We're an acupuncture and functional medicine clinic in downtown Seattle. We've been around since 2008. Our work blends traditional Chinese medicine with modern functional medicine, and we treat everything from chronic pain and digestive issues to hormonal patterns, fertility, autoimmune conditions, and the long tail of 'something is off and no one can figure out what.' We specialize in the complex, chronic, and 'mystery' cases that other clinics often punt on.

What makes you different from other acupuncture clinics?

Three things. First, we treat the whole person, not just the symptom — every plan is customized, no cookie-cutter protocols. Second, we blend Chinese medicine with functional medicine, lab work, modern technology, and clinical reasoning that most acupuncture clinics don't do. Third, we say what we mean. We'll tell you straight up if we think we can help, if we think you'd be better served somewhere else, or if a particular intervention isn't right for you yet. We're not here to upsell you — we're here to actually fix what's going on.

Where is GoodMedizen located?

We're at 509 Olive Way, Suite 1401, in downtown Seattle, WA 98101. The Medical Dental Building, on the corner of Olive Way and 6th Ave. The primary entrance is on Olive Way next to Go Fitness and Cherry Street Coffee. Take the elevator to the 14th floor.

Yes. Every provider at GoodMedizen is a Licensed Acupuncturist (L.Ac.) with a Master's degree in Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, plus extensive continuing education. We're nationally board certified and licensed by the State of Washington.

What conditions do you treat?

A lot. Pain (chronic and acute), digestive issues, hormonal imbalances, fertility, anxiety and depression, sleep problems, allergies, autoimmune conditions, fatigue, post-surgical recovery, headaches and migraines, neurological conditions, skin conditions, and the long tail of 'something is off and no one can figure out what.' Acupuncture and TCM are whole systems of medicine — we're always looking at the whole body, working on restoration of function to help your body perform the duties it's supposed to.

Do you take my insurance?

We're in-network with most major Seattle-area carriers including Premera, Regence, Aetna, Cigna, First Choice Health, Kaiser PPO, Molina, and several others. We can verify your specific benefits before your first visit so there are no surprises — text us your insurance info or fill out the form on our website and we'll run a benefits check for you.

What if you don't take my insurance?

We're preferred providers for most insurance plans in Washington State. We can still see you on a self-pay basis at our standard or member rates. If you have an FSA or HSA, you can typically use those. We can also provide a superbill that you can submit to your insurance for potential out-of-network reimbursement, depending on your plan.

How much will it cost me?

It depends on your insurance plan, your deductible status, and what services you receive. We'll always run a benefits check before your first visit and tell you what to expect — copay, deductible, coinsurance, the whole picture. No surprise bills.

How do GoodMedizen memberships work?

Standard ($99/mo) is for fairly straightforward cases — member-rate acupuncture, 10% tier discount, office-visit access to your practitioner, 60-minute appointment times that include a few modalities. Premium ($179/mo) adds weekly group Q&A access for people who want more clinical guidance between visits, with a 15% discount on everything. Functional ($397/mo) is the full toolkit — monthly functional medicine visits, quarterly lab review including specialty labs, dedicated messaging access with 24-hour return, 80-minute appointments for more modality work, and 20% off acupuncture, services, and supplements. Memberships are month-to-month and you can cancel anytime.

What's the difference between a la carte and a membership?

A la carte is pay-as-you-go — you pay full rate for each visit and service. Memberships give you a monthly rate that includes longer visits, member pricing on every service and supplement, modalities included in your appointment time, and varying levels of provider access depending on tier. Memberships are designed for people who plan to use them — if you'll be in regularly, they save you significant money over a la carte.

Does acupuncture hurt?

The needles we use are very small — about the width of a strand of hair — and most people do very well with them. They are still needles, so there might be a spot here or there that's a little sharp. If something feels sharp, it should go away within a moment or two. Some points, especially in the hands, can have a deep, dull, achy quality. That ache is actually a good thing, so long as you can rest comfortably with it. Our number one goal is that you are comfortable with our treatments.

