Acupuncture
Benefits of Working with Allied Practitioners
How your acupuncturist can build bridges among your health care team.
Let’s see if we can set the scene of something remarkable, something that could become the future of healthcare. Picture yourself walking into a doctor’s office or health clinic looking for relief from your debilitating chronic pain. The nurse calls your name and leads you into a serene treatment room. As you settle onto the examination table, the door opens and you are greeted by not just the familiar face of your acupuncturist, but also by a team of allied practitioners working in harmony to address your health concerns. continue reading
Chinese Medicine on Fainting, Dizziness
A friend of mine recently expressed having experienced great bouts of dizziness and fainting during the third trimester of her last pregnancy, which was in the dead of summer and was thus not surprising. I felt bad to hear of her struggles, but grateful that it inspired an idea for a new entry, on how Chinese medicine views fainting and dizziness, whether in pregnancy or not, and how we can treat or prevent it.
As with any Chinese medical diagnosis, the specifics get complicated, but we can still relatively easy to simplify into a couple of broad strokes. With any manifestation of dizziness, whether orthostatic, vertigo, passing out, or anything else, we are considering patterns of either blood deficiency, dampness, or a combination of the two, the latter of which obviously being the most difficult to treat. The final one is where your toddler at home forces you to “dance” with her around the house by spinning endlessly, for which there is no cure.
Blood Deficiency: More common in vegans, vegetarians, and pescatarians (most likely descending order), more common in women (especially while pregnant), the elderly, or anyone on long-term medications, which compromise the body’s absorption and capacity to produce blood. There is either a lack of cerebrovascular fluid or its flow and the head becomes faint.
Recommended treatment is herbs and moxibustion (acupuncture not as effective here), red meat or eggs, and earlier bedtimes.
Dampness: More common with obesity, more common in men, and/or people who consume a lot of alcohol, sugar, dairy, or raw foods. The microbiome grows congested with fluid retention, so the pathway by which our cellular energy carries healthy fluids to the brain is obstructed. “The clear yang qi cannot rise,” as we say, and our clarity or stability suffer.
Recommended treatment is minimizing all of the aforementioned foods, herbal medicine for 1-3 weeks to purge fluid retention, and acupuncture, especially along the vertigo line along the scalp located directly above the top of the ears. Note, this point will not be as effective on blood deficiency patterns, who are suffering a pattern of “deficiency,” not “excessive damp,” which responds better to aggressive manual treatment. As for self-care, drink hot ginger tea and black teas until symptoms subside.
Combination Blood Deficiency/Dampness: This is most common in pregnant women and very difficult to treat, because to nourish blood we must generate fluids, but to resolve dampness we must purge it. Not to mention the fact that we must be careful with purging fluid retention in pregnant women, since the fetus is ultimately a form of fluid retention—albeit an adorably magical one.
Dizziness and vertigo are serious conditions, not generally life threatening, although potentially dangerous when leading to the physical risks that accompany fainting. As always, Chinese Medicine can have much to offer in the way of hands-on treatment, internal medicine, and recommended self-care.
When in doubt: red meat, eggs, ginger tea, good rest, and steamed vegetables for the dampness.
Using Acupuncture to Manage Autoimmune Diseases
Autoimmune diseases can prove to be intricate and seemingly unsolvable puzzles for many people. And statistics prove this to be true as millions worldwide are impacted by autoimmune diseases ranging from rheumatoid arthritis to lupus, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, irritable bowel disease, and even Parkinson’s disease. Conventional medicine can diagnose 100 different autoimmune conditions, however the treatments offered don’t completely resolve the issues associated with the disease and in extreme cases, no treatment is available at all. And yet, in the midst of all these medical challenges that autoimmune diseases present, acupuncture emerges as a promising ally, offering relief to those grappling with these often-complex health conditions. continue reading
Acupuncture for Orthopedic Pain
Orthopedic pain is a big deal for many Americans, and it comes in many different forms including knee, hip, shoulder, and other joint pain. Acupuncture has been proven an effective tool to deal with orthopedic pain…even Harvard Medical School thinks so. continue reading
When is Stress Actually to Blame?
I feel like in the 20th century no one was talking about stress as an etiology for disease. Possibly I am guilty of generational egocentricity, having barely reached the drinking age by 2000. Thankfully, I had very few young friends discussing ailments and how they came about.
Still, I think it is more referenced, even over-diagnosed nowadays, especially by western doctors any time they cannot explain a symptom or its etiology, shrugging shoulders and throwing their arms up, citing the most probable suspect. “Might just be stress,” they say, which for its listener might feel an implication that their complaint is a fabrication of the mind, if not something that can only be resolved or improved once everything in life is good, or they achieve spiritual enlightenment, neither of which are in the cards for most of us this go around.
While I’m all for patients having agency over their own health, things happen that are out of our control—an accident, post-viral symptoms, genetic predispositions, or just life—when it helps to have a knowledgeable clinician to provide valuable insight and hopefully effective treatment.
In Chinese Medicine stress is said to have a drying effect on the body. This is why when people “stress eat” they crave “damp-causing foods,” such as cheese, bread, and sugar.
Unfortunately, such foods do not generate healthy fluids, nor is stress-induced dryness the kind that will drain pathogenic dampness. Instead, the drying effect of stress refers to the depletion of mucosal organ fluids, beneficial stomach fluids (anyone get acid reflux or diarrhea when over-stressed?), and/or those that lubricate our orifices, gyri and sulci of the brain. Although hydration is advisable, drinking water cannot replace these fluids.
In early stages or mild cases, the best way I know to restore such fluids is through rest, sleep, and the consumption of eggs, bone broths, or red meats. For the rest of us herbal medicine is necessary. Herbs such as ginseng or licorice for the gut, puerariae root for the head and neck, ophiopogonis for the intestines, atractylodes for the intestines, trichosanthis for the orifices, or rehmanniae for the brain and blood. Always consult a (real) herbalist before taking.
Although extensive periods of stress are never helpful, it is important clinically, to thoughtfully discern between when stress is, and when it is not the primary cause of a particular symptom. Almost everyone in modern society has at least moderate degrees of stress, yet everyone is walking around in enormously different stages of health or discomfort.
From our perspective, when stress directly brings up a symptom, it informs us that dryness is probably at its root of imbalance. The body couldn’t tolerate any further depletion of fluids. Then, and only then, is when stress is to blame—not to mention the fact that most disease is multi-factorial. Systemic dryness is likely only part of the picture, which is why many people “do all the right things”—exercise, meditation, good sleep hygiene—but still experience symptoms. Because it is almost never “just stress.”
