What that formula seems to do is actually encourage, phagocytosis encourage the immune system to actively get in and eat debris that is collecting behind the retina, which is, which is the cause of macular degeneration. So, you know, with, with dry macula, you get this buildup of rubbish, which you know, which are basically the sort of the visual plates drop off as they are used up and then accumulate behind the rationale.

I'm Michael max, and this is geologic. You probably love this study and practice of east Asian medicine, learning new things, being of service to others, creating a positive change in your corner of the world. You know, we venerate the masters, we hold them up as shining examples of what we would like to be someday, but let's be honest here. Most of us will never be masters. Those rarefied characters are few and far between and the process of takes is not one that most of them. Would willingly sign up for, we do however, have a good shot at being a fine journeymen or journey woman. Why is it so hard to become a man? I suspect it's because masters are usually forged in troublesome fires. They may be living through a time of war and disease and their medicine comes through the crucible of deep suffering, or perhaps they've gone through a terrible illness or accident of their own, where they just happen to be one of those acutely sensitive people in ways that makes everything in life really difficult. Are you really up for that bundle of pain lately? I've been hearing people say things like I'm just a lonely second year student, or I'm only a newbie with a few years of experience, or I've not been to China. There's all kinds of ways that it seems we put ourselves down and notice how we're failing to live up to what might actually be an impossible goal. I suspect the journey we take in practicing medicine is not to become like one of the masters we idolize, but to become more the practitioner. With our particular slant on the medicine that's ours to become. I suspect that if we somehow can grow more deeply into the person that we already are, take our unique perspective, insights, challenges, blind spots, and potential and Polish it through the relentless process of attentively honing our craft on a day to day basis. Then I suspect we have a shot at being solid, capable, and absurd. This is the path of the journey woman and the journeyman, and we are thickly in it and it changes us as we develop a patina and a shine that is consistent with the grain of our character and experience mastery might be out there for you as well, who knows, but one thing for sure, it's the path of the journey that gets us to where we're going. And I reckon there's some real wisdom in that phrase. The journey is the reward. Paul Bauer. Welcome to qiological. Thank you, Michael. So glad to have you here. I read your article in the lantern. I don't remember exactly when it came out. I think it was within the past

year or so. Yes, it was December, 2017.

It's such a great magazine listeners. If you're not reading the lantern, there'll be a link to it on the show notes page. It's fantastic publication. Anyway, I read your article concerning the treatment of macular degeneration, and it really caught my attention because I've recently become aware of some of the Microsystems of acupuncture that are becoming popular here in the United States for treating this issue. But it seems like your experience came directly with. Through what you were seeing and learning and.

Yes. I'd have to say that my experience was my response to people presenting with visual problems and may saying, well, you know, this is what I was taught. I trained in the Chinese system and in China. And so I applied. Chinese style acupuncture. And the herbs that I'd been taught were good for ice stuff, which was basically formulas. Like CIGI. And, you know, things like Joey shaoyang son with the addition of, of sort of Jew a go cheetah Shanko. So I simply applied what I'd been taught and people would come back and say, well, you know, look, I can actually see. I can say the numbers on the bus, or I don't have as many floaters or my eyes don't get as sore or gritty. So I just relied on that feedback. My first experience with really acute visual problems turning up. Responding. Well, when I moved to Bellingen, which is the small town I live in now, which is on the north coast of new south Wales. And I had a patient who turned up with a retinal tear. So this was Margaret, a 74 year old woman who had lost vision in her remaining good art. She had, she was centrally blind in her left eye.

And was that from the retina terror or was that from something else? That was a

combination of macular degeneration and cataracts. She had woken up suddenly without central vision in her good eye. And this was the second time this had happened to Margaret. So on the previous occasion, I think she'd been in Perth on the other side of Australia and the treatment was to inject. Some sort of gas into the eye and then lie her face down for 11 days. So for treating the

retina terror. Yep. Yeah, that's, that's a very common treatment. I think they use a laser to try to repair it

to license. So she came to me and said, look, I can't get into the nearest major hospital for quite a while. I don't want to go through that again. Is there anything you can do? And I said, look, this is my experience. It looks hopeful. I don't know how good it will be for an acute situation like yours, but let's try it. Okay. So

let me just make sure I'm following this correctly. She came in with a retina tear. That's usually treated with this procedure that we just discussed face down gas in the eye. It gives it a chance, but she didn't want to go through that. And she couldn't even get into the hospital for a period of time. Yep. Okay. That's a tall order to take to an acupuncturist herbalist.

