Blossom Your Awesome Transformational Healing With Dr. Alex Joannou

Blossom Your Awesome Transformational Healing With Dr. Alex Joannou

Dr. Alex Joannou is a General practitioner. He has spent the last 20 years training medical students, International Medical Graduates, and General Practice Registrars.

He is the founder of transformational acupuncture, a unique methodology and technique. He believes in full body healing integrating mind, body and spirit has  learned  about the human psyche and how it aids in the healing process.

To learn more about Dr. Alex click here.

To see more of my work check me out at my website

Where I write and cover mindfulness and other things to help you Blossom Your Awesome.

Or checkout my other site where I right about arts and culture, wellness, essays and op-eds.

Or follow me on instagram where I post fairly regularly and ask an inquisitive question or two weekly in hopes of getting you thinking about your life and going deeper with it.

My Instagram - i_go_by_skd

To support my work - my Patreon

To see more of who I'm talking to on the Podcast, to advertise your brand on the Blossom Your Awesome Podcast or just get in touch click here.  

Transcript

Sue (00:00.982)
Hi there, today on the show, we have got Dr. Alex here with us. I am so honored and delighted to have you here. Welcome to the show.

Dr Alex (00:10.779)
Thanks, Sue.

Sue (00:12.894)
joining us all the way from the other part of the world. Like you said, I've stepped into the future. It's Tuesday morning, your time. Thank you so much for being here and joining me. Now getting into your story, Dr. Alex, you were a general practitioner for decades. And then you went into functional medicine and you did training in nutritional and environmental medicine, acupuncture.

Dr Alex (00:30.415)
Yeah.

Sue (00:42.114)
Give us the backstory, like why you got into medicine in the first place and then why the transition.

Dr Alex (00:49.443)
Yeah, well, it's a good question. I mean, I got into medicine, you know, I had a sort of a scientific mind, I guess you'd call it. I'd always liked science at school and physics and chemistry and all of that. So it was just a way of helping people through understanding science, applying science to the human body. And I went along merrily in that regard as a GP for over 10 years.

about 12 years and I was feeling really run down and I was hard working then. It was just ridiculous number of patients I was seeing a week. It was like averaging 250 people a week, which is a lot of people going through your business and switching your mind from one thing to the other and so on. And it sort of gets to an unsatisfactory stage because you can't.

spend the time with the person. But on the other hand, I felt the need to help people was so great and that people kept coming to see me that I was just working harder and harder. And so I was feeling really tired and run down. And then basically I collapsed one day at work and my then wife said, if you don't get a blood test to see a doctor, I'm going to divorce you. So I did. And it turned out I had Crohn's disease to cut a long story short.

Crohn's disease is a disease of the bowel. I had two four inch abscesses growing there at the time, which was adding to my feeling of weakness and illness. And I had an operation a week later. And I thought, yeah, you beauty modern science, cut it out, we're done. And I asked the, I'd lost 20 kilos in the process.

from 80 kilos down to 60 kilos. So I'd lost a lot of weight. And, but the surgeon said, when it was time to be discharged, I said like, should I follow any particular diet? And he says, I know what you like, you're cured. So I thought you're beauty. And, but within six weeks, I started getting symptoms again and the surgeon threatened further surgery. And I'm thinking, this is ridiculous. I've had two feet of intestine cut out.

Dr Alex (03:15.983)
you know, what's cutting out more bits. You can only do that for so long. So, and the whole process was, you know, like running a marathon or worse. It was a very arduous process. And the recovery time, it took weeks to sort of get over it. But so a friend of mine was into nutritional medicine at the time. And he said, well, come and see me. And he put me on a nut-free, dairy-free, meat-free, gluten-free.

Sue (03:21.177)
Hmm.

