Review: Moxibustion Treatment At World of Moxibustion

Today I'm going bring you guys through the World of Moxibustion... tion.. tion.. *echos* (lolx~).

You may be confused just like me...What is moxibustion? Is it a western or eastern treatment? How's the moxi treatment like? Well, I will explain it further as I go along.

Firstly, I'll introduce you to Ms Nicole Zhou, Principal of World of Moxibustion. Below shows her at her training centre. It is also a beauty salon/ massage clinic where she and her team do moxi treatments for their regular clients.

About Moxibustion

Moxibustion is one of China's most ancient art of healing. Its herbal physical therapy originated in acient times and had lasted for thousands of years. By using the Ai oil (or essential oils), it produces a comprehensive warm flow of 'qi' in meridians or around the affected areas of the body. It helps to enhance vitality and blood circulation, promotes greater health and well-being and at the same time moisturise the skin.

About World of Moxibustion
Nicole Zhou was the first professtional moxibustion treatment therapist and trainer in Singapore.
Unlike the ancient method of moxibustion, moxibustion in World of Moxibustion (Singapore) is combined western science and oriental acient herbal natural treatment. Making use of the comtemporary western science and traditional chinese medicine, new and unique formulas were created. These new sets of ingredients were then packed into the products which Nicole would use during moxi treatments.

Her company was the first in Singapore to do R&D and production of moxibustion with therapy products, registered international trademarks and brand the products. All products produced by them are HSA approved.

At their salon, many products were placed on the shelves, along with some tools that they use.

Above 2 pics show the product sets produced by World of Moxibustion, the Nature Mineral Mud and Essential Oil for different parts of the body.

Below shows the tools which aid the use of their products. More details of them will be shown later.

Below shows the main component used in Moxibustion therapy, the Wormwood (stick). Wormwood contains zinc, selenium, manganese, iron, has anti-tumor, anti-aging efficacy, improves metabolic homeostasis and provides tocolytic therapy. Through use of wormwood and pure essential oil massage technique, Moxibustion helps facial detoxification and promotes facial blood circulation, opening the pores, enhancing the skin's immune system and absorption and maintain proper kidney functions. Later in this post you will get to see this wormwood stick in action. ^_^

In here, you can see these boxes that aren't really boxes, they are moxibustion woodworm 'holders'. 

Moxibustion is done through burning above the acupuncture points of the body to stimulate the body “qi” in order to achieve the purpose of treatment and prevention, thus these holders were made to hold the wormwood sticks above the skin surface while your wear them.

The top part is the cover which caps on using magnets. There is also wire gauze at the base to catch the ash from the wormwood stick.

So here's how you wear the "holders". Looks kinda funny if I walk around with this. lolx~

The following shows the Bianstone scrapping plate which had been tested and approved by the board of National Authorities and it does not contain any harmful substances to the body. The bianstone contains over 40 types of minerals and trace elements that are beneficial to the body. It also contains calcium, magnesium, zinc, strontium, selenium and over 20 types of Anti-Aging elements that are need in the body. When contact with the skin, it produces the body needed Far Infrared frequency, range from 7-20 microns. It also has microcrystalline calcite crystal size at less than 0.03mm pluton which is a fine and delicate texture and it creates a friction that make the body feel comfotable. Every friction that is created by the Bianstone is beneficial to the human health, average Ultrasonic pulse frequency can go up to 3708 times, frequency range from 2-200million cycles per second and it's the highest among all other types of materials.

Here's a magazine featuring World of Moxibustion and Nicole Zhou. Click image to enlarge.

The interior and decor at World of Moxibustion is really very beautiful as you can see in the below photo.

They have multiple treatment/massage rooms and they can be opened up into a larger room like shown below.

So here's the room reserved for my moxibustion treatment.

Moxibustion Treatment
During the demostration treatment, I was asked to remove all clothings and wore a cloth whereby the back part could be unbuttoned so that the therapist could massage and do the treatment on my back. *Shys*(//>_<//) First, she used essential massage oil on my body.

After which she used the Bianstone to scrap lightly over my back.

The motion or patten of using Bianstone plate to scrap on my back was actually along the spine area. I did not feel any pain nor did I feel it was tugging my skin. Bianstone was said to cause certain vibrations (ultrasonic wave) within the body and enable our body to react immediately thus the redness showed up after light scrapping a few times. It was totally unlike the horn type scrapping plate which I had experienced before. That one was so much painful and I had to withstand that pain and high heat throughout the whole process until it was finished. With this Bianstone, I did not feel much except for slight vibration that ran through and underneath my skin.