Yeah. So that was, that was quite challenging. Um, Started needling. So I was using the eye points on the occiput. So the eye-line on the occiput and points like young Laos. So small intestine five, I think. Goldblatt a 37 Guan Ming, which, you know, return the light points like that and other, and other sort of general points points like gallbladder 21. And so on points around the eye, the usual suspects, the usual suspect here, according to my, you know, my training then, and within two weeks, Margaret came into, into my clinic. So I think we'd had four treatments. I think I saw her on the, on the Friday and on the Monday she came in and said, well, something marvelous has happened. I can see out of that. I again, wow.

Now that's supposed to be impossible. It's not

something you hear talked about every day. No, not at all, but if you talk to someone like Andrew and Eugene here, He would maintain that this is the sort of thing that, you know, that Chinese medicine deed all the time that we were judged on our success in emergency clinical situations.

Oh, that's very different than the majority of the patients that we see today is.

Yes. Yes. That is quite different. Most people would be, you know, from here, they would be put on a plane to Sydney these days and probably have their eyes laser. Yeah.

Okay. So retina tire, you treated her on Friday. She comes in Monday and says something. Marvelous is. Okay.

That was the third and fourth treatments. Third

and

fourth treatments. Yep. And after the first couple of treatments, it was uncertain as to whether anything was happening between the third and the fourth treatments. What happened was that she started to get some visual input. So she started to get flashes and waivers. In that visual field in her left visual field. And, you know, she woke up on Monday morning and she could see through that again. I also had her on herds at the same time, and I had her on my favorite formula, which, which I called which is basically a combination of which is Lyceum Ramond. Oh, Lyceum, chrysanthemum and Romania formula. With the addition of Jehu, bupleurum Dugway, chrysanthemum flowers, and go cheetah and shampoo. And Woolwich. So, you know, that's the classic formula with some additions. And, and the logic between behind those additions is that, you know, that that child who. Raises the chief targets the RS because it's, it's working on the liver channel. Dunway nourishes shed shampoo, I think has a reorganizing ability. It dredges the channels. And there are, there are some indications that shampoo is very good at eliminating buildups of what we call insubstantial phlegm, or sometimes substantial. In the brain, which Western medicine now recognizes as deposits of stuff that, that is basically just clogging up the damn drugs. And in the case of macular degeneration and retinal tear in this case, What that formula seems to do is actually encourage, phagocytosis encourage the immune system to actively get in and eat debris that is collecting behind the retina, which is, which is the cause of macular degeneration. So, you know, with, with dry macula, you get this buildup of rubbish, which you know, which are basically the sort of visual plates drop off as they are used up and then accumulate behind the retina.

Very phlegmy sounding thing. Isn't it? Well, yeah.

And these Herb's do a great job at cleaning it up.

And it sounds like they nourish the blood, which nurses deliver, which nurses the eyes at the same time. So you're both nourishing and taking out the garbage. Yep. Okay. Four treatments she wakes up. Now she can see out of that eye. What happens next?

I see Margaret occasionally look, I actually don't know if Margaret's still alive. She's now in her mid eighties. The last time I saw her, she said, I don't really want to live past 84. Mm. And I haven't heard from her in a while, but the last I heard from her, her vision was still fine. I sort of kept encouraging her to take more Hertz and, you know, she might take one batch a year or something like that. But, you know, otherwise she'd be coming in, you know, for, for me to treat the knee that she'd heard at gym or something like that. Right. So

after the, I got better, you would still see her on occasion, but not necessarily for the eye.

No, it was fine after that. And the rest of that story of Margaret story is that she was due to have cataract surgery, to have the cataract on her bad eye removed. So she went into the ophthalmic surgeon who looked at her eyes and said, That cataracts gone, which we don't need to do the surgery. Unfortunately, she didn't regain vision in that eye. But on the other hand, we didn't treat that persistently because, you know, she was happy with the return of vision in her right eye.

