

[00:15:06] Dr. Tom Ingegno: We burn just on this knuckle on the first, on the index finger, on that knuckle, we burn a little bit of moxa. And I go, normally that style resolve in two days. She called me 15 minutes after she left the office. She goes, I had to pull over cause something was in my eye. And I go, okay. And she goes, and I'm going, oh my God, I somehow get a needle?

[00:15:28] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Like I'm freaking out. Like I'm always like crisis management. I did something wrong. She goes, the sty popped. And completely drained and I go, that is that's a typical, but like when we see those things and one of my favorite things to treat talking about mock Sebastian is breach birth.

[00:15:46] Dr. Tom Ingegno: There are studies to show that like we have a 70 percent success rate in flipping a baby that's breach and that's up to week 38. And you're like not only am I doing something to another human being at that point, right? Because that fetus can live on its own it's affecting a different person at that point, right?

[00:16:07] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So that baby turns and that and normally within two to three sessions. So we might see him two or three times that week. And we're getting 70 percent success rates. And my clinic does the same, it has the same rate as the study. It's so amazing to me. It's so weird. 

[00:16:23] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. It's a dangerous conversation for me.

[00:16:25] Christa Biegler, RD: Cause then it makes me want to go get a doctorate of acupuncture. Cause I just, 

[00:16:29] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I've had five people over the years go to acupuncture school because of me and in my head my self worth is like, Oh they think they can do that. They can probably do better than me. It's 

[00:16:39] Christa Biegler, RD: I actually, I was attracted to, there's what I really hear in the way you describe this is there's a listening skill, which we all need to. 

[00:16:47] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:16:48] Christa Biegler, RD: Beautifully. But I just I'm obsessed with pattern recognition when you're describing how you would recognize issues with the liver. I'm like, Oh yes. Like I. Yeah. In the clients that I feel are most like me, I'm like, Oh yeah, you have like congestion in your liver. It's probably anger.

[00:17:05] Christa Biegler, RD: You probably aren't thinking it's anger. So I have this conversation with people pretty frequently. So I was on the same wavelength with you there. I really want to know what the hell is going on with the index finger that creates that style. Like what's the relationship actually? 

[00:17:15] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So that's funny because that comes from a very niche Japanese system of moxibustion.

[00:17:20] Dr. Tom Ingegno: That's like an extra little Hey, somebody figured out, but you said something and I have to mention it because it is so the word that we use when we're taking the pulses. This is one of the ways that we diagnose, right? We feel six different positions on the radial pulse. Each one of those positions gets assigned to one of those 12 channels.

[00:17:41] Dr. Tom Ingegno: We use the word ting in Chinese and that's listening. We listen to the pulse. Not only are we listening to the answer to the questions, but we're listening when we feel the pulse and it is so amazing. You're absolutely right. This is just pattern recognition. And I think that's why me as an ADHD person is still in it because there's always another layer.

[00:18:02] Dr. Tom Ingegno: There's always something else that I can, That I can glean. And, I don't think I'm God's gift to acupuncture, but I've been doing it long enough where people are starting to show me some respect in my field. And when they ask me things, I'm like, oh yeah, do this. And they're like, why?

[00:18:16] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And you're like, oh, did you notice that? Like they wiped here and that's, it's this channel. And they're like, but they didn't mention that at all. I'm like, yeah, but you took their pulse and you press here and to go out. And she goes yeah. How'd you know that? And it's You do the same thing over and over again and each time you do it you polish that jewel, right?

[00:18:33] Dr. Tom Ingegno: You're refining that. And it happens so slowly that you don't notice, like every five years or so. I'm like, Oh, I wouldn't have figured that out five years ago, and it's just so beautiful, 

[00:18:46] Christa Biegler, RD: yeah. And I feel like the way you describe this would be so attractive if you were a medical doctor or provider, it'd be so fun to have this in your toolbox.

[00:18:56] Christa Biegler, RD: So it makes sense that you were, led toward that and then you had this kind of almost divine intervention that landed you over here. But I can see where every once in a while I think that there is that combination of people with, An arm of acupuncture in their practice. I do think that acupuncture has been around long enough where it's got some real.

[00:19:16] Christa Biegler, RD: You would know 100 percent better than I would, so you might be able to say I think it shows up in mainstream every once in a while. 

[00:19:22] Dr. Tom Ingegno: The scene has changed a lot in the time I've been practicing, right? A lot of the research that was being done originally, and this is a fun fact PTs and chiros don't like it when I say it, but we have more systematic reviews in the Cochran database than physical therapy and chiropractic put together.

[00:19:38] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Now, the bulk majority of the studies that were originally done. We're trying to disprove acupuncture and they get to the end of the study and they're like, Oh crap. They used some weird terms, but what they're saying is actually happening. And it doesn't matter if it's a neurological condition and an autoimmune condition, a musculoskeletal condition, a respiratory condition.

[00:20:01] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Hell, there's been studies that show that we can treat AFib. Now I'm not going to make that claim in my clinic, but like, how are we putting a needle in your body and altering those nerve Fibers as progenic and fibers in the middle of the heart. How are we doing that? 

[00:20:17] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And I don't have the answer to that.

[00:20:19] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It's still pretty amazing to me. 

[00:20:21] Christa Biegler, RD: As well as I do, I think that all things, I think, I don't know, maybe you feel differently. In physical therapy, there's a lot of tools that have been borrowed from we, 

[00:20:32] Dr. Tom Ingegno: we use the word appropriation on our side. Yeah. Oh, is that grass? Then's right.

[00:20:37] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. So Chinese grandmothers for 5, 000 years have been doing that with a soup spoon. 

[00:20:42] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It's not 

[00:20:43] Dr. Tom Ingegno: new, that's not new, but yeah, it's not even about taking swings about at it. I, for me, it's not even, yeah, it's not even dry needling versus acupuncture, because I think dry needling is.

[00:20:54] Dr. Tom Ingegno: In my personal opinion, it's undereducated acupuncture. It's lowbrow acupuncture, which will probably get some hate mail. You can forward them to my website. It's not giving respect to the, where it came from. And then it's saying, we want the same results. And when we look at those studies, they're not getting the same results, which is interesting.

[00:21:13] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And in my head, it's because you don't understand the system and the framework, right? You're looking for the quick fix. Point and shoot works. But not as well as a robust system. So it's, for me, and this was something my mentor beat into my head, you got to live the lifestyle, you got to live and breathe this, you got to be passionate about it.

[00:21:32] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And it's going to manifest differently in me than it did in him. But that's part of keeping the practice alive and having that cultivation on your own end, right? You can't just, you can't just, show up in the room and expect to be good at it, right? You have to constantly refine. 

[00:21:47] Christa Biegler, RD: And through those clinicians, I was exposed to cupping and exposed to dry needling and actually mostly through my husband who he doesn't come up. 

[00:21:55] Dr. Tom Ingegno: is he a PT 

[00:21:56] Dr. Tom Ingegno: and I'm just crapping on physical therapy. He's not, 

[00:21:58] Dr. Tom Ingegno: he's a labor intensive. 

