Jeff Rippey

Acupuncturist

1011 E St Maartens Drive A St Joseph MO, 64506 Show map

About
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About

I'm a nationally board certified and state licensed doctor of acupuncture. I run a solo clinic in St. Joseph, MO. I specialize primarily in pain management, but also work with depression, anxiety, PTSD, and digestive disorders. I work across the spectrum of pain, from acute injury to neuropathy - any type pain, at any location on the body, for any reason.

Education and Training

Colorado School of Traditional Chinese Medicine M.S. Acupuncture 2016

PCHS D.Ac. 2020

Board Certification

National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine

Provider Details

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Jeff Rippey

Why It's Hard To Tell Patients Where Needles Might Be Placed
I've been answering questions on this site for a couple of years now. There's been a recent trend towards acupressure questions which I addressed in my first blog post. Generally, though, I've noticed that questions tend to fall into a few buckets:...
Why It's Difficult to Answer Acupressure/Pressure Point Questions
As part of this site, patients have the capability of asking questions of practitioners and subject matter experts. Recently I’ve been seeing a lot of questions that take the form, “Please tell me x pressure point for treating y health condition”. I generally try to help these folks understand...

Does acupressure help nerve pain?
Couldn't tell you, I don't use acupressure all that often. In my experience, pressure techniques pale in comparison to acupuncture (using needles) in terms of time to treatment effect, the strength of treatment effect, and duration of treatment effect. On top of this, the vast majority of patients find acupuncture to be much more comfortable than acupressure. In a case like nerve pain, this will likely be doubly true. If you want to try Chinese medicine for your issue - and one big area for which there is abundant and excellent scientific evidence of acupuncture/Chinese medicine's effectiveness is pain conditions - go to NCCAOM.org and use their 'Find a Practitioner' lookup to get a list of local, board-certified providers. READ MORE
Does acupuncture increase blood flow?
Acupuncture can increase blood flow in certain cases. Whether or not acupuncture will work in your case is going to be dependent on why you have poor flow/poor circulation and where you're primarily experiencing this issue. READ MORE
Is acupuncture effective for insomnia?
Yes, acupuncture is generally a very good treatment for insomnia. READ MORE
Does acupuncture help poor blood circulation?
Acupuncture can sometimes help poor circulation. A lot is going to depend on what, exactly, is going on. I'd suggest calling a few local licensed acupuncturists (or go to NCCAOM.org and use their 'Find a Practitioner' lookup to get a list of local providers). See if they offer a free consult, sit down, and discuss your situation. They should be able to give you some idea if your issue can be addressed with Chinese medicine. READ MORE
Can acupressure help sinus infection?
In my experience acupuncture is not an effective way to deal with infection - you need antibiotics. If there is residual congestion after finishing a course of antibiotic therapy then acupuncture can usually help. READ MORE
Does acupuncture help back nerve pain?
Nerve pain can sometimes be tricky but, yes, acupuncture can generally provide some level of relief. In my experience, nerve pain patients can often take a few more treatments to get things headed in the right direction, so be prepared to attend at least 5 sessions before you decide acupuncture isn't working. READ MORE
Hormones and shivers?
Without knowing what acupuncture point was utilized and why the practitioner thought that point was appropriate (i.e. your diagnosis inside the Chinese model), it's very hard to say what might be going on. I strongly suspect that your provider accidentally hit a nerve with the needle, but without knowing the specific placement I can't say which nerve or whether that would cover the symptoms you're now experiencing. The first thing I'd do is contact the original provider and let them know what you're now experiencing. They may have some ideas about how to reverse this situation and get things back on track for you. If you're not comfortable going that route, go to NCCAOM.org and use their 'Find a Practitioner' lookup to get some other local providers. Call around and see if anyone offers a free consult. This would give you a chance to meet the provider and talk to them about the issues you're experiencing. They may want to see your treatment record from the original practitioner, but you may be able to describe the needle locations well enough in person for them to get an idea of what happened. With that information, they may be able to come up with a plan for resolving your issue. READ MORE
How does acupuncture increase blood flow?
From the perspective of modern science, acupuncture's effect on blood flow occurs primarily through nitrous oxide (NO). Acupuncture stimulates the body to produce its own NO and NO is a fairly potent vasodilator. In other words, NO forces the blood vessels to open larger which increases flow through the area. READ MORE
Can acupuncture help with anemia?
There are lots of different kinds of anemia. Without knowing specifically what we're talking about, it's hard to say how effective acupuncture might be in your case. There are acupuncture techniques that are intended to 'build blood'. In some cases of anemia, these acupuncture techniques coupled with dietary adjustment can help. READ MORE
Can acupuncture help with allergic rhinitis?
Usually, yes, acupuncture can be an excellent treatment for allergic rhinitis. There are some good studies out of Germany showing acupuncture is more effective than usual treatment and more cost effective in the long term. READ MORE
How long will acupuncture pain relief last?
How long pain relief might last from an initial treatment is highly variable and somewhat unpredictable. If you've never had acupuncture before, there's a slim possibility you'll be in the 5% or so of the population who do not respond to acupuncture. For people in the 95% who do respond, responses vary and the length of time that response persists also varies. There are a few things prospective patients need to keep in mind: 1. Acupuncture is a process. It's not usually a one-and-done type of treatment. 2. Acupuncture has a dose dependency. To a point, more treatment is going to produce longer-lasting effects. 3. Acupuncture's treatment effects are cumulative. Initially, patients might not experience much relief or their relief might not last that long. Over time, though, treatment effects are better and last longer. Given those parameters, what should a first-time patient expect on their first visit? My experience has been any relief provided by an initial treatment lasts - at minimum - one to two days. If you don't experience any change after your first treatment, it doesn't necessarily mean acupuncture isn't working for you. You may be a slow responder, in which case you might not notice any changes until treatment 3 or 4. If you've gone 5 or 6 treatments and still aren't noticing any change, odds are pretty good you're in the 5% who won't respond. READ MORE