It's really quite encouraging to hear. That some pretty straightforward acupuncture and herbs, nothing fancy here. This is, this is sort of straight ahead, Chinese medicine. It's very,

very basic traditional stuff. The other case history, uh, who was a woman who was then 70, 76, I think a more complicated story, a more sort of typical presentation of someone with a long-term degenerative condition. And in this case, Rosemary had suffered from wet and dry macular degeneration. For a number of years, which is quite common. It's common to see wet and dry, dry usually presents first. And that is followed by, by the wet and the wet macular degeneration occurs because the blood vessels struggle. To get through the rubbish, to get to the retinal epithelial cells and fighting their way through the drusen as it's called, um, they become torturous and fragile and start to bleed. So that's when you get wet macular degeneration. So you have this sort of low grade hemorrhage happening in the, in the red. The Western treatment for that is to inject a, an anti epithelial blood cell restrictor into the retina. So that sort of stops the growth of those blood cells. Those sort of torturous micro, micro Capela is, but doesn't seem to do anything to actually regenerate or clean up. The damn the dead and damaged cells that are already there. This is where I think that what we have to offer is superior because we can actually help clean it up. Stop the bleeding, clean up the rubbish and stimulate cells to function properly. Again. In fact, I was listening to a science broadcast this morning that was talking about stem cell transplants to do the same thing. And they were talking about how some of the cells in the retina there seem to be sort of juvenile cells even. Older retinas that can be stimulated to grow and to come to maturity. And I suspect that what we do actually stimulate either the maturation of those, if you like dormant cells,

it's interesting. It's as if the body is carrying around a spare tire in case it's.

We tend to have quite a lot of reserve capacity and in a lot of our organs

and redundant systems and backups and all that stuff. Yeah.

So, you know, I, I think that that is at least part of what we are doing. And one of the questions that I've often asked myself, Is whether what we can do is superior to what is being offered as an alternative. If you like by Western medicine, which is the use of lutein and zeaxanthin supplementation, which are the sort of the mainstay backup and preventative treatments offered to most, you know, sort of Western, um, population. And these things seem to work though, are the subject of big studies in veteran communities in the states in the late nineties and early two thousands. And they do seem to stimulate some return of function in cells, as well as, you know, protecting or slowing down degeneration of, of the existing. So. And I think we're doing the same thing. Um, the question is, are we doing it better?

It's a great question. It would be a wonderful thing to run some kind of research on, right? I mean, those supplements are really considered the standard of treatment from the conventional perspective. Be interesting to do a study. Comparing that with look, it would be

so wonderful. Wouldn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And it would be, it would be terrific to do that.

So tell us more about the second case. It sounds more

complicated, much more complicated. So in Rosemary's case, you know, she turned up with severely compromised vision. She had been having the anti. The G F injections for two years and they seem to have made no difference. She turned up to my clinic. She was a very feisty woman of a German origin. And she said, I give you six months.

I wish more of my patients were giving me a six months.

Yeah. Anyway. So, you know, we started started treatment. Look, I work in a community clinic in Belgium and, um, Rosemary would come into the community clinic. You know, initially it was, it was a bit uncertain, whether anything was really happening. She would say things like there seem to be fewer. She described them as curtains and cobwebs obscuring her vision. She would say, you know, they're, they're, they're sort of curtly things that, that sort of obscure my vision and they seem to be getting less, you know, the curtain seems to be fading or withdrawal. And she'd come in and say things like, oh, I can see the clock on the wall. I can see the hands. So it was obvious that, you know, there was something happening or she'd look out the window and say, oh, I can see the leaves on the tree instead of just the trunks. So there was some obvious return of central vision. Uh, we weren't sure quite how much. Uh, but then she went back to see her ophthalmologist who took another, um, optical tomography scan, an OTC, which sort of gives, gives us a cross sectional view of the retina. And, you know, and he reported that, that, where there had been massive. Swelling in her retinas the year before they were now smooth. And, you know, in addition, she could see two more lines in his eye chart. So there was an obvious return of vision, but that took, that took approximately a year. We know it's

not bad to take a year to do something that really, I mean, is there any other kind of treatment that, that can get that kind of a result that you know of?

