Integrative Medicine Dr. Jonathan Fields, AP, DOM discusses common herbs for prevention and treatment of cold and flu symptoms with Qi Gong Master, Teresa Yeung.

 Transcript text below video.

Sifu Teresa:  00:03

Hi, everyone. I invite you to join me as Master Teresa, Qigong Master. Today, we have Jonathan Fields, right? He’s a traditional Chinese medical doctor so he is also practitioner and teacher of Qigong. Today, we want to work very well with improving our well-being. Here, I use herbal medicine, myself.

00:30

Jonathan is a renowned acupuncturist, doctor of Oriental Medicine, a speaker and author. He spent a lifetime in martial arts with over 15 years of teaching experience, performing throughout US and China. He has studied at the world-famous, Shaolin Temple and in the Beijing Gulou hospital. He currently owns and operates a successful integrative medicine clinic in South Florida. And he offers online consultations on herbs and food therapy. You will really love, Jonathan. Now, let’s invite Jonathan into the room. Just wait for a moment.

01:24

Hi, Jonathan. Please help us to know herbal medicine, better.

Dr. Fields:  01:30

Beautiful. Sifu, thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here and speak with a Qigong Master, like yourself. We’re going to try to condense 4 or 5000 years of herbal therapy into a short session, but we’ll give you guys some basics.

01:46

One of the interesting things that you mentioned to me earlier was about how Qigong and the energy which Qigong and one of the things I think goes here there is, it does go with herbal medicine and we had spoken about this in the past. Shennong which is considered the father of the Chinese herbal medicine, about 3 or 4000 years ago, when he was tasting the different herbs and coming up with a different herbs, they actually in the TCM standpoint, we actually assign a taste of flavor and an energy to each herb, whether it’s warm or hot or cold and a channel, a Meridian, different Meridians that the herbs go to or enter or help with, just like we do with Qigong exercises. There is some definite overlap. I mean, I can tell you from my personal experience, herbal therapy is incredibly powerful and very effective. Sometimes even much more than medication. And for anybody who’s skeptical about this kind of stuff, if you look at most of the pharmaceutical drugs on the market, the majority of them are based on an extract of an herb. There is scientific basis for a lot of these herbs and for what they do. Aspirin, for instance came from White Willow, which is a traditional Chinese herb that’s been used for a long time. Digoxin comes from Foxglove root, which is a Shu Di Huang, which is a yin and blood tonic, and so on.

03:14

What I wanted to do today is speak about a couple things. One is some preventative stuff that we could use for what’s going on now. And some things that you’ll probably have common in your kitchen that you can use. So you don’t have to go hunting in Chinatown. There’s some things around the house that are can be very powerful to use for daily use, like some of the things you’re using probably for your teas as well. And one of the other questions you asked me about is how to know if you’re out of balance?

03:41

Let’s start with that. And the best answer for that and before you get on any herbs that could consider to be very strong or could have any sort of toxic side effects or before you start experimenting with formulas. I think it is always best to seek the advice of a professional herbalist or a doctor of Oriental Medicine. How you could tell you’re out of balance is if your energy is low. If you’re having problems with digestion, whether it’s bloating or gas or problems with your bowel movements, if you’re having trouble sleeping, maybe staying asleep or maybe waking up in the middle of the night, many different reasons. I mean, herbology is basically our internal medicine.

04:24

There’s thousands of herbs in the pharmacopoeia of the traditional Chinese medicine. In the United States, in North America, there’s probably about 200 or so common ones that we use in probably about 200 different common formulas that we use. Then we mix and match them sometimes and we can customize formulas, specifically to the patient depending on their symptoms and on their constitution. Where this becomes important, why it’s good to seek the knowledge or professional is because I get a lot questions from not only patients but also from other doctors. They say, Well tell me what herb or what formula do I use for insomnia? Or what do I use for constipation? And while we have many, that’s not typically how the Chinese medicine works.

