 of Think Tech Hawaii in downtown. Today, I want you to meet Dr. Paige Yang as she shares with us empowered healing through Chinese medicine. But before we get started, I gotta share with you. Before meeting Paige, I just have to mention that I thought I would be interviewing an older, wise woman. Come to find out, she's my daughter's classmate and a very young, very wise, very knowledgeable young woman. And I'm just excited to hear all about what she has to share with us. Welcome Paige Yang. Thank you so much, Wendy. I love how things come full circle and I get to be here today with you. Yay, you have no idea. I am so incredibly excited and Cassandra is as well and she'll be listening into all of this. So let's get started. I want you to tell us, how did you get into Chinese medicine? Yes. So growing up, I had a received big influence from my grandmother who's from China. She wrote two books about her childhood in China and she really helped to raise me alongside my mother and my father. And she always kept intact the traditions from China and looked at her childhood with such fondness. And so I decided to study Mandarin in school and I always had an interest in medicine and I thought I was going to go to Western Medical School. That's what I prepared for an undergrad and that's really the direction I was pivoting towards. And then I studied abroad in China as a junior in college and during that time I got sick because when I was there, China was still very much a developing country. And so I felt I would fall ill and as a student, the only thing I could afford was the neighborhood Chinese medicine doctor or acupuncturist or herbalist. And each time it worked and it didn't matter whether I had a poisonous spider bite or I had a bleeding ulcer from food poisoning or I had period pains for whichever ailment I came in for, it worked. And that completely changed my perspective on health and healing and really changed my focus and made me realize that my calling and my interest was really bridging those two. The influence from my grandmother growing up in the Chinese traditions and then my interest in health and how I met both of those studying abroad. And then I kind of never turned around and looked back after that. I've just been really on this forward march as a provider of traditional Chinese medicine. Wow. And so when you talk about the Chinese medicine, are you talking herbalist and all the different concoctions that they put together for your ailments? Yes, good question. So I'm a licensed acupuncturist. I'm also a licensed herbalist and took board exams for both. So I do all of the modalities within traditional Chinese medicine. And I can prescribe raw herbs, powdered herbs, tinctures, pill form. So all of those things that you may have grown up with or just saw walking around Chinatown or in different Asian groceries. So I do work with all of those as well as my acupuncture practice. So this is so powerful, you know, Paige, because I truly believe in this style of medicine. Yeah. And I know it all works because let me just give you a real quick. When I got married and I carried my first child, my voice changed. And you see, it's not a sweet sounding voice. So the first thing my husband did was he took me to an herbalist. And I was like a local girl, didn't know all this. And so the things that he put in my little brown bag was like crickets and things. And I'm like, heck no. And then he gives you a little bit of sweets, you know, to after you drink this concoction, you have the little sweets to wash it down. But you know, it works. Right. All these things, I mean, they don't even need to do anything except look at you, look at your tongue, feel your pulse in your head, like I'm sure you do. Right. But it's just amazing. And that's the medicine and that's the doctor I want looking after me and my family. So thank you for taking that step and learning and perfecting it and being here for us in Hawaii. So welcome. And I want to say congratulations on opening up your new clinic on South King Street. I want you to just share with us more about this wellness space. Yes. So I had lived away for 18 years for undergrad medical school and then I started my first practice in California. And during COVID, it was really time to move home. I have an eight year old and I wanted to be with my family and my folks. So I decided when I made the move home that I wanted to open a wellness clinic where it could be a one stop shop with mixed modality providers. So we have myself, doctor of Chinese medicine, then we have a chiropractor. We have a esthetician who's also a licensed massage therapist. We have a shiatsu provider and we have a natural path. Wow. And yes, all here in this clinic that I kind of curated and handpicked. Some of them were my provider. Some of them were my husband's. Others were patients of mine that I really had an affinity towards. And I just brought us all together and we are an amazing team and we really work together to help patients a lot of times. People will see one of us first and then another one afterward and kind of come in and take some stops within the different doorways here. And so it's really working out nicely. I just opened it in May and it's been wonderful to be home and to have the space for the community. Wow. What a great venture and I'm so glad that you're here sharing. So people that have ailments, at least we can offer them a great solution for them to be open enough to come to your doors and see what you can do for them. So keep on going, Paige, you and your team, feel Hawaii, make us happy and healthy again. I'm so excited for all of this. I also know you offer grants for native Hawaiians and just thanks, I just amaze because you grew up here. So I know you wanna give back to your native Hawaiians and your fellow locals. So can you just tell us what do these grants entail? Yes, this is a great question. So I should back up and say that for the past seven years when I had a practice in the Bay Area, I was also coming home probably every six weeks and seeing patients here locally for like one to two weeks at a time. And each time I would come home, more and more people would wanna see me. And because of that, I wasn't necessarily really accessible to people because I was home for such a short amount of time that it really was my inner circle that could get an appointment with me. And then when I decided to move home, I