The Lane Cove rooms are at 2 Austin Street, directly opposite the Lane Cove Library and a few metres from Longueville Road. If you are coming from the village it is a walk of two or three minutes, and the parking behind the library is the easiest option in the middle of the day.
Lane Cove sends a particular mix of problems through the door. There are the desk-and-commute necks and low backs from St Leonards and the city, the shoulders and elbows of a suburb that plays a lot of tennis, and the knees and Achilles tendons that come with living on a hillside — the stairs down to Tambourine Bay and the streets off Burns Bay Road are their own kind of training load. Lane Cove also has a lot of people in their thirties and forties carrying small children, which is its own demand on a back.
A first appointment is mostly questions and movement testing: where the pain is, what makes it worse, what it stops you doing, and how it has behaved over weeks rather than days. From there you should leave knowing what is proposed, roughly how long it is expected to take, and what would mean changing the plan.
Worth bringing: any imaging or specialist letters you already have, a list of medications, and the shoes you actually walk or train in. If the pain is new and severe, follows a significant fall, or comes with numbness, weakness, fever or any change in bladder or bowel control, see a doctor first — that is a medical assessment, not a treatment question.
The nearest alternative if Lane Cove does not suit you is the Freshwater side, about 14 kilometres away across the Spit.
Headlines about herbs and the immune system can read like advice. Most describe early research that cannot tell you what you personally should take.
Older adults heading into winter, and anyone juggling ongoing aches with a busy life, may be drawn to headlines saying a particular herb acts on the immune system. It is easy to read such a story as a recommendation. In most cases, it is nothing of the kind.
Many of these reports describe experiments in a laboratory dish, studies in animals or tests of one concentrated extract at a carefully chosen strength. Findings like these are a starting point for scientists. They cannot tell you which product to buy, what dose you need or whether you will avoid catching a cold. The gap between an extract in a test tube and a person with a full medicine cabinet is large.
Treat a research article as a prompt for conversation rather than a shopping list. When you meet Dr Christine Shen, Acupuncturist, the discussion is more useful if it centres on your health history, the medicines you take and the reason you are seeking care. A phrase such as immune support is far too broad to guide a safe, individual plan, particularly if you are also managing pain, blood pressure or another long-term condition with your GP.
If a herbal prescription is agreed, you should leave with a clear product name, directions and a date to review it. Keep the instructions together with the original packaging. Let Christine know if any other medicine is started, stopped or changed. Should a new symptom appear and you are not sure whether it is connected, ask for advice rather than adjusting the amount on your own.
Conversations about Chinese herbs with Christine happen at the Freshwater clinic. If a particular article caught your eye, bring a copy along; reading it together can show what the research actually measured and what it leaves unanswered.
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