05:18

One of the most distinguishing factors of this medicine is that every person is individual and it’s different based on the individual. For instance, one person might have constipation because of yin deficiency, right? Maybe their body fluids are too dry. Somebody else might be constipated, because qi deficiency, maybe they just don’t have enough qi in the spleen and stomach to actually push the stool through. Those people would be put on two different, very different formulas. And if you gave somebody the wrong formula, a too high of a dose or for too long over time, it could actually cause damage. So, you still want to be careful. But we’re going to go into basic stuff that you could use now around the kitchen and we’ll talk about some preventative stuff.

06:11

The first 4 herbs that I want to talk about that are very basic. We can all get them, when they’re lying around the house. If not, I recommend you should always stock these 4 things. One is mint, mint leaves, right? So bo he, peppermint, you probably use it sometimes in your tea. And any mint, I prefer the fresh mint leaves, you can buy them dried as well. Some people like to use essential oils, you can, if its food grade, but I always prefer to have the actual herb itself. There’s nothing like the energy of a raw herb. That’s the natural format. That’s how it was used for thousands of years. That’s how we use it.

06:54

A lot of people drink mint tea. Mint has a few different properties. We use it for everything from venting rashes, measles to some extent, but basically for cooling you down for the most part, and also for qi stagnation. So if you have any liver qi stagnation, if you’re a hot headed, angry, easily irritable, or have any sort of blockages, peppermint can be a great thing. You can get peppermint leaves. More importantly now, we use it for external wind invasions. So within the TCM paradigm, basically we consider any sort of infection, whether it’s bacterial or virus, any sort of infection, we can sort of that, basically an evil pathogen they got into the body, right? So if you’re outside and the wind is blowing, and it’s cold outside and you got your shirt off and you’re wet, you might catch a cold so it’s the same thing. The wind can carry in either cold or heat or dampness or dryness along with that wind. Peppermint is probably the first herb I recommend to keep around the house because you can use it whether it’s wind heat or wind cold. You can use it for both. And because it is so pungent and aromatic, it’s dispersing. It also helps with nasal congestion, runny nose, that kind of stuff. So a lot of, sinuses are a big issue around here. Mint is one of those things that could help with sinuses. And once again even with mint, it’s mild so it’s safe in for long term use, it’s safe for daily use. But if you are extremely deficient, it might not be the best thing for you to do too much though. Because it is so dispersing and might disperse some of the qi but if you know that you have a cold or a fever, first thing you should reach for is a few leaves of peppermint. You just boil some water, throw the leaves in a cup, pour some boiling water on it, let it steep for 10-15 minutes and drink it.

09:00

The next thing, I want to get into very important and crucial herb that most of us around the house is cinnamon. Cinnamon, Gui Zhi is the cinnamon twigs and Rou Gui way is generally considered the bark of the cinnamon tree, which is considered a hotter and more of a yang tonic than the gui zhi, the twigs. Most of us have powdered cinnamon around the house, I would suggest getting the sticks if you can, because if you’re drinking tea and there’s a bunch of powder in it, sometimes it gets all over your lips. Some people don’t like that. It’s easier to throw in a little peppermint. You throw in a cinnamon stick. Now what do we have? We have hot and cold. Now your formula is balanced, right? Yin and Yang, because as cinnamon is considered warming, it’s hot, and then mint is cooling. So that way you’re not going any too far in one direction.

09:53

Now if you have a high fever, you probably want to skip the cinnamon and do more mint but a lot of times, when you’re sick, let’s say, we were basically what we call a wind cold invasion, which would typically be more chills than fever. If you’re having a lot of chills, you can still have fever but if you have more chills, typically you’d have headaches, neck and back pains, sore, achy muscles. In those cases, you definitely want the mint and the cinnamon and you’d probably use more cinnamon than the mint.

10:24

The other beautiful thing with the cinnamon, we actually use it to relieve pain also, so we use it for gynecological issues, for injuries, everything from tendinitis to carpal tunnel. Cinnamon is pharmacologically known to be vasodilator. Meaning, it actually opens the blood flow, it encourages blood flow so it helps when you have those muscle aches and pains, arthritis, any of that stuff. Cinnamon can help. The only time again like I said cinnamon would be contraindicated in large amounts.