realized that I really wanted to be able to reach out to more communities. And I have a lot of, and I know we'll talk about this a little later in the show, but I am very passionate about giving back and also just really appreciating and honoring your roots and the places that raised you and taught you and formed who you are now as who I am now as an adult and a provider. So I wanted to make sure that I was still giving back to the native Hawaiian community. So what this entails is I, there's a kind of official application process that I had one of my staff members make and you have to be a native Hawaiian heritage and either in healthcare or in education because I feel like these two sectors are really big ones that just intrinsically give back. It's really embedded in what they do is just a giving back type of a profession whether it's healthcare education. So those are the two things then there's an application process where you have to write 150 word essay that talks about your relationship to your heritage and your values and how you might benefit from this opportunity. Then I award two recipients every six months and they get to work with me for six treatments of choosing. So I do offer different types of treatments whether it's acupuncture or copying or fish or rejuvenation acupuncture or just health coaching. So they can choose any six I don't judge if they choose the very most expensive thing or they choose the most affordable shortest appointment or they mix it all up. I'm just here to be of service for them and this has just been so rewarding for me because I've gotten to really meet the most incredible educators and incredible workers in healthcare. And myself, I don't have native Hawaiian blood and I was born and raised here and I'm I think maybe sixth generation on my grandpa's side from here. So I do have that aspect but there's a lot of this culture that I don't know about and that I didn't grow up with. And so I really benefit from this myself. I get to learn about certain cultural practices and how things were on the household and these nuances that are present with the native Hawaiian culture. And so this has just been such an amazing part of moving home and getting to really assimilate back into where I'm from and this beautiful place. So it's been really rewarding. Wow. So even though you left the islands you never left Aloha and the Aloha spirit and so it lives within you and now that you're home you can even more physically give back. I love it that you have that criteria set forth for your grants and really making them I don't wanna say work for it but really appreciate what you're giving them. And so that speaks volumes because then they're so grateful so they're gonna get more involved in the healing that you're trying to share with them so that they will make your job a little easier because now they're willing they had to work for it. It's nothing is free. So you made them work for it by filling out some forms and getting to know their culture as well. So I love that package that you put together now I'm gonna listen and see other healthcare providers and educators that will fall into the criteria so we can direct them your way because you're gonna learn more from it as well as them it's a two-way street and then they walk away becoming healthier feeling better and then they can be leaders of the community and their families. And so congratulations on that survey. I really, I think that is cream of the crop for what you're giving about. So now I wanna know a little bit more about you and your personal life and your family outside of the clinic. Right, so this is something, as a millennial I feel like I have all of these multi-hyphenated titles I'm like an acupuncturist and a brand founder and an educator and this and that and then I always forget to come back and say oh my gosh and I'm also a mother and I'm a wife and I mean, these are huge things I know yourself having two children, it's just so this is obviously for me and for many people can understand that this is the hardest part of my work is being a present family member and a mother. And so my husband is from Taiwan and he grew up in Taipei and his parents still live there. So that was just really nice and easy for me to have someone that really understood the work that I do and not have like a funny gaze over it or think that it's something different. So that part of things were really easy. And then our son was actually born at home in Kailua. I came back during my third trimester because I really wanted him to be born here. It was just so important to me. And then after he was born, we didn't then move back to the Bay Area for the past seven years. But we always came home pretty often because it was so important to me that those values that I grew up with were instilled in him. And so we're back here, he's really happy, he's loving being around family, seeing people that look like him. I think that makes a huge difference as a child and just feeling like a feeling a part of something bigger that in where we were in the Bay Area, there's such a transient population of people moving in, moving out. And it was just hard to really ground and root in like a solid community because someone might be leaving the next year what have you. So, and of course we have that here now too with COVID and everything, but just having the family here that's so consistent and to be that great network to lean on has made a difference. So yeah, that's the part about my personal background that I always forget to share because it's such a new work. I'm like- Well, I was gonna ask anyways, no matter if you forgot, I would remind you. But you know, being that you spent so much time in San Francisco, I was wondering what was your client tell, what was their ethnicities of your patient base there in San Francisco? Yes, it was mostly Caucasian. I did have a practice in like a pretty affluent suburb of the East Bay. And so that was the, my, you know, most of my patients, they're very, very educated because of where we were. And I did have some younger patients more in my generation that were Asian that I think just thought it was really cool that finally the medicine that they, as part of their heritage was accessible to them. Meaning, you know, being able to see me an English speaker who's young, who can articulate what I'm doing to them. So that was really nice for them to have that experience. So