Turns out, nobody can make the definitive list because the living system will continue being alive after the list is written. As an acupuncturist, I’m acutely aware of this. Sometimes people ask, “Why is my body doing this?” and for better or worse, it’s because it’s an alive being that is in constant motion.

So this is where, as an acupuncturist, I think the conversation about the “mental load” gets super interesting.

All the work I do is related, as much as it might seem a bit disconnected. I get quite a bit of, “You do small group acupuncture and also… facial acupuncture?” with resultant quizzical looks.

What can I say. I contain multitudes.

Because to me, it’s all rooted in the same thing: caring for a living, dynamic system.

Let's talk about detox.

Not the juice cleanse, not the foot bath that shows you the dirty water, not the charcoal lemonade that costs $18 and does nothing except make you feel like you're participating in your own wellness.

Those things exist because the wellness industry identified a real biological need, stripped it of its mechanistic truth, repackaged it as an aesthetic consumer experience, and sold it back to the people whose bodies were asking for something real. It’s the same structure as stripping wheat of its nutritional complexity to make it white and shelf-stable, then repacking it with synthetic nutrients… but we'll get to that.

This means that acupuncture mimics GLP-1 from inside the system. It stimulates the body's own GLP-1 neurons to fire by working with the vagus nerve to restore a signal the body had lost the ability to send clearly.

And because it’s an inside job, it’s teaching the body to do something rather than overriding the system and taking over.

Semaglutide is an external agonist, which means it occupies the receptor and drives the signal. Acupuncture, through vagal stimulation, appears to be rehabilitating the neuron itself. These are not the same thing, even when the downstream effects overlap, but it does pique my interest when the two are used in conjunction with one another.

I come from inside the wellness community, so I'm writing this as someone who has spent years both practicing within this world and untangling myself from its logic. The same water I swim in is the water I'm describing.

And what I keep coming back to is this: one of the things that Patriarchal Wellness teaches us is that our worth is legible through our spending.

You're serious about your health — if you can afford to be. The more specialized the provider, the more exclusive the practice, the more gilded the protocol, the more you must be worth healing. We know this is wrong and we absorb it anyway, because it's everywhere, even baked into our health insurance system. So we trust the influencer with the $800 supplement stack over the licensed practitioner with a decade or more of clinical experience, and we don't always stop to ask why. In fact, we rationalize it by conceptualizing that the people with expertise are actually the enemy.

I think the five elements have something to say about this.

Metal is the paradox of being human. It’s breath and body, grief and beauty, spirit and flesh. Autumn teaches us that letting go isn’t an ending; it’s how life circulates and begins again. This is why my facials have evolved into grief medicine: not about perfection, what about impermanence, release, and the beauty that rises through loss.

Acupuncture’s analgesic effects aren’t just energetic: they’re cellular. From calming inflammation to modulating neurotransmitters like dopamine, adenosine, and serotonin, acupuncture works by helping your nervous and immune systems recalibrate. This post breaks down the science behind pain relief: vagus nerve activation, cytokine suppression, and why the location of the needle actually matters.

Your health shifts with the seasons. Public Acupuncture works with those changes, helping you move from spring’s surge to winter’s rest with steadiness and ease.

Every chair holds a story: stress relief, migraine recovery, fertility support, maintenance care. Public Acupuncture makes space for them all, without anyone saying a word.

Same medicine, two pathways. Public care is your steady heartbeat; private care is your focused tune-up. Together, they keep your system strong, adaptable, and resilient.