How long does it take for acupuncture to work for muscle pain?
This is a question I get a lot and, to be honest, it's a fair question. I've been in practice for several years and I average over 100 patients per week. In those many thousands of encounters I've noticed people tend to fall into about 4 treatment buckets. 1. Somewhere around 5% of the population does not respond to acupuncture - at all. It doesn't matter who they see or how many times they go, acupuncture produces no results for them. We don't know why this happens, we just know that it's a pretty consistent slice of the population. The other 95% of the population fall out like this: 2. Some people get almost instant results. I can get one or two needles in and they're already feeling a difference in their issue. 3. Some people don't notice any change during or immediately after the initial treatment. 24-36 hours later though, they can tell things are feeling better. 4. Some people don't notice any change after the first or second treatment, but they can tell things are improving after the third or fourth treatment. Which one of these cases do you fall into? I don't know. No one knows. The only way to figure it out is to find a local, board certified, acupuncturist and try it. READ MORE
Can acupuncture fix blood circulation?
If we're talking about cold hands and feet or Reynoud's syndrome then, yes, acupuncture can usually help. If this is something along the lines of degraded vasculature in the low limb with spider nevi and/or varicose veins then the answer is still usually a qualified yes - you'll want to make sure someone is keeping an eye on your deep vasculature with doppler ultrasound so you can deal with any clots/thrombosis that may form. If this is more along the lines of atherosclerosis with plaques blocking the arteries then you're going to get further by fixing your diet and trying to reverse the damage as much as possible. Acupuncture may still have a role to play, but you're more in the conventional medicine space. READ MORE
Is acupuncture good for gastritis?
If it's gastritis of unknown cause or gastritis with a known cause that isn't particularly serious, yes, acupuncture can probably help. READ MORE
Can acupuncture help with respiratory issues?
How useful acupuncture might be is going to be dependent on what kind of respiratory issue we're talking about. If this is something like mild to moderate asthma or the early days of COPD then, yes, acupuncture can be very useful. If this is something like emphysema or COPD that has developed to the point the patient is on supplemental oxygen then acupuncture's usefulness is going to be reduced. READ MORE
What pressure point relieves nausea?
Acupuncture and Chinese medicine in general don't work the same way conventional western medicine does. One of the big differences lies in the explanatory and diagnostic model. In Chinese medicine, there isn't one and only one treatment for the management of anything. There are, potentially, a variety of reasons you might be experiencing nausea and without knowing your entire presentation, any point(s) I gave you would be a complete guess. If you want to try Chinese medicine to help with your issue, go to NCCAOM.org and use their 'Find a Practitioner' link to get a list of local providers. READ MORE
Can acupressure help joint pain?
I don't know, I don't use pressure techniques all that much. When comparing to acupuncture, acupressure is much less comfortable, takes a lot longer to achieve a treatment effect, and that treatment effect doesn't last nearly as long. READ MORE
What pressure point relieves a headache?
Headache is a very complicated issue, particularly if they're chronic. Chinese medicine recognizes something like 6 different types of headache, each of which has a different core treatment. Without knowing a lot more about your headache, I cannot provide any information that would be useful to your treatment. If you want to try Chinese medicine for your issue, go to NCCAOM.org and use their 'Find a Practitioner' lookup to get a list of local providers. READ MORE
Can acupuncture help lower back pain?
Usually, yes, acupuncture can be an excellent treatment for low back pain. READ MORE
Back pain from the waist up?
It's very difficult to say where needles might be placed. I know this isn't what prospective patients like to hear. There are two main reasons why I can't answer this question: 1. I don't know why you're experiencing back pain. In any medical system, treatment hinges on a correct diagnosis. If an MD misses on the diagnosis and prescribes the wrong treatment (medication or surgery), the patient doesn't get better and sometimes they get worse. Chinese medicine is a complete system - meaning it has a coherent, internally consistent diagnostic method. Without having a diagnosis, inside the Chinese medical model, I have no way of knowing what treatment is appropriate and therefore no way of specifying where needles might be placed. 2. Acupuncture is not a monolithic system. There isn't one and only one system of acupuncture that everyone practices. There is classical Chinese acupuncture, modern Chinese acupuncture, Taiwanese acupuncture, Japanese acupuncture, a couple different systems from Korea, at least 4 modern western approaches to placing needles, and probably another half-dozen that I'm either not remembering or not aware of. Bottom line: even if I specified a set of points that might possibly be useful to you, there's no guarantee that a licensed acupuncturist local to you will be using the same system of acupuncture in the same way that I do. They might choose to use an entirely different treatment approach, in which case you're going to be pretty confused. Here's what I can tell you: pain is one of the main conditions for which there is abundant and excellent scientific evidence regarding acupuncture's effectiveness. It doesn't really matter where the needles are placed as long as your pain is either reduced or relieved. A good acupuncturist practicing any system should be able to accomplish that task. READ MORE