Dr. Clayton Shiu  00:00

Someone may feel like their allergies are acting up, or they have sinusitis, you know, but that same pressure area could be related to like a concussion, like headache, too.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  00:11

Welcome to Life after impact, the concussion recovery Podcast. I'm Dr Ayla Wolf, and I will be hosting today's episode where we help you navigate the often confusing, frustrating and overwhelming journey of concussion and brain injury recovery. This podcast is your go to resource for actionable information, whether you're dealing with a recent concussion, struggling with post concussion syndrome, or just feeling stuck in your healing process. In each episode, we dive deep into the symptoms, testing treatments and neurological insights that can help you move forward with clarity and confidence. We bring you leading experts in the world of brain health, functional neurology and rehabilitation to share their wisdom and strategies. So if you're feeling lost, hopeless or like no one understands what you're going through. Know that you are not alone. This podcast can be your guide and partner in recovery, helping you build a better life after impact.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  01:17

Hello there.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  01:20

Dr Clayton, Shu, welcome back to life after impact. How are you today?

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  01:25

I'm feeling good. I'm so honored to be the first guest to return to your podcast. I think I should get a special t shirt or

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  01:38

some kind of button or something, or

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  01:40

I'll work on the swag,

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  01:43

a mug. I'll send you a coffee mug. How about that?

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  01:47

A beige or blue mug would be fine.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  01:50

All right. Well, so today we were going to tackle a certain topic, which is that many people, when they have concussions, they don't necessarily seek out acupuncture, Chinese medicine as their first or their second, or even their third, kind of, you know, healthcare practitioner. And so we are in an interesting position where a when people come to see us for concussions, we're sometimes kind of the end of the road, like we're like the last hope, right? But then we've also, because we specialize in concussions, we see a different side of the coin, which is that some patients come to us with things like neck pain or maybe even a hamstring injury or GI symptoms, gastrointestinal symptoms, and when they walk into our office seeking help for those types of things, when we actually just observe some some aspects of how they're they're functioning, we start to clue in on maybe there's something else going on. And then when we do get, you know, start asking more questions, we realize, oh, wow, this, this person has had a concussion, or maybe more than one, and we recognize that that might actually be driving some of these other symptoms, that they didn't even put two and two together. So you've had a couple of interesting kind of situations like that recently.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  03:16

Yeah, I think it's quite common actually, what you're what you're portraying in that a lot of patients, they, for some reason, forget they even had a concussion or suffered from a concussion from even two weeks or a month ago.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  03:37

And we, you know, for instance, one person, she came in and she was complaining about, like elbow pain,

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  03:44

but as she was signing herself in to the office visit, her neck looked like a bobble head, moving back and forth, back and forth. And the person actually it wasn't until halfway through our initial interview

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  04:02

process that she remembers that she did hit her head at the airport on a stairwell. But for some reason, concussion people tend to like, kind of like, let it go, or bury it, or compartmentalize that something happened. You know, they brush themselves off and they want to get going and get to what they have to do right there. I mean, there are times when somebody gets a concussion and they they can't just walk it off. They've got a lot of immediate symptoms, but you're right there are, there are some people who get a concussion and they are able to kind of, in the moment, continue on with what they're doing and then not even recognize the severity of what just happened, right? Exactly, exactly. So it, you know, it takes us a moment to

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  04:51

even though they're coming in for one thing to then guide the patient towards thinking about how they've been you.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  05:00

Um, moving through life the last couple days, and try to point out that, okay, well, this is a little abnormal for you. Or, you know, this took longer than expected. Or, you know, maybe, maybe your balance should be better going, you know, up and down stairs, or walking down the hallway and, you know, stuff like that, um, but, yeah, that was, that was um. That was just one example. Another example. I had someone who had um, who had like, a, like a pulled hamstring, or she thought she had a pulled hamstring, you know, but actually, like, her sacrum and her neck were super tight. And then it was actually because she also had a concussion, but she was riding a horse, and equestrians tend to ride a horse, and that horse stance on the saddle, you know, which makes them engage

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  05:52

the sciatic nerve pathway with all those muscles. And then she got flu. She got thrown off the horse, and she hit her head, you know. So she her leg hurt a lot, but she just wasn't paying attention to the concussion symptoms,

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  06:06

and her you could tell that her eyes were not behaving well. They weren't tracking well. Another interesting one was this person who also had knee pain, but it took her, like 1015 minutes just to book the session, and then when she came in, she kept saying different words, you know, and everyone, I don't know why, but everyone had kind of ignored it, and no one, her husband, didn't say anything. And, and we were like, Let's check your neck, and, oh, there's a little bump here, you know, to the left side of your head. And we were like, We think you had a concussion. And like, you're getting like,

