Metta Perspective Acupuncture & Integrative Medicine
6201 W. Howard Street, Suite 101, in Niles

(847) 701-5788

MettaPerspective.com

Background
Dr. Dawn Graziano began her medical career as a veterinarian technician, and while working with vets who were doing acupuncture on animals, she began to see a positive response without the use of steroids or antibiotics.

Soon after, “while pregnant and so swollen,” Graziano, who had always been a fan of herbs and natural medicine, decided to try acupuncture to help, and by the next day, the swelling was gone.

This was a game-changing moment, for herself and her career, leading her back to school as soon as her son was born in 2009. A Master of Science in East Asian Medicine and then a Doctorate of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine from Pacific College of Oriental Medicine followed.

Dr. Graziano launched her own practice in 2017, and soon after, added integrative medicine “as a way to fuse everything together.” Her beautiful and welcoming Niles office opened in February of 2022. All told, she has 2,000 clinical hours of training and more than 3,500 hours of classroom study under her belt.

Helping with chronic conditions
“Honestly — and my peers will say this too because I got voice mails and messages constantly — there’s nothing I can’t treat, other than emergencies,” Dr. Graziano tells us. “If the patient is committed, I’m committed. I love helping chronic conditions. If people have been having difficulty with something over the years, I love knowing that I’ll almost always be able to help them with it. All it takes is their commitment, and I will find an answer.”

“I don’t want to make it sound like I’m giving someone a 100-percent guarantee because that’s a scary thing for a doctor to promise, but I can typically make someone feel at least 60 percent better when they follow through with the plan I’m recommending.”

“I love helping chronic conditions. If people have been having difficulty with something over the years, I love knowing that I’ll almost always be able to help them with it. All it takes is their commitment, and I will find an answer.”  — Dr. Dawn Graziano

Metta Perspective specialties
Dr. Graziano admittedly tends to specialize in things that others can’t treat. She gets a litany of patients who come through her door with chronic autoimmune conditions they’ve been suffering from for some time, but just haven’t been able to find the right kind of help.

“We deal with neuropathies (nerve damage), where western medicine says it’s impossible to regrow nerves, but I do it every day,” she says. “Acute pain is easy, but chronic pain is harder, and that’s where people get in trouble with taking Tylenol or opioids every day.”

“I’m not a fixer. I’m working with the person, who has to meet me halfway. It’s a required lifestyle change for them that’s no different than maintaining your house after a renovation or your car after a tuneup. The environment doesn’t change, and it makes it more impactful. My job is to get people to properly feel what’s going on with their body again.”

Fibromyalgia, arthritis, MS, Lupus, fertility, digestion, anxiety and stress are just a few of the more common ailments treated at Metta Perspective. And a lot of the programming is based around teaching people how to be their own best advocate so they can properly recognize when something isn’t right.

“We’ve had people with failed back surgeries who cannot get relief and they’re on maximum opium prescriptions,” Dr. Graziano explains. “What we do is regrow pain-relieving receptors and focus on the physical medicine vs. a chemical medicine, which means retraining the body how to regrow and regenerate new, healthy cells. And once we get that going on the right path, it just can regenerate exponentially with the right ingredients — those being nutrients and electrons.”

There are those who believe acupuncture can’t help and it’s too esoteric or it’s an alternative to medicine, when in reality it really should be regarded as front-line medicine that is great for treatment and further prevention.

Common misconceptions of acupuncture
“There are those who believe it can’t help and it’s too esoteric or it’s an alternative to medicine, when in reality it really should be regarded as front-line medicine that is great for treatment and further prevention,” Dr. Graziano says. “My goal is to help everyone understand that this is medicine. It shouldn’t be a secondary thought.”

Overcoming your fear
Dr. Graziano suggests anyone who isn’t a fan of needles should come in and to talk to her first, in order for the Metta team to develop a plan for the best course of action to help. “Even my most needle-phobic people end up generally loving needles,” she suggests. “Trust me, it’s a lot less pain than what you’re suffering from. I always walk someone through what they’re supposed to feel beforehand so there are realistic expectations.”

Recent success stories
** One current Metta patient came to the office suffering from paralysis from the waist down due to Transverse Myelitis, and it was starting to move up his arms. They started treatment right away — a 60 treatment plan combined with physical therapy — and he showed consistent improvement, eventually ditched the wheelchair and, by the end of his initial plan, was able to walk out of the office and is now driving and playing soccer with his grandkids.

** Dr. Graziano had a patient she’d been seeing regularly for more than three years for her muscular skeletal issues (neck pain and migraines), and after additional conversations about her hormonal/fertility shortcomings, she also committed to focus on improving the quality of her eggs. After six months of acupuncture, her eggs grew from 7 to 15 millimeters. “The quality of the eggs is what we’re focusing on here,” says Dr. Graziano. “Not just the pregnancy, but the health of the egg, the health of the baby.”