Office Hours with Angelique and Toby, episode 5. Released June 25, 2025. 32 minutes.
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About this episode
Toby Daly and Angelique Britt answer a listener's question about reading a patient's response to Saam acupuncture. They discuss what changes in complexion, eyes, and mouth can and cannot tell you, why Toby checks back after about five minutes when he is unsure, the signs that a treatment is heading the wrong way, such as chest heat, a racing heart, or agitation, and Angelique's case of a patient whose hand mobility worsened on the wrong channel and improved once she changed course. Toby explains why he never lets his confidence in a treatment go much above 80 percent.
They also cover asking new patients for feedback within 48 hours, using the original chart to help patients notice improvements they have forgotten, news of the reported closure of Emperor's College and the wider pressure on Chinese medicine schools, and the "alien intelligence" of the title: careful ways to use AI to organize de-identified visit notes, with the output checked and treated as feedback rather than authority.
Topics
Reading complexion, eyes, and mouth after needling
Checking back after five minutes
Signs a treatment is going the wrong way
A hand-mobility case and changing channels
Keeping confidence below 100 percent
Follow-up feedback within 48 hours
Using chart notes to show progress
School closures and training costs
Using AI carefully for documentation and reflection
Key terms
Saam acupuncture (舍岩): a Korean Buddhist monastic acupuncture tradition that treats imbalance on one channel system at a time, using combinations of the five transport points.
A note for listeners: this is a conversation between licensed practitioners, offered for education, not as medical advice. Patient details have been kept general to protect privacy.
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically from the published audio and lightly edited for readability. It may contain errors in names and terms.
Welcome to Office Hours. Whether you're new to the acupuncture profession or have been at it for decades, this is the place where we discuss all things Chinese medicine and more. Join Toby Daly, a seasoned acupuncturist of the Saam tradition, and Angelique Britt, a nurse-turned acupuncturist who is brand new to the field as they explore topics in and around the world of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. There's something for everyone here. Drop in anytime. Hey Toby, I'm doing well. How are you?
Toby: Hey Angelique, how you doing? Great, everything's going good with me. I heard you've got some viewers' questions and let's get started with that and see what people have to say.
Angelique: All right. I think it's important. We never told anybody this, so sorry, but there is an email address that you can send questions to, which is office hoursangelique at gmail.com. And I will be gathering the questions. So we have two. And the first one is regarding watching a patient's face after needle insertion. And this person is saying that while they realize it's important and that they rely on the information as much as possible to assess treatment success. Sometimes they don't see much and they wonder what to do. And when they note that this has been more pronounced in folks that have really dark skin tones or that are pale, nearly bloodless skin, they wait and check in after a full five minutes to see if they've settled deeply. Sometimes they do this, but they find it disruptive. And so they're wondering what good enough is. See a couple of patients seem to be wide eyed hoot owls before, during, and after treatment, no matter what, yet there's no quote unquote off response when they come back, not quite sure what to make of this. Hm. So they're curious what sort of expectation you have around this, what sort of change that you generally look for to see if you go back into the room and check to make sure. And if you don't see a notable noticeable shift, what do you do?
Toby: Okay. What about I've got a lot to say about that. What about your from your experience, Angel Week? Are using the face to guide your assessment?
Angelique: With the face. So this will be a good segue for a story I also have. So with the face, what I have noticed myself, similar to what this person has asked, sometimes there really isn't a dramatic shift. Sometimes it's very, very subtle. So what I've noticed, I made sure to take a good look at the face beforehand. And so I'm thinking of I'm picturing a patient in particular that comes in, their face is very pink, usually for the majority, but there's a little bit more pink in the cheeks. And I'll notice just a little bit of dispersion of that pink. That's something that I can think of. There's usually like a dispersion of pinkness. I haven't done Som in a while on anybody that hasn't had Caucasian skin. So that my reference point to that has been mainly with that. So it's like a dispersion of pinkness that seems more even. But it's not very, it's not very obvious or notable sometimes. It's very subtle. Yeah.
