Bring Me the Screenshots: Using AI as a tool without losing the human part of healthcare

Let's talk about AI for a minute (ok, maybe more than a minute).

… I actually like it. There, I said it!

I use AI. My patients use AI. And I think it can be incredibly helpful when we use it as a tool rather than treating it like the final word on our health.

It can help you understand a lab result that sounds like it was written in another language. It can explain medical terms, help you organize questions for your doctor, give you ideas to research, and make sense of a giant pile of information when you don't know where to start.

It can also send you down a rabbit hole at 11:47 p.m. and have you wondering if your slightly weird symptom (why is my right pinky tingling???) means you have six rare diseases and a vitamin deficiency you've never heard of.

I've seen this play out in my practice, and I truly don't mind it. So, yes, you can bring me the screenshots.

Bring me your Mira charts or your Oura data. Bring me the labs you've been staring at and the list of supplements ChatGPT told you to consider. Bring me whatever you've learned that made you think, "I wonder if this has something to do with what's going on with me."

We can work with that! Because sometimes the information you've gathered on your own gives us another piece of the puzzle.

Take Mira, for example. Looking at hormone patterns over time can give me information I wouldn't get from a single lab result. From a Chinese medicine perspective, those patterns can sometimes give us interesting clues about things like Blood and Yin, particularly when we're looking at the timing and quality of the cycle alongside things like sleep, temperature changes, dryness, energy, and other symptoms.

That doesn't mean I'm looking at a Mira chart and declaring, "Aha! Your Yin is deficient." It means the chart becomes one more piece of information I can consider alongside everything else you're telling me.

And this is where another pretty important part of an acupuncture appointment comes in: I actually get to examine you.

I can take your pulse and feel qualities that aren't captured by a heart rate reading on your watch. Is it slippery? Wiry? Deep? Fast? Each of those qualities can give me different information about the pattern I'm seeing.

I can look at your tongue and notice its color, shape, coating, moisture, and other subtle changes that can give me clues about what's happening internally. A quivering tongue, for example, can be one piece of a picture that points toward things like Wind or Blood deficiency. A particular pulse quality, combined with other findings, might give me clues about Dampness or other patterns.

I can palpate your abdomen and other areas of the body, feeling for tension, tenderness, temperature changes, and differences in the tissue beneath my hands.

I can also listen to your voice, not just for what you're saying, but for its tone, volume, pace, and quality. In Five Element acupuncture, even the sound of your voice can be part of the diagnostic picture. A particularly sing-song or melodious quality may give me clues about Earth, while inappropriate or excessive laughter can point toward Fire. A sharp or shouting quality may tell me something about Wood, while a quieter, lower voice can offer clues about Water.

These are subtle observations, and none of them tells me the whole story on its own. But when you put them together with your symptoms, health history, pulse, tongue, palpation, and everything else I'm noticing, they create a much richer picture of the person sitting in front of me.

That's a whole diagnostic system, and learning to interpret it takes years of study and clinical experience. It's a big part of what makes Chinese medicine much more than matching a symptom to a treatment.

This is also where things can get really interesting. AI might look at "low energy" and come back with a list of things that can support energy. Maca might be on that list. And there is nothing inherently wrong with maca.

But the beauty of Chinese medicine is that it doesn't stop at the symptom.

If I see signs that someone is Yin deficient, for example, I may think very differently about how we want to support that person. A warming, stimulating approach that might be appropriate for someone who is truly Yang deficient isn't necessarily what I want to reach for in someone whose Yin is already depleted. In that situation, I may be thinking more about nourishing and supporting Yin, perhaps with an herb such as Nu Zhen Zi, depending on the person's full pattern and presentation.

So here we have the same symptom, fatigue, but potentially a very different diagnosis and very different treatment. That distinction really matters.

It is one thing to have an incredibly sophisticated tool that can search through an enormous amount of information and suggest possibilities. It is another thing to combine that information with what you can actually observe, feel, and learn from a person sitting on your treatment table.

Information is incredibly useful. But information isn't the same thing as understanding.

AI can give you possibilities and recognize patterns. It can help you ask better questions. I've actually used it myself before doctor visits when I'm having a hard time organizing my thoughts. It can be a really useful tool for that. But what it can't do is sit across from you and get to know you.

It can't notice that you seem completely exhausted even though your labs came back "normal." It doesn't know that the headache you're talking about is actually the least frustrating part of what's been happening to you. It doesn't know that you've been sleeping badly since your period changed, that your digestion has been off, that you've been under an enormous amount of stress at work, or that this all started six months ago after a really difficult year.

I can ask about those things. I can notice the patterns that emerge as we talk. And I can remember what you told me three weeks ago and connect it with what you're telling me today. (AI can remember things too, of course, but we also know it can get screwy and "remember" things incorrectly. I'll take the human memory with all its imperfections.)

That's one of the things I love about practicing Chinese medicine. We're not looking at your body as a collection of unrelated symptoms. We're looking at patterns and relationships.

Your headaches, your sleep, your digestion, your cycle, your stress, your energy, and your pain may not have arrived in separate little boxes, so it doesn't always make sense to treat them that way.

And sometimes the most important part of an appointment isn't the thing you came in thinking we needed to talk about, but the conversation that happens along the way. That is the part of healthcare I don't think AI can replace. But I also don't think it needs to.

I appreciate the patient who has learned about her own health, is curious about what's happening in her body, tracks her cycle, asks questions, and comes into the office with a stack of information. Empowerment is an important part of taking back some control of our health and advocating for ourselves. I want my patients to understand their bodies and feel comfortable asking questions.

But there is a fine line between being informed and getting pulled into the health anxiety spiral, where every symptom becomes a potential diagnosis and every lab value becomes something else to worry about. It can also be easy to start believing that because you've read about something online, you understand your particular situation better than the doctor or practitioner who has examined you, knows your history, and has spent years learning how to interpret all of those pieces together.

That's where I think AI and the internet are most useful as tools, not authorities.

Use them to learn and to come up with questions. Become a more informed participant in your healthcare- I love that! But then bring what you've found to someone who can put it into context, challenge an assumption when needed, and help you figure out what actually applies to you.

Being an advocate for your health doesn't mean you have to figure everything out on your own.

So yes, use AI. Learn things, ask questions, look things up. Track your symptoms and bring me your Mira chart and your 12 ChatGPT screenshots.

We'll sort through it together!

Our goal isn't necessarily to compete with AI. It's to use the tools that are helpful while keeping the part of healthcare that matters most: a real person sitting with you, listening to the whole story, noticing what doesn't fit neatly into a search result, examining you, interpreting the patterns, and using all of that information to develop a treatment that actually fits you.

And thankfully, that part of my job still requires me to be in the room ;)