Unlock the mysteries of the mind-body connection as we sit down with Utah Tech Biomedical Sciences student, Lizzy Maclennan to unravel the enigmatic ties between acupuncture and neuroscience. Join me, Doctor of Acupuncture, Janene Borandi, and Neuroscientist, Anthony Pappas, to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly about what drew us to choose alternative routes in the broad landscape of medical sciences.
This episode promises to broaden your understanding of how ancient practices meet modern science, and how this synergy can lead to more effective healing. Anthony's insights into the brain's intricate pathways offer a fresh perspective on the potential of acupuncture to engage the nervous system for enhanced therapeutic outcomes. Meanwhile, Janene's leap from IT to the holistic art of acupuncture exemplifies the transformative power of integrating scientific rigor into traditional modalities.
Struggling with work-life balance or pondering a career transition? Our guests share their personal journeys through the challenges and triumphs of their professional lives. The episode highlights the need for a stronger foundation in scientific education within the acupuncture curriculum, addressing the desire to bridge the communication gap with the wider medical community. Hear how the Neuro Acupuncture Institute's program is revolutionizing the approach to neurological conditions and discover the paths that Janene and Anthony have navigated—balancing family, financial considerations, and the innate drive to innovate within healthcare.
As we wrap up, tales of early hustles and eventual successes in acupuncture practice provide both inspiration and practical wisdom for listeners at any career stage. Whether you're on the cusp of a significant career shift or simply fascinated by the convergence of alternative medicine and advanced science, there's a wealth of experience to be gleaned from our conversations. We celebrate the joys and honor the dedication of those in the neuroscience field, from the classroom to the lab, and explore how these roles shape not just the future of healthcare, but the very essence of patient care and respect for the human body.
Unlock the mysteries of the mind-body connection as we sit down with Utah Tech Biomedical Sciences student, Lizzy Maclennan to unravel the enigmatic ties between acupuncture and neuroscience. Join me, Doctor of Acupuncture, Janene Borandi, and Neuroscientist, Anthony Pappas, to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly about what drew us to choose alternative routes in the broad landscape of medical sciences.
This episode promises to broaden your understanding of how ancient practices meet modern science, and how this synergy can lead to more effective healing. Anthony's insights into the brain's intricate pathways offer a fresh perspective on the potential of acupuncture to engage the nervous system for enhanced therapeutic outcomes. Meanwhile, Janene's leap from IT to the holistic art of acupuncture exemplifies the transformative power of integrating scientific rigor into traditional modalities.
Struggling with work-life balance or pondering a career transition? Our guests share their personal journeys through the challenges and triumphs of their professional lives. The episode highlights the need for a stronger foundation in scientific education within the acupuncture curriculum, addressing the desire to bridge the communication gap with the wider medical community. Hear how the Neuro Acupuncture Institute's program is revolutionizing the approach to neurological conditions and discover the paths that Janene and Anthony have navigated—balancing family, financial considerations, and the innate drive to innovate within healthcare.
As we wrap up, tales of early hustles and eventual successes in acupuncture practice provide both inspiration and practical wisdom for listeners at any career stage. Whether you're on the cusp of a significant career shift or simply fascinated by the convergence of alternative medicine and advanced science, there's a wealth of experience to be gleaned from our conversations. We celebrate the joys and honor the dedication of those in the neuroscience field, from the classroom to the lab, and explore how these roles shape not just the future of healthcare, but the very essence of patient care and respect for the human body.
My name is Janine Brandy and I'm an acupuncturist. I have been practicing acupuncture now for 10 years. I graduated in 2014, so I'm coming up on my 10-year anniversary, but they had us start with needles at about a year and a half in, so I've been giving myself 10 years for a while now, but this is my second career.
Speaker 1:
I was in information technology. I worked for the federal government for about 15 years doing IT stuff and it was definitely a very rewarding and important switch for me to decide to do this, to get back into medicine and pursue acupuncture as a career. It's awesome. I think everybody should do it.
Speaker 3:
Nice. Alright, I'm Anthony Pappas. I'm a neuroscientist by trade and I graduated with my PhD in neuroscience about 10 years ago, in 2015. I now serve as a department vice chair at a medical school in the United States and use my PhD to train young medical professionals, or aspiring medical professionals, in neuroscience and neuroanatomy.