Dr Alex (03:46.091)
everything free diet, which was pretty bland and pretty unattractive. But the thing was, I started getting better straight away. Within weeks, I was starting to feel back to normal. So, you know, I'm thinking, this is ridiculous. You know, I've never learned any of this in medical school. What's wrong with the system if they didn't teach you that? Just wait till you get ill enough to you need an expensive operation to fix you.

life-threatening sort of situation. That's crazy to wait that long. So that got me in the whole bent of exploring the idea of integrative and functional medicine. And ultimately, through exploring various ideas to acupuncture, because what attracted me initially was that the Chinese system had been developed for 2000 years and they had a whole system that really looks at

how the body functions and how the organs interact with one another, which is sadly lacking in medicine, which believes in specialism. You know, a person becomes more and more specialized and knows more and more about less and less of the body.

Sue (05:01.922)
This is so interesting, Dr. Alex. And you know, I always, I love stories like this because I feel we as patients and people on the other side, we don't have access to the right information, right? And somebody like you who understands biology, the body, all of that, but now you're tapping in, versus kind of the pharmaceutical thing, prescribing meds, which give other side effects.

Dr Alex (05:17.168)
Yeah.

Sue (05:31.102)
with the functional medicine, you're getting to the root of the problem.

Dr Alex (05:31.418)
Yeah.

Dr Alex (05:34.935)
Yes, yeah, exactly. And particularly with acupuncture, I've developed into a system because I noticed, well, with the help of my wife, who's also a doctor, medical doctor at the practice, and I kept skiting and telling her how my patients were getting better with all sorts of medical conditions through just using acupuncture and commenting how well they felt and that

problems didn't bother them anymore and they didn't have arguments with their spouse or they were happy with their work even though the problems were still there. And she just said you've got to document this. After a couple of years of her nagging me to document it I finally did and I followed a half a dozen patients with depression and their treatment with acupuncture and they got remarkable improvements.

often even within eight weeks, they were feeling much better than they felt in years. So, and over time I was able to get these people off their antidepressants. So that I thought was, you know, extremely powerful. I thought this is a message I've got to get out there. And, you know, I like to help people. And I thought there's, you know, according to the World Health Organization, there's at least 280 million people in the world with depression.

So even reaching a fraction of those can make a big impact. And because of the impact on their families and on the country's economies and so on, it's a massive amount of time off is because of depression and also anxiety. So I thought I've got to train other acupuncturists in this method. And that's what I've focused on for the last, well, six years, gradually more and more. And in the last...

Two years ago I sold my medical practice so I could focus on this 100%. And now I'm training acupuncturists online. Any acupuncturist in the world can get this training and help them to actually implement it in their practice to help all those people with depression.

Sue (07:51.422)
This is so remarkable because you never hear of acupuncture curing depression. It's unheard of, essentially. So let me ask you, I mean, how did you come, were you treating somebody for something else with acupuncture who happened to have depression and it cured it or how did you come up with it?

Dr Alex (08:00.311)
Yes, exactly.

Dr Alex (08:13.959)
Yeah, basically. The first patient that really focused my attention was a lady who's in her early 60s at the time. She had osteoarthritis, particularly in the hips and knees and her hands was bad. It was enough that her GP, who is also a doctor in the practice, had put her on to opioids, fentanyl patches basically.

and to help the pain. And she didn't like the idea of being on it, but she felt she had to because, well, that was what was on offer and it did help the pain. So I talked her into coming to see me for acupuncture because I'd known her over the years as a GP and started treating her and literally at her third treatment, so the third weekly treatments.

She told me she had thrown the opioids away. She didn't need them anymore, which was, I thought was remarkable enough. And she's only needed the occasional Panadol for the pain. So that was massive. And I kept going with her to treat her. Because with acupuncture, you need to give it as a series of treatments. It's not like, I say it's like you go to the gym, you don't expect to go once and be, come out with a...

muscley body, you keep going and building on it. And a similar sort of thing happens with the acupuncture. And she was feeling better and better. And after about six or eight weeks, she said, can I stop my antidepressants? So I hadn't even realized she'd been on antidepressants, but she'd been on antidepressants for 16 years. And I thought, well, maybe she just doesn't need it. Some people just continue to take pills because they're told to.

