Reduce Inflammation with Traditional and Cutting-Edge Modalities
– Mind Pioneer with Scott Donnell Episode 13 Tom Ingegno

Podcast Airs on Wednesday, August 25th at 9:00am EST and you can listen to it on Apple Podcasts here https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mind-pioneer/id1571321467

Dr. Tom Ingegno M.S.O.M., L.Ac. is a licensed Baltimore Acupuncturist and Certified Animal Acupuncturist. Tom holds a doctorate in Acupuncture and Chinese medicine, specializing in integrative health. He has a Master's degree in Oriental Medicine, and a Bachelor's degree in Professional Health Science. Tom is nationally certified (NCCAOM) and a Licensed Acupuncturist in both New York and Maryland. He has been studying Internal Cultivation Arts including Meditation, Qi Gong, Xing Yi, and Tai Chi since 1995. Tom has also been formally trained in Chinese Herbal Medicine. Tom has served as Director of Acupuncture for Nava Health and Vitality Centers and is the current Chair of the Maryland Board of Acupuncture

He has taught and supervised at the New York College of Health Professions and the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in New York. He is the author of You Got Sick, Now What? which explains seven Oriental Medicine techniques that can be done at home if you get a cold or flu. Tom was a Board Member of Edo Kai Traditional Acupuncture Society and frequent contributor to the North American Journal of Oriental Medicine. He has been published in several different issues of the North American Journal of Oriental Medicine (NAJOM) as well as consumer magazines and websites. He has treated FEMA rescue workers for both pain and emotional stress during the New York 9/11 rescue effort. He has also lectured about acupuncture and Men’s Health at Baltimore’s City Hall as part of Baltimore’s TV 25 program on Men in Science as well as several Johns Hopkins groups. 

As a practitioner, Tom combines traditional modalities with cutting-edge therapies to help reduce inflammation, and improve circulation. He is also certified to treat companion animals including dogs, cats, and horses.  He has volunteered to treat animals with several Baltimore rescues and has performed acupuncture on a rescued Pit Bull from Michael Vick, Camels in Egypt and has even been a consultant to the Maryland Zoo. Tom continues his education by studying with prominent Acupuncturists both in the US and abroad to ensure that he continues to expand his knowledge base and skill to provide the best possible care.

Listen to this informative Mind Pioneer episode with Tom Ingegno about how to combat chronic and mental health issues through a multi-disciplinary approach.

Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:

• Why we shouldn’t ignore our body’s check engine light.

• How eastern medicine, such as acupuncture, can reset our bodies and promote health.

• What actions you can take at home to become a healthier human being.

• What Chi is and how it can be translated into meaning, “How are you feeling?”

• Why you shouldn’t get attached to the outcome, so you can get the results you’re looking for.

Connect with Tom Ingegno
www.charmcityintegrative.com
Guest Contact Info:
Twitter - @ccintegrative
Instagram - @ccintegrative

Connect with Scott:
www.hapbee.com

Twitter - @BeHapbee
Instagram - @gethapbee
Facebook - facebook.com/BeHapbee
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Podcast Transcript:
Scott Donnell

Hey, everybody, Scott here. Welcome back to another episode of mind pioneer. I've got a great guest for you today. We're going to have an amazing discussion. He is a licensed Baltimore acupuncturist and certified animal acupuncturist. He has an incredible story that we're going to go through, it's Tom Ingegno. He is, like I said, an acupuncturist and certified animal acupuncturist. He's taught at New York College of Health Professions and the Pacific College of oriental medicine. He actually has a master's degree in oriental medicine, and a doctorate in acupuncture and Chinese medicine. We're going to have an amazing, amazing discussion today. As a practitioner, he combines traditional modalities with cutting edge therapies to help reduce inflammation and improve circulation. I could go on for a long time. But he also volunteers and treats animal at the Baltimore rescue. He has helped a bunch of Baltimore rescues, and rescued pit bulls from Michael Vick, camels in Egypt, and has been a consultant to the Maryland zoo. So, Tom, welcome to the podcast. I think a lot of people don't know much about acupuncture. They don't know much about Chinese herbs and Chinese medicine. That's what I want to get into today. I think this is a very interesting field. I think there's some weird stuff out there about the field. I love that you come referred. I love that. You have the background; you have the history. Some trusted people are putting on this podcast for a reason. What led you to this? I want to hear about your story for a little bit.