Well, I guess not.

I mean, I understand it's not a return to the vision that she had at age 20 or 30. No, no. At least for me as a practitioner to think about helping the body regenerate in ways and especially ways that conventional medicine can look at and measuring. This is different than it was before. This is a chronic degenerative disease that doesn't reverse itself. Yeah. Reversed itself to some degree. Yeah.

As you commented. I think in the introduction, micro acupuncture is becoming increasingly influential in the states and is gaining a reputation as an effective treatment for our disease. And the way that people like Andy Rosenfarb work is quite different from the way that I work, for instance. So Andy will see patients for, you know, blocks of treatment, 10 days, two treatments a day, and he's getting, you know, very measurable results within that time. So he will run. Oh, visual field tests before and after or before, during and after to establish whether or not the treatment is working and he's getting measurable results. We certainly have. Points on the board in terms of achieving very measurable, measurable effects for these, for those chronic degenerative diseases. So

a year with, uh, Rosemary. Did she take herbs as well? Yes,

she was taking, she was taking my favorite formula, which is the And look in retrospect, if Rosemary presented to my clinic, now I would put her on a much more. sedating liver, fire, quenching formula. So I put her on something like, you know, Joe with the addition of Jew, go cheats, a church hung Pooh and Woolworth's, but I would concentrate more on her liver cheat and I would use Sanchez from very, very early in the piece.

Would you do that for both of your patients or just for her more

for Rosemarie because of the bleeding? Yeah, because of the bleeding and because of the liver fire, Margaret was much more a live, a blood deficient kind of patient. Whereas with Rosemary, there was the combination of some liver blood deficiency, but more liver cheese stagnation and liver Firefly. And I would definitely treat that much more aggressively. You

mentioned

the, um, what's that in there for?

Okay. Well I think that we'll wait, it's mainly there as a nourisher. So it nourishes liver blood, and it has a slightly astringent property. Uh, the reason that I use it and I think is, is because of sort of Japanese research, which, which basically shows that it has very, very positive calming effects or restorative effects on liver function. So the Japanese use it to return liver enzymes to normal. So I use it as a, as a liver regulator and restorer, and there are some indications. That it has nutrition. Well, I think obviously because of its role in, in nourishing liver blood, so it has some nutritional aspects. And one of the other questions that I've asked myself about the role of psycho cheetah and in these formulas is that the lutein and Z. Components of those herds, uh, relatively small that they are also not active in decoction. And the Lutyens is Anthony supplements that are, that are commonly used. Those are all oil based extract. So the oil carried extracts because those are fat soluble vitamins. So you know how exactly they work and, and what part of them is, is doing the work is a bit of a mystery.

It would certainly be a mystery from the point of view of biochemistry. If we're just, if we're just looking at biochemist. But we're also looking at, you know, thousands of years of people using things like goat sheets for the eyes, right. To Hawk for the eyes. I mean, these are very common. These are just, you know, this is what you'll learn in your first quarter of studying Chinese herbs at these are very nourishing to deliver nourishing to the eyes. So yeah, how's that happening? Biomedically? I don't

know. Okay. Well, I wonder if it's, you know, it's as simple as, as you know, chrysanthemum is often taken as a tea with breakfast and maybe just, you know, combining the tea with whatever fat is in is in breakfast is what does.

Well, in, in the go cheetah is often used as a food as well. You'll see it put in disco fries, jewel. In fact, you often see it for breakfast now that I think about it. Some porridges, conjure cheese and things of that nature. Yeah. At any rate, it sounds like you found some very helpful effects from these formulas for these two patients. Have you seen other patients with eye issues that leads you to updating your thinking on all of that?