10:55

If you have a very high fever or if you have pain and a lot of heat in the body. Let’s say if you have rheumatoid arthritis and your joints are always hot and swollen and physically hot. Cinnamon, you’d probably want to skip we have herbs that move blood and clear heat would be better for that. But if you have the chills or if you have typical pain or you have like the arthritis type of pain that’s worse with cold weather, and dampness, and rainy weather. Absolutely, cinnamon is a great thing for that to use. And same thing you could actually just pour some boiling water in there. There’s other ways to cook herbs. This is just as simple as for us to do, keep around us, keep some cinnamon sticks around the house and keep mint leaves around the house.

11:39

Two more very common herbs I wanted to talk about. One is ginger. We’re all very familiar with ginger, right? Ginger activates the spleen, and it’s good for the spleen and the lung and a couple other channels. It’s incredible for digestion. If you have any sort of nausea, most of like the Dramamine and those motion sickness pills. The main ingredient is ginger. You don’t need to go, run to the store and buy some chemical crap with who knows what kind of synthetics and fillers and other junk they’re putting in there. Get yourself fresh ginger root and if you want you can freeze it, you can freeze ginger root, it stays in a freezer we find, in the fridge it’ll last a few weeks, no problem.

12:24

If you’re making some tea, once again ginger is considered warm, slightly hot. There are different types of ginger. If you use the powdered ginger, Gan Jiang, would be considered very hot. It’s hotter since it’s processed. If you pan fry ginger, it’s Pan Jiang, it’s even hotter than that. But the fresh root is a is basically warm so it’s safer for us. Sheng jiang is a fresh ginger. It’s phenomenal for digestion. It also helps remove toxins from the body. One of the reasons they give you ginger when you eat sushi. One, sushi is considered a cold and damp and two, the ginger is considered warm and it helps remove some of those seafood toxins. Ginger can also help induce sweating, which will get rid of a chills. Once again, if you have fever, you wouldn’t want to use too much cinnamon or too much ginger, maybe a tiny bit. But if you have chills, you want to have some of the mint in there and you want to go heavy on the cinnamon, heavy on the ginger. Normally I probably use maybe a quarter inch to half an inch of ginger root. I slice it two three times, throw it on the cup, put the boiling water on there and use it for that. Did you have a question, Sifu? Or a comment?

Sifu Teresa:  13:42

Yeah, so you reading, my mind. I was just thinking about wow, that’s very good information, you have. So we have 3 things. We have the mint leave, it’s great and then we have the cinnamon. The cinnamon, it’s also good for the balancing blood sugar, right?

Dr. Fields:  14:02

Yeah, absolutely.

Sifu Teresa:  14:03

That’s why you say open blood flow. So another ginger. Is it okay to take the ginger? I mean, even in the summer? Does it matter?

Dr. Fields:  14:21

So once again, it depends on the person’s constitution. The fresh ginger root is pretty safe, Sheng Jiang. Now once again, you got to keep in mind, your body constitution. In the TCM we break things down and we categorize people by your body constitution so some people are very hot, some people are very cold, they will have excess, Yang, some people have deficient Yin so it kind of depends on the body type. So if you’re the type of person who always feels hot, you probably don’t want to do too much ginger. Now many of us and actually I find personally with my patients and the majority of the people I see are more on the qi deficient side and more on the Yang deficient side. The majority of them, not all of them. So those type of people, absolutely, ginger would be good for you all year round. And in the summertime from TCM perspective, we actually, we do want to sweat more than the winter time. In the wintertime we want to preserve our sweat, we want to preserve our Yin. In the summertime you’re going to accumulate extra dampness so that extra heat will help you and the ginger actually also that’s the other two things that I mentioned about the ginger. It dries up dampness and it also helps resolve phlegm and mucus. So if you have, once again a cold and you’re having a runny nose, or if you have rhinitis, sinuses, if you’re coughing up phlegm and mucus, The ginger is great for that. Now, keep in mind, if your mucus is yellow and green, which from Western side we consider that to be more bacterial infection or from TCM side, we would consider that to be hot phlegm. You don’t want too much ginger, you’d want, you can have some, but you don’t want too much because that’s considered wind-heat or hot phlegm.

