The alarm clock disturbs yet another night’s sleep. As you motion to find the device that continues to repeat the same rhythm in ascending volume, you simultaneously find yourself listening to a tender voice from within articulate, “Perhaps you should roll over in your warm bed and sleep a bit longer this morning.” Despite the pleasant voice, and in utter defiance, you instead turn off the option to extend sleep and rise.

Although fantasizing about extra sleep is nothing you find to be out-of–sorts, something this particular morning is just not right. You feel tired, uneasy, and somewhat indifferent. Already in a lackadaisical state, you choose to place no further thought into your feelings, for you know any delay in the morning routine has great potential to make you late. You prohibit any more tiring thought and get to work.

Once at the workplace, and in forced resolute, you sit down and attempt to check voicemails, emails, and to-do lists. Instead, however, you hone in on how the light above you seems extra bright, conversation surrounding you is loud and impersonal, and the smell of someone’s perfume is pungent and distasteful.

A few hours later you are warm to the touch, flushed, and slightly clammy. Suddenly, you feel the need to swallow. Let me repeat the previous sentence. Suddenly, you feel the need to swallow. A once involuntary action becomes compulsory. In denial, you repeatedly continue to swallow, testing your ability to perform the movement without discomfort. You fail. A dull pain lingers. Fully aware of the sickness that resides inside, steadily increasing in strength and patiently waiting to kick into higher gear, you can’t help but gulp down dismay, defeat, and anger. In a slouched position, hand on the forehead, the mind in desperation, you cry aloud, “I need a doctor.” Interestingly, as the word “doctor” is pronounced, a momentous state of hopefulness comes forth. You effortlessly associate “doctor” with “fix,” “lollipop,” and “medicine.” Surely it is he who will soon verify your suspicions of having the flu, a bacterial infection, or the ever-so-enlightening-diagnosis, a cold.

In rigid fashion, you’ll administer the perfected-over-the-years drug schedule: snort the saline solution twice daily; swallow the prescribed amoxicillin until the bottle is empty; and supplement with self- prescribed acetaminophen, dextromethorphan, dexylamine succinate, acetylsalicylic acid, and guaifenesin. And despite the office visit, lollipop, and pharmaceutical preciseness, over the course of the next 14 days your appetite, sleep, training, time, and size will lessen, suffer, be non-existant, wasted, and minimized.

Is this all sounding somewhat familiar?

I’ve followed a regimen like this for 27 years. It’s all I’ve ever known. I’ve even taken pride in perfecting the protocol—storing supplies at home, saving my physician’s phone number in my cell phone contact list, always pleading with my doctor to prescribe me an antibiotic regardless of the diagnosis.

But now, I stand changed. I have kicked the past protocol to the streets. Needless to say, along with consuming Brussels sprouts, I add acupuncture to Things I’ve Never Experienced until the Age of 28. As I clearly do not understand the laws of acupuncture fully or claim to, nor have I performed any extensive research on its many properties and effects, I do know that one mid-afternoon, as death was looming over me, I took the advice from a colleague and alternatively made an appointment with an acupuncturist instead of my physician. After receiving but one treatment, my symptoms lasted only three days instead of the anticipated 14. In addition to experiencing the short-term bout of sickness, I did not lose any sleep or size, I did not miss any meals or training, nor did I consume any drug whatsoever.

I now receive treatment weekly. Not only have I found acupuncture to kill sickness and relieve stressors, it also surprisingly remediated a few nagging injuries I endured years ago. Seeing that I do find pleasure in annihilating my CNS several times throughout the week, I also find acupuncture to aid in the recovery process while alleviating tension found in reoccurring sore muscles: glutes, quads, hamstrings, calves, deltoids, biceps, triceps, forearms, and specifically the trapezius, rhomboidous major, latissimus dorsi, serratus anterior, and erector spinae.

I had the privilege of sitting down with my acupuncturist, Michael C. Moy, L.Ac. (Licensed Acupuncturist), T.C.M.D. (Traditional Chinese Medical Doctor), to ask questions and receive answers. At last I have high hopes that you too might become curious and seek/utilize an array of alternative medicine methods with the purpose of heeding off sickness, preserving and promoting health, increasing the capacity to do work, maximizing performance, and ultimately giving you the push to show up day-in and day-out. As my father reminds me excessively, “HEALTH IS WEALTH.” He undoubtedly is 100% correct.

Sheena: Please provide elitefts™ readers with some background information on yourself.

Dr. Moy: My name is Michael Moy. Yes, that’s the name I was given in America. When I was young, I was very interested in Chinese, Ancient Chinese Martial Arts, and Healing Arts. So when I was young, I studied Kung Fu. When you injur yourself, there was always a medicine—inside a school or the teacher's house if you injured your hands or sprained your ankle. For example, one time I was doing the arm training—so you have to hit each other very hard, as hard as you could—and the tendons swelled up. It’s very painful. The teacher just opened a jar of medicine and then just rubbed it on for you. Five minutes—it flattened out. No more puffiness, achiness. Everything gone, brand new, immediately able to train again. That’s why I wanted to learn. I was about 11 or 12. I was training with a guy who was four years older. I mean that’s not that old, but when you are only 12 and he’s 16, that's quite old. Their bones are much harder than yours.