[00:22:00] Christa Biegler, RD: One of my really good friends is a PT, but 

[00:22:01] Dr. Tom Ingegno: and I don't have, I 

[00:22:02] Dr. Tom Ingegno: refer to them all the time. 

[00:22:04] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah no, 

[00:22:05] Christa Biegler, RD: You're great. And Very early in my dietetics education there was a chiropractor who suggested I go to essentially an applied kinesiology course.

[00:22:14] Christa Biegler, RD: Ultimately, it was not my vibe, but I took from that, this has roots in Eastern Asian medicine. And actually I get a little bit. To your point. I do get, sometimes I dig I get people who come on who have this proprietary system quite frequently, and sometimes I dig for the, don't you love that?

[00:22:31] Christa Biegler, RD: I dig for the, do you want me to say 

[00:22:33] Dr. Tom Ingegno: No? Nothing's new. . 

[00:22:34] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. And sometimes the credit is not given now.

[00:22:37] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. 

[00:22:37] Christa Biegler, RD: On a more positive note, I had this lovely person once, come on another time. I don't know you, I'm sure you could talk about this. I would love to do tongue geography.

[00:22:46] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, I did. I had someone come on about face reading. 

[00:22:51] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I was actually listening to that podcast. Yes. Yeah. 

[00:22:54] Christa Biegler, RD: She has this like lovely demeanor. She did a face reading for me and what I appreciated about that, which was something you mentioned earlier, is that Was essentially their research was just compilation of all the same things they had seen.

[00:23:07] Christa Biegler, RD: And I couldn't agree with that more. That's like basically my life and my practice. I'm like, 

[00:23:12] Christa Biegler, RD: yeah, 

[00:23:12] Christa Biegler, RD: I've just seen that this is always this. So we're going to go ahead and treat this and it's probably going to work. 

[00:23:18] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean that is when we talk about evidence based medicine, right?

[00:23:22] Dr. Tom Ingegno: They always put that up with Three circles in a Venn diagram. And one of them is, clinical research and everyone holds that as the, the golden idol, right? Those double blind placebo controlled, randomized human trials, right? That's what we want. But those other two circles are what is the patient, right?

[00:23:39] Dr. Tom Ingegno: That needs to be part of it, right? If you're like, Hey, Tom, you have this horrible cancer we can do surgery, but you're probably going to die. Then it's do I really want this? Do I need to go through that surgery? And then the last bit is the practitioner's knowledge and experience, right? So this is why.

[00:23:55] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And I think, I've lectured to a few med students recently in the last couple of years, like the schools have had me out. And the idea is they don't know. Like the system they're working in, right? They want more natural things. They want to be able to say, I know this is good for this. So you need to go here, right?

[00:24:15] Dr. Tom Ingegno: They want to quarterback it. They want to run it, but they want to know that like when somebody comes in with Ms. Yes, we're going to give them our drugs. We're going to run our tests. We're going to do our things, but can I send them to acupuncture? Can I send them here? Can I recommend herbs to them?

[00:24:29] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Can I at least put them in that right corridor? And I think that's a great thing because until the medical system finally crumbles and needs to be rebuilt from the ashes, which I don't know if that's happening in my lifetime. There's too much money. I thought 

[00:24:42] Dr. Tom Ingegno: that was going to happen. I keep waiting for 

[00:24:45] Dr. Tom Ingegno: things to fall apart.

[00:24:46] Dr. Tom Ingegno: People told me things were going to fall apart. They haven't fallen apart yet. But at least the knowledge is there, right? And they're not pretending like they don't see it anymore, right? And even when they're appropriating things like they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

[00:25:01] Dr. Tom Ingegno: You're doing a bad job at it, but okay we see that you see value in it. I didn't 

[00:25:05] Christa Biegler, RD: know that. I didn't know that my retirement job was going to be acupuncture. Thanks, Tom. 

[00:25:09] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Oh if you ever want to apply to schools, let me know. I'll tell you that they're all horrible. 

[00:25:14] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. Fantastic. I look forward to that. Okay. So we're going to talk a little bit about you've written this book called the cupping book, and this is not new to me, although I was flipping through it, reading bits and parts of it, which I love the length of it. I love the pictures. That was 

[00:25:28] Dr. Tom Ingegno: intentional. It was meant to be a quick read. 

[00:25:31] Christa Biegler, RD: I might be able to get my husband to actually read it. He's not a reader, but he loves cupping. And actually on this note, he was the one I didn't visit a chiropractor my entire life. It wasn't part of my upbringing, but I met my husband. He was like very pro chiropractor. Actually. Now he's very pro physical therapy and dry needling because that's what I have access to 

[00:25:48] Dr. Tom Ingegno: that 

[00:25:49] Christa Biegler, RD: we do not have an acupuncturist.

[00:25:51] Christa Biegler, RD: And so anyway, somewhere, I don't even know if you 

[00:25:53] Dr. Tom Ingegno: have a state organization. I don't even know if you have licensure. 

[00:25:56] Christa Biegler, RD: Dry needling just happened a few years ago here, actually. And so one of the earliest credentialed physical therapists was one of his physical therapists. So anyway, so he got into that.

[00:26:10] Christa Biegler, RD: He loves that now. He loves doing the inner, the in between restoration book, but, or the restoration work. I was looking at your book and it said that. I was feeling a bit old when I read it and saw that in the 2012 Olympics was when cupping I remember this as well. Yeah. It became a thing because Michael Phelps was showing up the swimmer, which I think everyone listening to this podcast knows what I'm talking about is on the same page as us.

[00:26:35] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Yeah. I'm just like, Oh, 2012. Geez. But anyway, I had a child born that year. So I remember it just feels like a long time ago. So that's when I think cupping really became more. I felt it became mainstream. I think my husband was exposed to it, maybe at a massage. I'm not sure, but he's been a very avid cupper.

[00:26:51] Christa Biegler, RD: Over the years and my kids are older now, but when they were in younger elementary school, the school called us to make sure everything was okay because they had cupping bruises. And in fact, there was once upon a. time. We have a, I'm in a tiny little town. We have an NFL player from here.

[00:27:06] Christa Biegler, RD: But one time when he was in high school, he was in our living room and my husband was cupping him and he was able to go play in the state basketball tournament and whatnot. So like cupping is not an unfamiliar thing in our household. And. I don't know if anyone would cringe at that, but somehow someone told my husband you can just do this at home.

[00:27:24] Christa Biegler, RD: And he's always covered in cupping. 

[00:27:26] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It is. And honestly, it came to Chinese medicine. It's not even Chinese in origin. There was a physician in about the 300 ADs who wrote in his, memoirs and his medical texts that like, we know that this is being done in homes.

[00:27:40] Dr. Tom Ingegno: This is folk medicine. It's not beneath us. We really should be doing it as practitioners, right? So I always find it funny when you even mentioned the Olympics there. Because the next day when Michael Phelps had the marks, ABC, the local ABC was in my office doing a recording on it, but it was, it's so funny to me because traditionally we're using fire cupping, right?