Toby: From my experience, it seems like y you're right. I mean, with worse with darker skin color is more difficult to be able to assess, right? The paler, the better, because you can really see the blood vessels and how everything changes in the body. Channels that I've taken that are go work really well tends to be an amazing change on the face. And if I've taken the wrong channel, it tends to be pretty significant. If you're like in the vicinity, if you got some channel that's okay for the patient, then there's not gonna be that big of a change. So that's in general how that happens. But yeah, nothing's a hundred percent correlated all the time in the clinic. So I've given amazing treatments that the face didn't change much. I don't think conversely is true though, like where I've gotten something really wrong and there hasn't been a big change in the face. I don't think I've seen that. But definitely I've given treatments you know, that end up being really powerful, really big change, but then the face didn't change as much. But I always notice a little something like you're saying with the subtlety, the face becomes a little bit more even colored or something like that, if the treatment's good. That's the skin color too, but also like that other person was saying too, the wide-eyed things or the eyes closing and going to rest and things like that. I think that's really valuable too. Sometimes even the mouse will get really twisted if this is the wrong thing, or the mouth gets really relaxed, maybe even open and things like that if everything's going well. The complexion is really part of it, but then also the apertures, the eyes and the mouth. That sometimes those change too with a good treatment or bad treatment. But again, there's never a hundred percent correlation between those. But I feel like that's that's the most reliable. When I learned the system initially too, I did a lot of we checked the pulse right after and things like that. I just didn't feel it very reliable, the pulse, the changes in the pulse right away. Whereas the face is much more reliable for me. Do we hit on the whole part of that question or is it something else?
Angelique: They think the other thing that was mentioned was do you go in and check like five minutes after if someone doesn't seem settled, or do you let them rest? There is a concern about it being disruptive after you know someone has relaxed into treatment if you go back in the room five minutes after. Just wondering what best practice is in that regard.
Toby: Yeah. If I'm really worried about the patient, I go back in five minutes. If I'm really unsure or I'm really like the face isn't super clear, I'm not really clear with the diagnosis, then I like to go back in five minutes. It's slightly disruptive, but it's really great to have that information because you know, right away you're gonna have maybe a subtle change with the face, but within five minutes, you should change, you know, the symptoms should change, the face should change significantly. You'll get more information as you get more of that, as the message you're putting in the body with the four point combinations gets uploaded into the body more that five minutes in, then you have more information. And then that's plenty of time rather than waiting till the very end of the treatment and knowing something went wrong. Right. It's great to catch it at that five minutes and then reverse it right then. That's great. So I agree with that person. Yeah, it is a little bit disruptive. And so I don't do that very often, but if I'm very concerned about the patient or very unsure about the diagnosis, I really like to do that. And often I'll leave the light on. I'll tell the patient I'm leaving the light on. I'm gonna come back in five minutes and turn it off, just so I can evaluate the face really well. You know, I really don't like to turn the light off and then back on. So I just I'll leave it on for that five minutes.
Angelique: Yeah. That makes sense. Can you provide some examples of what you've heard from patients, like what they say when a channel is wrong?
Toby: I'm not doing that very often lately, right? So I'm having a hard time finding that. Yeah. R but really, I mean, you know, now I feel like I don't make major mistakes, like exactly wrong channel. I can't remember last time I did that, right? But I, you know, I missed the channel, right? So I'll get something that's just okay and give them and that will be fine. But yeah, I mean, I remember one I wrote about, right?
Angelique: Pull from the vault, please.
Toby: Patient had really cold hands. So I thought it was fine to supplement heart, but they had a whole bunch of other problems. And they were saying, I can just feel my chest warming up and my I can really feel my heart beating. And I remember thinking, assigning that to myself, that means the treatment's really working, right? I remember thinking, well, that's you know, this power is really working. But obviously that's way too much heat. Going into the heart itself. So patients will a lot of times tell you exactly what you've done wrong, right? This one heat in the chest and then heart you know becoming really rapid and being aware of the heartbeat. So yeah, that's patients will sometimes tell you exactly what you've done wrong. I'm trying to think of other things too. Like I said, usually it's pretty clear, right? Something like that. The patients won't won't rest and they'll they'll start really Being agitated about something. It maybe not about the sensations in their body, but they'll start getting really agitated talking about something. So that could be a sign too. Even if they're not talking directly about feeling their heartbeat and feeling heat in their chest, they just get really agitated and really talkative. It seems like that's a good case for maybe doing something really wrong. Okay.