Speaker 2:
This is for my behavioral neuroscience class Behavioral neuro oh man, that's what got me, that's what got me hooked. It's so cool. I love it yeah that's where I started.
Speaker 3:
There wasn't a neuroscience program at the time, so it was more like psychology.
Speaker 2:
That's what the department it's in now and it's only the one course that's taught in it.
Speaker 3:
Oh, really, they only have one elective Like I'm assuming it's an elective course. Yeah, okay For a psych degree.
Speaker 2:
My degree is actually in just biomedical in general Okay, but I know it is an elective for the psych degree. I just have a friend in psych that's taking it as well and he's taking it as an elective.
Speaker 3:
All right, yeah, that was. That was my experience with neuro as well at the time.
Speaker 1:
All right, so you're, you're here interviewing, okay, well.
Speaker 2:
I've got five questions for y'all, all right, so we'll start with our first one, which is what are the key areas of content knowledge related to neuroscience that would be most relevant for someone to learn to be successful in your career?
Speaker 3:
okay. Is this directed at both of us, or is it one more so than the other?
Speaker 1:
or both of you, both will work, I think.
Speaker 1:
Um, so I guess, given that you are interested in going into into acupuncture, a big part of, so the key areas of neuroscience that are important, which wasn't really part of my curriculum when I studied acupuncture 10 years ago, like we had a couple of like science of acupuncture classes and, um, like I remember doing um, something like a poster, a research poster, but there wasn't a whole lot of emphasis on, hey, understand the science of this stuff.
Speaker 1:
Um, so I'm like now, at this stage of my career, kind of trying to catch up and like, oh man, there's so much science going on. Let me help to people to understand at least the basic science of it, which is, when you create an injury in the body, your immune system is responding you're increasing blood flow to the area, you're releasing endogenous opioids, you're firing off different neurotransmitters, and now we understand that if you apply a different frequency to the needles, that can elicit a different response, not only locally but systemically. And so, yes, absolutely, it's so important to learn about the brain and how the brain works in communication with the body. Um, if for no other reason, because the science will help us, as acupuncturists, substantiate its effectiveness in treating medical conditions okay and like naturally. So we're not having to give people pills to elicit the same response within their body. That will help them feel better.
Speaker 2:
I like it, okay, okay.
Speaker 3:
Cool, my. So my thoughts on that question. I'm going to interpret that question, or I'll let that question for me be framed in the context of somebody who's interested in both neuroscience and acupuncture but hasn't embarked on their career yet. So that's kind of you.
Speaker 2:
Okay.
Speaker 3:
Perfect. So if I was going to, if I was gonna, if I was gonna approach an acupuncture career but wanted to bring some element of neuroscience into it, um, or at least know what elements of neuroscience to appreciate given that career, uh path, I'd probably focus on, like um the autonomic nervous system, because from what I've the papers that I've read looking at um acupuncture, they seem to be converging on um the vagus nerve and you know, leading to activation of the vagus nerve.
Speaker 3:
And the vagus nerve is one of the, you know, as far as the body cavities go, which is, you know, thorax, abdomen, pelvis, um, the vagus nerve provides all the parasympathetic drive to the thoracic cavity, most of it to the abdominal cavity, and then it doesn't really have anything to do with the pelvic cavity but through that vagus nerve you can affect that.
Speaker 3:
You know, by affecting the parasympathetics you're going to affect digestion, for one thing, blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, just all the things that kind of are behind the scenes as far as keeping a person alive.
Speaker 3:
So when those are out of whack it can be very uncomfortable. So having an understanding of that and being able to potentially communicate that to your future patients, I think is important. Also, I would think about the pain pathways, so sensory innervation to the skin and connective tissue, how that information comes in, what's known about how that information is delivered to different parts of the brain. Because anytime there's an injury, whether it's a small injury through an acupuncture needle or you know, you fall asleep, you break your wrist or something like that, that information is gonna be sent to multiple places in the central nervous system and knowing kind of which ones might be most important for eliciting the response that you want? Versus a conscious experience of pain, you just want a little bit of an injury to evoke the body's natural healing and kind of I don't know response team or whatever you want that you don't want the one causing the person issues.