Tom Ingegno  

I'll give you the highlights. My grandfather was a pharmacist. I remember one day he was counting out pills, and he was counting out pills for somebody without insurance. He goes, “This guy needs five pills a day and they're five bucks apiece.” This guy was basically making minimum wage or less somewhere. It's a huge shock. He looks at me, and this is back in the day when before they had the computers, he actually had to deal them out by hand, put them in the bottle, label them all that stuff. He said, “There's got to be a better way than this, I'm looking for you to find it.” He passed away right before I went to college. When I was in college, I was all set up for pre-med and I was sitting in a class with 200 other top of the class students who all could memorize everything out of a textbook, but if you ask them how they felt, or, you know, to have an interaction with somebody else, sometimes it kind of short circuited them. They were programmed for one thing, and that was to memorize stuff. There's nothing wrong with that, but all of them wanted to be doctors too. I always wanted something that merged the personality, the human side of medicine, with taking care of someone. Through a weird series of events, including taking a club Tai Chi elective, and a Chinese philosophy course, the wires somehow got crossed in there. I said, “Wow, this is kind of interesting. I came home from my sophomore year, and shortly after received a postcard in the mail from an acupuncture school. Next thing I know, I'm enrolled in acupuncture school while I'm doing my second semester, junior year, caring about 32 credits and going, “Now this is what I want to do.” Once that happened, I never looked back.

Scott Donnell  

Wow, there you go. I love it. That's not everyone's story but a lot of people that we interview have had a personal pain point, a personal tragedy, or a personal struggle, or something that needed to be fixed and then they made that their mission. There's a time and a place for pills. There's a time and a place for prescription. Unfortunately, I think we tend to make that the de facto. It shouldn't be. There are so many other holistic ways to help your body. There are so many other things that are connected emotionally, and physically, and spiritually, and I think you're hitting it. This is great. We all have heard the word acupuncture. Explain it to the first grader.

Tom Ingegno  

I'll give you both the Eastern and the Western because I feel like, as it's moved to the west, they've made it more mystical. They've kind of built it up into this thing that I think is really doing it a disservice at the long side of it when we talk about terms like biohacking and how we can alter the human environment, if you will. Acupuncture is really set to do that in a very sophisticated way using some classical terms. When we talk about acupuncture, it falls into a branch that we call East Asian medicine or traditional East Asian medicine. That includes everything from massage and other types of body work to breathing to meditation, Qi Gong, Tai Chi, these movement exercises are Chinese herbal medicine. Acupuncture is what everyone sees. That's the most visually appealing kind of thing, but that's putting needles into the body to affect how that body functions. So classically, we'd say we are putting needles into specific points along channels, that would change how the energy is flowing through the body. Now, that is an amazing old school version of defining this, this cascade, these multiple effects that happen during the body. When we look at acupuncture through the lens of studies, what we're seeing is switching off the fight or flight mode, get it into rest and digest, which is a huge part of meditation. It's a huge part of yoga. All of these adjunct therapies do that in some way. We're seeing increased circulation throughout the body. Areas that get fresh blood in and old, stagnant blood with metabolic waste, lactic acid, cytokines, all these inflammatory processes out. If we get that fresh blood in and the old blood out, we can promote healing, and that's the main method of action of acupuncture. We can talk about it emitting endocannabinoids, your brain's natural feel good chemicals that look similar to cannabis, naturally forming painkillers in your body, and all of those things, but at its core, we have this overlapping cascade effect of switching off fight or flight, putting into rest and digest and allowing the body to reset. 