Angelique: I had an example for personally, like last two one of the last two weeks, I think, where I did I chose the wrong channel and it wasn't super clear to me that's what it was. So I knew because I've been doing this now for a few months pretty consistently with patients, statistically, this was going to happen. So I was almost waiting for it because I knew, like, okay, I'm gonna see the wrong channel at some point soon, just to I'm sure it was gonna happen. And maybe I set myself up with that expectation. But this was a patient who came in that had like numbness in The hands, like very, very similar to carpal tunnel, although it was fairly sudden onset and intense for this person. And so I've been, I'm still working with this particular patient. But and I can't remember all of the exact details to be able to give them to you in this moment. But this was, I think I mentioned this to you in an email possibly, but there was I assessed her as a pericardium excess. Like she had some tightness along the gallbladder channel, she had Lot of her sensation was running along the pericardium meridian of the forearm. And she I basically I misread her pericardium excess. It was actually a gallbladder excess, but her personality was one like she gave librarian energy, but she was a little short and a little irritable during the visit. But I still thought it overwhelmingly like she's more pericardium. And so I supplemented that and she went from being able to close her fist fully to only being able to do this by the end of the treatment. And when I put the needles in, her eyes got really giant. And I was like, Are you okay? And she's like, Yeah, yeah, I'm okay. And she was able to settle. And my gut was like, no. But because she settled, I was like, huh, maybe it was just because of my new Som needling hands. Maybe I was a little rough or maybe I hurt her or whatever. Right. So I was like, okay, she seemed to settle and it was okay. And then whenever she came out of the room and she was like, I can only close my hands like this, I was like, no. And I was like, we'll just work it out. And she went, she got to the elevator and she said she was able to close it a little bit more. And then the when she came back in the following week, she said that she still had like this range of motion where she couldn't close her palm. I was like, lord. So I let her know what the plan was. I supplemented gallbladder. And by the time she left the appointment at the elevator, she had a full fist again.
Toby: B supplement pericardium that second time.
Angelique: The second the first time what am I confusing my channels? Yes. No. I supplement yes, that's right. She was pericardium access to supplemented gallbladder, bad. And then she came back and I supplemented pericardium and it was better. So but her initial like that initial like response, like is that something that you can take as a as evidence for poor choice?
Toby: It depends on if it's a response to that while you're needling, like when you're needling those jingwell points, right? Almost everyone has some reaction to that. But if it stays, then you could take that as a potentially a bad thing. And then usually I notice too, like when they're doing that 3D press after you have the four points in, that's when if the eyes are open then, then I'm I'm really starting to get concerned. Do you do remember when the eyes were open in that case?
Angelique: They were definitely after the three breaths, they still were big.
Toby: Okay. So that's again, nothing's conclusive a hundred percent in clinic, but that's that's usually a guide that you've you've gone the wrong direction.
Angelique: Okay. Thankfully we fixed it. It was good. The end of the day.
Toby: I know, but that's really valuable. That's a nice thing that's a nice thing about the system, right? If you get exactly wrong, that actually guides you what exactly you need to do next time. So it's like one of the few things we have certain in clinic, right? Is if you get it exactly wrong, then you then that shines a light on what you exactly need to do. So th that case would have been interesting, like if you if that they're still wide eyed after the three breaths, then maybe that's a good time to come in five minutes and check the symptoms. Okay.
Angelique: To know and we'll do next time for sure. The follow-up is how often so I think I know the answer to this, but anyway, I'm gonna ask, how often is Toby 100% sure of his treatment choice in a way that is confirmed by the patient response?
Toby: Okay, you do know the answer to that. I just say there's a journal of Chinese medicine article that exact topic coming out. What was my max competence? Do you remember? Maximum, yes.
Angelique: It's eight percent. Max confidence. Yeah. Eighty percent. Not fully. A hundred percent.
Toby: Do you remember why? Because so many times I was still No, but so many times I was a hundred percent sure that was a good treatment and it wasn't. So I had to recalibrate that back down to eighty percent because so many times I thought, that's just knocked out of the park, perfect, a hundred percent, and then it's wrong.
Angelique: I've had a couple of the experiences so far where I was a hundred percent and was right. And so I'm trying to I'm watching myself 'cause I'm trying to remember eighty percent because, you know, that could happen where I'm gonna be like, This is it, and then it's absolutely not it.
Toby: I mean you'll you'll have to make up your own percentage, but I don't recommend a hundred percent because it's too can clinic is too confusing. There's too many complicating factors to for us to really fully comprehend exactly what's going on with another human being. It's impossible. So it ha it has to be below a hundred percent.