How many acupuncture sessions will I need?

What we're trying to do in the beginning is get the attention of your immune system, so we front-load treatments 2–3 times a week for typically the first 2–3 weeks. If you aren't seeing significant change by visit 3, then we dig deeper. The ultimate goal is quarterly maintenance visits — 4 times a year at season change. The goal is to limit the amount of intervention you'll ever need.

How long until I feel better from acupuncture?

Most patients notice benefit from acupuncture at their very first visit, although the first benefits noticed can be nebulous — feeling more relaxed, sleeping better, having more energy. We want to start seeing explicit change around visit 3, and significant improvement around visits 4–6. We front-load treatments to get the attention of your immune system, then slow down.

Is acupuncture safe during pregnancy?

Yes — and incredibly helpful. Acupuncture is safe throughout pregnancy when performed by a trained practitioner, and it can help with morning sickness, back pain, sleep, anxiety, breech presentation, labor preparation, and postpartum recovery. It's often one of the only things a pregnant person can do for stubborn aches and pains, as many standard treatments and medications are contraindicated.

Can children get acupuncture?

Yes. We treat kids of all ages, including infants for things like reflux and sleep disturbances. For younger children we often use non-needle techniques (shonishin, gentle bodywork, magnets, ear seeds) that get the same effect without the needles. By age 8–10, most kids are curious about the needles and actually lead us to start using them.

Is dry needling the same as acupuncture?

Dry needling is a form of acupuncture — so all dry needling is acupuncture, but not all acupuncture is dry needling. Acupuncture is a complete medical system with upwards of 5,000 years of clinical refinement. Acupuncturists train for 3–4 years at master's or doctorate level and complete national board exams. An acupuncturist needs 2,000–4,000 hours of training to insert needles. A physical therapist can be certified to do dry needling after 50–100 hours. That's the practical difference.

What is functional medicine and how is it different from going to my regular doctor?

Conventional medicine is excellent at acute care, surgery, and managing established disease. It's less designed for the chronic, complex, multi-system stuff — the gut/hormone/inflammation/fatigue tangles where every specialist sends you to a different specialist. Functional medicine zooms out, looks at how your systems interact, and uses targeted labs and interventions to address the upstream causes. We work alongside your conventional providers, not in place of them.

How long does functional medicine take to work?

Most people start feeling shifts within 4–6 weeks of starting a personalized protocol. Bigger structural changes — restoring gut function, rebalancing hormones, healing chronic inflammation — usually take 3–6 months of consistent work. Functional medicine is iterative: we run labs, build a protocol, retest, refine. It's not a quick fix; it's a rebuild.

How do I know if I need detox?

Common signs include chronic fatigue, brain fog, unexplained inflammation, hormonal disruption, chemical sensitivity, mold exposure history, dental amalgam history, occupational exposures, autoimmune patterns that aren't responding to other care, and a long history of 'doing everything right' without feeling right. We start with a thorough intake and (when indicated) testing to figure out whether toxic burden is actually the issue.

Why doesn't GoodMedizen sell a 30-day detox kit?

Because they don't work, and some of them are dangerous. Pre-packaged detox kits don't account for your specific exposure history, your drainage capacity, your genetic detox pathways, your medication situation, or your nutrient status. They mobilize toxins without first making sure your exits are open — which is exactly how detox protocols cause harm. Real detox is individual. We don't shortcut it because we've seen what happens when people do.

How much does microneedling cost at GoodMedizen?

Microneedling at GoodMedizen is a flat $619 per session and is never discounted. Exosomes are expensive — really expensive — and they're the difference between 'okay' results and exceptional ones. Cheap microneedling without quality exosomes is a fundamentally different treatment. We don't compromise on the materials.

How many microneedling sessions will I need?

Most people see significant results from a series of 3 sessions spaced 4–6 weeks apart, with maintenance every 6–12 months after. Severe scarring or significant sun damage may benefit from a series of 4–6 sessions.