[00:28:02] Dr. Tom Ingegno: We're using, glass cups with An open flame to eat the oxygen and create that vacuum. And now we don't need to. So when I see other practitioners using the gun with the plastic cups, I'm like, that's the home, that's the home version. You can play with fire. You're allowed to, but it's so funny where I'm assuming you don't have a plethora of Asian markets and things like that to go to, but by us, I can go into the, there's a chain called H Mart. It's great. I can walk down the health and wellness aisle and pick up two or three different kits right there. The other reason I wrote the book was really because this isn't one culture, right?

[00:28:40] Dr. Tom Ingegno: This is something that everybody should be doing at home, right? This is one more tool in your toolkit before you have to go see the doctor or the physician. Or seek, more intense treatment, but within that, like this was part of everybody's culture.

[00:28:54] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Everybody's grandmother used to do this at one point, so why not respect that? Why not have some traditional experience that. Is backed by modern science and research and that is so easy and safe. And I see you playing with one of the silicone cups Now. Those are some of my favorites because I can't break them.

[00:29:14] Dr. Tom Ingegno: . I can clean 'em with whatever the hell I want. They're not gonna get broken down. And those will last, last a lifetime. As long as you're not chewing on 'em. 

[00:29:21] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:29:22] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And they're fun 

[00:29:22] Dr. Tom Ingegno: to play with. 

[00:29:23] Dr. Tom Ingegno: They're so much fun to play with. And honestly, like 

[00:29:25] Christa Biegler, RD: fidget toy, 

[00:29:26] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Double and triple up on, on uses are for everything, 

[00:29:29] Christa Biegler, RD: let's get into the one on one of cupping if someone's not really familiar with it. Like why would, and what I was intrigued by going through your book was some of the uses because for me, this is my interpretation of cupping is that it's bringing blood flow to the surface. And so when you have more circulation, you're healing faster.

[00:29:49] Christa Biegler, RD: And so it was really for soreness. 

[00:29:50] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. And that's the number one use. Okay. 

[00:29:53] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. Okay. So 

[00:29:54] Christa Biegler, RD: other, yeah. So go over the one on one. Yeah. 

[00:29:56] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So the cool thing is you mentioned blood flow to the surface, right? So when we put the cup on we're pulling the skin away from the fascia away from the muscle.

[00:30:04] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So we have those three layers that we're creating this space. Now the surface. You basically get a hickey, right? The capillaries burst and you're causing those that, that redness, the mark, the bruise is caused by those capillaries breaking. But the real magic happens at those lower, I'm saying magic a lot today.

[00:30:22] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Real benefit happens deeper in the tissue by creating that void, by creating that space between those different layers of tissue. We're allowing older. stagnant quote unquote stagnant blood to be pulled to the surface. And pulling that into that interstitial space and fresh blood, because it's a relatively closed system, fills in behind it, right?

[00:30:46] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So we're getting inflammatory markers, we're getting metabolic waste out of the deeper tissue that may not be getting that circulation. Now that's how it helps with the musculoskeletal stuff. But when we look at cupping's blood flow, the increased blood flow, it happens up to six inches deep in the body.

[00:31:03] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So when you're mentioning other effects of cupping, in the book, we talk about respiratory disorders. We talk about digestive disorders. That's where we're seeing that because we're increasing circulation, just not like we do it on the abdomen. We're going to work the abs, right? Yes. But you're getting blood flow deeper into that tissue, into the intestines.

[00:31:23] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Which is really crazy because we're doing something to the surface of the skin, but it has this effect. Like I said, six inches into the body. So we can even treat the gut from the low back because we can get it from both sides. Right now, one of the other things that happens, and this is one of my favorite uses, and this is actually why my, what my 11 year old, when she treats me at home, she just does it for stress for me.

[00:31:47] Dr. Tom Ingegno: We know that when we trigger one of those parasympathetic nervous system responses, that rest and digest response, as opposed to the sympathetic, the fight or flight our vagus nerve, which everyone's talking about now, how do we get good vagal tone? How do we not get stuck in that fight or flight?

[00:32:04] Dr. Tom Ingegno: But we know when we drop into that rest and digest, if we start breathing deeper and slower, especially on the exhale, if we get ourselves to think about food and we start like getting our stomach to rumble. We're starting to enter parasympathetic nervous system, right? So our brain doesn't tease out any of those specific functions.

[00:32:24] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So if we start increasing circulation, that's another thing. Vasodilation is one of those triggers. All those other things start to fall into place. 15 minutes later, I start to get a little sleepy. Maybe she does that just to calm me down. Maybe it's cause she, wants to eat a bunch of junk food or something.

[00:32:41] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And I told her no before but yeah, she'll do it to help me relax and I just do it for stress relief, 

[00:32:48] Christa Biegler, RD: I was wondering about cupping for stress relief because I saw that as a heading in your book. And that's intriguing. So essentially. Increasing circulation just naturally triggers the parasympathetic nervous system.

[00:32:58] Christa Biegler, RD: If you're urinating a lot when you're drinking water, maybe you're not actually hydrating that much. Or, in other words, getting the fluid and nutrients into the cell. Electrolytes are minerals that help fluid and nutrients get into the cell. I recommend all of my clients start by drinking electrolytes when we begin our work together, so to improve energy.

[00:33:18] Christa Biegler, RD: And then we get even more strategic with our electrolyte recommendations as test results come in. Now, generally electrolytes are potassium, sodium, and chloride. One of my favorite electrolyte products is pickleball cocktail from jigsaw health, because it's one of the only products you can get with an adequate dose of potassium to meet my recommendations, which is critical for blood sugar, which everyone should care about hormone health.

[00:33:41] Christa Biegler, RD: And digestion huge thing for relapsing digestive issues. Jigsaw health is also maker of the famous adrenal cocktail made popular by the pro metabolic corner of the internet and root cause protocol, as well as a multi mineral electrolyte for recovery called electrolyte supreme. You can get a discount on all of jigsaw's amazing products, including pickleball, electrolyte, supreme, and adrenal cocktail at jigsawhealth.

[00:34:05] Christa Biegler, RD: com with the code less stressed 10. That's three S's less stressed. Ten. 

[00:34:12] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, 

[00:34:12] Dr. Tom Ingegno: and we do it with massage, we do it with gua sha, scraping grass ends, we do it with acupuncture. All of these things are really playing with that, autonomic nervous system, vagal nerve tone, whatever you want to call it. It's all the same roots. But if you convince yourself you're relaxed in one area, it has that ripple effect across all other systems. 

[00:34:32] Christa Biegler, RD: I think it's so important. I recall this client I had a lovely client had found some sleep apnea while we were working together, having, would have occasional trouble falling asleep. Funny enough, he would get a massage and sleep like a baby. And I was like, what do you think that this means for you?

[00:34:51] Christa Biegler, RD: This is one of those disconnection pieces, right? Where it's that's interesting that happened. Yes. That is interesting that happened, that somatic, that touch overall. This is getting my kind of wheels turning a little bit. So I've got some specific questions really.

