Acupuncture Helps Arthritis: Three Illustrations

Acupuncture isn't for everyone, but for those seeking natural remedies to pain, it can be "just what the doctor ordered." Let's take a glimpse of some actual cases. Patients names are fictitious to protect privacy.

Marsha, 65, came in with severe arthritis in her hands: she couldn't button her sweater and felt shooting arm pain at night. Depressed and fearful of her ability to work, Marsha committed to a three session a week for three months, then taping to twice and then once a week for 10 months. The swelling in her hands is gone and, despite a few previous surgeries, are strong and pain-free for her work as master gardener.

Philip is a 65 y.o. actor and avid golfer. His couldn't raise his right shoulder. During examination, he discovered his left shoulder was in no better condition. Inspection reveals scars on the right arm and both legs from an accident occurring in the 70s. Philip came in twice a week for six weeks. He continues on a weekly schedule to "let me do what I do," as he put it, because besides improved range of motion, he noticed less urge to go at night and his eczema improved. His golf game is benefitting too.

Valerie is a 45 y.o. violinist, who was experiencing "nervy" pain and hypersensitivity in her middle finger and weakness in the thumb of the right hand. Inspection revealed much imbalance at the neck, where she also had discomfort. Seeking to address the root issue, Valerie stuck to a schedule of once a week for six weeks and some exercises to do at home. She comes in every three weeks for maintenance. The nerviness is gone and she is able to play longer without irritation.

Acupuncture is not a quick fix for chronic cases. The up-side is that there are not only no side-effects, but the benefits build with time, perhaps like fine wine.

Nausea and Hangover Formula

I thought some of the Chinese medicine people out there might like to learn of this simple but effective formula for treating nausea and hangovers. Success from this formula occurred after administering, to no effect, Guangci Tang's (hereafter GCT) Wen Dan Pian for nausea associated with migraines. The 29 yo female's migraine expression (anomalously on the left) had been effectively relieved with acupuncture and GCT's Shaofu Zhuyu Pian.

GCT Wen Dan Pian focuses on resolving phlegm with ancillary action of detoxing and regulating the liver. Its ingredients are listed below:

zhi ban xia
zhu ru
chen pi
fu ling
lian qiao
jin yin hua
yu jin
zhi shi

The formula I switched to comes from a book published in 1999 by Chinese Medical Technologies Publisher (zhongguo yiyao keji chuban she, 中国医药科技出版社）, entitled Tea Remedies Herbal Foods (cha liao yao shan, 茶疗药膳）. In it is a chapter on various formulas that are appropriate for the seasons. Therein, I found a formula under "spring," that I felt was worth giving a try. The ingredients are listed below:

green tea
shi hu
xiang yuan/fo shou
ge gen

The text notes that the formula "clears heat, generates fluids, calms the stomach, clears food stagnation, detoxes alcohol (xing jiu, 醒酒) and resolves irritability." It goes on to boast, "It can frequently constitute the most ideal beverage for detoxing alcohol. For resolving the difficulties of spring, its efficacy is particularly apparent (p.128). "

Even though it is listed last among ingredients, interestingly ge-gen, which we know by its Japanese name kudzu, begins the short discussion on herb function. Practical knowledge around ge-gen has shown it to have positive effects on hangovers. Research has shown that ge-gen reduces alcohol craving and diminishes the quantity of alcohol consumed. These properties informed my selection of this formula from among eight others for the treating of spring disorders because my patient expresses concern over her keenness for alcohol, which she consumes daily in an amount that would likely be considered unremarkable in France or Italy. As an herb whose action focuses powerfully on the yang-ming channel, ge-gen is a very sensible selection, particularly in light of ban-xia and zhu-ru's disappointing performance for her.

Just for the record, I didn't use fo-shou, rather I swapped it out for some top-notch chen-pi that I picked and dried myself. Also, all the ingredients were ground into a powder and the patient was instructed to take three to five grams before going to bed and anytime she felt nauseated.

I understand that there may be some difficulty in sourcing shi-hu. Among the yin tonics, it is deceptively similar to the diuretic tong-cao given it's styrofoam nature. Han-lian cao is non-cloying, but it is a much grassier substitution. Other possible substitutions, like mai men dong, sha-shen, or yu-zhu, if selected, should probably be used in their prepared granulated form instead of raw. Under no circumstances would I consider sheng-di an appropriate substitution because of its heaviness. I personally would probably use tian-hua-fen as a substitution because it also generates fluids, is non-cloying, grinds up easily, and has virtually no taste--thus fewer complaints! Also, since phlegm is a principle cause of nausea, tian-hua-fen appears a particularly appropriate substitute.

Finally, the question regarding the actual meaning of "spring disorders" looms, particularly in light of my administering the formula in July. Of course, we know that constitutionally speaking we all lean toward expressing a certain "season." The problem is that I don't practice "constitutional acupuncture." It's way over my head. The diagnosis of "liver over acting on spleen," sounds logical, but there's such a laundry list of conditions that fall under this diagnosis that I'm altogether skeptical of its existence. In other words, I very much doubt that the above formula could be administered for the sundry cases called, "liver over acting" with any degree of benefit, unless we are specifically speaking upon nausea. Still, the association of alcohol with liver and ge-gen's proven effect on alcohol points to it as a possible lynchpin herb for balancing the yang-ming, jue-yin, shao-yang, tai-yin quadriad. Considering the complementary herbs of green tea and fo-shou, this speculative assertion seems reasonable.

