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.

The Economist Asked 'Does Acupuncture Work?' Here's What They Got Wrong

Courtney Zeller
2 days ago
3 min read

Updated: 7 hours ago

The Economist just published a three-minute explainer on acupuncture, and I want to be fair: they got some things right. There is strong evidence for pain. The 2018 Journal of Pain meta-analysis covering nearly 21,000 patients is real, it's solid, and the benefits held up a year out. That part? Accurate.

But the way they framed everything else — and what they left out — is the kind of lazy science journalism that genuinely misleads patients. And that matters, because when people read "the jury's out on everything else," some of them quietly decide not to pursue a treatment that could have changed their life.

The Sham Acupuncture Trap

The article cites a 2020 JAMA Internal Medicine paper showing "no significant difference in pain relief between true and sham acupuncture" — and uses it to imply the whole thing might be placebo. This is one of the most persistently misused findings in the acupuncture debate, and it drives me absolutely crazy.

Sham acupuncture is not a sugar pill. It involves inserting needles — just shallower, or at non-traditional points. It still penetrates skin. It still activates mechanoreceptors and connective tissue. Decades of research, including work from NIH-funded researcher Helene Langevin (who the article actually cites!), has shown that needle insertion — wherever it happens — causes measurable fascial and neurological responses.

So when a study shows that "sham" acupuncture performs similarly to "real" acupuncture, it doesn't prove that acupuncture is placebo. It raises the possibility that both are doing something real. That is a wildly different conclusion, and collapsing these two things is not a minor error.

They Cited the Mechanism and Then Ignored It

Here's what's maddening: the article mentions Langevin's research. Her work shows needles twist connective tissue, pull on nerve endings, and trigger a cascade that reduces pain. That is a proposed biological mechanism — not a belief system, not a vibe. And then, in the very next paragraph, the article pivots straight to placebo.

You can't have it both ways. If there's an identifiable tissue-level mechanism, you don't get to conclude "maybe it's all in your head." Pick a lane.

The Edzard Ernst Problem

The article's primary skeptic is Edzard Ernst, an emeritus professor from the University of Exeter whose career has been built on debunking complementary medicine. His quote — "any therapy comes automatically with a placebo effect" — is used to cast doubt on acupuncture's results. Which, fine, it's technically true. Every therapy has a placebo component. Antidepressants. Physical therapy. Surgery.

We don't use that fact to dismiss those treatments. We don't look at the data showing antidepressants outperform placebo by modest margins and conclude they're fake. We have an adult conversation about clinical effect size, patient outcomes, and risk-benefit ratios. Acupuncture deserves the same standard.

What's Actually Missing from the Story

The 2022 review they reference — the one that analyzed 862 systematic reviews — showed benefits for post-operative nausea comparable to antiemetics, migraines, tension headaches, cancer-related fatigue, female infertility (in conjunction with reproductive medicine), and chronic pelvic pain. That is a meaningful list of conditions affecting millions of people. The article breezed past it to focus on the 86 conditions where evidence was insufficient.

What they didn't mention at all: the neuroimaging data showing acupuncture changes brain activity in specific, measurable ways. The 2021 Nature study identifying a neuroanatomical pathway — the vagal-adrenal axis — that is activated by acupuncture at specific points but not others. Not "acupuncture is magical," but "specific needle placement produces specific physiological effects." That's the opposite of placebo.

They also didn't mention that the VA, DoD, and NICE in the UK actively recommend acupuncture for specific conditions. These are not fringe organizations swayed by ancient mysticism.

Why This Matters Beyond Being Annoying

Patients with anxiety, fertility challenges, chronic fatigue, digestive disorders, or headaches will read this article and conclude that acupuncture is probably a pain-only tool. Some of them will make decisions based on that. They'll pursue pharmaceutical options with documented side effect profiles, when they might have done well with a treatment that has an exceptionally clean safety record and growing mechanistic evidence.

That's not a small thing. That's the actual public health impact of sloppy framing from a prestigious outlet.

Here's what I'd tell any patient who read that piece: the science is more interesting — and more promising — than a three-minute summary can capture. Acupuncture is not magic. It doesn't work for everything. But dismissing it as an elaborate placebo in 2026, after two decades of neuroimaging research and mechanism studies, isn't skepticism. It's just not keeping up.

The British Acupuncture Council published their own response to The Economist article — worth a read: acupuncture.org.uk/news/bacc-response-to-the-economist-article-does-acupuncture-work/

Courtney Zeller is the primary practitioner at GoodMedizen, an integrative acupuncture and functional medicine clinic in downtown Seattle. She has been practicing since 2011 and holds a QSI Detoxification Certification alongside her acupuncture license.

How Acupuncture Works