[00:35:04] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:35:05] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Do it. 

[00:35:05] Christa Biegler, RD: All right. So I'm thinking about the muscle soreness and I'm thinking about this flow of things. Do you feel like there's just like a completely interwoven conversation with lymphatics when we're talking about? 

[00:35:17] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah, definitely. Because we're in those areas, right? So we're not necessarily.

[00:35:22] Dr. Tom Ingegno: cupping right over lymph nodes, but any increase in blood flow is also going to increase lymph flow and working with bigger areas. Normally we tend to see them, we think lymph nodes, here, and then, under the armpits and, in the inner thigh or the kind of the big major areas, if we're doing kind of lymphatic massage, but Increasing circulation, releasing tension in the muscles.

[00:35:45] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Of course, you're going to see an uptick in lymph flow. It's not as fast. I remember somebody describing the lymph is like the sewers. But, the 

[00:35:54] Christa Biegler, RD: ocean better. Yeah, I, 

[00:35:56] Dr. Tom Ingegno: yeah, it's not just for garbage. Yeah, but yeah, There's so many things that are happening there that when we treat systemically and for lack of a better phrase cuppings, like probably like really horseshoes and hand grenades, right?

[00:36:12] Dr. Tom Ingegno: We don't need to be exactly on an acupuncture point. We don't need to worry. Are we in the belly of this muscle, right? You hit it. You can be a little bit more loose, a little bit more free form. So yeah, we work adductors, which is going to work. That's a little painful.

[00:36:27] Dr. Tom Ingegno: But when you put the cups on the inner thigh, you're definitely hitting all those lymph pathways that are in there. And those tend to be pretty sluggish and God, I remember doing self massage with that, digging your thumb in and just crying as you're doing it. 

[00:36:40] Christa Biegler, RD: I love talking about lymph here and the lymph experts will say you got to start by opening the drain. 

[00:36:45] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. 

[00:36:45] Christa Biegler, RD: So I want to talk next about where not to cut, but before we go there, I want to understand chest congestion a little bit more and experiences you've had around this because it's a very new idea to me. I'd never would have even thought about it around this, but I wonder, I'd love to hear if you have seen, a lot of long COVID coughing, et cetera. Have you seen any support? 

[00:37:06] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. Yeah. Long COVID has been really such like a like a Bain clinically now, because somebody comes in with symptoms, right? I just had this conversation with a woman today. She goes, yeah, ever since I went through menopause, I'm starting to get this type of arthritis.

[00:37:20] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And I said, Hey, you went through menopause two years ago. And did you have COVID? Yeah. Once. And I'm like, I can't even tell if this is straight menopausal symptoms or it's complicated by long term COVID. And yeah, even my wife was having some weird. She described it as tachycardia and I'm taking her pulse and I'm like, it isn't speeding up.

[00:37:39] Dr. Tom Ingegno: She went to a cardiologist, with a little like monitor with the button. 

[00:37:42] Christa Biegler, RD: I think 

[00:37:42] Christa Biegler, RD: cardiologists are so busy right now. 

[00:37:44] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And the first question they asked when they were screening her was, when did you have COVID? Yeah. They didn't even say, did you have COVID? It's like, how long ago was it?

[00:37:53] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Six to 18 months ago, because this is what we're seeing, right? So the chronic chest congestion, it's funny because in my head, when I was an acupuncture student, that's what I knew it for. But that turns out to be a real Mediterranean thing. It's like the Italians and the Greeks, they do it for chest colds.

[00:38:12] Dr. Tom Ingegno: They always have done it for chest colds. You know what? 

[00:38:15] Christa Biegler, RD: It was 

[00:38:15] Christa Biegler, RD: familiar with cupping. 

[00:38:18] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It was a weird thing, right? It was a weird thing in the back of my head. It wasn't something we were very gentrified. I'm Thomas, not guy Tano. But It was known. It was something like, I had other Italian friends that were like, yeah no, used to do that.

[00:38:33] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:38:34] Christa Biegler, RD: Actually did it. Cause 

[00:38:35] Dr. Tom Ingegno: my grandmother personally, not that I know of my great grandmother probably did. But by the time I came to the scene, she was a little less mobile. Yeah, but within that It was something that, like you'd hear from variations on a theme of how you attach the cups, depending on what culture it was.

[00:38:52] Dr. Tom Ingegno: But if you go back and you watch the Godfather part two and they're describing Fredo, right? He was the frail one, right? The youngest kid, I think. There's a scene where the grandmother is doing cupping on his chest specifically for, but she's got the little old school water glass.

[00:39:09] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And you just see this little old lady leaning over a baby on the kitchen table and I'm like that's nailing Italian culture, right? 

[00:39:16] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah and you were talking about 

[00:39:18] Christa Biegler, RD: this being pervasive in so many cultures. Yeah. I actually thought you meant all Asian culture. 

[00:39:22] Dr. Tom Ingegno: No, like You mean 

[00:39:23] Dr. Tom Ingegno: literally. 

[00:39:24] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So I wish I had them here because water buffalo horns are like one of the traditional ones. And I had, I called, there's only a few acupuncture distributors in the country. And I like harassed the one that's in North Carolina. Cause they get me stuff super quick and I know them well enough where I called them and I sent them a photo of sheep herders in Ethiopia.

[00:39:46] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And they had these water buffalo horns up and down this one dude's back. And I literally said to the guy, Joey, can you please get me these? This looks so fucking metal. He's like, all right, let me see if I can get them from our suppliers in China. And Joey didn't own the company, but he was like one of the higher ups.

[00:40:08] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And he calls me back two hours later. He's I can get them, but we're only going to order samples. So they're going to cost a lot more than if we carry them. And I go, how much? And he goes. About 20 bucks a piece and I goes, if that's landed, give me 100 worth and I'll go from there, and so I figured I'd get five and then he calls me back.

[00:40:28] Dr. Tom Ingegno: He goes, you know what I showed him to the owner, Barry and Barry also thinks they're metal as fuck, so we're going to carry them and he goes, now they're 9 a piece. I'm like, okay, so let's go with 100 worth. And he sent me all of them. Now, the problem is one of the things with the designs of the cups is you want a really wide edge because the buffalo horn it's and it's water buffalo.

[00:40:51] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It's Asian water buffalo. They cut into you their fingernail material. It's very thin. And I put him on my dad. He was like these hurt people. Why are you doing this? And I'm like no, I did it to you. I can't share these cups. These are the family cups. Why these are porous. I can't sterilize them.

[00:41:08] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. This is the way we're not giving somebody else an infection because I want it. 

[00:41:12] Christa Biegler, RD: Maybe 

[00:41:12] Christa Biegler, RD: they were sanding the edges or something. 

[00:41:14] Dr. Tom Ingegno: do, but it's so thin. I really wanted to get bison. We used to have a bison farm here. I wanted to get the bison horn, but the pet market has them cornered, so anytime they butcher a bison they're great for dogs that chew really hard, but their shell is much, their horn is much thicker, so I might have to go and buy a couple and sand them myself. 