Sifu Teresa:  16:06

Then what would you do instead of ginger then what would you use, them on?

Dr. Fields:  16:12

We’ll get right to that next, there are a couple herbs. The thing I wanted to mention last with the ginger is. Typically, what it is indicated for is if you’re having a lot of white phlegm or clear phlegm, or very thin, runny, watery mucus coming out, lots of ginger and as I said if you’re the cold type, lots of ginger.

16:33

The next herb that I wanted to talk about, which actually works for hot phlegm, it’s still not the main herb that you use for hot phlegm. For hot phlegm, typically, we use things like bamboo shavings and things like that. But these are not your typical herbs that you’re going to find laying around. So if you do have the hot phlegm, definitely the peppermint still, you can use the peppermint you can use a tiny little bit of ginger, not too much.

17:01

If you have hot, if you run on the hot side, actually one of the herbs you can use is chamomile, right? Typically from a TCM standpoint, we use more chrysanthemum ju hua, the yellow tea, right? But it’s, most people have chamomile tea at home so chamomile is cooling.

17:24

If you have a high fever, you can take the mint leaves, and you can take a bag of chamomile tea, throw some mint leaves in there or throw a bag and chamomile tea together and that’ll help relieve some of the heat.

17:36

The other herbs that we use specifically for phlegm and also for qi stagnation and also for rectifying the middle or for moving. We use it for constipation to some extent, it can be drying  long term but its safe overall. Tangerine peels or any citrus peels. The citrus peels are one of the main herbs that we use that are mild but are effective for phlegm and mucus within the TCM pharmacopeia.

18:12

Tangerine peel, chen pi is probably the most common one that we use and the way they process it is, they age it for 3 years. You don’t have to worry about that. You can also use any citrus, right? If you got, citrus fruit, oranges, grapefruit, lemons, limes, right? Whatever you got laying around, you use the fruit and you just save the peel, you let it dry out. If once again, if I was having the cold and chills and a lot of runny nose or phlegm or mucus. I would do the mint, I would do the cinnamon, I would do the ginger and then I would throw in some citrus peels, any citrus peels. Everything from the pomelo, the tangerines or the mandarin oranges are the most common ones. Bitter oranges, the green little oranges, before they become mature, immature oranges. Zhi Ke, which we use a lot for qi stagnation as well, damp stagnation. It’s one of the excellent things, they’re bitter and acrid, they’re drying, but they’re not considered as hot or as warm as the ginger.

19:22

If you have more of the hot phlegm, like I said I would probably do the peppermint, maybe chamomile and maybe some citrus peels. That would be an excellent thing and like I said, if you wanted to speak to an herbalist, it’d be better to get a formula from an herbalist because some of the phlegm herbs that we use can be toxic in large doses like Ban Xia. Ban Xia is a pinellia, it’s a very hard little thing and in very large dosages, over long periods of time, it can be toxic so it’s best to have a professional like myself or a local herbalist to specify that but everything that we are talking about today is very safe.

Sifu Teresa:  19:44

Why in Chinese, in Chinese medicine, we talk about combining things so that they help the whole formula become bonds. So that’s why we would like someone to put a formula together, right? I’ve been using herbs for 10 years before I did Qigong and I find the Qigong work so good together with the herbs and then that’s when I feel my health really change because the herbs helped me, but it doesn’t raise my energy up. And then when I start doing a Qigong then they work really well. So I do use herbs as my maintenance. So I like to ask you, Jonathan is, so how, what would you think because we know when we are not well, we go to see that TCM doctor they measure the pulse, and on your tongue and the glands then ask questions. So I’m with what’s going on in the society. And then also the people may not be in Florida, right? So they may not be able to see you so is it possible they cannot get help from you even like this?