Speaker 1:
I love that. Yeah, like somebody sitting there writhing in pain because they've got a large gash that's eventually going to, you know, elicit a lot of pain in an area. Their brain's going to go haywire with that, um, but if it's if it a tiny little injury, they might still have that same response firing to say, oh, we have to go to work to heal that injury. There's an injury here and you're sitting there for 45 minutes with a needle in you and it's triggering all of these mechanisms. But the person has a subjective feeling of calm which I think takes it one step further in saying, like your body is under a stressful circumstance, it's under a sympathetic stimulus, but you've got a person laying there, it's nice and warm in the room, it might be dark, there's nice music playing, and they're actually in a very parasympathetic response.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so in some ways, if you think about acupuncture, you know us as acupuncturists. We say you got to come for four to six weeks consecutively, like that's what I usually tell my patients, because you're like practicing a new muscle, you're practicing a new habit, I'm going to put you in an excitatory stimulus, but you're going to go to sleep. Yeah, that trains the body and the mind to now be better equipped to deal with stressful and painful circumstances. Okay, and I think and I'm going to bounce this over to you because you're the neuroscientist I think that that actually works on the anterior cingulate cortex to start to train it to not be so hyperactive, because people who have pain, they, they tend to have more and more pain if they don't address that, and that the anterioringulate cortex is the pain signal in the brain. Right, that's the part that turns on and off.
Speaker 3:
My understanding is that that's the emotional part of the pain. That's the part if it goes haywire. That would be like the okay, yeah, I've twisted my ankle, oh, I've twisted my ankle, I can't work for the next six weeks. If I can't work for the next six weeks, if I can't work for the next six weeks, I can't get this. And then you just kind of go into this kind of downward spiral which exacerbates the pain and then it just sort of feeds off itself. That's that was my understanding of cingulate. But yeah, I think that's what do you call it. Yeah, that's something you want to eliminate from your patient.
Speaker 2:
You don't like the same way how it works when, like, little kids fall specifically and if, like you, don't make a big deal out of it. They tend to like probably.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, they don't know the difference.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I read a study out of I think it was, it was either Stanford or Harvard, and this was in my doctorate program. They were trying to help us understand the mechanism of fibromyalgia pain, and so they did cognitive behavioral therapy on both this normal group quote unquote normal. So these people were they did not have fibromyalgia versus a group of people that did have fibromyalgia pain and they called it um catastrophizing. Okay, and so if you can imagine somebody who twists their ankle oh my god, twist my ankle.
Speaker 1:
I can't work for six months, versus like somebody's like oh man, I twisted my ankle. Okay, no big deal, it's gonna take a little bit of time, but there's. There's this mechanism and they were calling it the anterior cingulate cortex. That is always on. And if it's always on. That person's perception of pain is that it's always there. Yep, Okay, so interesting stuff. I'll try to find that study for you.
Speaker 2:
That would be cool. I'd love to read it. Okay, all right, we good to move on. I think so. I like it, okay, okay. My next question is what credentials? Preparation or training wasn't required for your profession but you wish you had taken or knew before you entered your career uh, I probably answered a little bit of that in the first question question that we didn't have.
Speaker 1:
I mean, we had anatomy, we had point location, we had needling techniques, we had, like I said, the one integrated science of acupuncture class, and I'm sure we had some other science classes. But it just, I think now, especially with where I want to go with my career, which, as you know, uh, involves the education of future acupuncturists I wish I had more of those sciences, and so much so that I am fascinated by this program at the neuro acupuncture institute, yeah, where when you go in, they start from ground zero and teach you about the brain and the nervous system and you know the different neurotransmitters and all of the things that are relevant to treating um, specifically like cognitive decline and strokes and other neurological diseases. So it wasn't required at the time and I think I've still been a very effective acupuncturist, even though I I haven't had like that aspect of the, the education that is available, um.
Speaker 1:
But yeah, I think it would have been nice to have it initially, and I you know that you're going to go to school for the rest of your life, sweetheart yep so that's true you're going to be learning for forever, but I think it would have helped me create more of an awareness for the the science of this medicine from the beginning. Yeah, and that would have given it, it would have substantiated the mechanisms and therefore the effectiveness to the greater scientific community and medical community.
Speaker 3:
I like that.
Speaker 1:
Thanks.