What should I expect at my first acupuncture visit?

Your first visit is longer than a typical follow-up — usually 75–90 minutes — because we're doing a thorough intake. We'll go through your health history, current medications and supplements, lifestyle, and what brought you in. Then we'll do a TCM diagnostic exam (pulse, tongue, palpation) and build your initial treatment plan. The treatment itself is included in this first visit.

How do I book an appointment at GoodMedizen?

Online at goodmedizen.com/schedule-now — it's the fastest way and shows real-time availability. You can also text 206-402-3813 if you'd rather book that way or have a specific timing question.

What's the fastest way to reach GoodMedizen?

Text 206-402-3813. We're a busy clinic and during clinic hours we're with patients, hands-on, often literally holding needles. We can't pick up the phone in real time — but we can absolutely respond to a text between patients. Texting is by far the fastest way to get a response from us.

Four Ways a Supplement Ad Misleads You

Sep 3

11 min read

Supplement marketing is rarely built on outright lies. Outright lies attract regulators, and the industry has learned to work in a subtler register. What it runs on instead is distortion — taking something with a real mechanism behind it and bending the presentation just far enough that the bottle in your hand cannot do what the advertisement implied.

That distinction matters, and it is the reason this piece is not a list of things to avoid. Nearly every ingredient below has a legitimate clinical use somewhere, and several of them sit on our own shelves. The failure is almost never the molecule. It is the form, the dose, the delivery route, or the supply chain — and each of those failures has a tell you can learn to read.

The companion to this piece, our full guide to supplement forms, covers the absorption chemistry underneath. This one is about the advertising layered on top of it.

1. The right nutrient, in a form that cannot do the job

This is the most common move and the hardest to catch, since nothing printed on the label is false. The nutrient named is truly inside the capsule. The version of it that went in is the version the research was not done on.

Glucosamine is the cleanest illustration. A network meta-analysis of 80 randomized trials in knee osteoarthritis found a significant benefit for pain and function from prescription-grade crystalline glucosamine sulfate specifically (Beaudart et al., Drugs, 2020 — PMID 33074440). That is a particular stabilized salt at a particular daily dose, and it is not what fills most retail bottles, which contain glucosamine hydrochloride. A shopper reading "clinically studied ingredient" is reading a claim that is technically defensible and practically misleading, since the study in question was run on a product the bottle does not contain.

Hyaluronic acid behaves the same way in skincare, and the variable is molecular weight rather than salt form. High-molecular-weight HA is a large, water-binding polymer that sits on the skin surface and holds moisture there. That is a real effect and a pleasant one, and it is a surface effect. Low-molecular-weight fragments are small enough to move into the epidermis, where the biology being advertised takes place. A jar listing "hyaluronic acid" with no molecular weight specified is selling you an unknown, and the price tells you nothing.

What to look for: the exact salt, ester, or molecular weight, plus the dose and the dosing schedule used in the trial the brand is citing. A company that has matched the research will say so in detail, since that specificity is the whole reason to pay more. Silence in that spot is an answer.

What we do instead: we match the form to the study before we match it to the person, and where a patented form carries the evidence, we use the patented form and explain the price difference rather than substituting a cheaper salt and hoping.

2. Borrowed pharmacology

Here a compound with real activity is marketed by naming a prescription drug it resembles. The comparison performs the persuasion, and the actual data never has to.

Berberine, sold widely as "nature's Ozempic," is the current example. Berberine is a legitimate plant alkaloid with real metabolic activity — a meta-analysis of 46 randomized trials in type 2 diabetes supports modest improvements in HbA1c, fasting glucose and lipid markers (Guo et al., Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity, 2021 — PMID 34956436) — and it has a long history in Chinese herbal medicine as Huang Lian, used for patterns we would describe as damp-heat. It is also not a GLP-1 receptor agonist. It works largely through AMPK activation and effects on the gut microbiome, it does not produce comparable weight outcomes, and the trial populations were not the ones the advertising is aimed at. The nickname is doing work the evidence cannot support.