But I checked the notes and her previous GP had tried stopping her antidepressants the year before and within six weeks all her symptoms came back and she had to go back on the antidepressants. So she obviously had a need for them. So at any rate, because I rated her on the DAS score, which is a score to rate severity of depression, and she wasn't depressed.

Dr Alex (10:40.871)
at that point. So, okay, let's, I cautiously weaned her off the antidepressants over the space of about a month. And not only did the depression not come back, but she remarked how happy she felt. It just happened that it was around Christmas time. And she said that there's some, she got a knock on a door and there are some Christmas carolers there singing to her.

and she burst into tears and it was just such a heartfelt moment for her that it really touched her. And she commented that when she saw films and movies she could feel the emotional impact of what was happening in the movie, which she hadn't felt for years. And that's, I think, partly because, you know, antidepressants really tend to numb emotions, which when your emotions are predominantly depression, that's a good thing, but...

it stops you also experiencing the joys and happiness in life. So, and this was back in 2011, 12 years ago, and she still comes to the practice for occasional prescription and treatment, but she hasn't needed acupuncture anymore and she hasn't needed antidepressants anymore, and she still only takes occasional Panadol for her pain. So she's remained really quite well. And I just thought like that was astounding.

Sue (12:05.706)
Wow, this is so astounding. And what other kind of findings? So people, you know, talk to us about depression. So it seems like a lot of times, the kind of first go-to is some sort of medication, right? It's always.

Dr Alex (12:22.127)
Yeah, unfortunately. I mean, I mean, generally, if people go to a doctor, they're offered antidepressants, maybe not on the first visit. But if you go there often enough, and especially female patients crying in front of male GPs, you can almost guarantee they're going to get a prescription for an antidepressant. Because guys like to fix problems, so to speak. Yeah, it's

It's...

Dr Alex (12:56.855)
And, you know, it's, yeah, the only other alternative really is talk therapy, just sitting down with a psychologist. And, and I've had a lot of people over the years that say, I'm sick and tired of talking to the psychologist, you know, I go to a new one and then I've got to go through all my story again about my childhood and bad parenting or whatever happened. You know, there's usually a story there, but every time they keep telling that story, it seems to like reem.

reinforce the story, the victimhood thing. With the beauty of acupuncturists, you don't have to talk about any of that. You just lie there and accept the treatment. And it works on the mind, on the subconscious. And often conscious thoughts come to people while they're even lying there. Plus, the other aspect is releasing emotion. I think in particularly in the case of depression, people tend, they're taught to suppress emotions. People generally don't

rant and rave and scream and shout, they just soldier on. And that's the way they were brought up. And these things, I think they get stuck in the body. Often I've acupuncture at a particular point and the person will burst out crying in tears. And it's usually associated with some sort of memory of something in the past, but sometimes it's not even associated with the memory. It's just the energy.

of the emotion is stuck in the channels. Because they, in Chinese medicine, one of the beauties of it is they associate different emotions with different organs in the body. And like if the person's a frustrated, angry type person, it's usually a liver issue. And if there's a lot of sadness in their life, it's usually affects the lungs. So lung issues. So you can gauge what treatments they need from the emotions they have and so on.

So it opens up a whole new vista. And for me, being that sort of scientific minded person, initially I thought, oh, this is all rubbish. But you try it and it works. And it's just, I find it captivating that way.

Sue (14:53.326)
Let us hope.

Sue (15:09.822)
And now I know you have kind of a different methodology. So what are you doing different? How did you come up with this?

Dr Alex (15:19.813)
Yeah. Well, initially, it was a system of acupuncture based on affecting the chakras, because there's a Dr. Mickey Osanki who realized, well, chakras, the ayurvedic system of energy sensors from the crown, they head down to the root chakra. They're really acupuncture points, you know.