Speaker 3:
As a neuroscientist answering that question again, trying to think of somebody who's going into, who wants to kind of have like a bridge between those two disciplines, acupuncture and neuroscience. From my perspective, what I would have liked to have more training during my PhD program would have been just oral presentations. We had plenty of like scientific talks that we delivered to other scientists, yeah, but, like at that time podcasts weren't really a thing yet, yeah. So, just yeah, just knowing how to like deliver, like important you know, in-depth information in a digestible format for people who don't have backgrounds in science, and how to like communicate, you know heavy duty neuroanatomy to the lay person, or something like that. So, as a practicing, practicing acupuncture, yeah, you didn't have the courses when you were training, but your, your, your methods are still effective, but what might be missing is your ability to communicate that to your patients patients so that they. But what might be missing is your ability to communicate that to your patients, so that they know what it is.
Speaker 1:
You're targeting what you're doing through your techniques and not only my patients, but their physicians as well. Yeah, exactly, If I could document that hand it to my patient and say hey, go take this to your doctor so he or she understands what mechanisms are at play here, so that our treatment plans can be complementary to one another.
Speaker 2:
That would be cool. Yeah, definitely, that's a good idea. That is a really good idea. Okay, Thanks guys. All right, so my third question is what effect does your career have on your lifestyle and your family?
Speaker 1:
um, what effect does your career have on your lifestyle and your family? Um, so a couple of things like it always depends, right? If you are young and you're in love and you're gonna go get married right away and you're gonna have babies, like, and go to medical school, you're signing yourself up for a really tough time right out of the gate. That's a really expensive time. It's a very exhausting time. If you're single and you don't want to have kids and you don't want to get married and you decide that you're going to go to acupuncture school, it's going to be fun, it's going to be not as expensive, it's going to be a really rewarding career. You're going to graduate and make enough money to pay off a lower amount of debt and everything in between. There's the spectrum, for you Throw in sick parents, sick children, maybe having an illness yourself. It's always going to depend upon the individual life circumstance. Yeah, um, I would say it's. You know, just from having gone to acupuncture school and having taught at a medical school and having friends that are still going through that process. They're in their residencies now and my course of study was a lot easier. It was not as expensive. It is just as, if not more effective.
Speaker 1:
I have patients coming to me all the time saying nobody has been able to figure this out. My doctor just wants to give me a pill and, oh my gosh, thank you so, so much. You helped me resolve my issue. So it really boils down to the individual and what they really feel in their heart is the right thing to do for their path. I know a lot of people going into medicine are looking at the landscape and saying medicine has failed my family or whatever, and I want to make a difference in medicine. It's a locked down system. There's not a whole lot that you can do as an agent of change within the medical system as it is right now, and there's still a lot of money to be made as a physician. So if you're going to go into medicine and be like, yeah, I'm going to make a ton of money, absolutely that that should be your path and you should go full bore towards that path, understanding that it's going to be six years, a lot of money, a lot of sleepless nights.
Speaker 1:
It's probably going to affect your health and you're going to have to. You're going to have to do someone else's standard of care when you get into your job, that is your job yeah to carry out the mission as defined by the organization.
Speaker 1:
Very few people come out of medical school and hang their shingle. Yeah versus people, Versus people going into acupuncture. Very few people come out of acupuncture and take a job. Most of us are are going to start our own business and, um, at the end of the day, you know I say it always depends upon the person and what you're looking for. But if you're looking for lower cost, easier, higher quality of life and, uh, a way to establish your self within your rule set, you get to make the rules. It's pretty cool. Acupuncture is the way to go and you're going to make a lot of money, Maybe not right out of the gate, but that's not expected.
Speaker 1:
If you go the medical route, you're not going to make a lot of money right out of the gate but you're going to make a lot more money sooner in the acupuncture route than you will the traditional med school route and you're only going to work, like you know, 30 hours a week versus the 80 hours a week you're going to have to put in for most of your, your, your, your fun years. You know, like your 20s into your 30s, you should be partying and having a blast during that time and you're just racking up debt and wondering like when you're gonna get to sleep again. So not the case for acupuncture school got it okay far more like return on investment.
Speaker 1:
And if you think about like, if you think about things in terms of like um, where is there value? There's value in being able to sleep well at night and feel good for most of the day and low stress, because all of those factors contribute to your health. And if you enter your 30s, after a really tumultuous 20s because you were in med school and your health is failing yeah, I don't know, it's like now that I'm older. It's kind of like, no, my health is such a priority now.
Speaker 2:
So you're up all right.
Speaker 3:
What was the quote is something about career and family lifestyle and family.
Speaker 2:
How?