Dr. Fields:  21:18

Yeah, absolutely and thank you for asking Sifu. I actually I do phone and Skype consultations for functional medicine and herbal medicine. So people could send me their lab work from all over the country, all over the world. They could send me their blood test results. And then what I would do is I’d get on the phone with them or get on a Skype call. We go through all your symptoms, we go through your diagnosis, we go through your lab work, I’ll take a look at your tongue, front and back. And then I have a lot of questions that I generally ask them probably spend 30 to 45 minutes just asking different questions, everything from how you sleep to your urination, your bowels, your menstruation and so on. And that is how we get to the root of what your constitution is. And then we make sure we treat not only the symptoms, which is the western allopathic model, and which is why it never works and why you see people that are going to the doctor never really get better, because they’re only covering up your symptoms with a band aid. We are going to address your symptoms, but we’re going to look for the root cause of the problem, so we can address that, that way, you can get better and stay better. And everything we use, of course, is all natural, very little to no side effects, especially if you’re working with somebody who knows what they’re doing and could prescribe it and keep in touch with you and make sure you’re going along the right path. Because it’s very important.

22:41

If somebody is Yang deficient, you’re not going to give them the same herbs as somebody who has liver fire. It would be a disaster, it would make the person worse, just as if you were to give somebody the wrong medication in the hospital. So that is one way. Yeah, anybody if you want to look me up, you could find me integrative medicine US is the website or https://integrativemedicine.us instead of dotcom, its integrative medicine.us or if you want to look up my Instagram or Facebook, it’s @imedicineus. And then the other question, you asked me, some preventative stuff for what’s going on right now, there’s another formula that is pretty safe for most people to use.

23:30

We use it basically for what we consider to be a wei qi deficiency, which is basically a lung and spleen qi deficiency for the most part. But people that have wei qi deficiency, usually have two things, common things that we see, normally they get sick very often they get a lot of upper respiratory infections. These are the type of people that they have a cold every other week or every other month, they get the flu and the next week, it’s bronchitis and so on. And then sometimes there’s a lot of spontaneous sweating. Because their wei qi is not controlling the pores, how it should be. So they’re losing body fluids. It’s a very simple formula. It’s 3 herbs, and it is safe for most people, even if you don’t have the wei qi deficiency. For the, I mean, for almost everybody, this would be safe to take in a very small dosage, right now. And the 3 herbs that it consists, well, the name of the formula is actually Yu Ping Feng San and there’s 3 different herbs and maybe we’ll put this spelling up later, and they look.

Sifu Teresa:  24:35

You can send it to me and then we can post it up for them or something.

Dr. Fields:  24:40

Fantastic but the 3 herbs on there, they’re very simple. I’m not going to give you the whole background on them. The first herb in there’s Huang Qi. Huang Qi is a tonic. It’s a qi tonic, and it’s an astragalus, very common herb. You find it in pretty much every GNC shop or Vitamin store.

Sifu Teresa:  24:42

I have one, too.

Dr. Fields:  25:01

Exactly. So it’s a, I personally I prefer the raw herbs to make a tea with them. But you could get this formula and powder which is the second best way you can get it in capsules or you can get it in the little black tea pills which is probably the least effective way to take it but anything is better than none. Huang Qi  is actually used to increase your white blood cell count, so it raises your immune system, but it’s an immune modulator. It’s not going to cause you to have some kind of autoimmune condition; Huang Qi is not going to like throw that off. It’s also used in kidney disease, they use it to treat cancer, they use it a lot of times for chemotherapy for the side effects from recovering from chemotherapy and radiation or post-surgery. It’s excellent for building qi and blood. It’s a fantastic or they make injections out of it all sorts of stuff. That’s the main ingredient of the Yu Ping Feng Wan. The second one is Bai Zhu which is white atractylodes. I don’t even know how to pronounce it, that’s the Latin name of it.

Sifu Teresa:  26:05

Just saw, we were just typed down up so they can perfect it can check it out or they can write you for information. No. Yeah,

Dr. Fields:  26:14

Absolutely. So bai zhu is also a spleen tonic and the reason a lot of this is focused on the lung and spleen because the lung is actually the first place we catch an infection normally, right we breathe it in through the nose or the mouth like what’s going on now or it comes into the skin and from a TCM standpoint, the lung actually opens up to the skin it controls the skin to some extent and that’s what we’re talking about the sweating and the spleen actually also stores and filters platelets and makes white blood cells and filters red blood cells that has a lot to do with your immune system. As far as Western medicine is concerned, the spleen is not necessary. But if they remove your spleen, they actually put you on antibiotics (DanielleOfri) for the rest of your life. An oral antibiotic, because you’re more susceptible to infection.