Angelique: That makes sense. And then the other is following up after treatments. And this person's curious about what we both have to say about this. They're a new practitioner and they deeply value feedback after treatments to refine diagnosis and to better understand the Saam system as a whole. And they say that thus far they're they're very slow and cautious. So it's helpful to have some time outside of clinic to process to think through options before the next meeting without added pressure in the clinic. So wondering what systems and language that you and I use for soliciting feedback and if this is by email or phone or only requested in cases of an unusual response, like what the best language is to use.
Toby: I want the fresh perspective and I'll give you the old perspective after
Angelique: Okay. All right. So I have only asked for response in cases that I am wanting to really know. Like if there's something big hinging on it. So the patient that I had that I was treating for the vertigo, I asked him to email me and check in with how he was doing. With the patient with the fist, the same thing. And there are other times where I tend to confuse lung and stomach in my brain. Like I know it, but then when I talk about it, sometimes I flip. The descriptors. And so there's always a part of me that's afraid that I have screwed up the lung and stomach and have supplemented the wrong one. And so frequently with a lumber stomach supplementation, I will ask those patients to let me know as well, just in case I didn't do it right. But I don't do it on a regular basis, just in those specific circumstances that I can think of. An email is always best. A couple of patients have figured out that my work phone is textable. And so they will send text messages and then I Sort of purposely delay my reply that way because I don't want to create a culture where people are expecting an instant reply via text. Right. So email is preferred. If it's severe, if it's like a severe thing, then a phone call, yeah, that's my order of operations. So what do you what do you do?
Toby: I'm just thinking about what I do for new patients, right? I don't give them a follow-up appointment usually until they checked in after two days and giving me really clear feedback about what's going on with them. So I sort of make it as a gateway for them to get further appointments to you know, to make them check in with me about 48 hours after the treatment. And they'll talk to my office manager directly on the phone or text or email. I'd give it up to them however they prefer. But I feel like th this is really valuable because it forces feedback from them and the language I use. Is I say, I'm gonna I'm gonna, I'm trying to think about the exact words I use, but it's it's like I'm gonna figure out your treatment plan going forward based on this feedback. So I need it to be really clear. I don't need everything in the real details, but any significant changes that you've noticed in the last 48 hours, I'd like to hear about. And so that's usually what I do for that. And then I say the same thing too when the patients come back, right? I say, how's your how everything been going with you? And then Sometimes they'll kind of hem and haw about stuff and then I'll reiterate that again. I'm gonna make a really important clinical decision based on your feedback. So just make it as clear as possible for me. A lot of times patients don't know how seriously we're taking what they have to say. And so it's nice to give them that framework and then they kind of steps up their meticulousness of giving that feedback. No, that you're really eliciting it and you really need it as clear and as honest as possible.
Angelique: Okay. So what do you do? I'm sure this happens sometimes with patients that are like, nothing is different. Nothing. Nothing changed.
Toby: Yeah, but then I
Angelique: Dear Toby, no changes.
Toby: And then sometimes I'll ask back. I'll either have my office manager ask back that shoulder is there's been no change with the shoulder. You know, I look back in the chart, all the things that we're doing, no change with the shoulder, still having that diarrhea seven times a day, whatever it is, right? And go down the list just to remind them of their original report because that's really common for patients to say there's no change. I made a small video about that. I'll try and put it if I can figure out how to do it, I'll put a link into this one about that, about the patients come back and reporting no change, and even though there's been significant change. I feel like again, th they're not they're not great reporters sometimes. And especially that's that's the most common way of not giving good feedback is saying everything's fine. Everything's the same. Yeah. And then and so then I a lot of times we'll break that down and be like, so really seven times a day diarrhea anymore? And then you'd be like, well, that's fine, but you know, something else is still lingering.
Angelique: That's because the sun's out.
Toby: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. In that video. Okay, I'll send that I'll I'll really try and put this video out here 'cause it's I yeah, that was again and then a lot of people want to blame acupuncture for the worst possible things and then not give me any credit. I think that's just maybe just a cultural bias or something like that. So just be on the lookout for that. Acupuncture can cause so many side effects and so many harms and things like that. Recently I had a patient contact me all this crazy bruising on their body and I checked their point combination again, I give them nowhere near that bruising. So I forget where, you know, they'd have been doing something else that caused the bruising. But again, everyone's immediate thought is, my God, it's the acupuncture. So just be on the lookout for that.