It's the same thing by a different name. It's just, you're looking at it from a different perspective. So you can actually use acupuncture to manipulate chakra energy. And I guess, and he, Dr. Sankey was using it from the perspective of helping people raise their consciousness. And they usually needed to be high level meditator type people, very...

introspective and working hard on themselves. But me being a GP, I just thought I'll apply this to ordinary everyday people and lo and behold, I was finding it was working. Initially, the system he was teaching was too powerful for people with depression because it would stir up emotional stuff too much and be very confronting for the patient.

So I really sort of over time developed it into a gentler milder system that's graded to take people through it as they emotionally can handle these things. So, you know, there's always the next level, if you like.

Sue (16:54.066)
And now Dr. Alex, talk to us. What are some other myths around acupuncture or what is something that would surprise us that acupuncture can cure or heal that we would never imagine?

Dr Alex (17:07.776)
Yeah, well, because the thing is, I guess, is, especially when you understand chakras, there's a real connection between the mind, body and spirit. And like if somebody's, you know, I found out before, okay, you get people get admitted to hospital for all sorts of medical illnesses. But when you actually talk to the patient in a sort of a casual type setting,

and discuss their attitude about their illness. They usually have some reason in the back of their mind as to why they got the illness. And it often relates to events in life and or spirituality and so forth. It's really quite fascinating because medicine only just treats the physical illness. I mean, the classic thing is colicistitis, an inflamed gallbladder through gallstones and having to have an operate. I mean,

medicine says you just cut the gallbladder out. And that fixes the problem. But in the Chinese medicine, it's to do with courage and to be decisive. And if you're not, it usually manifests as a disorder in the gallbladder system. And it's closely related to the liver, which is an organ that's designed to take action.

and he's likened in Chinese medicine to a general of the army. He listens to the heart. The heart says, I want to do this. And the general goes ahead and fights the war and gets the outcome for the emperor, if everything's going good. If it's not going good, the liver gets angry, frustrated, and the gallbladder becomes indecisive and that annoys the liver even more.

I mean, it sounds like fairy tale type stuff. But interestingly, when I've talked to people with who've had their gallbladders out, they can usually relate to being an indecisive type person. And I even had one woman told me that she went into hospitals to have a gallbladder out. And while she was there recovering, lying in bed, she realized she needed to divorce her husband. And she made the decision there and then came out of hospital.

Dr Alex (19:28.371)
and divorced the husband and doesn't ever look back. I mean, pretty crazy. But, you know, yet from a medical viewpoint, you just think this is all nuts, this is nonsense. But I hear these sort of stories over and over again. So what I've done is create a questionnaire, which I get my patients to fill out every time, which relates to not only their physical symptoms, but their mental attitude.

and their aspects of spirituality and figure out from that questionnaire which are the chakras that need to be really worked on the most and in doing that I finally get the quickest results.

Sue (20:11.918)
So essentially what's happening is anytime we have some kind of emotional or stress, it can come up in the body as it will present itself.

Dr Alex (20:22.499)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I had one patient who was actually a medical student becoming a doctor and he complained of a sore shoulder, which he'd had for a couple of years. And so I treated it and a particular point I hit, he burst into tears and I said, you know, like what's going on for you. And I said that particular point relates to carrying a burden.

And he said that a few years before, he had been helping his father build a hut, they were from Fiji, so he built the buries in Fiji. And he said he was helping his father build one. And while his father was working at the other end, the beam slipped and he let go of it and it fell on his shoulder. But the important part was that he felt like a failure.

as a result. He felt like he'd let his father and his family down and he'd been carrying that burden in his body. The pain was a reminder. So he wasn't really going to get a healing until because he'd seen, you know, had physiotherapy and all the regular sort of treatments, but it was releasing that emotional burden for him that made all the difference.

So he wasn't only paying fee, but he was a happy man after that. And that just happened to be literally one treatment because he was at my practice sitting in learning as a medical student off of me. So I saw him over the next week or two and it had really shifted something in him mentally and changed his life really.

Sue (22:13.006)
Hmm. This is so fascinating. And so essentially with the acupuncture, what you're doing, you're hitting certain pressure points, but you're also kind of releasing, getting like the chi and the energy flowing.