Scott Donnell  

I knew none of that. That wasn't your first grader level though. I actually have only ever heard of the Eastern explanation, which is, there are channels in your body, and you have the flow of energy. A lot of people go, “You mean like blood flow? You mean like my virility? What do you mean? What is energy?” 

Tom Ingegno  

It’s like Chi. It gets kind of convoluted when it came to the west. We'll watch these movies where people are shooting things out of their hands. It was never meant to be that. in fact, the word Chi, in China and Japan is used to describe how you are doing, how are you feeling. Overall, they'll use the word Chi, whether it was never meant to be this, this mystical thing. When we translate it now, in modern terms, it's more like, “Does your body have the potential to do what it needs to do?” We don't perform all physiological functions at the same time, but they should be able to turn on and off when they need to. When Chi is not abundant enough, or when that Chi is stuck that function can perform.

Scott Donnell  

Now, with modern Western medicine and academic placebo controlled blinded studies, you can have words like rest, digest, parasympathetic response, fight or flight circulation, less inflammation, endorphin trigger. We're just putting in language that us Westerners can clearly feel comfortable with, whereas for the last 10,000 years, all of everyone in Asia is like, “Chi is how I'm feeling, how I'm doing.

Tom Ingegno  

The system that was there before, the old language still beautifully consolidates and defines everything. Now we have a way that we can understand it and quantify it a little bit better. There's over 8000 RCTs, randomized control trials in English alone. Combine that with studies that have been done all over Asia and the rest of the world. Its pretty damn evidence based.

Scott Donnell  

How much of what you do is pain based, versus preventative?

Tom Ingegno  

So, you know, that's really been an interesting shift since COVID even. Classically, when I started 20 years ago, 80% of the people coming in, were coming in for low back pain. That was the number one thing that 80% of the world's population is going to have at some point. That was kind of what we were known for. When we explained that acupuncture was this whole system, you started to see studies on fertility, you started to see these other studies that started feeding more types of patients in acupuncture at its highest level before you get sick. That's a hard concept for a lot of Westerners, especially for Western males, where it's like, “Look, it's not broken, I'm just going to keep going.” We ignore that check engine light all the time in our own bodies. Within that, we're starting to see this shift, especially with a pandemic, where everyone's locked in their houses, and they're wondering what's wrong with them, they're starting to think about their lives. When we have something that is literally the reset button, not only for your physical health, but for your mental health, people really did that. Now they're starting to come in just going like, “Look, this is going to help me stay healthy. If I come every once in a while, maybe 20 years from now, I don't need that high blood pressure medication.” That's really where I think as a whole society, a global society, we need to aim more at.

Scott Donnell  

You hit it on the head there. I did this full blood workup, urine, stool sample back in January, a few months back and I was sitting with Dr. Rebecca Miller here in Phoenix. She basically told me, “If you get cancer, it’s 150 grand a month on the system. They're going to charge you through all the insurance, all this different stuff on the system.” For a lot of people, it ends up costing them a ton of money. Not to mention, you're deathly sick, and you're out of the workforce. You can't help people; your relationships are strained. It just messes up everything. That's a million dollars for a six-month treatment. I spent $1500 and we found out that I had 50 issues, not just cancer. I had pre dementia issues. I had celiac. I had a parasite that was eating me alive, sloughing off of my body's terrible gut bacteria. I had all these trace minerals wrong, my hormones were off, and pre cancer and prediabetes. We've fixed a lot of that in the last few months of work. Basically, what she said is, “You probably gave yourself 20 years of functional health span.” Everyone thinks, “Why would I want to get any older? I mean, I don't want to be in a wheelchair another 50.” No, we want you to be 100 years old feeling like you're 55. That's the point. If people had this mindset, if insurance had this mindset, we’d be better. There's no money in preventative but there's money in a million-dollar cancer treatment down the road. The system's messed up. It's up to us to educate our constituents on how to make their bodies stronger, longer, give themselves a longer health span to enjoy their grandkids, to help meet your great grandkids, watch them grow up, you know, instead of, “This tobacco doesn't really hurt me right now. In fact, it gives me a little bit of peace. I’m good with four hours of sleep. I'll make it work. I'm going to take that extra shift because I really need that money.” I went on a little tirade. I'm sure our audience has heard me say this a million times. Let's talk about Charm City, Integrative Health. What led into that? Walk us through what you do and how it's a little bit unique from just traditional acupuncture.