Melatonin receives the inverse treatment: a hormone with signalling roles across immune function, reproductive timing and metabolism, sold as a benign sleep aid at doses ten to thirty times what the pineal gland produces overnight. An independent analysis of 31 retail melatonin products found actual content ranging from 83% below the label claim to 478% above it, with lot-to-lot variation within a single product as high as 465%, and serotonin present as a contaminant in eight of them (Erland & Saxena, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2017 — PMID 27855744). The dose you intended is frequently not the dose you took.

What to look for: any product described primarily by the drug it resembles rather than by its own mechanism. The comparison is a substitute for evidence, and when a real mechanism exists a good brand will lead with it.

What we do instead: when berberine is the right choice we use it for what it does, at studied doses, with attention to the fact that it shares metabolic pathways with several prescriptions and can amplify them. Melatonin we treat as the hormone it is — a targeted tool, useful for jet lag and for specific circadian problems, at a low dose timed to the question we are trying to answer, rather than a nightly sedative.

3. The mechanism removed during manufacturing

This move is almost elegant. The original substance works. The processing that turns it into something convenient destroys the part responsible for the effect, and the name survives the process intact.

Apple cider vinegar gummies are the clearest case. The modest glycemic benefit attributed to vinegar comes from acetic acid, which slows gastric emptying and blunts postprandial glucose. Acetic acid also tastes like vinegar, so producing a palatable gummy requires neutralizing much of it, and sugar is then added to cover what remains. The finished product carries the name of the thing without the thing.

Mushroom supplements divide along a similar line. The immunological research rests on beta-glucans concentrated in the fruiting body — the mushroom itself. A great many products on the shelf are mycelium grown on grain and dried whole, which yields a powder that is substantially grain starch by weight. Both can legally be called by the mushroom's name, and only one carries the compound the studies measured.

Collagen belongs here too, in the topical direction. Collagen molecules are far too large to cross an intact stratum corneum, so a collagen cream deposits protein on the skin surface, where it functions as a reasonable occlusive moisturizer and nothing more. Ingested collagen peptides are a different proposition: hydrolyzed into di- and tripeptides, absorbed intact, and appearing to act as a signal that stimulates fibroblast activity, with meta-analysis of 19 trials supporting improvements in skin hydration and elasticity (de Miranda et al., International Journal of Dermatology, 2021 — PMID 33742704). The delivery route decides the outcome, and the photograph on the jar does not.

What to look for: whether the manufacturing step that made the product convenient is the same step that would have removed the active compound. Ask what part is doing the work, then ask whether that part survived.

What we do instead: we prefer the least-processed form that remains practical to take — vinegar in food or as a liquid before a meal, fruiting-body extracts with a stated beta-glucan percentage, collagen taken orally rather than applied.

4. Guided and tested, versus grabbed and guessed

This is the category most often flattened into a warning list, and flattening it does real damage — because the compounds that end up on those lists are frequently the same compounds serious practitioners use every week. The difference is not the molecule. It is who made it, how it is delivered, whether anyone tested it, and whether a clinician is watching what happens next.

Two examples we keep in our own dispensary make the point better than any warning would.

Silver. Silver has a long and unglamorous record in medicine. Silver sulfadiazine has served as a reference treatment in burn care for decades (Gomes et al., Revista da Associação Médica Brasileira, 2017 — PMID 28225874), silver-impregnated dressings are standard on chronic and colonized wounds, and silver ions are used in water treatment worldwide. The mechanism is well characterized: silver ions disrupt bacterial membranes, bind thiol groups in respiratory enzymes, and interfere with microbial DNA replication.

We stock silver and we use it. The line we carry is Results RNA's ACS 200 Extra Strength, and we use it the way silver earns its keep — the topical gel on cuts, scrapes, burns and stitches, and the nasal spray during an acute sinus or upper respiratory illness. Applied to the surface where the microbes are, for a defined short course, by a route matched to the problem.