Later on, when I was a teenager in high school, I had an injury in my knee. I twisted the knee, actually a pretty bad sprain—torn all the tendons and ligaments. I was dragging the foot for two years, and it was always in pain. I waited too long for two years, and then finally I decided to go to Hong Kong and get acupuncture done. The leg was totally numb for a year; you don’t feel it, you might feel something—not 100%, you might feel it 60%. The first needle that the Kung Fu Master...he put it into my buttocks, and then I felt a sensation. It went all the way like a spiral down to the heel. It was just an eye opener. I just feel like you wake up from the dead. When it was numb I felt like I wouldn’t be able to use the leg 100%. After the treatment I asked, “would you be able to teach me that kind of stuff?” He said, “it takes a lot of time, not just one or two days.” He guided me into what is good.

I went back home to America and then ran into a doctor, an old man, who was still living at 95 years old. He needed my help. In trade we help each other out. I helped him buy groceries and helped him become legal. I became his apprentice. He taught me for three years, from old school. I then decided to go back to China. I took a placement exam and got accepted into the University of Oriental Medicine in Guangzhou. I stayed there a few years, finished the program, and came back and started myself.

That’s the whole training. That’s why I am able to help most people when they say they are hurt because I know how you feel. I had that. I can relate.

Sheena: Can you expand upon WHY you do what you do?

Dr. Moy: Why? I think this is the best job. Why? Because I think I’m an honest and fair person. I have done many different jobs in the past. I’ve sold real estate, I sold whole-life insurance, did remodeling, restaurants—some hard, some not so hard. Some, too, where you use your mouth to make money, like sales. In construction you use your strength—physical, physical strength to make money. It’s hard, too. I’m not very convincing with the selling. It kind of has a cheating ingredient in selling which I don’t like. Remodeling is too hard for the body. Over time, you abuse the body.

I treat people, they feel better, they pay me—it seems fair to me. It’s not a bad trade.

Sheena: How can strength athletes benefit from acupuncture?

Dr. Moy: Athletes endure strenuous training. Usually your muscles get fatigued, the joints are overused, and they get spasms. Acupuncture can relax the muscles.

Lactic acid—the whole body aches. There are special points that I found that only use one needle, right between the ring finger and the last knuckle. The next day you can go back to training. Somehow it releases that lactic acid.

You have many options. You can use a local area. If the leg gets tired, you can do the muscle group and still accomplish the same result.

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Sheena: Aside from acupuncture, what is an alternative, non-needle method that strength athletes can benefit from?

Dr. Moy: Cupping, more for the whole general area—muscle fatigue, soreness, tension from draft. You can get tension from getting cold. Muscles contract from cold. You stay outside, you start cramping, and you lock up. The most important thing is that it pulls out the cold from the muscles and joints. There are pores in our skin. This is how we perspire. When the cold goes through your pores and into your muscle, it becomes a spasm. In order to get that cold out, you put a cup in it to enlarge the pore. It also has suction, and therefore it can suck it up.

Bruce Lee, he didn’t use acupuncture, he used the Russian Tense Unit (electrical stim) to ease up his tension so he could continue training. It’s the same principal.

Sheena: Do you feel that most athletes take advantage of restorative methods like acupuncture or cupping? Why or why not?

Dr. Moy: No. Eastern medicine, some people are not really open to it. They go more for conventional medicine—physical therapy, chiropractic, massage therapy, surgery, or replacement. People are skeptical in the beginning, until they try it. Then they know what it does. The best thing is to try it. They need to find out by doing it, like you. But I think the American who is into Chinese Martial Arts, they might be more open to acupuncture. I think these students are open to it.

Sheena: What areas do you find the most suffering?

Dr. Moy: Lately, the neck and shoulder blade—tension on the C7 and the T1 area. A lot of times, people will have the lack of range of motion and then they end up having surgery or replacement. They end up going to the massage therapist who rubs the shoulder blade. It’s helpful for a short period of time, but they didn’t get to the cause. You have to get to the cause.

The root of the problem is chronic spasm. I think your brain and disk, that area, that nerve, gets used to getting spasm. It’s like an old memory—it’s hard to erase and you always think it’s normal. By putting a needle in that area more often, it kind of tells the brain where the problem is. Keep having communication between the brain and the disk, and then they understand each other. They will help each other out. The problem will be clear. That’s how I look at it. The book did not tell you that.

Most of time it doesn’t matter how chronic or how difficult the problem is, if I am able to work it, and the person is able to go along with my treatment, there is no problem that can’t be solved.

Sheena: How can you be contacted? How can someone learn more about the benefits of acupuncture and eastern medicine?

Dr. Moy: My website: www.moyacupuncture.com