Angelique: Yep. Then so along those lines, so the patient, I don't know if I talked about him a couple episodes ago that had come in with the bird ago. So it's been a month since I last saw him. And he came in this week for his appointment because he said he would come monthly. And he basically said, you know, he feels it's like I feel I feel better. And I was like, Okay, you feel better. He's like, Yeah, like what does that mean? Well I mean, I still have to look where I'm walking, you know, because otherwise I feel unstable. He's like, but I don't feel dizzy. And I'm like, that's great. He's like, but I'm not eating gluten. And I said, Great. He's like, I tried eating gluten. He's like, I tried it one time. And he's like, and then I had an episode where I thought I was gonna get vertigo again. He's like, but I was able to catch it. And I'm like, that's great. And I kept like, how's everything else going? Everything else is fine. And it was almost like he didn't remember. Things that he came in with. So to speak to like what you're saying, I ended up going all the way back again because I had done this with him the first time. And I was like, well, how are you sleeping? He's like, I'm sleeping fine. No problem. And my the most recent time that I had treated him, he couldn't sleep at all. Right. Like he was he had gone from being able to sleep to doing a diet change and having an acupuncture, not being able to sleep, and then able to sleep again with no problem. His digestion, so much better. All the things were so much better. And then he says, he goes, I think I'm going to come back one more time and just to see if this is worth it. I was like, okay, sounds good. Let's do your treatment. And so for him, this last time I supplemented stomach because he was having lung excess symptoms damp on the inside because he was having looser stools, like his bowels were better, but he was having looser stools and his skin was it was dry. It was not, it was a little bit of a stretch because it wasn't like Moist skin, but it was dry on the drier side. Yeah, it was pretty it was pretty funny going back and being like, so this is pretty much better, right? This is better. And then he's like, well, how do I know? I mean, how do I know it's really the acupuncture that's doing anything? It's like, okay, come back next month and we'll we'll see, we'll see how this goes. So on that one with regard to that.
Toby: Yeah, I mean you could always put that back in Yeah. You could always put it back in his court and just be like, well don't come for a while and then see how you do, you know? Because I mean there are so many variables in the patient's life, so you could remove yourself as a variable and see how everything goes. You know, I think that's that's a reasonable experiment. And then I
Angelique: Coming back and he came back a month later and he's gonna come back next month as well.
Toby: He's gonna demand to come to see you weekly once he recognizes how much you're helping him. We'll see. I was gonna one more thing in defense of the patients, right? Is the body's designed to register problems. If everything's going well, it just doesn't register it. So that's that's in defense of the why the patients say that, right? If it's if it's not happening, then it's out of your consciousness. So yeah, that's that's a little bit understandable what they're going on with them. That's why it's so nice to be able to consult your notes again and then say it back to them.
Angelique: Yes. The notes the no taking good notes is a is a solid thing to do.
Toby: Yes, or a good memory. Yeah. Yeah.
Angelique: All right. So that those are our main questions.
Toby: That's way to go, listener. Thanks. One thing I was gonna say too, I've just a little bit of Chinese medicine news. I'm not sure if you heard about it, but we lost another Chinese medical school. Did you hear about that? Emperor's College in Santa Monica? Yeah, maybe six weeks ago or so now. It's been there for forty two years. One of my good friend, he's a colleague, she went there and pretty upset about it. So it's definitely not a you know, there's not
Angelique: I didn't hear about that.
Toby: By chance these things are going down. This is definitely a trend that six Chinese medical schools in the last two years have closed. A little bit concerning. I still don't know exactly what the solution is here. But this profession has to has to figure it out probably.
Angelique: I know that there have been several absorptions of schools into other schools, right? Too that's happened.
Toby: Yeah, this one just closed as far as I know.
Angelique: This one just closed, so there was no absorption.
Toby: Yes, g gave the students just a couple of week notice, right? Just that we're this is
Angelique: It. God. Can you imagine being in the middle of acupuncture school and then getting the announcement of guess what?