Well, I've seen a number of patients. Over the years. And as a result of the article and a presentation, I gave at a, at a recent conference in Sydney, I'm currently treating at a distance, a number of practitioners who are presenting with, you know, various eye conditions. So both things like detached retina, Or the after-effects of detached retina, which are what we call floaters, which are bits of congealed protein in the fluid of the eye, that obscure vision. And I had a call just a few days ago from a woman. Again, a practitioner who became blind. In her left eye overnight with very, very aggressive macular degeneration. So I'm currently advising those two practitioners and I'm treating a man with very longstanding Stargardt's, which is an inherited kind of macular degeneration. This guy is a truck driver and drives 'em slashes drives tractors with, you know, sort of whirling blades on them. So he's in his late fifties and has been losing his vision for a long, long time. So we were trying to rescue what, what little bit reminds look? The, the other things that I'm treating at the moment are, uh, what's called vestibular migraine.

A lot of people have this.

Yeah. And, uh, and I find that variations on either Jewish TGG. Uh, terrific for the symptoms of vertigo and dizziness associated with vestibular migraine. It's part of it's another indication of the, or another example of the wide applicability of particular formulas,

correct me if I'm wrong. It sounds like with these people that you're saying. And the formulas that you're working with. I mean, you're, you're very much focusing on the liver. In some cases, it's more of a nourishing with the, uh and in other cases, it's more of, of liver clearing clearing the liver Chi moving the liver GI getting rid of fire if there's fire. So on one hand, you're dealing with nourishing, if they're weak. And on the other hand, if there's a stagnation. Or an excess you're clearing that, that sounds like there's two axes that you're working with there. Is there anything else that's coming into

play? Uh, well, okay. In relation to, um, the vestibular migraine, the other presenting picture is of phlegm obstruction.

And what kind of symptoms are they showing up with for that? Is that the dizziness that you're seeing.

You'll have a combination of, of dizziness and vertigo, but also a feeling of obstruction or blockage in the ears and sinuses in terms of visual symptoms. The other thing that people report to me frequently is that that their vision improves so that they find they're able to read, find a printer. Not use their reading glasses as much. So, you know, at general improvements in iComfort as well,

what herbs, if any, are you adding in addition to things like the shirt shaoyang pool for dealing with that, like fullness in the ears and that sort of clogging that's going on

there look things like buncha, sup you know, sort of Occasionally something like

I'm sorry, what was

that one again? So she out, uh, oh yes. That little

thorny thing.

Yes. Yeah. So that will be an acute cases. And sometimes things like sung, uh, uh xantham Zante and say, uh Xinghua but, uh, so things targeting the sinuses.

It sounds like with your two patients, Rosemary and Margaret's emotionally, they were very different kinds of characters. Very, very different, very, very different. And of course, I mean, it kind of goes without saying in the work that we do a person's cycle of motive, makeup in some ways is going to probably be contributing to their problem. And probably in some ways, contributing to them getting better.

Definitely now, particularly in the case of Margaret, she was a remarkably positive woman. She'd had a very, very difficult life. She grew up in, in England during the war and was, you know, basically starved as a child. Because they were so poor that had consequences for her in later life. And I think that, that her, her macular degeneration was one of those, you know, she was very liver, blood deficient, and I think that was a consequence of her early semi starving. But nonetheless, she was just such a remarkably positive person. She always looked for the positive in any situation and was always, you know, sort of deeply. Anything positive hat that, that happens and graciously accepting of those things that didn't go well. So she was a very contented woman.

Sounds like the opposite of Rosemary.

Rosemary was really sort of deeply frustrated and responded with, uh, you know, quite fiery anger to when things weren't going well. You know, so she found that really, really frustrating that she was losing her vision. You know, she was a very active woman, very dynamic and she found it deeply frustrating.

So even though before she couldn't see the leaves on the tree and now she could see the leaves on the tree was sort of that situation. And, well, I just, all I see is the leaves on the tree.

No, she was actually, she was overjoyed, but you know, look, unfortunately, In, in Rosemary's life, the frustrations seemed to outweigh the good things. And in her particular situation, she. Having trouble with things like transport. You know, we were in a rural area. She was coming from a village about 15 kilometers away to bell engine to the community acupuncture clinic. And there is a community transport service, but because of changes in the way social services were delivered. At the time she could only come once a month rather than once a week. And unfortunately, the injections that she'd paid for, which were, were not then covered by, by our sort of nationalized medicines, scheme were very expensive and that they really bankrupted her, which was of course another, another source of frustration, because she'd say. A lot of money on a treatment that hadn't worked.