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  06:42

a little bit of like speech aphasia right now too. You know, she was even going to physical therapy getting her knee treated, but no one just pointed out that, okay, you may be having some central nervous system issues and some vocal issues.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  06:58

So she had fallen and injured her knee, and quite a while, like there's quite a bit of time that had passed, but while she was doing all this knee rehab, and she had developed the speech aphasia, but no, nobody was shedding a light on that.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  07:15

Yeah, she was. She even didn't believe us, as we were trying to explain it to her, this, this hadn't been there before the fall. No, it wasn't there for the fall. So, so that was, that was a pretty interesting one. So it's kind of interesting how, because a lot of times what happens with concussions or even someone that's in a car accident, right?

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  07:39

Like even symptoms like whiplash and headaches can appear one week later, right? That's very common. Like, most people get up from an accident, they're like, yeah, it was perfectly fine and nothing was wrong. And a week or two later, you know, they're they're getting migraine headaches, right? And migraine headaches can be something that can be confused too well, I think especially with car accidents or falls, people's adrenaline goes way up, and because their adrenaline is high, they don't feel pain in the moment. And it can take a while for that adrenaline to calm back down, and then all of a sudden, yeah, it's like, three days later, Oh, wow. My neck really hurts. My head really hurts. Or, you know, all these injuries kind of rise to the surface, which honestly is why a just public service announcement, like, if somebody gets in a car accident,

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  08:31

they should always get the other person's information and not just say, Oh yeah, I'm fine. You know, because if you then, if someone then documents that, you say you're fine, but then three days later, all of a sudden, your pain flares up, you know, then all of a sudden it's like, this turns into a big argument right over well, no, you said you were fine. Honestly, I think when I turned 16, my dad said that to me. He's like, Hey, if you get in a car accident, don't, don't ever, just say you're fine and drive away like, you know, admit nothing, good advice.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  09:06

It is good advice. Thanks, dad.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  09:11

That's very funny. Yeah, definitely got to get

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  09:13

the the insurance policy number, the driver, yeah, yeah, for sure, the license.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  09:19

Well, you know, one of my concussions happened when I was mountain biking. And I had been mountain biking on this really long Nine Mile screaming downhill trail that's just an absolute thrill ride the whole way down. And so, yeah, my adrenaline was super high, and at the very end I I wiped out, and I hit the I hit the ground hard, and definitely whiplash concussion, and I didn't feel anything. I didn't feel any pain, because my adrenaline was so high, and so I didn't realize that I had had a concussion. But I definitely got back on my bike, and then a little bit later, I.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  10:00

Come around a corner and there's a bear in the middle of the trail eating like raspberries by and and I think I was so disoriented that I was just kind of like, oh, look, a bear. I just kind of kept riding right? I mean, okay,

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  10:17

I know I was kind of like, more excited about the bear, and just also maybe a little disoriented that I was going so fast that I didn't even, like, react to the fact that this bear was, like, on the trail, like, Oh, let me just outrun this bear real quick.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  10:31

Maybe that's an example where the concussion may have worked here to your advantage.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  10:36

disoriented enough that I didn't even freak out over the bear.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  10:39

Exactly, you're in a like, atatonic.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  10:45

Wow, that's nice. I didn't know that. I never heard that story.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  10:48

It all happened so fast.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  10:51

So, yeah, I think, I think also, like, a lot of cases of insomnia, yeah, right, a

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  10:58

lot of patients. We're seeing a lot more insomnia cases in general across the country. I think it's a bigger problem. But like the other symptoms that appear later, like insomnia, can be related to a concussion as well. So, and that's because of the

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  11:19

disorder, it's one of the dysautonomias that may occur. Correct with a sequelae of post concussion.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  11:27

yeah. I mean, part of, part of the autonomic nervous system is to help regulate circadian rhythms, so when that is affected, that can definitely throw off sleep cycles.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  11:37

Yeah, exactly. So, so I think, I think that's pretty interesting too, because, because a lot of it would change also the herbal approach to treating that kind of case as well, instead of using all these calming, sedating kind of herbs, you know, we might want to actually get more circulation through the area too, so well.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  12:04

And I think that's the beauty of Chinese medicine, or especially, specifically the herbal component of it is that you could have 10 people with insomnia, but they might all get 10 different herbal formulas based on what else is going on. And I know you use a lot of herbs in your in your clinic and with your patients. So do you want to talk a little bit about some of your approach? Because I know you've you've mentioned different formulas that you use that are like maybe traditionally used for sinus issues, but they actually work very well for headaches.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  12:40