Toby: Yeah, not really. And then I think it must you know, a lot of acupuncture students in all the schools must be a little bit nervous right now just because you see it seems like the hammer's coming down a lot of schools. So yeah, again, I don't know the solution, but probably something, right? I think this has been recognized for a while, right? Chinese medical school prepares you for the exam, but not how to practice and it's really expensive. So that's just not it's not they're not making very good products. So hopefully Again, I don't have solution, but hopefully someone in the Chinese medicine community can come up with an idea for a school that can make a better product at not such crazy prices. So I'm hoping that happens. Otherwise as Chinese medicine gets more and more demand and we have less and less schools, that's that's gonna be a big problem.
Angelique: Yeah, I wonder goodness, I wonder what's gonna happen. Yeah.
Toby: I was gonna switch to another topic. Are you okay? Sure. Okay. Well this will be our final t topic for today. But do you use AI for anything? What kind of things?
Angelique: I have what I have used it for is since I am documenting for insurance companies. I and also I had a patient that was sort of wondering along the same lines of like, is this actually helping? I removed the identifying information and I cut and pasted my visit notes for like four sequential treatments into it and had it analyze the symptom like track basically create like a symptom tracking thing for me. So like visit one pain was Seven out of ten, able to, you know, put socks on with difficulty, like basically track all of my measures across the continuum of the visits and to create a synopsis. And then I double checked it to make sure it wasn't wrong because I don't think AI is right all the time. And then I was able to use that visit note both for the patient, just this note like the breakdown, and then able to put that in the chart as evidence for supported continued treatment and another treatment plan.
Toby: That's awesome, right? Again, that's so great for those kind of analytics, right? Where you can pull up trends and it can especially looking through big text is so great for that. Other things you use it for?
Angelique: I have double checked my diagnoses out of curiosity to see like, okay, this is what I think. I wonder what it thinks. And it's close. It's not the same, but it's close. So I've dabbled in it curiously. I haven't like done what it's told me to do, but it's mirrored back elements of my own diagnosis and elements of my own point prescriptions if I'm not using Saam. It's not good at Saam because I've tried to see what it would say and it looks at it differently than you do. It uses a language not that you use. And so maybe it's saying something correctly, but it doesn't. It's more five elementy in its language versus talking about like the accesses and the channel systems.
Toby: Probably doesn't have enough data, right? To be able to come up with something good for that. Can I share with you a prompt I heard from a Stanford professor? You might like it. Sure. Okay, great. This is I'll put it up here on the screen and I'll email this to you so you don't have to remember, but it's a great prompt. All right. What do you usually use? Like Chat GPT or Gemini, Claude? What do you like?
Angelique: I've used Trash UBC.
Toby: Okay. You can ask this to all three. I use all three systems. It's it's pretty good to get a little bit different take on everything. But this is this is the prompt. You ask it, can you ask me questions one at a time until you have enough context about my workflows and responsibilities and objectives until you can make two obvious and two non-obvious ways I can leverage AI in my work. I think you'll find a really interesting back and forth with the AI if you do that prompt.
Angelique: Cool. All right, I'll check that out. Okay. Thank you.
Toby: And then AI asked me, I asked it if there's any questions I should ask you. I described our show and asked if there's any questions I should ask you. And then it gave up one topic idea for us to discuss. Acupuncture needles, tiny torture devices, or miracle wands. Do you have any response to that? Good. That was pretty good. Way to go, alien intelligence. Okay. And then it had other
Angelique: That's pretty good. Tiny torture devices. Well, in my hands it might be the former, in yours it might be the latter.
Toby: I d I don't know if that's true, but that's a good response. I'm gonna ask you some other questions too. Okay. I don't want to respond to this, but I thought it was funny it came up with this. It wanted me to ask you, what's the weirdest thing you've ever stuck a needle into? Okay, I thought it was funny. If channels were a party, which one would be describe the party that they'd have. If all twelve channels went to a party, what would the channels be like?
Angelique: All twelve of the channels went to a party. What would that party be like? Yes. It would be something else.
Toby: That's pretty good.
Angelique: Can help myself.
Toby: Yeah. Okay. They wanted me to ask you, what's more terrifying to you? A qi blockage? Or someone who just Googled TCM cures for everything and now thinks they're a practitioner? Okay. A chi blockage is no worries. It's someone that yeah has done all the research on Chinese medicine and then now would like to present it.
