Author Archives: Delphine Baumer, RAc

About Delphine Baumer, RAc

Delphine Baumer is a registered acupuncturist‎ in Vancouver, BC, Canada, since 2009. Delphine’s acupuncture practice is focused on holistic assessment and treatment of emotional and internal health. She uses acupuncture, moxibustion (burning of an herb called ai ye), acupressure, gua sha (a traditional scraping technique), and shonishin (pediatric non-needle treatment) to help remove blockages and restore her patients’ natural self-healing mechanisms.

A Focus on Good Health

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Weight loss… such a golden carrot for so many of us! Alas, people often feel frustrated that they are “doing all the right things,” but still not able to lose weight. Sound familiar? Fortunately, I am here to share with you a lovely energizer buddy to help you achieve your goals!

As a Registered Acupuncturist, having helped many people, I have found the best approach to losing weight, is to focus on health.

​A Focus on Good Health Cues

Whenever a patient comes to me about losing weight, I always help them shift their focus away from weight, and into health. Throw away the scale, and pay attention to how you feel instead. How do your clothes feel on you? How does your energy feel? These are far better cues than any scale because scales can play tricks on us, and they become like unfriendly mirrors on the floor. Additionally, the more we think about and focus on weight loss, the more the weight tends to stick to us like glue.

I have achieved the best success with myself and with my patients by shifting the goals to those of health rather than weight. The health cues we look at include improvements in digestion, circulation, aches, energy, emotional health, fluid metabolism, and presence of dampness/phlegm (Traditional Chinese Medicine terms) in the body. The great news is that as we become healthier, the unhealthy tissues naturally slip off. Feeling good and feeling energized promotes healthy choices. Weight loss becomes a pleasant side effect of getting healthier and more active. So, I make it my goal to help people see and embrace the key elements to achieving healthy, happy bodies and emotions. Below is a simplified approach to achieving these goals.

The basic keys to health from a Chinese Medicine approach are:

  • Eat appropriate amounts of good food that is right for your constitution and the current season.
  • Move regularly in activities you enjoy, such as walking, Qi gong, and other strengthening exercises, without overdoing it.
  • Sleep regular hours, longer in the winter.
  • Get acupuncture to help keep your Qi (life force) smooth and unblocked, kind of like giving your body a regular tune-up.
  • Take herbal medicines to assist when needed.

​A Weight Loss Assistant

Reishi (Ling zhi) is known as “The King Herb” in Chinese Medicine. It has been known for centuries to promote health and longevity. Red reishi has a wide range of health benefits, especially to support energy and soothe emotional angst, improving mood and sleep. When it comes specific to weight loss, red reishi is found to benefit the gut by improving the microbiome (good bacteria) and increasing metabolism.

The BBC published an article noting scientific findings that reishi slows weight gain. The study was done on mice, with one group of mice being supplemented reishi mushroom and the other acting as a control group and not supplemented. What they noticed is that the mice on reishi gained less weight on a high fat diet, and they were much slimmer when fed a normal diet, than the control group mice. The research team reported that reishi “may be used as pre-biotics to reduce body weight gain, chronic inflammation and insulin resistance [type 2 diabetes] in obese individuals.”

“The microbiome is certainly a key player in weight gain and weight loss, it’s certainly involved in extracting energy from our food.“

“Mushroom used in Chinese medicine ‘slows weight gain’”
BBC article http://www.bbc.com/news/health-33237991

The study also pointed out that of course you don’t then get to continue eating poorly and drinking fountains of sodas. So, don’t make the mistake of overeating and moving less just because you have Mikei on your side.

My advice is to keep moving forward, follow the above key steps, and adopt your new friend into your routine. It will be like adding an energizer buddy into your life. The combination of supplementing with Japanese red reishi and regular acupuncture treatments is a very strategic and successful method to lose weight, and achieve health! Remember, the key advantage and winning force is that is that the focus is on health, not weight. Losing weight becomes a happy side effect of getting stronger physically AND mentally! It is much easier to be happy and feel sexy in one’s skin when energy and spirit are vital and balanced.

An Acupuncturist’s Adventure with Mikei

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Greetings! My name is Delphine Baumer. I am a registered acupuncturist practicing since 2009, in the wet climate of the northwest, Vancouver BC. The focus of my practice is in emotional and internal health. The fall season is in full swing here at the moment.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), we value the importance of our environment as impacting our personal wellness. Each season is designated as having a greater influence on specific systems in our bodies. We understand fall to correspond with the Lungs* and The Large Intestine*. From an emotional health perspective, the fall season is a time for letting go and for focusing on our quality of self. However, this process can be quite overwhelming, and the tendency for depression lingers over many of us at this time of year, as the summer days fade away to memory! Fall is an especially important time to quiet down and retreat into oneself to reflect upon what to let go of and what to nurture. Even armed with all this wonderful information, I have personally found this fall to be particularly challenging!

A couple of Fridays ago, I was near my emotional breaking point. I had not been sleeping well and I felt like my emotional body was full, like it could not take another hit. I felt as though I may blow up at even the smallest annoyance—a pen that didn’t work, for example, may have been the last straw! Not the best state for anyone—especially an acupuncturist—to be in, as it is my job to be solid and calm, and help my patients navigate healthily through life. This position is one that many of us can relate to, whether you are the head of a family or company, or are the person everyone seems to come to for help. Ultimately, each of us must care for ourselves in order to care for those around us. I was beginning to wonder if a forced mental vacation was going to become necessary!

Needless to say, it was impeccable timing to be trying a new product. I was introduced to Mikei Red Reishi by a fellow colleague of mine.

Reishi is a medicinal mushroom, known in Traditional Chinese Medicine as “The King of Herbs.” It has become very popular as a health supplement for a wide variety of reasons. Reishi has a powerful ability to nourish the heart, calm the spirit, enrich Qi (vital energy) and blood, relieve cough or breathing difficulty, and for general tonification. Because of its taste (sweet and bitter) and neutral energy (not delivering heat or cold), it is one of the safest, most relevant supplements for many constitutions, and most people can take it without any side effects.

After just over two weeks of adding Mikei to my health routine, I have noticed some very notable benefits. I am sleeping much better, my mood feels a lot more stable, and there is another private matter which I have decided to share publicly as well.

I also recently quit smoking, going on two months now (a very secret guilty pleasure I’d been clutching to, even as a health care practitioner). This cessation may have had something to do with my spiritual uneasiness! After over a month of absolutely no cigarettes, I had not really noticed anything coming out of my lungs—something I had anticipated. Only a few days after I started taking Mikei, however, I developed what felt like a phlegmy chest cold. Since I almost never get sick, it felt to me like another benefit of red reishi—to help my lungs clean out and heal from the years of smoking. I’m happy to take all the help I can get!

I’m looking forward to continuing with this product and sharing the benefits with my patients and community. If you are considering trying red reishi, I give my stamp of approval and absolutely recommend it.

Wishes in peace and health,

Delphine Baumer
Registered Acupuncturist

* It’s complicated, but we capitalize the organ system words in TCM to distinguish them from the physical organs themselves. The names are place holders for the patterns we diagnose that affect our physical, emotional, and other connections.