Speaker 3:
does the career affect lifestyle and family? All right, yeah, the. So right off the bat, I don't know. I think we have to be honest and say you know, these are. We are two people who don't want yeah, didn't want to get married or have kids, so getting a neuroscience PhD is not an easy thing. At that time it was like the average duration of graduate training would have been like maybe six years or something like that, and at that time also, luckily, there was no tuition, it was all waived, so it was tuition free, and then they paid you like we got paid like $24,000 a year.
Speaker 3:
That's nice, okay so yeah, it's nice that we don't have any debt to rack up. Well, some of us did, because they chose to take out like loans. So they want to have a nicer place and car and big TV or something Of course there's always those people big TV or something, of course.
Speaker 3:
There's always those people. Yeah, you can make ends meet, or you could at that time make ends meet with like $24,000 salary. What sucks is it's like six years at $24,000 and it doesn't get any better, but the impact it has on family, I'm trying to think. I can probably count on one hand the number of neuroscience PhDs who I've met who are married with kids and haven't been through either one or multiple divorces or something like that.
Speaker 3:
So most often I feel like with the science careers, the duration of training, which kind of locks you down at a certain pace, scale Plus you're also you don't, you're not just like a 9 to 5. You're kind of, if you want to survive after the training, you kind of need to bump it up and make yourself stand out. So that requires more time and energy, so it puts a lot of strain on family and lifestyle at that time.
Speaker 3:
Later on yeah, coming out of a phd program if you're going right into like a postdoc research postdoc. I remember I was a.
Speaker 3:
I was a really good research postdoc yeah and uh, I was, I was looking to get out and I was looking at jobs back home and like high school or you know, public school teacher makes about the same if not more, and I was like dang, you know, like that sucks, yeah. And then just friends of mine who never went to college, who just graduated high school and been working. They're buying new cars and they've already got money to buy a home and it's like I'm just starting out and um, but anyways, you do end up making more money after once.
Speaker 3:
You really kind of find your place in the sun yeah but, um, something that happens to a lot of people in phd who've gotten a phd whether it's neuroscience, biomedical sciences or whatever then they do a research postdoc. You can stay in that research postdoc loop for almost 10 years yeah and your salary never really goes up. You might have 20 papers. Who cares? It doesn't do anything for your paycheck.
Speaker 1:
You were at Harvard right.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so what matters is more just like how you use the opportunities creatively to make the next I don't know job opportunity for yourself, something like that.
Speaker 1:
But yeah, I think it has a.
Speaker 3:
It doesn't make family life or anything like that easy and lifestyle eventually gets, you know, catches up and you get to have nice things and relax. But there's going to be a time of sacrifice, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
I like it. Okay, alrighty, so we kind of already answered this in the last one but what did the first two years of your career look like?
Speaker 1:
Oh, this is a good one. Um, the first few years from my career, I was still I was still in my old career as an IT person was still. I was still in my old career as an IT person, and so I was like part-time at social security.
Speaker 1:
I was part-time at the VA medical center and I was doing um ear acupuncture on Gulf War veterans for a research study. Um, it was a lot of traveling. It was a lot of traffic. It was a lot of traveling. It was a lot of traffic. It was a lot of trying to prove myself worthy of getting a VA job, because it would have been wonderful for me to graduate from my master's program, quit my federal job at Social Security and then take a new federal job as an acupuncturist within the VA Medical Center. And the federal government is hiring acupuncturists just not as much as we would like them to, but that would have helped me keep my pension. And I did interview eventually for a job at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital. They have a integrative team that works specifically on active duty traumatic brain injury. So soldiers coming back from war yeah, that had mild to moderate traumatic brain injury, I was going to be their acupuncturist cool cool job ever.
Speaker 1:
I would have taken a serious pay cut, talking like 115,000 a year to like 60,000 a year.
Speaker 1:
But, I was starting out in a new career and I would have been willing to do that, especially to be able to keep my pension and the whole nine. Okay, I didn't get the job because I'm sure some active duty military person moved in. Maybe their spouse got the acupuncturist position, but it was. It was like, equally like I was really excited to work with that team and they were excited to work with me and they were probably their hands were tied. They had to give the job to someone else with preference. Um, but at that point I was like, hey, you know what, I'm going to move. I don't want to be in the DC area anymore, I want to move out West. I've always wanted to move out West. And here I am, st George, right.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Um, as soon as I got here, I started my business and, um, it went really slow at first, but I just, uh, I did probably a little bit of advertising, but what I really did to make myself successful is I just went out and I did what I loved. So I went to yoga, I went climbing. I met people at the climbing crag. They were like, oh cool, you do that. I'm like, yep, come on in. I got time and I would schedule anybody who wanted to come in whenever they wanted to come in, Because that was the hustle right.