[00:41:33] Christa Biegler, RD: I'll have to go see what I can find land to occasionally drive by. I'll see what I can, I'm gonna have to look into this, I'll have to look into this. 

[00:41:41] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It's worldwide, and ago, they were doing it, calling it Ventosa. Even the Muslim faith.

[00:41:47] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It's part of their religion. They call it hijama. Yeah. So it's everywhere we, it might be Egyptian and it looks how they apply the cups is just slight variation, normally classic cup, 

[00:41:58] Dr. Tom Ingegno: right? And the 

[00:41:59] Dr. Tom Ingegno: design of the cup, everything. Yeah. 

[00:42:00] Christa Biegler, RD: Maybe. And I think talking about where to not put them is important, but let's go.

[00:42:04] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah, definitely. 

[00:42:05] Christa Biegler, RD: Where to put them. Actually, I like the concept of the cups look. Interesting. Now, in today's world, I saw in your book, there's red light cups. So you can, yeah, 

[00:42:13] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I'm a big fan of stacking. Actually. We do that at our clinic. Like we have people like run through a circuit of services.

[00:42:19] Dr. Tom Ingegno: But. I also think it's like the swiss army knife that's so bulky that it's not even a good knife anymore in some cases. So I have a whole bunch of those red light cups. I don't believe right. So with the red light, the frequency is always the same, the wavelength, I should say. But the intensity, the output needs to be really high.

[00:42:41] Dr. Tom Ingegno: We have red light therapy in our office. If you're going to get a treatment with the panel being anything less than on your surface of your skin, the red light in the cup is a little led and you can't convince me that it's powerful enough to actually do it. Does it look cool? Yeah. Did I buy the 80 one?

[00:42:59] Dr. Tom Ingegno: No, I went to China and just said, how much are you selling these for 20 bucks? Okay. I'll try them. it's cool because it's motorized, that's a cool function. You don't have to sit there and pump it yourself. The red light really isn't enough. Even the ones that heat up, I don't feel like they get hot enough to notice. 

[00:43:15] Christa Biegler, RD: How many 

[00:43:15] Christa Biegler, RD: sets of cups do you have? 

[00:43:17] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So when I wrote the book I spent several hundred dollars picking up like one or two odds and ends like weird cups. 

[00:43:23] Christa Biegler, RD: Not bad though. 

[00:43:24] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It's not. I like the tools. Yeah. 

[00:43:25] Dr. Tom Ingegno: No. And it's all a business right off, but like the glass cups that we use clinically, God, I probably have a couple of hundred at the office.

[00:43:31] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Why? Cause they're a pain in the ass to clean. And if it's busy and you're using like 10 to 15 on a patient, by the end of the day, you're cleaning 60 cups, 70 cups. And you're like, Oh God, 

[00:43:41] Christa Biegler, RD: that was those 

[00:43:41] Christa Biegler, RD: are the OGs, but they're harder to use. 

[00:43:43] Dr. Tom Ingegno: That's why I suggest leaving that to the professionals.

[00:43:46] Dr. Tom Ingegno: One glass can break to you have an open flame. And if you're not set up, if you're not trained how to do that, like the last thing I wanted somebody to do was read my book and burn their house down. Yeah, I can't imagine that lawsuit. Yeah. 

[00:43:59] Christa Biegler, RD: What results have you seen with cupping the lungs?

[00:44:02] Christa Biegler, RD: You told me that the sty usually resolves two hours after this. 

[00:44:06] Dr. Tom Ingegno: That days is normally what I say. That was just a fluke patient. That was just way too eager to be my favorite patient but yeah, I had, and this was funny because the first one was a Greek woman.

[00:44:17] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Who came in and she had antibiotic resistant bronchitis. So she ran two courses and she goes, my grandmother would have done this at home. And I'm like, hang on, I'll go get the cups. And she goes, you do that. And I did it. She called me three days later saying she couldn't believe how much phlegm she was coughing up.

[00:44:35] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Which is everything went to productive, right? And it could have been, this is the weird thing, right? So when we increase circulation, we're increasing circulation of anything that's in the blood. Maybe we got the antibiotics to the lungs better, so I'm not saying it was me, but then I did it again a few months later to somebody else that had like walking pneumonia or something.

[00:44:54] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And, she goes, Oh my God, I feel so much better. And it became productive. Increasing, in East Asian medicine as a whole is really just trying to stimulate the body to do the thing that it's supposed to do anyway. Yeah. When we look at it, it's not about we're not going to be able to turn somebody's metabolism up.

[00:45:10] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Past what's normal. But regulating towards normal is what we can help do on both sides of that coin, too much, too little, just right is what we're going for. So when we do it with cupping, that's what we'll see. And, those are the really interesting things I've seen with, cupping as like a, wow, I didn't even think that would work that well as like when you do get an infection breaking up. 

[00:45:30] Christa Biegler, RD: Totally. On the same note, you were talking about treating gut from the low back. I think about this I've had a variety of guests. And I remember someone had a modality that was essentially, in my opinion, some kind of abdominal massage. 

[00:45:48] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. 

[00:45:49] Christa Biegler, RD: But what I liked about it was that she, she made such a valid point because when you're in fight or flight, your blood flow goes to your extremities to run from tiger.

[00:45:57] Christa Biegler, RD: You often, like when you live in that state, which we so often do when we're disconnected, especially you're losing blood flow to the abdomen. And so that's going to impact your gut symptoms, but also hormone, fertility, all of that stuff is right there. So I feel like this is just another one of those modalities that can return blood flow to the central cavity, ultimately only going to be positive.

[00:46:19] Christa Biegler, RD: I think. 

[00:46:20] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. 

[00:46:21] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. You mentioned tongue diagnosis, right? Mapping out the tongue. The Japanese tend not to use that as much. Yes. They learn it in school. And part of the reason is in the 1600s, acupuncture was a vocation for blind people. So they would do abdominal diagnosis.

[00:46:36] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So they map it out similar to the tongue, but when we press, we have what we call alarm points. We check and that tells us the pathologies in the channel, the pathologies in the organ, these kinds of things, and gives us some fundamental stuff. And as a Japanese practitioner, we do a lot of abdominal diagnosis and treatment.

[00:46:53] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And you're absolutely right throughout history in Asia, there were a lot of systems. One was called the school of the middle in China, right? Why if the gut isn't working, if we're not digesting, how are we going to get herbs in? How are we going to get medications in? Why? Because your body's not going to be able to do anything with it.

[00:47:10] Dr. Tom Ingegno: If that middle is not working I'm sorry, I ran with that.

[00:47:12] Christa Biegler, RD: No, it's 

[00:47:13] Christa Biegler, RD: perfect. It's perfect. I'm just thinking of some other things that I think are maybe very important. Earlier, we were talking about emotions stored in organs like the liver, and I think you are using acupuncture for that.

[00:47:24] Christa Biegler, RD: And I'd love to know if I pretty positive the answer is yes. I see people having emotional release. They come out sometimes crying when you do acupuncture. Do you see that with cupping as well? 