Yeah. We see

this a lot. Yeah. And you know, and I'm, I'm hearing that now as well. So even though the anti VGF injections are partly covered by our Medicare system, I think the rebate is about a hundred dollars per injection. And the patient is still $500 out of pocket. And, you know, for some people that's once a month for others, it's, you know, every six weeks. So it's still a big out of pocket expense and I'm sure it would be much worse in the study.

Oh, I'm not even going to go into it, how bad it is and what I know people are spending on it for those who are listening to this conversation right now. And they're thinking, oh, you know, I've got some patients like this, or, you know, maybe I'm going to see some patients like this, or maybe I've even got a family member like this. Any suggestions that you would have. For how to think about how to approach other things to keep in mind when treating these kinds of degenerative eye diseases?

Well, I think, I think the secret is, is to start early and to treat as consistently as possible. But the other thing is that, you know, as we saw with both Margaret and Rosemarie, We can have both dramatic clinical effects for acute in acute situations, but also in very, very chronic situations, which you know, where people perhaps have, have given up. So I think, I think that persistence is really the key. That's the

key I Deely if time and money was not the factor. How often would you want to see people? For these kinds of issues.

This is a question that I've, that I've asked myself. I guess one of the main questions I've asked myself is what is the relative question of acupuncture and of Herb's they work very well together. And the way I treat is that I, that I like to see people weekly, if possible. But, you know, fortnightly or monthly for acupuncture, if that's what they can afford or have time for, but definitely keep taking the Herb's.

Are you using tablets, powders, raw herbs? How do you,

uh, prescribe? I use granules. I don't have much faith in tablets and I don't like. And I don't use pre-calculated herbs, so I'm mixed my own granules and, you know, and I like that because I can vary the proportions or, or the mixes, depending on the patient's clinical presentation.

Yeah. The granules are great for that. Yeah. And they're super convenient for the patients. Yes, Paul, anything else that you'd like to share with us before we say goodbye for

today? It would be wonderful to have some research, you know, establishing that, that this works in, in a way that that can be presented to funding bodies. Um, trying to get some research happening here. Which is a little bit difficult because I'm way out in the boondocks. And most of the research happens in the capital cities. And I know that people like Andy Rosenfarb have been doing research particularly into, I think with, um, transcranial electrical stimulation in the, in the treatment of, uh, written artists pigmentosa. Look, it would be just wonderful to see more research establishing our medicine as an effective alternative.

Absolutely. And I know that here in the United States, these days there's a doctorate programs are increasingly popular. And so if you any listeners out there, you've got an idea about this. Here's a. Th th um, this would probably not be a difficult study to do you, you would be comparing the supplements to some herbal formulations. That's a, it's a fairly straightforward study, isn't it?

Yeah, I don't, I don't know the, where the, we actually okay. That, that would be one way of doing it. I think that what, it would be good to establish the efficacy of Chinese medicine. And then perhaps do a followup study. But the thing to do is, is actually do the study because with the Lieutenant Z is Anthem supplementation. It was the veteran studies that, you know, established those as workable alternatives and that was United. And that was in the days when really there wasn't anything else about.

Well in there still really isn't much else that they have to offer. I find it interesting, fascinating, really that the best conventional medicine has at this point is something that's a supplement. That's a little bit unusual. Usually they're, they're working more with controlling something from a pharmaceutical perspective, but here

it's look. The major treatment is actually the injection. And the supplements are seen as supplements and as preventative myths. And similarly in Australia, the majority, well, the vast majority of funding and attention is, is going into the pharmaceuticals and into, you know, research into stem cell approaches. Well,

it sounds like there are some possibilities here that we can certainly work with and, uh, follow up and see what happens. Paul, thank you so much for. Taking the time today here to, uh, talk with us about your experience with treating these eye conditions that are such a problem for people, especially as we age and sounds like there's some real hope out

there. I think that we have a lot to offer and I would love to see. Our minutes and being more widely used, because I think we can really benefit our communities.