Sina Leslie Smith LAc MD

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United States
Chicago, IL
Sina Leslie Smith LAc MD

Medical Doctor, Acupuncturist, Integrative & Functional Medicine, Homeopathy, Nutrition, Pain Expert Practicing in Illinois and via telemedicine/telehealth.

Holistically-minded modern medicine: Japanese and Chinese acupuncture; medicinal herbs, supplements, and nutraceuticals; integrative medicine; functional medicine; homeopathy; and manual therapies. Physical offices in Chicago are currently closed but look for reopening Fall 2022.

10/14/2026

Dry needling and acupuncture get lumped together all the time, and the confusion goes both ways.

So let's demystify it a little (that's the book title for a reason!)

Dry needling traces back to work done by Dr. Janet Travell in the 1940s, who studied trigger points... the tight knots you can feel in a muscle... and used a solid needle to release them. Funny enough, acupuncturists had already been treating those same points, which we call "Ashi" points, for over 2,000 years. So the technique itself has roots that go back further than most modern trainings acknowledge.

Here's where it gets more involved. Physical therapists, chiropractors, and other practitioners who perform dry needling often complete a weekend course or a few hundred hours of training.

Licensed acupuncturists complete at least 4 years of clinical education (and more if they earn a doctorate) that includes deep tissue-layer training, how to feel the difference between muscle, nerve, organ, and blood vessel under the needle, and how to recognize when something under the skin isn't what it should be. That difference in training is exactly why patient safety and informed consent matter so much when you're choosing a provider and a technique.

In conclusion: Dry needling tends to be a great option for quick, targeted relief of a specific muscle knot or trigger point, especially in a sports medicine or physical therapy setting. It is a type of acupuncture, not distinct from it.

Acupuncture works on a much broader level... it can address that same muscle tightness while also considering the nervous system, organ function, and the underlying patterns that might be contributing to the pain in the first place.

Knowing the difference between the two approaches helps you make an informed choice about the care you're receiving and who is providing it.

If this kind of behind-the-scenes context interests you, I go into much more depth in my book, Demystifying Acupuncture. Grab a copy anywhere you get your books, and if you've already read it, I'd love it if you left a review... it helps more people find their way to the answers they're looking for!

10/08/2026

Cold and flu season is officially here, and with kids trading germs at school right along with their snacks (and crayons, and water bottles…), this is a great time to support their immune systems from the kitchen.

In Chinese medicine, fall belongs to the Metal Element, which governs the Lungs and our Wei Qi, the protective energy that shields us from outside germs. Western science adds that about 70 percent of the immune system lives in the gut, and kids ALREADY love many of the foods that support both.

Here's my cold and flu season immune kit for kids:

Colorful produce for vitamin C. Strawberries, oranges, kiwi, and bell peppers help immune cells do their job, and a "rainbow plate" where kids pick one food from each color turns it into a game.

Yogurt, kefir, and fiber for the gut. Choose plain yogurt or kefir with live and active cultures, then add fruit, oats, or a banana to feed those good bacteria. A kefir smoothie with berries and a handful of spinach checks several boxes.

Zinc-rich foods. Hummus, beans, eggs, beef, and pumpkin seed butter give kids zinc to help fight off infections. (Spreads are best for littlest ones, since whole nuts and seeds can be a choking hazard.)

Warm soups and broths. Chicken soup with a little garlic and ginger is a classic way to support Wei Qi, and research suggests it may also help ease cold symptoms.

Vitamin D foods. Eggs, salmon, and fortified milk all help, and since many kids run low as the days get shorter, ask your pediatrician whether testing or a supplement makes sense.

A spoonful of honey for a cough. Honey can soothe coughs in kids over 12 months, but please never give it to babies under one because of the risk of botulism.

A sniffle or two will probably still find its way home this season (it's part of how little immune systems grow stronger!), and these foods give your kids what they need to recover and keep learning. Pick one or two to add this week.

What's your kiddo's favorite immune-friendly snack? Share below so we can all borrow ideas!

Disclaimer: This post is for educational purposes only. Please check with your pediatrician before changing your child's diet or adding supplements.

10/05/2026

I’d bet that your kitchen is already stocked with more Five Element wisdom than you realize.

Next time you're grocery shopping, try picking up one food for each element. These five are a great place to start, and each one brings something different to the table.

Water = Bone broth. Sip it first thing in the morning while you're still in that quiet meditation headspace, or build your rice, risotto, soup, or miso around it as a base. Water likes depth, and this is about as deep and nourishing as food gets.

Wood = Goji berries. These little pink raisin look-alikes are a bit sour, the signature flavor of Wood. Chinese medicine connects the Liver and the eyes to this element, and goji berries nourish both by tonifying Liver Blood and supporting your vision. If your period has been a little light (in color or flow), this is a good way to get it back on track.