[00:47:34] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah, you can, right? This is in that realm of somatic response, right? Where, any reaction is good as long as it's not violent.

[00:47:43] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So depending on what organ we're talking about, we have 12 channels, right? We don't put, consciousness in the brain in Chinese medicine. It's local to the body, but it's not inherently in one organ. So we split up that's, so your intellect, our ability to speak and everything comes down to the spleen and stomach, which is our major digestion ones.

[00:48:00] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So we talk about brain fog, whether it's with COVID or anything else. And then we're like, Oh, the spleen and stomach isn't working. Students. Oh, their spleen is depleted while they're studying too much. But within that, the main releases that we see Yes, sometimes it's crying. Crying tends to be the most popular one.

[00:48:16] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I've had people say, I'm really angry and I don't know why. We go, Oh, this must be liver. This must be the smooth flow of chi and blood throughout the body is what we say classically. But, even laughing even terrible sadness that isn't even crying grief, they all come out, they're all, Indicative of a different organ.

[00:48:33] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And it's just another thing to note, right? We don't hang our whole diagnosis on one sign or symptom, but we go, oh, that's interesting. 

[00:48:40] Christa Biegler, RD: And it's powerful. 

[00:48:43] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It is. And that experience like, wow, I came in for something physical and I had this whole body release that became emotional, became psychoemotional.

[00:48:53] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And it's wow, because that's where it was stuck, wasn't in the body. You felt it in the body. 

[00:48:59] Christa Biegler, RD: This is good when you have this kind of bait and switch, right? Or it's I came for pain, but I left with more. 

[00:49:04] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It's funny because my mentor used to say this look, they might be limping in and they want you to address their knee.

[00:49:09] Dr. Tom Ingegno: You better address their damn knee. But when you're addressing their knee, you're treating everything else, right? Nothing's separated, right? We sometimes say ghost in the machine, right? That was Descartes. But like in Chinese medicine, the East Asian philosophy, no we were this energy being that just becomes denser and denser until it has physical, material, right?

[00:49:28] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So , you can't pull them apart, right? If I separate your spirit from your body, you're dead. So those two things are intimately connected. We even call that yin yang divorce. When somebody's on their deathbed, right up the physical and the non manifest are separating. Yeah, we treat the body from the spirit from the body.

[00:49:46] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And why? Because it's the same thing. It's the same. You. 

[00:49:50] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. That's one of those things. The experience. Seeing as believing 

[00:49:55] Christa Biegler, RD: stuff. 

[00:49:55] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. You can't convince somebody that, we've had people, you'll be working on them and all of a sudden they think about past traumas or they go, Oh my God, I didn't realize this happened.

[00:50:05] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I had one patient and I treated her once and she cried like the almost the whole treatment and this is God, there's gotta be almost 20 years ago. And she came back three weeks later, didn't make another appointment and she goes. You treated me and all of a sudden I remember this abuse that I went through when I was a child.

[00:50:25] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And she said, look, I'm holding off on treatments until I get some mental health counseling. And I said I think that's real wise. It was, and I, you go back and you look at your points and you're like I didn't even do anything that should have been psychoemotional.

[00:50:39] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And it's 

[00:50:39] Christa Biegler, RD: you can't control. 

[00:50:40] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It doesn't matter. If you get the right diagnosis, what comes out. 

[00:50:43] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. It reminds me actually. My dad has been a really like hard soul my entire life. He was a Vietnam veteran. And actually he had knee surgery, I think three years ago and he has never really been the same because he like woke up and he was in war.

[00:50:58] Christa Biegler, RD: So I'm not exactly sure what happened there, but it's unlocked something where he's yeah, this stuff is coming up actually. 

[00:51:03] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. And 

[00:51:05] Dr. Tom Ingegno: especially with vets, especially with the Vietnam vets and the Korean vets they were sent somewhere. They were came home. 

[00:51:11] Dr. Tom Ingegno: They weren't heroes, right? Yeah,, there were kids when they went, they were men when they came back, but there was not an evolution there. It was just like a cold, hard thing. And then they're fighting people that. Don't know why, like they're like, why are we killing these people?

[00:51:25] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. They're all of those things are there. And it's real funny because I used to treat one years ago and he like, it was very funny. He had a Korean girlfriend. And she's I don't know if I like this white guy playing with this stuff. He doesn't like about me because he would come home and have these flashbacks for a day or two.

[00:51:46] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And it was him processing. And he even said it, he articulated it so well, like his PTSD, he didn't call it that ever. But I don't want to lose that thing. That's keeping me alive. What is that? That's the fucking fight or flight response. That is in a nutshell. That is the chart.

[00:52:03] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm glad you brought that up because sometimes, how else can you connect the people to what they need, right? Yeah. It's like that thing. It's it's actually a, it's actually scary to work through the thing. I don't know. 

[00:52:14] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Because that's it right. 

[00:52:15] Christa Biegler, RD: Coming in to process their emotions with you. 

[00:52:17] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah, it's funny because the people that are savvy, the people that have done acupuncture before, and like I said, there's a bunch of different systems. There's one that really harps on that. Like I almost feel in some cases to a fault because we're not psychologists and we're not mental healthcare workers.

[00:52:31] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It's part of our training, but it's not like. No, dude, you need to talk to somebody is normally what I end up saying. It's you can tell me whatever, if you want to work through this, I'll give you a referral. And it's funny because that's We're playing with that survival instinct so much, right?

[00:52:48] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And we talk about that as the kidney, that's fear, right? The kidneys adrenal means on top of the kidneys, what gland gets taxed? What thing makes cortisol? What thing powers the adrenal gland? And I know I'm saying it like that intentionally, but that's the house of will in Chinese medicine.

[00:53:04] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So yes, it's fear based because that keeps us alive. Right now we know the amygdala's involved in the brain and all of that as well. But it is that drive. It's that I'm gonna get through this or I'm gonna fight my way out, or I'm gonna take as many of these people out with me as I can.

[00:53:18] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And that's really hard to put down, especially, in the mail incarnations, right? I can't, why, 'cause that's who I am. If I let that go, what's I'm too soft. Somebody's gonna kill me. 

[00:53:30] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. 

[00:53:30] Christa Biegler, RD: Man, good stuff. 

[00:53:31] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It was a real weird aside there, but I think it was a little dark, we're talking about numb.

[00:53:37] Christa Biegler, RD: Let's talk about what best practices or not to do more. So when you were talking about increasing blood flow, I wanted to make sure to ask about cupping during cancer. 

[00:53:46] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. 

[00:53:47] Dr. Tom Ingegno: This is a double edged sword with any modality in cancer, right? I have people that come in, we have exercise with oxygen therapy at our office and people are like, I want to do that.

[00:53:55] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Oxygen kills cancer. And I'm like, Some cancers, other cancers love oxygen, right? And I will always default to the person with the right title. And that's you let the oncologist call me. I will explain to them what the process is, and if they say yes, I'm okay. And this is the same thing with cancer and cupping, right?