that was really the groups. It was, you know, boomer generation, Caucasian and then my generation Asian was what it was for the most part. Wow. And so these patients have elements they come to, they seek you out. And then are you able to relieve their symptoms as well as to heal them? Yeah, so it's always case by case and it depends how long it took for them to get where they are, right? So some patients, if it's years or decades long of health issues or back pain or whatever it is and they come in, I let them know that they're gonna have to, it's gonna take some time. It won't be, I mean, of course it'd be amazing. And sometimes it does happen where one treatment just takes care of everything and is a panacea, but for the most part if you've had something for a long time you're gonna have to expect that it's gonna take a bit of time to work with. So what I normally do is I tell patients to give me, give Chinese medicine three visits. And if by three visits we should know whether or not it's working for you. So let's say after three visits you're 50% better, let's do three more and get you completely taken care of. If after three visits you haven't really noticed anything then maybe this is not the medicine for you and I'm not gonna impose my ego onto this and I just want the best for the patient and I want them to be able to recover and heal how they want to. So I will suggest they go elsewhere or refer them to a different type of practitioner or a different type of medicine. Yeah, so that's really what it looks like and I think for the most part people walking in the door are already very open-minded. Very few people come in here because they're forced to and so that already is working on my side. And then I just know the local population here as well. I think we tend to be a little bit more open-minded because we have so much exposure to different cultures and a lot of differences that we grew up with and we all I think get really interested in other cultures because of the population here and being on a small island it's made us have to look outside of this little rock. So that's always easy too. I can tell patients are to things and they are very open to it and they don't look at me funny and they take it into account and there's a good compliance. So whenever that happens there's good outcomes. Wow, yeah. So I have to ask you this question as well. Do you, does insurance cover your treatments? It depends on what the patient's coming in for. So insurance typically wants to cover things related to pain and that's where I know a lot of people know about Chinese medicine and acupuncture is pain related orthopedic related injuries. So my practice is I ask that the patient takes care of the bill up front and then I can provide a medical receipt also called a super bill that they would then have to go and submit to their insurance company to be reimbursed. So their insurance company one would have to cover acupuncture and two they would have to come in for something related to pain for them to then get that reimbursed. So that's what it looks like in my clinic and our chiropractors contracted with HMSA. Our other providers are more cash practices. So it's really kind of depends on which provider, which insurance. Unfortunately, it's not so easy and clear cut as allopathic Western medicine wants to keep out. Yes, they don't have all the right codes and all of that for you. Exactly. Yeah, I understand. I just had to ask you that because I know people are going to ask me and I'm like, I don't know. But so I know that you also, you are a brand founder and you educate people on health justice. I am curious about your brand and how you educate your community. Yes. So I have a traditional Chinese facial tool line and let me just grab. Oh yeah, you got some photos there. So it's called young face. So my surname, Y-A-N-G, correctly pronounced in Mandarin is young. And so young face is a little bit of a play on words because in Cantonese it ought to be like young face. So it's kind of talking about like a youthful or a young face. And this is a, like I mentioned, a traditional Chinese facial tool line that I founded because I saw that a lot of the practices, indigenous practices were being culturally appropriated by the Western wellness world and people were extracting parts of cultural practices and packaging it and marketing it to be kind of like a hack or a trend and then profiting off of it. And this was something that I really didn't like because of all the education that I went through and my understanding of the importance of honoring cultural roots. So I wanted to develop this brand to really take back the power and bring it back into the hands of people with the right expertise, cultural background and relationship to the medicine. So that's what this line is for. And this is another one of the tools. And then what I do is I use this brand to leverage to speak out against cultural appropriation and really encourage cultural appreciation. So for some people where these words might be a little bit foreign, cultural appropriation is the idea of kind of extracting, I mentioned before, a cultural practice from a minority or marginalized group of people and pretending that it's your own and then selling it as if you're the expert and not giving back to the community from which you took that practice from. Whereas cultural appreciation would be honoring the roots, talking about the historical significance, the cultural significance, the medical significance and then giving back to the community from which you benefited by selling that tool, which is what I do. I give 10% or even more, it turns out because it's a fixed number back to Ike Hawaii, which is a program within Punahou School, which is where I had graduated from. And then I also donate. So that's with the tool line. So this is to give back to another indigenous culture. And then within my practice, I give 10% to Asian Americans fighting justice and equality, an organization. And then another 10% to the Loveland Foundation, which is a foundation for black girls in women's education. So a lot is flying out the door, but it all comes back. It all comes back to you. It comes back for sure. Wow, such a generous heart. And they always say, whatever you give, it'll come back double, double full. So keep on giving. And as I was your age, I didn't wait until I was older to give back. And so that's the success