Speaker 1:
Until I got busy enough where I was like, oh my gosh, I'm working on Sundays, I'm working at night, I'm working in the mornings, like I gotta like dial this in. So the busier I got, the more I gave myself permission to say, okay, I might not fill all of these slots, but I'm only working Monday through Friday. And then once I got even busier and, and so during that time I was also working over at Entrada and I was working at the veterans home and I, you know, like I had multiple different places where I would go and make myself um, available. But the busier my schedule got, the more I kind of pulled it in and I cut that thread and I cut this thread, kind of pulled it in and I cut that thread and I cut this thread and now I'm Monday through Thursday, 10 am till 6 pm some days, and I have two treatment rooms. So the first few years was I got a hustle to make this happen, but now that it's happening it's kind of autopilot and I don't have to do any marketing.
Speaker 1:
You know my business is referral only and I'm coasting and I can see retirement in the near future. So yeah, it's been a good career. A good second career for sure, much more rewarding than the first.
Speaker 3:
So, yeah, I guess I had kind of a two phase career thing too. So like when I first graduated with my PhD, I started the postdoc. That was the one at Harvard. That was a research postdoc and that one's really low paying job, but because of the prestige of that university that was really the main reason I pursued it. I think at that time I was already done and didn't want to do research anymore.
Speaker 3:
I wanted to use the neuroscience, uh, phd for something else, um, but yeah, those first couple years were were rough because it was like I think 40, 42, 000 annual salary, yeah, and it was boston so I had to live like down in. Originally I was living in um, providence, rhode island, and taking the train two hours, and then I was able to save money and things changed in my life where I moved like a half hour north and then I was an hour and a half each way and I did that for about two years and it was like the hardest, longest two years I've ever had, a lot worse than the six years for the PhD. But luckily by then, you know, I had kind of established myself a little bit, made, made a name for myself. I was at a good place for a couple of years. I got my name on a paper too. I had also met this other postdoc there.
Speaker 3:
We formed a postdoc association so we were for our hospital, the Mass Eye and Ear Hospital. We were like our postdoc reps. So then we would kind of for the whole Boston area which is big on science, like MIT, tufts, all that, we would have like weekly kind of meetings with all the postdoc association directors from all those other schools and then we would set up like events. We would have guest speakers, we'd have like I don't know, there was one winter the ice skating socials and things like that where we get all the scientists in the area together and just meet each other and hang out and have food and do an activity. So that was.
Speaker 3:
That was all fun. That was also like stuff I could put on my CV. That would have been helpful for the new career now that I have, which is teaching anatomy to medical students. So that was something I had to do as a graduate student, as a TA, because the PhD program I was in was affiliated with the University of Vermont Medical School, so we'd have to after we finished the course. The next year we would have to teach in the course. Okay, so that gave me the kind of basic experience and background teaching that I needed to get out of research to do teaching.
Speaker 3:
And then now. Now, luckily, I've been able to like kind of run the lab here at Rocky Vista and now I'm serving as the department vice chair, so I get to like hire people, do fun things like that.
Speaker 2:
Sounds nice, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:
Take care of the department budget and all that.
Speaker 2:
Okay, cool, okay, sounds nice. Okay, yeah, take care of the department budget. Okay, cool, okay. My last question is what is the most rewarding aspect of your career? Man, I stumbled over those words okay um helping people I like it yeah.
Speaker 3:
That was it.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, wow, well, I could come up with more. But she asked for the most.
Speaker 3:
The most rewarding. The most rewarding.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean, if you want to give me more go for it, but yeah, like I.
Speaker 1:
It's lucrative, I make really good money, I make my own schedule, I'm the boss. It does ultimately come back to helping people, though. Being able to help people figure out like get to the root of why they have the issue and help them understand what they need to do to prevent it from coming back, takes it the next step in their care and that's just like there's nothing. Yeah, there's nothing more rewarding than that feeling like you have a sense of purpose in your life's. Work.