Dr Alex (22:24.325)
Yeah.

Dr Alex (22:28.419)
Yes, it needs to flow. I mean, you know, the Chinese talk about the energy flowing through the body. And whether you understand it in those terms or in Western scientific terms, the result is the same. You know, you can't by hanging on to some emotional baggage or suppressing some emotional baggage and things like that. It's like your body's having to, you can't move on. It's having to.

work overtime trying to suppress and keep it under some sort of control.

Sue (23:05.758)
And now, this is amazing. Dr. Alex, so give us some other insights into kind of potentially some natural things that we can be tapping into. Is there stuff that we can access on our own?

Dr Alex (23:06.68)
sense.

Dr Alex (23:23.035)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess in days gone by, people used to talk with their mates or girlfriends about these things. And just talking about issues can make a massive difference. Because, you know, there's nothing wrong with a bit of tears and so forth. And but a big part of depression is people feel stuck.

they feel like they can't move and that becomes actually manifested physically. So usually they often will stay in bed in the morning till quite a late, late hour. Just because they feel like they physically have no energy to do these things, but literally just putting on a pair of joggers and going for a walk first thing in the morning before anything else can really start shifting the energy and getting the tree flowing.

And if while you're doing it, you can think about things to be grateful for. It really takes the mental focus off yourself, your own problems. And you start realizing things that you do have in life that are worthwhile. And, you know, I think when people are depressed, everything looks and seems bleak. And, you know, the idea of sort of black cloud hanging over you.

and it just colors your view of the whole world.

So doing that can help too. And I think in this day and age, less time on social media helps as well. There's people always feeling self-conscious, comparing themselves to the young and the beautiful. And also just all the horror stories of what's happening in the world is stuff that really, people take that and adds to the burden they're already carrying. And I think that that's really sad.

Dr Alex (25:22.791)
need more positivity and there are plenty of things to be grateful for and things to be happy about in this world.

Sue (25:31.73)
I love all of this and I love that as a physician, I'm hearing this and having this conversation more and more with other doctors as well who are now leaning and incorporating the whole mind, body, spirit. Like it really is one thing.

Dr Alex (25:50.243)
Yeah, you can't say, I mean, mentally, you know, in scientific terms and so on, we've always separated these things. But it's, you know, you go back a couple of hundred years and it used to be that the church would take care of the spirit and then you'd go to a doctor for healing, for physical ailments. And then of course, about a hundred years ago, psychiatry developed.

So we have specialists in each of those directions and now people, a large percentage, don't have that connection to a church or a spiritual connection and they're trying to seek alternative ways of belonging to groups and so forth. But yeah, the idea is to really see these things as an integrated whole.

Medicine sort of lost sight of that, I think.

Sue (26:49.502)
Yeah, because if you're having a mental something that could present itself as a physical something and vice versa and

Dr Alex (26:57.03)
Mm, yeah.

Absolutely.

Sue (27:01.946)
Yeah. And now Dr. Alex, tell us what else are you working on? Are you, is there more stuff in the works for you? What are you coming up with next?

Dr Alex (27:11.127)
Oh yeah, well I've written two books on the subject, which I've called Stick It To Depression, pun on acupuncture of course, but also it is really giving it, sticking it to depression. And I've written one book which is subtitled Get Your Life Back Naturally, and it's written for the general public and it's available on Amazon. The Kindle version is only like four dollars or something.

But it gives my experience of my journey in terms of discovering alternate type medicine. And also I tell stories about specific changes that my patients have undergone and what differences made for their lives. Because I think what this world needs is some kind of hope at the moment and not focus on anger and fighting.

You just need to look at things that are positive and things that you can do to make a difference. So yeah, so I'm really, my focus right now is training other acupuncturists to study this method. And I've successfully run a number of classes now which helps acupuncturists around the world to give effect to their patients, including a recent last class I had, I've got a doctor from Wales.

and she works in palliative care. So she's now able to give acupuncture for her patients who are in hospice dying from cancer. And that makes a much better impact on their lives compared with taking yet more painkillers and mind numbing things. So I get excited about that and I just wanna get it out there more and more.

