Ancient Eastern Medical Treatment

I take medication that inhibits my body from making estrogen. This hormone has anti-inflammatory properties and lubricates the joints. Because this medication makes my estrogen levels so low, my joints are stiff and achy, especially the knees. Advil helps temporarily, but I do not like taking a lot of drugs.

Because we live in Asia I thought I would try acupuncture. Friends who have been treated this way say it works, so I went to the medical center that builds and finds recipients for the wheelchairs we donate. They have doctors and offer a few medical services, one of them is acupuncture. Our friends there were more than happy to introduce me to the doctor.

I was not convinced it would help, but thought it would not hurt to try it. This is my experience -

The receipts from the consultation with a doctor and the first treatment. The cost for the first treatment includes a bag with the needles, massage gel, alcohol wipes, and two gloves for the nurse to use. The total cost for this was 307,000 LAK (less than $15). The subsequent treatments cost 150,000 LAK for the treatment and 20,000 LAK for the needles, a total of 170,000 LAK (about $8). You cannot beat the price.

This is the acupuncture room. The nurse sits at the desk in front of the door in the back of the room when she is not working on someone. You see two of the four tables where patients are treated. The chairs on the left are for family and friends who are waiting. On the wall there are charts with different points highlighted depending on what problem you need to be treated for.

The nurse is putting the needles in my knees. They are long and very thin. You barely feel when most of the needles are inserted, a few of them feel like a pin prick, but once they are in you no longer feel them.

After the needles are inserted she attaches electrical cords to some of them. 

It looks like tiny jumper cables for a car are attached to me. 

If you look closely you can see the needle closest to the camera vibrate. When the nurse first turned on the electricity I was not prepared and jumped a little. She was concerned she had turned it too high, but I was just surprised. It is a strange pulsating sensation. The treatments last about 30 minutes. After the nurse removed the needles she massaged the area with the massage gel and helped stretch the leg.

That was the first two treatments. The third one was a little different. The acupuncture part took about 20 minutes. After the nurse removed the needles she added cupping. This is when small glass cups are heated and attached to your body. The heat in the cups create suction so that they "stick" to you. It was a surprise to me that it was part of the treatments as that is completely different from acupuncture.

Here the nurse is heating the cups and attaching them around my knees.

That is a lot of cups on such a small area 😳 There is pressure from the cups as they are glass and feel heavy, and there is a lot of suction. It was more uncomfortable than the needles, but did not hurt.

After the cups are removed you look strange for a few days 😂 

After the first two treatments I could feel a slight improvement, but after the third one there was a marked difference. The pain was more manageable. The fourth treatment was acupuncture only, and I am amazed at how much I have improved. I have one more treatment before I see the doctor again, then we will see how frequently he wants me to have them done. Now I am thinking I need to try this for the neuropathy in my feet! 

I believe in modern medicine, but there is something to some of these old remedies - and I prefer less invasive procedures, and fewer drugs. If you have issues - try acupuncture (after consulting with your doctor of course)! You may be surprised at how helpful it is.

Our Favorite Pho Restaurant and Fun Friends

We are fortunate to live close to many good restaurants. Craig has been on the hunt to find the best pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) restaurant, and keeps coming back to this one. They do have delicious food! There is only one dish on the menu, beef pho, so this is where we go when one, or both of us, has a craving. It costs about $2.33 for one bowl, so we go there quite frequently. We cannot make our own food for that price.

It is close to our home, and the best way to get there is to walk. We love walking through our neighborhood. There is much to see and we find many fun people, some who have become friends, on the way. In the video at the end of this post you will see some of what we see as we walk, as well as meet some wonderful women who gather for lunch almost daily.

This is what Craig and I call a three wall restaurant. There are three walls, and the fourth is open to the street. They are usually higher end than a two wall, and always higher than a food stand that does not have walls, and most of the time no place to sit and eat.

You order your food from the woman in front of the blue wall, then you walk over to the red table to get your greens and other things to put in your soup, or eat on the side before you sit at a table.

This is where you order your food. You just need to tell them how many bowls you would like to buy.

My lunch 😋 You add the sprouts, basil, and lemon juice to the soup and eat the long beans on the side. You can put the peanut sauce and whatever else you want on a piece of the lettuce and eat it. There are condiments on the table. Craig and I both like to add chili oil to make it spicy. 

In the video you can see snippets of where we walk to the restaurant. These were taken on our way home. Most of the roads are dirt, but the bigger road where you see a motorcycle and a car driving is paved. The roads look bad here because they are putting in flood abatement. It is very much needed, and should be helpful for the next rainy season. They are also upgrading the road surface to asphalt on some of the dirt roads.

The fun and kind women stopped us a few months ago to ask if we wanted to join them for lunch. We had already eaten, so told them we were ເຕັມແລ້ວ (full already). They told us that maybe their food would be too spicy for us, so when we told them we like spicy food, one of the women laughed and said ບໍ່ເຜັດ ບໍ່ແຊບ (not spicy, not delicious). It is something we have heard many Lao people say, and I decided I wanted that on video, but did not think of it until after we had left. So some time later I had Craig take a video of them as they were saying it. Unfortunately I had to coach them this time 😅 So that is what they are saying - "if it is not spicy it is not delicious."