Speaker 3:
is has always been big for me, so you're up all right, I needed you to expand on that so I can you gave me plenty of time before than that one. Uh, so most rewarding part of my career now yep let's see what is the most rewarding part of my career now gratitude journal. It's that gratitude well you know, I do love neuro.
Speaker 1:
I mean, I love absolutely.
Speaker 3:
Let's see what is the most rewarding part of my career now the Gratitude Journal. It's the Gratitude Journal. Well, you know I do love neuro. I mean, I absolutely love neuroscience and that's why I pursued it. I still have a passion for it, but actually, you know, being an investigator and executing research plans not for me, no, no. So at least I get to. What I get to do is I get to hang around every year in the part of neuroscience that I absolutely trust, um and love. Actually I really love the nitty-gritty neuroanatomy.
Speaker 3:
We have to draw a spinal, I teach, like all the spinal pathways and stuff like that at rvu, a lot of the visual pathways um, which it's just it's kind of like for a medical student, like it's it's good basic neuroanatomy that they have to understand to be able to, you know, deal with people who might have a spinal cord injury or stroke or some other lesion that might affect their vision or something like that. Um, I don't. I'm no longer like under the pressure of trying to figure out some new element to the whole neuroscience story.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 3:
And having to hopefully hang my hat on what I found in this mouse or rat being true for humans. Yeah, it's so a lot less stress and just I get to hang out in that one kind of area of neuroscience and do it every year. So I get to revisit it and get a little bit better at delivering the material, get a little bit more efficient in getting the point across, and then I get to try out new like analogies and stuff. So I like that part a lot and then also my role as an anatomist at Rocky Vista.
Speaker 3:
It's also rewarding the dissection piece, the donors. You know they make that donation and what they're hoping to do is provide some useful, you know, educational experience for students or some research that will help advance our knowledge of something. So by running that anatomy lab I get to help those people create the gift that they were intending to provide. So you know, by being good and skilled at dissection and teaching others how to be good and skilled at dissection, they can learn the anatomy better. There's no better tool than a human body to learn all of the arteries, nerves and and vessels, everything like that. So I get to kind of act in that sense and make sure that the donors are always respected and appreciated by the students and things like that, and protect their identities, protect them from students who might otherwise forget how grateful they should be for that opportunity, and then say things, do things, make remarks that are remarks that are just you know ridiculous.
Speaker 3:
So yeah, I get to do that, that's so cool.
Speaker 2:
Okay, that's all the questions I have.
Speaker 1:
Cool. I always tell Anthony it's like it's really rewarding to have the conversations that we do, because I'll be like, hey, I'll send him over this study and be like what do you think about?
Speaker 1:
this and he he puts this like critical eye on research, which nobody there's no one like a researcher to put that critical eye on something and say, well, they didn't really do this, they didn't really do that, or or hey, you know what this looks like a really well-designed study, it they had, um, the right kind of, um, uh, research requirements and you know, in terms of acupuncture, like, oh, it's really, it's really, it's pretty cool, it's doing what they're saying it does, yeah, and so acupuncture is still one of those like really budding professions here in the us.
Speaker 1:
There's not a whole lot of people that look at you and say, oh, that's so cool, you want to go into acupuncture.
Speaker 1:
They look at you sideways like hey, yeah, that's a little that's a little woo-woo and it's like no guys, there's there's actually so much science to it and uh, and it it's I don't know. I feel like it's like anything in medicine right, it takes about 20 years. Once we discover something, it takes 20 years to actually bring it to market and help the rest of the world understand there's something going on here. So that's, that's the biggest value I get out of our professional relationship is you bring so much legitimacy to my work and it's uh, like somebody said the other day um, I don't want to. I don't want you to tell me how good you are at something. I want somebody else to tell me how good you are at something. People don't want to hear you brag about yourself but, in some ways I'm like yeah, but just.
Speaker 1:
But then just go talk to my friend the neuroscientist, he can tell you how legitimate my work is. So anyway, it's cool oh, thanks for that.
Speaker 3:
I appreciate that yeah okay, what did you do your research on, because I'm sure you spent a bunch of years on that yeah, I spent about six years um looking at subarachnoid a rat model of subarachnoid hemorrhage, okay and then after that, my postdoc it was looking at uh mouse optic nerves and um looking at what kind of what kind of stuff goes on in those mouse optic nerve heads that leads to uh degeneration of retinal ganglion cells and glaucoma.