Sue (28:59.681)
Mm-hmm.

Sue (29:05.426)
Oh, I love that. Well, I'm going to be sure to have links to all of your stuff. Now, what is your hope? You know, can you give us kind of your insight on the Western versus Eastern? You're leaning more into this other side.

Dr Alex (29:09.443)
Yeah.

Dr Alex (29:18.387)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, obviously, Western medicine has its place. I mean, you know, it saved certainly saved my life from what have been a fatal disease in that situation. Yeah, not that many years ago. So, but it's a matter of finding the blend, the two. And the part of my training with acupuncturists is to train them how to communicate with doctors, because, you know, acupuncturists learn the Chinese method and

you know, to doctors when they talk about what they're doing from a Chinese perspective, it just sounds like woo woo, it just sounds like rubbish. And so I'm helping them to explain to doctors what they're doing and how they're helping the patient.

Sue (30:02.51)
Oh my goodness, I love that. And now what other insights, just from all of your experience, is there something you can kind of share, just insights, practical guidance for people?

Dr Alex (30:16.575)
Yeah, well, if with acupuncture, if it's something you've even half thought about, a lot of people, you know, just worry about whether the needles are going to hurt. And really it doesn't, you know, you might get an occasional one where the energy is really built up and caught there and you put the needle in and it releases. So it can give patients a bit of a shock sometimes, but nine, nine times out of 10, it's just people say, oh, is that all there is to it?

Cause I'll say, just let me put one needle in and see. And if you don't like it, I'll stop. And I put that needle in and they go, Oh, is that all there is to it? Go ahead. And by the end of the treatment, they, you know, most, the vast majority feel calmer and more relaxed, even from the time they walked into the time they leave. And, and so, you know, it really encourages them to just keep coming back and feeling better and better. And then the changes become more and more permanent. So.

If you've half thought about it, I'd encourage you to give it a go. And if the acupuncturist in your area doesn't know about stick it to depression, get them to my website, stickittodepression.com and they can contact me and, and learn about this specific system to help mental health, which I found quite gentle and yet powerful at the same time.

Sue (31:42.318)
Wow.

Dr Alex (31:42.395)
compared with all the interventions doctors do on patients. This is very pleasant and very nice and you know it's every day of the week when I do the treatments people fall asleep during the treatment so it's that relaxing.

Sue (31:46.367)
I'm sorry.

Sue (31:57.77)
Wow. Oh my goodness. What an incredible... So many amazing insights here, Dr. Alex. I just, first and foremost, I'm gonna be sure to have links to your website and your book and things for people. I just have loved this conversation. This is so incredible, so insightful. I love that you're doing this and getting this information out to people. So it's incredible. And I just, I thank you so much for your time today.

Dr Alex (31:58.875)
It's not scary at all.

Dr Alex (32:09.287)
Thanks.

Dr Alex (32:27.623)
It's my pleasure.

Sue (32:29.482)
You've been awesome. And you know what, Dr. Alex, you've already said so many amazing things, but in closing, if there were just one message, your hope for everybody, what's that close?

Dr Alex (32:34.407)
I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

Dr Alex (32:38.519)
Oh, yeah. Yeah. The first step is just to get out and start moving. Really, for people with depression, getting out there and moving is really, really important. It just seems so silly. But it's exercise itself, you know, in any form has been shown to actually, you know, can be as powerful as taking antidepressants themselves. And that's just really incredible to think of.

So you don't have to go to the antidepressants necessarily as a first step. And if you're on them, it doesn't necessarily mean you will have to take them for the rest of your life. You can do something about it and get out there and get moving as a start.

Sue (33:24.702)
I love it. What a powerful closing message. You've been so awesome. Thank you so much.

Dr Alex (33:30.651)
It's been my pleasure, sir.

Sue (33:32.642)
Thank you.