Worth being precise about what stands behind it, since this article is about reading claims carefully. The kill-time data on ACS 200 is in vitro — laboratory kill rates against isolated organisms, not clinical outcomes in patients. That is meaningful evidence for a topical antiseptic, where contact with the organism is the whole mechanism. It is not the same as a trial showing people got better, and we would rather say so than let a decimal place do work it has not earned.

What gets people into trouble is a different product used a different way: a generic "colloidal silver" of unstated particle size and concentration, swallowed by the ounce, daily, indefinitely, as a substitute for systemic antibiotics. There is no established nutritional requirement for silver and no controlled human evidence supporting that use. What accumulates instead is silver in the dermis, where light exposure reduces it and fixes it in place. The resulting blue-grey discoloration — argyria — is permanent, has been documented from ordinary over-the-counter products, and often appears first in the nail beds (Slater et al., Cureus, 2022 — PMID 36457628; Simon & Buchanan, Journal of Emergency Medicine, 2020 — PMID 32591303). Silver also binds several antibiotics and thyroid hormone, reducing their absorption, which matters if you take either.

What to look for: a named manufacturer, a product formulated for the route you intend to use it by, published testing of some kind, and a defined stopping point. Open-ended daily ingestion of an unspecified product is the failure mode, not silver.

Peptides. The word covers four quite different things, and collapsing them is how both the hype and the panic get started.

Approved peptide drugs. GLP-1 agonists, teriparatide, leuprolide, insulin. Characterized, dosed on real pharmacokinetic data, prescribed.
Compounded peptides. Prepared by a licensed compounding pharmacy against a prescription, with oversight of sterility and potency.
Practitioner-channel oral formulations. Made by named manufacturers who publish third-party testing, sold through clinicians rather than direct to consumers, and taken by mouth rather than injected.
"Research use only" vials. Ordered online without a prescription and self-injected. No potency assay, no sterility testing, no endotoxin limit, no identity confirmation.

The one we carry sits in the third tier: Quicksilver Scientific's Liposomal BPC-157 + KPV, an oral formulation we use for gut-lining and tissue-repair work. Two peptides, two distinct jobs. BPC-157 is a fifteen-amino-acid fragment of body protection compound, a protein that occurs naturally in human gastric juice, and the preclinical work centres on protecting and repairing the gut lining, supporting collagen synthesis and encouraging new blood vessel growth. KPV is a tripeptide of lysine, proline and valine — the tail end of alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone, minus the part that darkens skin. It enters cells directly and dampens NF-κB and MAPK signalling from inside the nucleus, and it is absorbed through the PepT1 transporter, which intestinal cells express in abundance. That last detail is the reason an oral formulation is a defensible route here rather than a compromise.

Honesty requires saying something else, and it applies to the tier we buy from as much as the one we avoid. BPC-157 has three decades of animal work behind it showing consistent activity in tissue-repair models — the signal is real enough that serious pharmacologists keep returning to it. What does not yet exist is the pharmaceutical science that would let anyone dose it with confidence: no approved formulation, no validated dosing regimen, no completed Phase II trial, and human data drawn from fewer than thirty subjects across three uncontrolled pilot studies, none using a standardized preparation. A 2026 review framed the barrier precisely — the obstacle is not the absence of biological activity, it is the absence of fundamental pharmaceutical characterization (Mateescu et al., Pharmaceutics, 2026 — PMID 42198317).

We think a liposomal oral formulation from a manufacturer that publishes its testing, used deliberately and reviewed, is a reasonable thing to offer on that evidence. We do not think it is settled, and we would rather tell you that than sell you certainty we do not have. The regulatory position has also been unsettled and actively changing through 2026, so anything you read about legality may already be out of date.

What to look for: a named manufacturer, published third-party testing, a route that matches what was studied, and a clinician who will tell you what is known, what is not, and when to stop. The absence of any of those is the finding.