Yeah. So, because there's so many sinuses in the head that, like, it's pretty interesting with with

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  12:48

concussions like there, there can be, like, sinus blockages that appear someone may feel like their allergies are acting up, or they have sinusitis, you know, but that same pressure area could be related to, like a concussion, like headache, too. And then the funny thing. Funny thing is that the herbal formula, like one of the most famous

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  13:12

herbal formulas for headaches, is actually all sinus clearing, Herb, herbal flowers and plants and stuff. So the idea that phlegm and blockage can block the sinuses, create headaches or in both a concussion and with, like an allergy presentation is pretty interesting. So we that's where, like, our expertise comes in, and we have to tease through right, like, what's in what category, what's in another category, and then, and then, like, sometimes, what I'll do is I'll mix that classic sinus, herbal headache formula with like, other Other like liver, liver moving formulas to or blood moving formulas, how we call it in Chinese medicine, which, which helps promote healthier blood flow, which, which is kind of the name of the game. And in medicine today, I think, I think almost everything I look at, whether it's red light therapy, you know, or PMF or stem cell or PRP injection, everyone's hijacking the whole precept of Chinese medicine, which is where there's where there is no blockage and flow, there's no disease, you know, right? We were the OG experts on circulation. Yeah, 4000 year old poetic comment. They they teach us that, like the first semester of Chinese Western School now you have, like, the highest, most sophisticated,

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  14:53

you know, equipment, they're like, and they just simply say, well, it's going where it's needed, and there's going to be healthy blood flow there.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  15:00

Are, you know, and I think that's what, exactly, what our medicine is really great at, because, because we don't need a huge pencil, thick needle, we use, like micro, fine instruments that are sterile, disposable. They're used once, because we're because this is the right century for that, but yeah, and so it can be, it can be very precise and very elegant a treatment,

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  15:30

and it doesn't feel anything like dry needling or sports medicine like acupuncture, because you're not trying to loosen up a tendon or something like that. Like, like, what we deal with is trying to stimulate the nervous system, the neural tissue. Yeah, I think it takes a lot more precision to

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  15:54

to actually differentiate what a true concussion symptom is from a regular symptom, but then also to figure out, like, Okay, what modalities are we going to use, and what percentage and what combination. But the first thing

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  16:09

is, is something that

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  16:13

AI and no other equipment can teach you. It's just that first

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  16:18

interaction with the patient that susses out, like whether or not this person's suffering from a concussion, or you have to be a living doctor, a practitioner, to do that and to get that information started, you know? And that's,

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  16:35

that's,

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  16:37

that's why we'll never work from an island.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  16:39

Yeah, we have to physically show up every day.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  16:45

I know, I know that's why you and I are coffee freaks, and you have a coffee sponsor, right?

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  16:54

But yeah, so it's pretty it's pretty interesting. Actually, I when I figure out someone's got a concussion or a neurological issue, or multi system issue, or even Parkinson's, or, you know what I mean, like something like that, like, because some people can come in right and they think they have any central tremor, but they don't have any central tremor. Again, they had the concussion and the nerve entrapment was spreading down and but another doctor might have thought they had essential tremor or Parkinson's, and we're just like, No, wait a second, let's, let's look through this, because when someone has any central tremor, for instance, or in general, Parkinson's, They don't necessarily have these other,

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  17:42

other type of symptoms that comes with concussion, they don't necessarily get these other like, you know, complete loss of balance all of a sudden. Like, it, like effects. And, you know, I've never heard of Parkinson's patients say, Well, when I stopped and braked in my car, my body kept going forward. Like, yeah, you know what I mean. These are vestibular, ocular motor issues that you know, that we discuss, but it's not something related to like Parkinson's or ALS or etc.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  18:14

Yeah, no, I've definitely heard of cases where people are kind of misdiagnosed as having Parkinson's at, you know, in their 50s, and then it turns out like, Well, no, wait a minute, you actually had a concussion, and it's a completely different mechanism causing this, this tremor that came on rather suddenly. So it's interesting, because we obviously live in a day and age where we now have access to

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  18:39

chat, GPT and and all these AIs, but then also just people searching on the internet trying to self diagnose. And so time and time again, I am getting more and more people coming in saying things like, Oh, I think I have dysautonomia, or I think I have pots, or I think I have, you know, this or that, or my vagus nerve isn't working, and so I think we are now in a day and age where it's so important that we do have all of this testing that we can do to shed some light and some clarity on what people are experiencing, like how their nervous systems are actually functioning. Because I've had people who have said, Oh, I think I have pots. And I run them through a lot of autonomic tests, and there's, there's no sign at all that they have pots, but there's other signs that other things are going on. And so I do think that people are very curious. They want, they want to get to the bottom of what's happening. So that curiosity is great, but people are also coming in with sometimes preconceived notions of what they think is going on. And, you know, also still looking for further clarification.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  19:52