And take a look at the result. I felt nothing and yet the redness showed up so much as if I had went through lots of pain. Note that I have quite a bad slanted spine. That was also the reason why I have a terribly stiff neck and shoulder. The other reason I got aching back was also because I often sit down and use computer for long hours.

Check out the bruise-like effect on my shoulders. My left shoulder always experience pain while the right one not so much. The redness can actually tell the therapist about their customers how much pain they are going through everyday. She knew I have more pain on my left than my right from looking at the "bruises" that showed up on my skin as well as pain on my neck. (Do excuse that 2 brown dots, they are old scars, not caused by scrapping)

Next, the therapist used the Nature Mineral Mud on my back.
This Mineral Mud contains high concentration of elements such as strontium, copper, zinc, nickel, cobalt, tin, molybdenum, manganese, chromium, potassium, vanadium, calcium, sodium, magnesium, iron, and earth elements such as yttrium and cerium.
It has high oxygen content that supplements the skin cells to create energy and has strong absorption ability that can discharge lead and mercury. The mud contains over 2000 nanotechnology particles that can effectively treat a variety of skin diseases such as eczema, dermatitis, acne. This Mineral Mud has an ability to directly be absorbed by the skin and helps to moisturise and tighten the skin. There are entirely no harmful side effects after absorption and the minerals also help to detoxify the body to improve nutrition and health.
Mineral mud therapy can relieve nmuscle tension and pain. It reduces inflammatory lesions of peripheral nerve compression, promotes metabolism, accelerates blood circulation and removes toxins from the body. Applicable to chronic rheumatoid arthritis, spinal arthritis, osteoarthritis, slow healing of fractures, muscular fibrositis, tenosynovitis, neuritis, radiculitis, neuralgia, peripheral nerve injury and surgical complications.

After applying the mud on my skin, it's time for the wormwood.

The therapist applied the mineral mud over my vertebral acupoints and used the wormwood over them. Below pic shows the mud on my skin which had dried up and the circular spot in the center of the mud was the area that the wormwood was placed above. 

Here's a clearer picture of the wormwood when placed above the mineral mud. This treatment penetrates deep into the skin to enhance blood circulation, strengthen skin tissues and excretion of toxins. Moxibustion provides the necessary energy for the body’s activities and restores the body’s normal functions.
I was told by my therapist that I have inbalance Yin and Yang Qi in my body. I have a heaty body which is the reason why I always have sorethroat and feel warm and hot from chest and above, and a cold uterus which causes menstrual pain most of the time when I'm having menses. Thus by going through several moxibustion treatments, it could balance up the Yin & Yang Qi in my body and make those symptoms go away gradually.

During this particular 'heating' process, I felt the heat spreading out to other parts of my body. At some point the heat got pretty hot that I would need to tell the therapist so she would touch my skin with her hand to cool it down before placing the wormwood stick over it again. The therapist said that the areas I hardly felt the heat spreading were the areas that I had 'trapped Qi' in my body. By repeatedly going for the moxibustion treatment, it could help me get rid of the 'trapped Qi' and would better improve my blood circulation in that area too.

After the woodworm heating stage, the therapist applied the smaller bottle Essence (not the Massage Essential Oil) on top of the mineral mud and massaged the mud away so my skin can absorb the minerals.

The essential oil is made to complement the mineral mud so they both could be absorbed into the skin. Below shows the therapist massaging the essential oil and the mineral mud into my skin. And with that, ends my Moxibustion Treatment demo.
For all of you out there, do note that there are actually many people in the market selling non-approved mineral mud with harmful ingredients which could clog and harm our skin so be careful and do not buy them without understanding their products, seller and/or company first.

Quantum Resonance Magnetic Analyzer (QRMA)
Before any treatment, the customer is required to do a body health analysis through using this QRMA equipment. However, I did mine after I was done with the Moxibustion treatment but it wasn't a big problem since the treatment I went through was a demo, shorter version of an usual treatment.
Usually for customers who regularly visit the salon/centre, would need to get analysed so that the therapist could show them the improvement after each treatment.

