How to Find a Good Acupuncturist, Herbalist or TCM Doctor

The alternative medicine field is pretty damn weird. I mean, you have everything from the very, very credible and well-studied alternatives to conventional care, like diet, and you have things where people are doing craziness, like drinking human breast milk, thinking it cures cancer. So, how do you really discern what would be a great alternative practitioner to see and what would be someone maybe on the far-fetched side or downright pseudoscientific? In this video, I want to share what I think, as having been a patient for years, were some of the essential criteria I looked for in the really effective practitioners. Hey, it's Alex Hine, author of the health book, Master the Day. So, I've included a free download below this video, and the free PDF is going to be for And they're based on this Chinese medicine practitioner and Taoist medicine practitioner's five daily habits that help them to live unusually long. So, it's the first link right below this video. Now, the most important thing, I think, is that the practitioner, the physician, the healer, whoever, is always the most important through-line for getting clinical results. You can find conventional physicians who use outdated, out-proven medicine that just frankly doesn't work or harms you. You can also find the same in alternative medicine. You can find conventional physicians who are well aware of alternatives that work better than what they do, and they will recommend that. And you'll find that in alternative medicine as well, these people having built this referral network. But for me, in my process of trying to heal from these lifelong digestive problems, one of the biggest things was I saw initially these alternative medicine practitioners who were very kind of mystical and spiritual about illness, right? They would say that things are related to your karma, and it's related to things that are psychological and spiritual, and it all sounded very cool, but none of it worked. And ultimately, the practitioners that ended up working the best that resolved my GI problems that I studied with, these people basically were just pragmatists. They didn't talk about your past karma, they didn't talk about spirituality or energy, they just said, this is what's going on with your GI, and take these formulas, and they worked. So for me personally, I really strongly think that the practitioner is the most important thing. It doesn't matter what medicine or alternative medicine, it's the doctor or the person giving the advice that is the predictor of whether or not it works. Now building off of this, the second thing is that, does this practitioner give pragmatic grounded advice? Now I have no doubt that there are highly creative, highly spiritual, highly synesthetic practitioners in every field that may not be able to explain well or advise you on your life well, but they can do it and they can fix you. I have no doubt they exist. My own experience was that typically people with clear explanations for what's going on have a clear understanding of what's going on. And I personally look for people that seem just very grounded, that seem pragmatic, practical, they can give me clear habits, strategies to work on. And I found that these were just far more likely to work in my experience than something that sounded really cool and sounded mystical and spiritual and far out, but didn't work very well. Because ultimately it has to work. We're in the field of medicine, we're not in the field of finger painting. It has to help the patient get better. And for me, the best people were the most pragmatic. Now the third question for me that I think is very important is, do they come from a similar problem referral and do they seem like they are busy? So when I say similar problem referral, I have no doubt that all the energy healers and the massage therapists and whoever have tons of referrals, if they're great, they may not be the person that can fix your health problem though. They may be someone that's great for relaxation, mental, emotional healing, psychological wellbeing, but they may not be the person that can fix what you have. And so I would really look for someone that has a clear history of treating the problem that you have, or if your friend is saying, Oh, you've got to check out this person, ask if what the friend is being treated for, if they'll share, because you want to find out if the person can actually treat what you have. And I know that sounds obvious, but just because someone had a great experience with someone doesn't mean they can fix a medical problem. And I think that's also difficult and important to differentiate. So can they fix what you have besides them just being great and enjoyable to be around and relaxing? Can they fix it? Now, my opinion, that's one of the best ways to vet an alternative medicine practitioner, because again, there's a lot. And if you have a problem that's been unresolved for a long time, you can really go down the rabbit hole and you can really lose sight of what's grounded and what's pragmatic and what works because you're desperately grasping at straws. You're trying to figure out, feel solid ground and just find anything that can save you. That's a dangerous place to be in. But again, I myself have been there, seen tons of alternative conventional doctors from my own health stuff. And this is what's helped me a lot to find the really, really rare practitioners who are really, really good at what they do. I hope that helps. Again, there's a free download below this video. It's on five daily habits you can use to potentially add 10 years to your life. And there are Li Ching Yun's rituals to live to a hundred, so you can check it out right below this video. And then remember, I have two related videos on this topic there.