Tom Ingegno  

I've been in Baltimore for about 15 years, I came down here from New York. We've expanded four times. Each time, it seemed like, I love what I do, but I'm doing more and more work. I'm realizing that I'm not reaching as many people as possible. That's not just because of the usual objections like, “Wow, I really don't like needles,” or something like that. It's more of the, “I can't work 24 hours a day, seven days a week treating multiple people.” Even if I could, I wouldn't even put a dent in the city's population. The idea here was to look at services that followed the same classical principles of acupuncture, reduced inflammation, improved circulation regulated, the immune system function improved their chi, if you will, and was something that could be a higher volume practice. So, we have some flashier services like cryo therapy, we use oxygen therapy, we have red light panels, we have an infrared sauna, we do a salt chamber, we do medical cannabis consultations. We were really trying to put together things that complement acupuncture, but once again, help regulate autonomic nervous system function, get that fight or flight rest and digest balance. I know I hammer a lot on that. Our unique special sauce, if you will, is combining them in a way that we call stacks. If you talk to weightlifters, or you talk to biohackers, you ask “What's in your stack?” They'll say, “Okay, I take a multivitamin. I take magnesium, I take this, I take that.” I'd say everybody's got it right, we all got to pull out our little kit, but we're not doing that with therapies necessarily. My goal was to put together things that made sense. So, if you want mitochondrial health, we're going to put you on the exercise with oxygen chain thing and then we're going to have you get into the red light. Why? Because the mitochondria need oxygen to run the power and then the red light makes that work. Now we're kicking out more cellular energy and all of that should be relaxing while you're doing it. This is not a bunch of stimulants. You know, these machines don't get tired. We put the mask on you, we have you lay down, the machine just runs. It's not like me where I'm going to burn myself out. My goal is to help as many people as possible get machines to do it.

Scott Donnell  

I go to optimize, here in town. I was just in Dallas last week with Randy Eisenman, Satori capital. He's a huge biohacker, his entire upstairs has millions of dollars of biohacking equipment. We spent the whole day in meetings. He's an advisor and we're talking through a bunch of investment stuff. We're literally just going over business meetings with five hours of saunas, and red lights, and everything. It was a lot of fun. I'm with you, man. I think it has to be a holistic deal. It has to be integrative, which is part of the name of the business. Now what is the book? It's called, You got sick. Now what? I love that you're talking about trying to reach an exponential amount of people. I think a book is an incredible way to do it. I would love to hear about the book. What's in it? What are some of the main tips that you give people?

Tom Ingegno  

There's so much of East Asian medicine that has its roots in folk medicine. Those are simple things that people can pick up and do at home easily with little training, little knowledge and apply them to their life. Now, at the time I wrote this, I was thinking of my mentor who always used to try and say like, “It's got to be practical. It's got to be hands on. It's got to be accessible.” We go through seven different techniques. We include some breathing techniques; we include some simple soups or Chinese herbal formulas for colds. We include some things like wash on cupping, which are modalities used in acupuncture to try and help kick up your immune system and knock out a cold or the flu, at least shorten the course of it. All of it is, you know, safe, able to do it, you're able to do it at home. A lot of those supplies you can get relatively cheap and pretty quickly. Once you have them, you have them forever. You can use them for other things, like especially the copying of gua sha, musculoskeletal pain, that kind of stuff.

Scott Donnell  

I think it's brilliant stuff. I don't think a lot of people approach it from this angle. They they're approaching it from a food nutrition angle there. That's huge. There's a lot of people who own that space really well. This is a new angle. Thinking about the preventative measures that don't require a bunch of stuff getting shoved into your mouth, I think that's smart.