Here are some of my results analysed by the QRMA. Since they were all written in Chinese (there is English version too but I wasn't given a copy as they have some problem forwarding it via email), then I shall make a few remarks about some of the analysis results so you could understand what they are saying. If you can understand Chinese, you can go ahead to read my results in the following screen captures.
I was told by Nicole that the QRMA analysis is about 80% as accurate as those results provided by the hospitals or clinics. It was proven by her customer who did the comparison.
So here comes my comments regards to my results. First of all, the first pic shows my memory (ZS) is in the yellow zone which is lower than norm and I must say that it is very accurate. I always knew my memory is bad and when this result came up, I was really awed that this tiny equipment could analyse so well.
Next screen shows my bone and calcium and it shows my calcium loss is in yellow zone which is quite high. This is accurate too because I did not like to drink milk since young and only when I fractured my toe did I realise my calcium level was so low. Since then I have been drinking milk and taking calcium pills every other day but it is still not enough. With this analysis result, I'll be able to learn to re-adjust my daily diet so I can have my calcium level return to the healthy range again.

Next, I have the Q10 level which is also in the yellow zone. Q10 is something that our body needs for cell growth and maintenance and it functions as an antioxidant which protects the body from damage caused by harmful molecules. I always feel that my skin do not have this glow which most people have. It often look dark and dull which makes me think it could have been my low Q10 level that makes it so.
The 4th screen cap shows my HDL-C (good cholesterol) is within norm range and LDL-C (bad cholesterol) is out of range but this is not causing a problem to my health as it means that I do not have high (bad) cholesterol level. This part is very accurate because most of my health checkup results gave me the same thing as this analysis. Infact, my reports gave me even higher HDL-C score than what this analysis could give me.

I knew that my sugar level has always been within the norm and I recently just did a urine glucose test which also gave me a result of negative (meaning within healthy range). Thus, the result that the QRMA provides is accurate once again.
There is also a page in this analysis report where it states comments and recommendations beside each profile such as, recommending me to reduce stress, eat less meat and more vegetables so as to improve my memory.

World of Moxibustion provides Moxibustion & Mineral Mud Treatment sets that target different parts of the body such as head and brain functions, neck shoulder and hand, vertebral, kidney maintenance, intestines and stomach wellness, leg and foot, bright eyes, liver detox, chest maintenance, ovarian physical therapy, and lastly, sliming physical therapy (shown below). These sets can be bought from their salon/centre.

I was given this brochure booklet which contains a lot of information about Moxibustion and the products and services that World of Moxibustion provides. If you are at their centre, do grab a copy so you can understand more about their treatments and products. ^_^

Before I give my after-treatment thoughts, here's a pic of me and my therapist! She's so young yet knows a lot about the body and could even tell that I have several health issues just by touching my body. lolx~

Post-Treatment Review

The following pics show my back after the treatment, taken after 2 days. Comparing this with the earlier pic I post above, in this pic you can see that the bruise-like pattern on the right side of my spine is almost gone. On day 3 to day 4, the 'bruises' on my skin disappeared entirely including the area around the back of my neck.

At World of Moxibustion, they seek their customers to take the neccessary precautions after each treatment such as avoid drinking cold water, cold fruits and food and avoid taking bath within 2 hours after treatment. They also mentioned it is common that most customers would feel certain level of pain or discomfort after the treatment because it is natural for the body to feel that way when the body is gradually healing by itself. They gave example of customers who have knee problem will feel more painful than usual in that area or those who have muscle ache could experience even worse ache than norm. They said that all these symptoms are normal counter-reactions thus we do not need to worry. And of course, these symptoms do not persist for a long time as they will reduce after several treatments. It was recommended that one should continue the treatment everyday for 3-5 days in the beginning then twice a week, and then once a week to see the full effects of the treatment.
As like what they have mentioned, I indeed had aching muscle at my shoulder area which felt pretty painful. I already had slight shoulder and back ache before the treatment. Right after the treatment I wasn't feeling anything, infact I felt much lighter and the aching kinda stopped for awhile for about a day. The 2nd day though, the ache came back and I was feeling uncomfortable. I tried to do some light exercises by turning my head, moving my arms and body but it wasn't helpful. About the 4th to 5th day, the pain subsided and it returned to that slight aching feel I had before the treatment.
Since the treatment was a demo thus I could not do a full review but to talk about my experience and the things I have learnt while I was there. Should I be sponsored for full treatment sessions (thick skin hehehex ;p~) then I'll post my full review in my blog! ^_^

If you have any questions regards to Moxibustion treatment, drop a comment and I'll reply or otherwise, you can always give the centre a ring~ ^,~

Where?
World of Moxibustion
Blk 16 Upper Boon Keng Road #01-1085 S380016
Tel: 6747 0128

Links
http://moxibustion-sg.com