[00:54:18] Dr. Tom Ingegno: In most cases, cancer oncologists, I haven't met somebody that said don't do acupuncture. But 

[00:54:25] Christa Biegler, RD: testament to how open we are to action. 

[00:54:27] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. Yeah. And I think the research is there with cupping. We're not really talking about it too much with cancer. And we don't have research on it, so best case scenario.

[00:54:38] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It probably is okay, but don't take that chance. Talk with your oncologist, and in that case, maybe you don't want to just be doing it at home. Maybe you do want to have a licensed practitioner that has some experience. And I want this to be accessible to everybody, but I also don't want anyone to get hurt.

[00:54:53] Christa Biegler, RD: I learned you weren't supposed to do it over your spine. So tell us about other places. 

[00:54:56] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. Yeah. So give you the big contraindications and over the spine is like a fast and loose one. And I think that's more of if somebody was going to do it really intense, you're probably going to just piss off a nerve.

[00:55:07] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I don't think you do permanent damage, but why do that? I saw Jessica Simpson while she was pregnant at the nail salon posted something on Instagram that she got cupping at the nail salon on her legs on points that we would consider contraindicated in pregnancy and acupuncture. In general, we don't have any data.

[00:55:24] Dr. Tom Ingegno: This is another area we haven't researched. I would say don't do it while you're pregnant. Why? In Chinese medicine, we think a fetus is an accumulation of qi and blood. in blood. We don't want t Jessica Simpson had the k But once again, no resear side of caution. No one's women as an experiment. N know things like vas deep vein thrombosis or i right below the surface o Don't put a cup there, right?

[00:55:56] Dr. Tom Ingegno: You can do it somewhere else. Not right there. And that might mean that for most people that have those legs are out of play. If you want to treat the legs, do something on the low back and the hips. Open wounds. Don't put it over an open wound. I saw one study that talked about acupuncture for eczema cupping for eczema.

[00:56:14] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It did not put the cups for eczema. on the sites of eczema. It did some systemic stuff. So once again, like if we had it on the elbow or an area that's prone to getting it, doing something on the neck and shoulder to increase circulation down the arm is the thought there. So no open wounds, no things on the surface of the skin.

[00:56:33] Dr. Tom Ingegno: The spine is one of those ones that they're worried that if you do it very intensely that you would upset. The root of the nerve. Clinically, I haven't seen that when we do sliding cupping with the glass jars. Sometimes we get lazy and we'll pull one across the spine just quickly.

[00:56:47] Dr. Tom Ingegno: We don't leave it there. Nothing bad ever happens. It's safe. But yeah, at home, not directly on the spine. It really likes to hold into like flat muscles. It does. It sticks best there. 

[00:56:59] Christa Biegler, RD: Why do you slide versus leave it in one place?

[00:57:02] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So the idea here is You know, you can put a bunch of cups on and cover an area, but a sliding cupping and it works itself so well for the back, put some oil down and I can run the whole length of that erector muscle going from all the way from the trap all the way down to the hips, right?

[00:57:19] Dr. Tom Ingegno: What? Oh God it's like a very intense massage, right? So it's a little bit Gua Sha scraping. Because of the way it is, but you also get that cupping effect. So you're pushing the tissue down, you're pulling it up and then you're pushing it back down as it slides under the cup. So you're getting three points of stimulation, right?

[00:57:38] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So it's very intense when we do it in the clinic. And even then sometimes I have to put the cups on very light to be able to get the cup to move or to make it tolerable for the patient. And that's the same thing, right? These silicone cups I sent you, they have a nice little handle on them.

[00:57:52] Dr. Tom Ingegno: You're not able to put them on too tight. So once again, safety first. I'm pretty sure people that are using that style are not going to hurt themselves, but that handle works really well for the sliding technique. You use olive oil, use coconut oil, use whatever you have at home or we talk a whole bunch about different liniments and things that you can buy online.

[00:58:11] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Hell, Ben Gale work if you want to use that, but you put that down and you pull one hand in the opposite direction of that muscle. And you slide with the other and it's a different sensation. Like I said, it's massage, it's gua sha, it's cupping, it's three things at once. And it's very intense, but it's great to get things really ripped up quickly.

[00:58:32] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Ripped up. Doesn't sound so good when we're talking about treating someone but those workout fiends would love that. Oh God, I'm going to go get ripped up. 

[00:58:40] Christa Biegler, RD: And doing three things at once really speaks to my efficiency. 

[00:58:44] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. The 

[00:58:45] Dr. Tom Ingegno: biohacking community. 

[00:58:47] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Okay.

[00:58:48] Christa Biegler, RD: We covered a ton. We meant to talk about copying. We got. Sidelined by acupuncture, which was important.

[00:58:54] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I think this was a great conversation. 

[00:58:56] Christa Biegler, RD: It was perfect. It was perfect. And there's something I want to underline that I think is a good summary statement. Yeah. You say in your book, one factor always contributes to achieving positive results faster.

[00:59:07] Christa Biegler, RD: There's this common denominator, essentially, in people who are achieving positive results. What do you say about that? 

[00:59:13] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Jesus, I wrote this book like a year ago.

[00:59:16] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm doing it every day. It was consistent 

[00:59:18] Dr. Tom Ingegno: consistency. Yeah. I, it's fine. I knew you were going there too. And that speaks to the practice itself.

[00:59:23] Dr. Tom Ingegno: You get better, the more you do it certainly with consistency, this is a therapy, right? So it's not every day, but it's as your body can tolerate the area, right? You could cup your body every day, but not in the same spots. You want to get, let those bruises clean up a little bit, but.

[00:59:38] Dr. Tom Ingegno: A therapy is not a one and done thing. So doing it with some regularity is going to be that's what I'm speaking of.

[00:59:44] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. It 

[00:59:44] Christa Biegler, RD: was essentially at the beginning of the book, you were talking about people who have the best results aren't just relying on their in office treatments. They're doing more to support themselves at home.

[00:59:54] Christa Biegler, RD: And so therefore I want to teach you about this amazing thing that everyone knows about. But it's this lost art that I didn't even realize was so pervasive in so many cultures 

[01:00:04] Dr. Tom Ingegno: over 5, 

[01:00:05] Dr. Tom Ingegno: 000 years old. Yeah. It's been everywhere. 

[01:00:08] Christa Biegler, RD: One of my tenants with this podcast. There's a few things it's always there's so much opportunity.

[01:00:12] Christa Biegler, RD: I truly never think you're out of options for anything. Literally anything. No one of my thoughts. And the other one is that there's a lot of opportunities for self healing. And I think personally, that's how we change the medical system is that you advocate, there's a time and a place to have your expert all the time.

[01:00:31] Christa Biegler, RD: And maybe you need that person. And there's all these learning, like every experience is a success, according to Louise Hay. And it's one of my favorite quotes. But there's a lot of opportunities to support yourself in between appointments on your own. And so it's a big, huge, I'm a huge fan of modalities to help you heal yourself.

[01:00:47] Christa Biegler, RD: And this essentially is a tool for faster healing is how I look at it. 