Fire = Cinnamon. This is the one for cold hands and cold feet as the weather starts to turn. Cinnamon carries warmth all the way out to the distal parts of the body, so work it into your cooking or steep it as tea and let it do its job.

Earth = Jujube. Sold looking like dehydrated dates, but bite into one and you'll find something closer to the texture of an apple. Reconstitute them for smoothies, toss them in salads, or chop them over pork or chicken with a little gravy. Look for reddish, soft, slightly squishy skin at the store, and watch for the seed hiding inside.

Metal = Onions and garlic. The backbone of flavor in Mexican, Thai, Indian, Italian... basically every cuisine worth eating. Beyond flavor, alliums are broadly antimicrobial, so bringing them into your meals daily is one of the simplest ways to boost your immune system.

Five elements, five foods, one very well-stocked grocery cart. Which one is missing from your kitchen right now?

10/01/2026

June 2004. My first day of residency, and I remember checking my pager, just to make sure it actually worked (that's the kind of nervous-eager I was).

That woman in surgery scrubs had one very simple goal... help people find their way out of pain, in whatever way medicine would let her do it.

She had no idea how many turns that road would take.

Surgery taught me an enormous amount, and I'm grateful for every year of it! And somewhere along the way, my own body started asking questions my training hadn't fully answered, years of chronic pain that no scalpel was going to fix.

Acupuncture is what finally gave me relief, and it cracked open a whole different understanding of the body that I couldn't ignore once I'd experienced it.

So the road bent. I went back to school, became an acupuncturist too, and started practicing both sides of medicine at once... hands that used to hold a scalpel, now holding needles instead.

Same goal, every single time. HELP PEOPLE FIND RELIEF. Just a different set of tools than the girl with the pager ever expected to use.

Twenty-plus years later, that's still exactly what I get to do. And I feel unbelievably lucky to do it!

09/28/2026

There's a moment in almost every talk I give that I truly love… when something that's felt confusing for years finally makes sense.

Phones go down. Pens come out. And by the end, someone almost always says the same thing to me... I wish I'd learned this years ago.

That's the most rewarding part of speaking, and the part that keeps me saying yes to it.

Whether the room is a leadership team trying to understand why stress doesn't just resolve because someone tells you to "push through," a group of clinicians wanting the Western and Eastern models of the body reconciled in plain language (dental teams included), or a mix of parents and health-curious people looking for practical tools instead of more content... the goal is always the same. Take something that sounds complicated on paper and hand people back a framework simple enough to actually use on a normal Tuesday morning.

If you're helping plan a wellness day, a leadership offsite, or a conference lineup and you've been looking for a speaker who can make health information land in an impactful way for your people... I'd love to be considered. Send me a message and let's talk about what your group needs.

09/24/2026

Craving something salty at 3 pm doesn't mean your body is betraying you! Most of the time, it means your body found the easiest way it had to tell you something.

In Chinese medicine, each of the Five Elements has a flavor that supports it, and when you notice yourself reaching for one flavor over and over, it's often a clue about which Element could use some attention.

Wood (Sour): If you're craving something sour, a squeeze of lemon in your water, tart cherries, a spoonful of yogurt, Wood may be asking for help moving things along. Wood governs the Liver, and sour flavors support that sense of flow, especially after a stretch of stress or feeling stuck.

Fire (Bitter): A pull toward something bitter, dark chocolate, arugula, a coffee you actually want black, can be Fire's way of asking you to cool down a system that's been running hot, wired, or overstimulated.

Earth (Sweet): Sweet cravings, roasted sweet potato, a ripe piece of fruit, point to Earth, the Element tied to digestion and worry. A little natural sweetness can be grounding. Too much of the processed kind, though, tends to leave Earth more tired.

Metal (Pungent): Reaching for ginger, garlic, onions, or radish? Metal governs the Lungs and our sense of boundaries. Pungent foods push outward, in the same way that the immune system pushes pathogens out of your body. It's no wonder that many of these pungent foods are naturally antimicrobial.

Water (Salty): A craving for something salty like miso, seaweed, or a well-seasoned broth often points to Water, the Element that holds our deepest reserves. Water is usually asking for rest.

Your cravings are not something you have to fight or feel guilty about, my friend! They're information... and food is one of the simplest ways to answer it.

09/21/2026

Q: Can acupuncture actually work as preventative medicine?

A: I love this question because it gets at something most of us never think about until we're already in the middle of a flare-up.