27:01

So it has to do with digestion, transporting body fluids around and so forth. So that 2nd herb being Bai Zhu. Bai Zhu is, its main thing is it dries up dampness. So it activates the spleen as well. And it gets rid of extra dampness, is kind of like humidity and just like people with arthritis, oh, it hurts more when it’s raining outside. It’s a real thing. We are affected by the weather. We are affected by the climate, we are affected by the foods that we eat, just as if you’re eating too much. Just like how some people just retain more water. Right. And it’s not always a heart issue, it can also be some spleen issue.

Sifu Teresa:  27:43

Yeah, it’s very interesting to just recap, right. So at the beginning, Jonathan was saying that a lot of western drugs actually is based on herbal medicine.

Dr. Fields:  27:58

Almost all of them.

Sifu Teresa:  27:59

So just to recap a few just to help people to understand is like aspirin has. What’s aspirin has?

Dr. Fields:  28:12

White Willow.

Sifu Teresa:  28:13

Things how much to understand. So there are things we can think about more, right? Exactly. So what is something else you like to remind people?

Dr. Fields:  28:25

Absolutely. The last thing I would like to tell people like I said, I cannot stress it enough that in TCM, it’s not I have insomnia. So I take this formula that will not work and you’re likely to do more harm than good. So you always want to see a professional about it, and most importantly, more than herbs more than anything, do your qigong. You cannot sit all day. Our body is not meant to sit at a desk all day. It’s not meant to sit in the car, to sit at the computer. The qigong does more for you I think than anything else. And the more qigong you do like you said in your case, you will actually be more sensitive and more perceptive to what the herbs are doing to what channels and meridians.

Sifu Teresa:  29:15

I was very low in my qi when I started before. As I was sick every month, right, very low. That’s what the herbs does not help me very much because I was so low. So if I didn’t actually do qigong, I cannot even raise myself up. When I’ve raised myself up, then I changed what kind of herbs, I take them then they start to make sense. So they really work hand in hand very well.

Dr. Fields:  29:42

That is excellent.

Sifu Teresa:  29:42

Nobody get too sick like me before they get started.

Dr. Fields:  29:46

That is an excellent point. I am really glad you brought that up. Yeah, because you’re correct. If you are very, very deficient, and in your middle jiao, obviously qi deficient,  your spleen stomach qi deficient, it’s going to be very hard for you to process the herbs. So even if you’re taking the herbs, even if you’re taking medication, one, you’re not going to absorb it properly. And specifically, if you’re not doing any exercise, if you don’t have good circulation, if you don’t have good blood flow, those herbs are not getting to every cell in your body, they’re going to come in and go right out, you might not even digesting them at all. So you might just be throwing all your money and that’s part of the problem with our society. Everybody wants a pill. Everybody wants a magic herb. You have to do your qigong

Sifu Teresa:  30:32

Yeah, I’m saying work together like a team would be nice. That’s what we want because they’re all useful is how to put everyone on the spot to work together. And that will be great, yeah.

Dr. Fields:  30:44

And the last thing I want to stress specifically about the qigong, because a lot of people say, “Well, I do exercise, I don’t need to do qi gong”. And I say no, it’s completely incorrect way of thinking. Because you can. one, you can over exercise and you can actually cause damage, you can create insufficiency, you can create injuries, you can create things like that, you will never get injured doing qigong. Not if you’re doing it right. Two, the problem with the exercising is, you’re missing the, the spiritual and the mind body connection component.

Sifu Teresa:  31:19

This is really calming the mind so that you have to, to feel all your stress is gone. So you have nothing to really need to think about it anymore. And then when you do physical, once you finish, you still think, but when you go to do the qi gong nicely, you really empty your thoughts out and go to say, an elevated vibration, and then at that moment, you just feel no worries. You feel you can.