What we do instead: every injectable we use is pharmacy-sourced and given within scope — point injection therapy, B12 and lipotropic injections, and neural therapy for scar and autonomic work. The rest of the shelf is hand-selected: the science has to be sound, the form and delivery have to make sense, the source has to be verifiable, and our patients have to feel the difference. A trial result alone is not enough to earn a place.

One more, for your chart

High-dose biotin, taken for hair and nails, interferes with a wide range of immunoassay laboratory tests through the biotin-streptavidin binding those assays rely on. Affected panels include thyroid function, several hormone assays, and troponin — the marker used to evaluate chest pain in an emergency department. The direction of the error depends on assay architecture: competitive formats read falsely high, sandwich formats falsely low (Dasgupta, Advances in Clinical Chemistry, 2022 — PMID 35953126).

This is not a reason to avoid biotin. It is a reason to stop it several days before a blood draw and to tell whoever is ordering the panel. A harmless supplement can produce a dangerous result on paper.

The three questions

Every example above yields to the same three questions.

Which form, at which dose, was the study run on? If the brand will not say, assume the answer is not the studied one. And check whether the study was run in people or in a dish — both can be useful, and they are not the same claim.
What does the delivery route do to it? Chewed, applied, sprayed, swallowed and injected are five different products with five different fates, and the name they share is not informative.
Who made this, and can they prove what is in it? A certificate of analysis, a lot number, third-party testing, a named manufacturer. The absence of these is itself a finding.

None of this makes the category worthless — quite the opposite. Well-chosen supplements in the correct form, at a studied dose, in a sensible sequence, do substantial work, and several of the compounds that get written off in listicles are ones we reach for weekly. The difficulty is that a retail aisle is not organized to help anyone tell a guided tool from a guessed one, and the labelling conventions are built to keep that distinction hard to see.

If you want the chemistry rather than the advertising, start with our guide to supplement forms. If you would rather not sort it alone, our free resources library holds the complete Supplement Decoder, and a practitioner can review what you are already taking, tell you which bottles are earning their place, and retire the rest — book a visit online.

We maintain a professional dispensary through Fullscript, which lets us specify forms and verify sourcing rather than guessing at a shelf. Links to it are affiliate links.

This article is educational and is not medical advice. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any condition. Speak with your physician or a qualified practitioner before starting, stopping, or changing a supplement, particularly if you take prescription medication, are pregnant, or have upcoming laboratory testing.

Sources

Mateescu DM, et al. BPC-157 as an investigational peptide therapeutic: biopharmaceutical challenges, formulation strategies, and translational development barriers. Pharmaceutics. 2026. PMID 42198317
Slater K, Sommariva E, Kartono F. A case study of argyria of the nails secondary to colloidal silver ingestion. Cureus. 2022. PMID 36457628
Simon M, Buchanan JA. Argyria, an unexpected case of skin discoloration from colloidal silver salt ingestion. J Emerg Med. 2020. PMID 32591303
Gomes MT, et al. Experimental burns: comparison between silver sulfadiazine and photobiomodulation. Rev Assoc Med Bras. 2017. PMID 28225874
Beaudart C, et al. Symptomatic efficacy of pharmacological treatments for knee osteoarthritis: a systematic review and network meta-analysis. Drugs. 2020. PMID 33074440
Guo J, et al. The effect of berberine on metabolic profiles in type 2 diabetic patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Oxid Med Cell Longev. 2021. PMID 34956436
Erland LAE, Saxena PK. Melatonin natural health products and supplements: presence of serotonin and significant variability of melatonin content. J Clin Sleep Med. 2017. PMID 27855744
de Miranda RB, Weimer P, Rossi RC. Effects of hydrolyzed collagen supplementation on skin aging: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Int J Dermatol. 2021. PMID 33742704
Dasgupta A. Immunoassay design and biotin interference. Adv Clin Chem. 2022. PMID 35953126