Speaker 2:
Oh okay, that's cool. Sounds very tedious.
Speaker 3:
It's tedious, yeah, dissecting out those little mouse optic nerve heads under a microscope. I would imagine that was rewarding in a sense, just to be able to develop a skill like that, to have my hand stay still under a microscope and get those things out. But I was always plagued with that question of like okay, I'm doing all this in a mouse and I know some, some not necessarily my project, but some projects you couldn't. You could do it in a mouse but you can't do it in a rat because it isn't is it the same?
Speaker 3:
pathway. It doesn't work and it's like, well, why are we doing it in a mouse?
Speaker 1:
and if it doesn't go from mouse to rat, we're trying to go from mouse to human and we're still so anyways yeah, all those questions yeah, I think, once you do go down to like the research wormhole and you start looking at all of the variables, um, it's kind of like you. You can make a case for why your design isn't good Might not work.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, and that was you know, when I was at the VA and I was looking at our point protocols and how we were testing the points to see whether they were active or not, I looked at it and I was like, well, I mean, you know, I'm using this little point locator and I'm testing the different points in the ears to see which ones are most active, and it's this whole thing. But the ones that we would needle were the most active. And I was like, well, what about the ones that are not active at all, yeah, aren't they the ones that need the most help?
Speaker 1:
And so it caused me to kind of like drum up this whole analysis and reason why the design of the study might not be the most efficient and effective. And now that I've been in this profession for so long, I look at the mechanism of qi which we don't talk about in modern medical sciences at all.
Speaker 1:
But this is, you know, this concept that there's energy in the body and you can use that energy to create change. This is thousands of years old and it's something that you know. People in medicine aren't even scratching their heads about, they just don't care about it and so it's like well, are we even asking the right questions? If we're not looking at all of the potential mechanisms that can cause change, then are we even asking the questions in the right way?
Speaker 2:
It's true, that's the whole fascinating aspect. Yeah, bye.
Speaker 1:
Good For you, yeah, okay, all right. Well, this was fun guys. Maybe we'll talk about it again someday, and for now, good luck with your assignment. All right, well, this was fun guys. Maybe we'll talk about it again someday, and for now, good luck with your assignment.
Speaker 2:
Thank you yeah.
Speaker 1:
Congratulations on checking another box. Oh, I know I'm excited.
Speaker 2:
You're almost done.
Speaker 3:
How many more years until you graduate?
Speaker 2:
So I'll be done with my undergrad spring of 25. So next year? Oh yeah, it's getting close. Yeah, to make it that far well, good for you, congrats.
Speaker 3:
You're almost done last year, about to start right next fall, I guess yep, but I'm excited.
Speaker 2:
And then you know we'll embark on acupuncture. That's another, like four years.
Speaker 1:
But yep, maybe good, we're gonna see if we can short that, though, because she's already got all of her biomedical sciences and a lot of the programs require a lot more science classes now, which is awesome, um, but we're gonna as a prerequisite or do they like deliver?
Speaker 1:
it like they deliver it and because you have a lot of people mid-career changing careers, they come into acupuncture school and they're like, okay, great, you haven't studied science ever in your life, or it's been a long time since you've had your mind in that game. We're gonna give you all of your sciences again. But she's so fresh out of the gate they'll probably just wave them good, yeah, hopefully you don't have to do that again.
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, that would be nice.
Speaker 1:
We're going to see how much we can. We're going to fast track her. That would be cool. Yeah, the time she's spending with me now. I'm going to see if we can get her credit for that too. Excellent, Excellent.
Speaker 3:
Have you had an opportunity to put a needle? In that head Not yet.
Speaker 1:
Not yet, not yet, oh man, I know, next semester I will.
Speaker 2:
I'm excited.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, because I don't think that you know the work I did over at RVU and you know that I was given permission by the administration to let the students needle themselves. I don't think I'm going to get in much trouble if I say, hey, lizzie, here are some needles.
Speaker 3:
Like go stick yourself Needles in a mirror. I think that'll be fine.
Speaker 1:
You've got medical professionals around town putting needles in people, adding stimulation, basically practicing acupuncture without as much as watching a YouTube video. I doubt I'm going to get in trouble for helping a young biomedical sciences student um needle herself just to see what it's like. So yeah, it'll be fun. We're having fun, I'm excited.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Okay, thank you guys. This was fun, of course, thank you.