Dr. Fields:  31:49

100% you’re talking about a wu ji, wu wei, wu shin, right. And you don’t get that with exercise because if you talk to people, If they’re out jogging, or they’re at the gym on the treadmill, or riding a bike, you’re still thinking. Even when you’re lifting weights, you’re thinking about the office, you’re thinking about your kids. You’re thinking about making money, you’re thinking about returning phone calls, or I got to do the laundry, which is the opposite of what we want in qigong or Tai Chi. We want that Wu Ji. And we want to empty the mind. We want to dissolve all the stress out. And most people are like, oh, well, I can’t meditate. But that’s not how we teach them. First we teach them the breathing exercises, then we teach them the movements. So when you’re doing qi gong, you’re not thinking.

Sifu Teresa:  32:36

That’s right.

Sifu Teresa:  32:39

Well, I was just say that, Jonathan is such a treasure in Florida, to actually teach qigong and all herbal medicine and acupuncture, all this beautiful knowledge coming together. And I have to say just to encourage people in Florida to take advantage of someone like this and then you are in South Florida, right?

Dr. Fields:  33:04

Yeah, I’m near the Fort Lauderdale area. Coral Springs, Florida. It’s about 15-20 minutes west, northwest of Fort Lauderdale. About 20 minutes from Boca Raton maybe 45 minutes from Miami. I have people that come see me from South Miami and the West coast of Florida. When you’re good at what you do, word gets around and people will drive.

Sifu Teresa:  33:28

We see there are always very good doctors of TCM around, but then maybe not everyone actually understand how to practice qi gong. It’s not everyone really understand how it works right? So Jonathan has really enjoy the practice himself. So he really understand how they work together. So for people actually, very lovely people, love your energy. Well, sometimes you just worry about the person who works on you, doesn’t know what it means to do energy work, right? So he actually understands, so you understand what I mean. So it has some more benefit for you.

Dr. Fields:  34:07

I’m very glad you brought that up. And actually, it does make a huge difference. And very much so in acupuncture treatments as well, unfortunately, in this country, and probably in the Western world, probably 98% or more of people who practice acupuncture, don’t practice qigong, which doesn’t mean they say, Oh, I do yoga, or I go to the gym. It doesn’t make sense.

This medicine. Through this medicine. And qigong is actually what drew me to Chinese medicine. Because qigong was just like you said for you, it may help you from being sick. Qigong was so effective, and I guess it made such a difference in my life from practicing, that it made me believe in this medicine and made me want to learn more about TCM and Chinese Medicine. Because it was, I mean, it totally changed my life around and as you know, you’re a witness of that as well.

Sifu Teresa:  35:06

Because when I was taking herbal medicine, I was taking 10 years already because I was so weak really. It helped me, but it did not actually really raise me up. And then I just think that if the beautiful, powerful things can come together, like a team, right, so become a team then you get two tigers, the beautiful herbal medicine, and then the qi gong, you can even have that beautiful western doctors all work together, the emergency, the all-important work together like a team, and then it will be so amazing for the society and look forward for that day.

Dr. Fields:  35:45

Yeah, and its like you said. It’s much more effective. I mean, I’ve had patients just like you said with herbs, I’ve had patients that come in and they’ve been on Nexium or some kind of acid reflux medication for 10 years or some other medication for 10 years, and it just doesn’t work. Or maybe it works a little bit but they don’t get any better. And that’s why I called the practice integrative medicine because we try to integrate the western medicine with the herbal medicine. We also do functional medicine with the supplements and vitamins. And then we teach them qigong exercises so they can do their own medicine.

Sifu Teresa:  36:21

That’s fine.

Dr. Fields:  36:22

More you put into it, the more you get out.

Sifu Teresa:  36:25

Perfect. So thank you, Jonathan. So I think we have provided good information for the audience, it will help them understand how to, to enjoy the best of the West, the east and your knowledge in Florida will be an asset for that. So okay, so thank you very much.

Dr. Fields:  36:45

It has been a pleasure. I really appreciate everything that you’re doing and keep spreading the good word and thank you so much for helping all the people.

Sifu Teresa:  36:57

Thank you, everyone. And then the last, enjoy Traditional Chinese Medicine with qigong.

37:04

Bye.

37:05

Thank you.

Dr. Fields:  37:06

Thank you, Take care.