Tom Ingegno  

And it's not one or the other. There's, there's so many things you can do at home to move the needle in the right direction for you. Why not tie those in with those bigger things? 

Scott Donnell  

What are three things during the day that you're like, “I got to do these three things no matter what?” So,

Tom Ingegno  

This took about 20 something years to finally get into my head, but I meditate every day. That is number one. The longer the better, but it starts small and builds up. Just be consistent with it. My favorite thing is the sauna. I own a cryotherapy machine. I'm using an infrared sauna. Recently I've gotten into lifting weights. That seems to have not only helped me physically, but it does get my head clear, too.

Scott Donnell  

I love it. That's a good primer for the day right there. Okay, meditate, sauna, and weights. Very good. I'm with you. I'm a CrossFit junkie and I live in Phoenix, so we basically are a sauna. You go outside and lay on a rock or something. I want to hear about this, because you treated the 911 FEMA rescue workers. How did that come about? 

Tom Ingegno  

For something that was so horrible, and really marred in modern history, it changed, I think, our landscape as a country. This was a concerted effort by several acupuncture schools in New York City. Post 911, FEMA took over the Jacob Javits Center, which isn't too far from ground zero. There was this effort to supply those who were helping clean up and look for people, some comfort and some support. Three or four of the local acupuncture schools got together. They brought in chiropractors, massage therapists and acupuncturists, and it was like, you know, any, anybody doing rescue work, anybody that's in the area that wants to come in and get treated. You get to do it and it’s out of something that is this beautiful thing, what humanity could be. It’s still so fresh in my mind. A barbecue truck from Arkansas drove up and he was cooking whoever needed food. People were sending in socks and home baked cookies and toothbrushes and whatever anybody might need. To get to treat rescue workers who were really just climbing through rubble and putting themselves at risk was rewarding. It was really great to see. I remember I was behind some firefighters on an escalator. Coming up the escalator there was another group of firefighters from Puerto Rico. One of the firefighters going down said, “Hey, man, thanks for coming,” and the Puerto Rican crew said, “Hey, we would have been here sooner. We heard you had too much help.” That got me a little choked up. They were telling people, “Hey, we don't have any room for you to help.” It was really some of the best things of humanity out of this horrible, horrible situation. That still sits with me.

Scott Donnell  

That's why we all do what we do. You guys showed up at a dire time. That was really cool to see, and you have my respect. I really appreciate what you do. I want to talk about this because why would acupuncture be one of the main things that they want? Talk about this mind body connection with acupuncture. I think that there's something special about what you can provide that can help people that are in dire circumstances, or trauma, or ptsd. 

Tom Ingegno  

There's an expression, I only know it in Japanese, I don't know it in Chinese. But they'll say the mystery of the the mind spirit needle, right? They have this word Coco, which if you look at the character, it's the Chinese character for heart. It's this mind body connection. There is something that happens when you're getting an acupuncture treatment, or even in a deep meditation, or float tank, or something like that. It's so hard to put into tangible words. There is a thing that happens, that even though I'm talking about these physiological changes, and look, this is blood flow, and we know these hormones are going to balance, we know these neurotransmitters are going to come out, there is another thing that happens. I believe it happens in all medicine. It seems to happen more in acupuncture where this weird, spiritual thing takes over. Some of the classics, they'll say things like, “You know, the highest level of acupuncture is treating the spirit.” Within that, people switch out. I've had some people come in over the years and say, “Hey, I don't know what you did, but I had this prophetic dream that night,” or, “I feel like there's somebody else in the room with us,” or some other weird stuff. It doesn't happen often but when it does, it's a really interesting gift. You go, “Oh, there's something that we don't see. There's something that we don't fully understand.” It kind of reignites you in your passion for it as well, which is great.