Here's how I like to picture it. If your toe didn't bother you, you wouldn't change the way you walk. If your gait didn't shift, your knee and hip wouldn't be picking up the slack. And if your knee and hip felt fine, you'd probably feel more like moving your body... which tends to lead to better food choices, steadier blood sugar, and a much lower risk of the whole cascade that follows down the road. One small, easy-to-miss signal has a way of climbing the chain.

I see this in my practice all the time. People come in for "the thing that's finally bad enough to deal with," when the work was available three steps earlier.

In ancient China, acupuncturists were paid while their patients stayed well... and stopped getting paid the moment someone got sick (try pitching that insurance model today). Prevention was the entire job.

And this kind of prevention isn't only physical. Acupuncture also helps the mind process what it's feeling instead of getting stuck in one emotional lens (fear, grief, whatever it is) and letting that lens color everything else. When emotions get to move through, the whole system runs a little steadier... mentally, emotionally, physically.

So my answer is a wholehearted yes. Acupuncture works just as well (if not better!) in the years before a flare-up as it does in the middle of one.

Think of it as tending to the toe before it ever gets the chance to change your walk.

If you want the fuller picture (including what an acupuncturist actually asks you and why), it's all in my book, Demystifying Acupuncture. Check it out on Amazon or wherever you get your books!

09/16/2026

Calling all my ladies! Let’s talk about “that” time of the month! 😉

Can you relate to how some weeks you feel like you could take on the world, yet other weeks, getting off the couch feels like a heavy lift.

That's not random... that's four distinct seasons moving through your cycle every single month.

Five Element Theory is a framework from Traditional Chinese Medicine that maps five distinct energies onto everything from the seasons to our emotions, and it turns out those same energies map beautifully onto your monthly cycle too.

Here's what each phase actually needs.

Week 1, right after your period: Wood energy. The rising and building phase. New ideas spark, and motivation comes back online. Support it with movement, fresh starts, anything that lets that momentum go somewhere.

Week 2, around ovulation: Fire energy. This is your peak. Outward, social, magnetic. Save the big meeting or the first date for this week... You have the most to give here.

Week 3, the first half of the luteal phase: Earth energy. Slower, more grounded, craving routine and comfort. This is a great week for structure and simple, nourishing habits.

Late week 3 into week 4: Metal energy. Your body starts releasing what it no longer needs, physically and emotionally. Give yourself space to reflect instead of pushing through.

Your period: Water energy. Deep rest and restoration. This is the phase that gets skipped over most often, and it might be the one that matters most. Support it by actually resting... not powering through with willpower and caffeine. I invite you to be gentle with yourself, sister. ♥️

Once you can see the pattern, you can plan around it rather than be surprised by it every month. Your body is doing so much for you, and it deserves to be treated with so much love and support!

09/14/2026

Most of what your body does all day happens without your input. Your heart rate, your blood pressure, your digestion... all of it running on autopilot, whether you're paying attention or not.

Your breath is the one exception... the only automatic system in your body that's also yours to direct, any time you choose.

That's a bigger deal than it sounds, and here's why.

When you slow your breathing down on purpose, your heart rate follows. Your blood pressure follows. Your brain then, reading all of that, decides you must be safe... even if nothing around you has actually changed.

Breathing is the most natural give-and-take. You receive with the inhale; you release with the exhale. When that gets shallow or rushed, it's usually the first sign you're carrying more than you need to.

The next time your breath speeds up before you do… I invite you to take four counts in, hold for four, six counts out. Longer exhale than inhale, every single time. THAT'S the element that tells your body it's safe to stand down.

Simple. And still one of the most powerful tools you have (score!).

09/09/2026

The snap at your partner over dishes. The flash of road rage at a slow driver. So often, anger is the messenger showing up for a feeling that couldn't find another way out.

In Five Element terms, that's the Liver at work... The Liver is our big brother, our mama bear... fierce, protective, quick to rise up when something feels threatening. But the Liver also acts as a storage container for the feelings underneath it. Fear. Grief. Anxiety. When those emotions don't have anywhere to go, the Liver channels them into anger instead, because anger feels more active, more useful, more like something you can actually do something with.

But regardless of which one it is, the medicine doesn't change... More grief right now? Move your body. More fear? Move your body. More anxiety? Move your body. Getting outside, even for a short walk, gives all of that stored-up feeling somewhere to go.

The alternative is what most of us reach for instead... food, alcohol, a cigarette, an extra hour of sleep we don't really need. All of it numbs the feeling instead of moving it through, and all of it keeps that Liver Qi stuck right where it started.

So here's my advice, especially on the hard days... eat the frog first. Do the difficult thing, the uncomfortable thing, the thing your body is asking you to move through, right at the start of your day. Everything else gets so much easier once that first step is behind you.

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