Angelique: Obviously the latter. All right. Yeah. Well, what's interesting is the patient that I ended up going to AI to help me with it's with the consolidation of data was someone who was unsure if the treatments I were was giving to them were scientifically valid because I wasn't repeating the same points every single time. And so they weren't sure if they were able to accurately track because they couldn't quite understand exactly the reasoning behind it. Like they were definitely looking at it like the Western reductionist way of double blind, randomized, repeatable. And so I had to go into a detailed discussion with them about Chinese medicine in general. But I think it's because they had gone down a little side rabbit hole of their own in that. So very on point and valid question. Thank you, Chad GPT.
Toby: So much. That was great questions. And then also remember when you when you when you start working with the AI, right? Just keep iterating, make it iterate. Because first I said what question should I ask you? And it was like, you know, how's holistic medicine perceived? And you know, like a whole bunch of boring things. And I kept asking it. Yeah. You know, I said I think the last thing I said, make these questions slightly irreverent. And it did. You know, that's when it started doing the parties and everything like that. So I thought it's pretty good. But don't, yeah, like you were saying before too, don't don't just accept its first thing. Ask it to ask it to explain itself and make it a little bit better.
Angelique: Yeah, you've got to have it double check for sure. Yes. What do you say to folks that are like, This is the devil? We should not be using AI in Chinese medicine.
Toby: I was in that camp and like both of my books, right, I like proudly said did not use AI for any parts of it and things like that. And now I feel like it's just a tool it's it's a tool. I you know, actually I read recently you should think of it not as a tool, but like as a teammate. I think it's reasonable as a teammate, you know, you to run things by it. Like I said earlier, right? You all know Harari, he calls it alien intelligence. So it's nice to have another intelligence give you a little bit of feedback that you can't do yourself, right? Just something on the outside. So I think it's good. Again, I think as this goes forward, this is gonna be this is the probably golden age of AI right now. And then I'm I'm reading a little bit about this right now. I think very soon this world's gonna get a little bit weird with AI. So might as well use it while it's still at this infancy stage because as it gets weirder and weirder, I think we're gonna have a harder, harder time interacting with it. So I feel like this is. This is the time to get used to it and see what you can do with it. Later on, I'm I'm not sure what kind of directions this is gonna go in.
Angelique: I have heard that there's one that they're developing specifically for Chinese medicine called Chibo. Have you heard of this?
Toby: No, I had a similar idea initially, but I'm not sure how to do it. I think the thing you really need is to make it really reliable. And so, like if you can just train it on really reliable information, I think that's that's super valuable. But I wasn't sure, you know, like two years ago when I was looking into that, I wasn't sure how to do that, how to make sure it was super reliable. Because when you give recommendations to practitioners, right, there's a patient's you know, basically life involved in that. So you gotta make sure that's really it's really correct. So I kind of shied away from that because I didn't feel like there's a good way to, you know, to avoid the hallucinations, to avoid the errors and things like that. What d what do you know about that Chibo app? Anything about
Angelique: The only thing that I have read about it was an article and I tried to find it and I couldn't find it, but that it's basically it's an AI specific to Chinese medicine. That they're inputting all of the patterns and classics and all the things into it for the utilization by clinicians and students. And it's originated in China, I think. It was a really brief it was a really brief article that I found. That's the extent of the rabbit hole I went down. Very shallow rabbit hole.
Toby: Okay. Anyway, it was nice to know things that come down the pipe. Mm-hmm. All right.
Angelique: I'm with you. I think it's a good tool. I don't think it should surplant our brains, you know, but I think it's it's interesting to bounce things off of it.
Toby: Right. That's how we get better. Like you were saying, you know, starting with earlier w the feedback from the patients. That's how we become better clinicians, but also for like our writing and everything we want to do, right? It's nice to bounce it off something. So again, it's I spent a lot of time like stiff arming it and keeping it away. And then when I started working with that, I thought this is this is not the devil. This is yeah, like I said, potential artificial, like alien intelligence to give us you feedback and that's valuable. Again, you have to just take it as feedback, not as gospel. I think that's that's the worrying part. Yeah. All right. Let's let's wrap it up for today. And then yeah, th thanks so much for soliciting feedback from anyone who's viewing this, right? It'd be great to any other questions or any feedback if they can send to that email. And we'll just keep working on making this better and better as our conversations get better and better. Hopefully that you can get more and more out of it. All right. Bye everybody.
Angelique: I agree. All right, take care everyone.