Scott Donnell  

I studied quantum physics. It gets all weird down there, too. You're preaching to the choir about weird. I was a theology major. It's an amazing world we live in. This is great. We're almost done. We got a couple minutes left. I wanted to know, what is the best advice you've ever received, and who gave it to you?

Tom Ingegno  

If I say meditate, again, I think that's going to be a boring interview. If I'm going to talk about a clinical advice here, I'll tell a story about my mentor who recently passed. I had one patient that unbeknownst to me, had been sexually assaulted. She was just coming to see me to try and see if a male could treat her. I started treating her and the second I walked out of the treatment room, she started crying. Now, this was as I was a student. My mentor was overseeing the treatment. He said, “Just go sit down, I'm taking over the treatment.” I'm looking at the assistant that was in the room with me, I'm going, “Did I do something, say something?” I felt horrible. I couldn't get over that experience. Later, she called me back into the room and said, “Just so you know, I thought I was ready to be treated by a male. I'm still not there yet. You know, I've known your mentor for years and years. He's the one person that I'm comfortable with treating me.” I said, “Look, it's your treatment,” but I moped around the rest of the day. The next day, I had a patient come in who was this giant man, he had diabetic neuropathy. He said it was like his toes getting touched with a car battery all the time. I treated him once. The second time was the day after this experience with this woman. I treated him. I'm walking him back up to the front after the treatment and he's literally telling other patients, “Don't see that student, come see my guy. He cured me in two sessions. This guy's the best guy in the school.” I was pumping up my chest. It was out. I was feeling it. So, I dropped him off at the front desk; I walk away. Around the corner, like a goddamn Ninja, my mentor steps out. He goes, “Remember how you felt yesterday.” He might as well have hit me in the gut as hard as he could because I was like doubled over in pain like, “Jesus.” Then he said to me, “Look, you're in the treatment room, you do the best treatment you can. Do not get attached to the outcome.” I don't have control over how that person responds. That can be applied to lifetime situations, where you do the best you can. Everything else isn't necessarily going to respond the way you want. Don't be attached to that outcome. That was probably one of the most profound pieces of advice. I got a painful lesson, but I love the man like a second father.

Scott Donnell  

That's really good too, especially in the health profession. My uncle, Chris Moyer is the head pediatric surgeon at Mayo in Rochester. It's so important. You do your job, and you love people, but the outcome is the outcome. You cannot live and die by the patient. Their response to you, or their acceptance of what you say, or rejection of what you say, just like with our children, we can't let our children's happiness or temper tantrums dictate our level of liberty, and peace, and health. Well said, Man. That's great advice for everybody listening, whether you're a parent, or a doctor, it doesn't matter. Do what you can, and then let the rest go. That's a good place to end this thing. Is there anything else that that I forgot to mention that you'd love to tell people about?

Tom Ingegno  

I don't know. I'm excited to see where this this world of medicine goes. We're at this interesting standpoint where public health is on everyone's mind, but I feel like the buzz-phrase of the last five or ten years has been, “n equals one. How can we optimize ourselves?” I'm very excited for this; the merger of those two things. We know enough about public health; we know enough about our own personal bodies to take care of ourselves better and thereby raise the level of the population. On the other hand, the level of the population gets healthier. We get healthier. This is a mutual thing. We work on it from both ends. I'm so excited to see what happens in the next few years.

Scott Donnell  

Well said. I'm with you, man. That's why this podcast exists. How can people find you? I know we will put the link to the book, You're Sick, Now What? What's the best website or social people can reach you?

Tom Ingegno  

charmcityintegrative.com. My Twitter and Instagram handles are @ccintegrative. Feel free to reach out. I'm happy to answer questions. I love doing podcasts. I love talking to groups. Even if you're interested in another area and you want help to put together a center like mine. I'm more than happy to help.

Scott Donnell  

Absolutely. Well, that's it, folks. That's perfect. Thank you so much. The book is, You got sick, Now What? Charm City Integrative Health is the company. Tom, thank you so much for your time.