[01:00:51] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. And you can call it like they call it lifestyle, medicine, self care, whatever. But the more things you're doing in between your appointments, whether that's just your, every six months checkup which is funny, right?

[01:01:02] Dr. Tom Ingegno: You get that piece of paper. It says, oh, all the labs are in normal order. You must be very healthy and you'll be dying on the inside and they don't know. But doing those things, being more in tune with how your body functions and, oh, I ate this and that didn't work for me. And, oh, you know what?

[01:01:18] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I tried this and, cupping is one of those things that like, with a little bit of money, you buy the book, if you want, don't. Watch a YouTube video. I really just want people doing good work and taking care of themselves. And then you become your own advocate, you become your best representative of yourself.

[01:01:33] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And let's face it, MDs, all the healthcare professionals know that everybody's got a little Rectangle in their pocket. That's smarter than anybody on the planet. And we have access to that. Now we're starting to use that. Now we're not only just starting to use it to, start fights on social media, but we're like.

[01:01:51] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Double checking things and fact checking and going, Oh, I found out about this. Is that any good? Okay. Let me read this website. Oh, this one seems biased. Let me check over here. So we can start to empower ourselves, but that doesn't mean just dump the baby out with the bath water. So a lot of these traditional practices, and I think in the next few years, we're going to see more and more, we talk about shamanisms as we talk about psychedelics.

[01:02:13] Dr. Tom Ingegno: We talk about that cultural ancestral roots there. And look, Oh God, modern research is showing, yes, these things happen, right? So we had a lot of knowledge throughout history and we can bring it back. We can redefine it. We can measure it now. And that doesn't devalue it, and that's why I think cupping is one of these modalities that needs to go back into families and into homes because it's so accessible. It's so easy to use and it's everybody's culture. 

[01:02:42] Christa Biegler, RD: For sure. I love it. I think this is fun conversation. 

[01:02:45] Dr. Tom Ingegno: We went long, 

[01:02:46] Dr. Tom Ingegno: didn't we? I'm sorry about that. 

[01:02:47] Christa Biegler, RD: No, I had time. I should have stopped and asked you if you had time. But 

[01:02:51] Dr. Tom Ingegno: no, I'm good. I'm good. 

[01:02:52] Christa Biegler, RD: We got distracted by the acupuncture and here we are. And I think we summarized it well. So where can people find you online? 

[01:02:59] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Charm City Integrative, T I V E dot com is my clinic's website, but you can find out all about me.

[01:03:06] Dr. Tom Ingegno: You can find links to the book. You can find links to my podcast. You can book me for lectures, those kind of things too. Yeah, I love talking about this. I just want to share what I know and make sure people have the information. 

[01:03:19] Christa Biegler, RD: the relatable acupuncturist. That's one of my takeaways from our conversation is Oh, I would just to learn this from you because 

[01:03:25] Dr. Tom Ingegno: We'll see.

[01:03:26] Dr. Tom Ingegno: We'll see. Maybe there'll be a school in the future. 

[01:03:29] Christa Biegler, RD: Maybe. Thank you so much for coming on today. I see you maybe have your own show too called irreverent health, which is the perfect name for you. 

[01:03:36] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that one started me and my buddy, Matt we're just having these conversations in the back of a business group and people would come over and just listen.

[01:03:44] Dr. Tom Ingegno: And then eventually somebody said, you guys should record this. And then COVID hit and we're like, all right let's start recording this. Yeah, I say stuff that's even more off the cuff than I did here. Normally, like I haven't even reached for the whiskey glass. 

[01:03:57] Christa Biegler, RD: I feel like we got a real Joe Rogan 

[01:03:59] Christa Biegler, RD: experience.

[01:04:00] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I'm not Pro Joe Rogan. I'm not anti Joe Rogan. I like some of his guests, but like some of them, I'm like, no, that, that guy is a fascist. No, that's fascism. No, he's describing fascism. We should all be against that, Joe. Yeah,

[01:04:15] Christa Biegler, RD: I don't listen to enough of him to catch. 

[01:04:17] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I know every once in a while, I'm like, That guy's crazy.

[01:04:20] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Why did you have him on? No, we know he's insane. 

[01:04:26] Christa Biegler, RD: I guess that's the why, right? Like

[01:04:28] Dr. Tom Ingegno: exactly. 

[01:04:28] Dr. Tom Ingegno: It's, he just, he loves it. Cause he's making more money. Yeah, that's all good. 

[01:04:33] Christa Biegler, RD: Thanks so much for coming on today. 

[01:04:34] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I had so much 

[01:04:35] Dr. Tom Ingegno: fun 

[01:04:36] Christa Biegler, RD: Sharing your passion of cupping and honestly, just helping people heal themselves.

[01:04:40] Christa Biegler, RD: I think you, I'm glad the divine intervention sent you the acupuncture school card. How hilarious. And I feel more inspired than I really expected to. 

[01:04:48] Christa Biegler, RD: So today for the first time, I was like, I think I know what my 10 year goals are. And then I look at retirement. I'm like, what would I like to do in retirement?

[01:04:55] Christa Biegler, RD: Cause this is my personality. It wouldn't be that I'm just doing whatever people do in retirement. I'm like, yeah, maybe in retirement I could do some acupuncture. 

[01:05:03] Dr. Tom Ingegno: When I was in school the program was Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday, and it was specifically written for people changing careers.

[01:05:11] Dr. Tom Ingegno: The average age of a student was 35. I started at 

[01:05:15] Dr. Tom Ingegno: 21. 

[01:05:17] Dr. Tom Ingegno: But that's the thing. We had a 76 year old in our program. 

[01:05:21] Christa Biegler, RD: Oh, yeah. 

[01:05:21] Dr. Tom Ingegno: So 

[01:05:21] Dr. Tom Ingegno: I was bringing the average down. Yeah,

[01:05:24] Christa Biegler, RD: the 

[01:05:24] Christa Biegler, RD: stories that I like personally is you can reinvent yourself at any age. And what else I'm saying is like, Oh, here is this ancient modality that is so powerful that has a lot of things in it that I love, like pattern recognition, etc.

[01:05:36] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. And how do You know, get to the root of the unlayering of things. 

[01:05:39] Dr. Tom Ingegno: We could have done a whole episode on Daoism and it's pre Daoist roots which, you read books on Chinese shamanism and you're like, Oh wow, this sounds like Native American culture.

[01:05:50] Christa Biegler, RD: And I'm not smart enough to even know what Dao is, but it's there. 

[01:05:54] Dr. Tom Ingegno: You're describing it perfectly. The Dao that can be named is not the true Dao. 

[01:05:58] Christa Biegler, RD: Perfect. 

[01:06:01] Dr. Tom Ingegno: All right, we're going to 

[01:06:03] Dr. Tom Ingegno: ramble if if you leave me on here and you don't hang up on me

[01:06:06] Christa Biegler, RD: for 

[01:06:06] Christa Biegler, RD: coming on today.

[01:06:07] Dr. Tom Ingegno: Thanks 

[01:06:08] Christa Biegler, RD: for the beard. This is great the cupping book available everywhere