Yeah, exactly, yeah. And just to add, like, another different kind of symptom besides pain, but you know, someone could come in.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  20:00

For irritable bowels or

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  20:03

gastric issues or like acid reflux, and you know, this or that.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  20:09

And there's some patients, you know, we're trying to we were, we noticed they're on fight or flight mode, and there's that strong pulse in the stomach, you know, abdominal artery and this and that and and then, even though we're giving them the digestive treatments, not getting better, so instead, when we switch gears,

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  20:29

you know, we we check their their neck again, we went into some of their symptoms of whether or not they they were, I think, they were in a car accident, and they did hit their head, you know, and that's when some of these symptoms started happening too, so,

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  20:45

and you also have had good results treating tinnitus too, which is super tricky and hard to deal with.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  20:55

Yeah, we, we've, we've got our, we've got a pretty good system down. It

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  21:02

took a while to develop a lot of it came from how we would start palpating the head

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  21:09

and palpating the skull, like above the ear and then behind the ear. And

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  21:16

we we look at tinnitus, so so we actually have pretty good results with it. And a lot of EMT doctors are just surprised that that anyone would even say they get any results with tinnitus. But I find that there's like, two different categories, in my opinion, like there's, there's like an auto immune response to like, sugar and alcohol and stuff like that, that that can the next day cause, like tinnitus, like symptoms or or can cause tinnitus. And then there's other kinds where there's high impact, loud noises could be, explosions could be, could be out of a rock concert, you know. So those are like two different etiologies. So, so you're saying, like younger people, not necessarily somebody that's dealing with hearing loss and tinnitus, but perhaps somebody that's younger that gets a concussion, all of a sudden they have tinnitus. You're seeing, yeah, good results. Yeah, we're seeing pretty good results. We'll, we'll check around the auricular area above and around it. And we use different points related to the two meridians there, around the San jiao and gallbladder meridians. And we also use a, we have some pretty good herbal formulas for that as well, which also helps to basically, like, get the circulation cleared through this area too. So when you run your fingers, like, through somebody's scalp and around their ears, you're feeling specific bumps or lines or ridges or, yeah, we're feeling different ridges that are abnormally there. Some of them can be very large, almost like,

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  23:02

like some of them can be even half a ping pong size, thick

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  23:06

and very soft, very movable.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  23:10

If we feel those, then we will suspect, possibly, like tinnitus, or, depending on the location, there could be some dizziness too. So, but yeah, and it's usually pretty accurate, like it usually

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  23:26

we use it the way, the way many acupunctures would use, like pulse reading and tongue diagnosis. So we we do a skull palpation diagnosis for that. So, but it just helps me fine tune

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  23:41

which, which acupuncture points I may use to get the results and stuff. So, yeah, and it's neat, because it gets better too. It actually it's malleable,

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  23:52

like it gets you mean, like the the bumps you're feeling on their scalp actually go down with time, in addition to the tinnitus getting better.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  24:00

Yeah, exactly when they, when they start to clear up, the symptom starts to clear up too. So, and it can, it can be better within a few sessions, too.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  24:11

So, awesome. So, where can, where can people find you?

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  24:17

So I'm located in,

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  24:19

in Manhattan, New York and in the Hamptons,

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  24:24

it's the shiuclinic.com

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  24:26

and we're on Instagram. My my personal Instagram is called Jade shaman,

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  24:33

just to play on words, nothing, nothing too heroic about that.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  24:40

And we have shoe clinic on Instagram as well. So, but yeah, if you ever curious, give us a call and

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  24:49

and we do, we do odd source types of stuff. We do WAVY brain scanning, we we have a really sophisticated light bed.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  24:58

And we have a whole

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  25:00

Team of experts that you can work with too.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  25:03

fantastic. Well, thank you for coming back on the show and chatting with me again about acupuncture and herbs,

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  25:11

you're welcome. Your podcast is amazing. My patients who I don't even tell them, but they come in talking about an episode or trying to ask me questions about it, and I have to refresh up and stuff. So it's, it's been great. I think it's been a great benefit to all the patients and practitioners. And I hope you, I hope you keep going on it and keep, I don't know, it's amazing how many interesting guests you find and and you know, of course, none of them back twice like me.

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  25:46

All right, well, I'll send you that. I'll send you that the mug.

 

Dr. Clayton Shiu  25:52

Thank you so much. Yes, thank you. Have a good night till next time. All right,

 

Dr. Ayla Wolf  26:02

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