that you will have as well. At your young age, you give and you give and give and it'll continue to come back. And no matter during a pandemic or downtimes, you'll still feel the rewards coming back to you by people getting healthier, by people just seeking your wisdom and your expertise. So keep giving. Yeah. And you say, give until it hurts, it doesn't hurt. It feels so good. It feels so good when you do that. So, wow. How I tell you, you got so much to share and you're just a young person. I just can't wait. I want to grow old with you because I know that if I ever need you, you're right there to support all the issues that I'm, you know, I know it will one day, one day pop up. So I'm going to follow you and I'm going to really study what I should be doing. So, you know, a lot of what you're talking about is you're going to treat. Can you just give us a few words on how do we not have to go see you? How do we take care of ourselves better so that we don't, I mean, of course, we don't need you as much, I should say. Right. Well, so first I'll say that Chinese medicine is also a preventative medicine, right? So some, even if you don't feel something right away or you don't have an acute illness or injury, you can always see a practitioner of Chinese medicine to get evaluated and to see other aspects of your health. So a lot of times in the West, we're so conditioned to see someone when we're physically unwell. But in Chinese medicine, we understand that, you know, you can be mentally unwell, you can be spiritually unwell. There could be a lot of other parts of your mind, body, spirit, emotions that are not in harmony and eventually those will manifest physically. So if you can take care of them while they're not, you know, manifested in the body, then that can prevent you from getting sick and really needing to have more health support. But to answer your question about how to take the best care of yourself, I always feel like we grew up kind of giving our power away to allopathic Western medicine doctors where we just are kind of outsource them, like, tell me what's wrong with me. Am I okay? And we give them all of the authority and agency over our own bodies. And a lot of times there are things that are not totally in harmony that you understand and feel about yourself. And you might go see a medical doctor and they do blood work or labs and they say, oh, nothing's wrong with you, everything's fine. But you know deep down that something is off and something's out of balance. And I think it's so important to listen to that and seek out a different type of provider who has the language that can speak to that feeling. So whether it's a doctor of Chinese medicine or a naturopath or an aerobatic provider or someone who has the language who can say, okay, I hear you, I hear that you think something's not right even though tests say something else, let's work on this. Was there trauma in your life? Was there a big emotional event? Was there a divorce, a death, moving? Something that may be settled in the body in a way that's not sitting right and how can we be present with that and work with that and try to transform it so that you're not super sick in a few years because you avoided it or you bypassed it. So I always say to just listen to your own intuition and the body's so smart and it's always communicating with you and telling you how to take care of itself. You just have to listen and not always ask someone else to tell you what's wrong with you. Right. Wow. Yeah. Like, wow, you are an old lady in a young person's body. That's your wisdom. I mean, and a lot of people, unfortunately, they're not in tune, they're not intuitive to their body. They don't take the time to listen. But as you said, your body tells you everything. You just need to be still and you just know. And so like for me, I've always learned to live in prevention and to just take care of the body and listen to the needs. My only downfall I think is that I don't get enough sleep but I still perform well. And I know as we went through the last two years, I did take time to rest more because I know that's the time when the body heals and regenerates, but that would be my only downfall. But as far as taking care nutritionally, spiritually, physically, emotionally, I think I'm pretty much on track, but I'm going to come one day and I'm going to see you before I need to because I want to know how I really am doing. And I think people out there should also take that word to go and see and seek because you can, I know that you can look at my body and see and you can tell me some of the issues. And just like you said, by listening to how I come across or how I answer some of the questions that you're going to ask. Right. A lot of it is emotional. Emotional turmoil that's causing a lot of the issues and you hit it right on the nail girl, you are like such a genius. I'm like, so people out there, you guys got to come see Dr. Page, but I want to quickly, I know you also have a podcast. So what was the intention behind your podcast? Yes. So this is called Beauty as a Birth, right? And I just see how so many of my patients that come in, because I do specialize in facial adjuvenation, they come in and they don't feel, they're not aging in a way that feels useful. They just don't feel confident about how they are changing. And so this podcast, I interview, I have a co-host, all people from all walks of life. It's a intersectional type of a space. And so I just want to hear, and my co-host and I want to hear from other people about their process of aging and beauty, and kind of going like really deep into the spiritual realm and understanding how that influences how they see themselves. Wow. So that means when we go to your website, we'll be able to link onto the podcast and we'll get more information from your right page. Yes, I will make sure on my Instagram handle as well, there is a lot to do. And we have all that information out there for everybody, but Paige, we've run out of time for today. I just want to say mahalo to Paige Young as she encourages us to listen to your body's intuitive wisdom. So please let me share how proud I am of you, Paige. I'm so proud of you and all of your accomplishments in your 35 years of life. I know that you're just getting started. So we'll be back in two weeks with more of Taking Your Health Back. So mahalo to Paige Young and we'll see you again soon. Aloha everyone.