Natural Solutions to Whooping Cough with Chinese Medicine

Whooping cough is on the rise. This is the case even among children inoculated against it and in adult populations. Pertussis, aka whooping cough, is a bog that invades the respiratory system, often causing a wailing crane-like sound in children and spasmotic cough in kids and adults.

Within the system of Chinese medical herbalism is a category of herbs with the particular function of killing bugs: viral, fungal, and bacterial in nature. Among them are the more than 20 herbs used to treat bugs in the respiratory system. These are combined and cooked into a broth of sorts, consumed usually 3 times a day.

Common concerns about the side-effects of prolonged antibiotic use, as well as their efficacy make Chinese medical herbalism a sensible option. Each person who is affected by a given pathogen will respond uniquely depending upon the body's pre-existing status. For example, it is not hard to imagine that a person prone to respiratory infections and with a history of antibiotic use faces a very real prospect of deteriorating into pneumonia. Such an individual would require a different approach from someone whose lung system is generally strong. Chinese herbal medicine affords flexibility in dosing and herb selection to address the complete circumstances at hand.

Herbal broths are the most effective way to address lung complaints, short of a nebulizer, mist, or steam. It is actually not a bad idea to breathe in some of the steam from the formula, so as to line the nostrils and sinuses with the herbs. Naturally, be careful not to burn yourself with the steam. The best way to do this is to do this is by placing a towel about one's hand suspending it about a foot and a half or two from the pot, which should be placed upon the floor while you're seated in a chair.

Benefits should be noticed almost immediately and definitely within 24 hrs. Contact your Chinese medicine herbalist if nothing has changed or worsened.

A recent case serves to illustrate something about the flexibility of Chinese medical herbalism in action. A patient had just returned from a trip to Ohio and had caught a "cold." It appeared to be in its final stages but for a lingering cough, which he attributed to having something stuck. A week and three bags later, he reported feeling feeling about 50% better. He no longer needed to suck on throat lozenges but he would still break into very powerful spasmodic coughts, some so severe he fainted on two occasions. I devised a new formula after consulting one of the formulary classics written nearly 2000 years ago, the Golden Cabinet. After 3 additional bags he reported that his condition was 95% improved.

The difference between formula one and formula two lies in emphasis: the former focused on clearing something perceived to be phlegm-like in the throat, whereas in the latter pertusis was identified as the cause. The original formula of 6 herbs had only one herb specializing in killing bugs, where as the latter of 10 still only had two. Clearly, there is something more a play in these herbal combinations beyond their individual attributes.

In conclusion, Chinese medical herbalism offers a sensible and natural solution to respiratory disorders like pertussis. It has the flexibility to address your pre-existing status. Relief will be noticed almost immediately.

Water-logged: Halitosis and Hemorrhoids From Excess Water Consumption

This is the case of a professional female in her late 40s suffering from chronic halitosis. She experiences mortifying workplace interactions because of the way colleagues react when she speaks with them. Mints make the symptoms worse. I had previously treated her for heart palpitations using Chinese herbs based on a phone interview. Earlier attempts to quell the halitosis with herbs had proven unsuccessful.

For purposes of this discussion we'll call our patient Patricia. She is quite health-conscious, exercising daily and eating about 50% raw in addition to taking many supplements. She also suffers from hemorrhoids that are not correlated with either diet or stress. Additionally, she complains of "not being able to feel her stomach" given the amount of exercise she performs. She also reports feeling tingling and numbness of the legs when she exercises, but she found that a tea comprised of Chinese herbs for "blood detoxification" was helpful, so long as she took it twice a day.

From this set of information I queried further, whereupon she volunteered, "I'm still drinking a lot of water." "Oh yeah?" I replied. "How much?" "One-hundred ounces." "Does that include other beverages?" "No."

I've spoken to Patricia before about the Chinese medicine view of drinking water. It generally does NOT encourage drinking vast qualities of water to "flush" the body of "toxins." Furthermore, one's overall water intake includes water extracted from food and other beverages. If one suffers from hydration issues, then substances with qualities "juicier" than water are appropriate. Fruit or honey are examples. Patricia did NOT feel thirsty. Rather, she had developed a routine of forcing herself to drink water as a means of maintaining good health.

A healthy balance between opposites, hot/cold, moist/dry, top/bottom, is the goal of Chinese medicine, otherwise commonly understood as the Goldilocks principle: Not too much of either extreme but just right. Chinese medical inquiry is aimed at organizing symptoms into meaningful categories of "too much" or "not enough" and often relating the two.

"Did you have hemorrhoids before drinking a lot of water?"
"No, but I've been drinking that much water for a long time now. Plus, my tests show everything to be normal, except for a deficiency of sodium and potassium. "

"Hmm. How might one become deficient in those minerals?" "Uh, by sweating it out?" "Sure, but you're not sweating it out, are you? I recommend that you drink at most 64 oz of water a day INCLUDING the other beverages."

Three days later I received a call that the hemorrhoids were shrinking and that she could feel her stomach. She could not report on the breath with any certainty, given the apprehension she has developed over five years, but the quick response in the other areas have made her optimistic.

Explanation:

In Western and Chinese medicine the digestive trac stretches from the mouth to anus. Patricia's Western exam by endoscopy and bloodwork showed no major anomalies, though all of the symptoms clearly laid along the digestive trac: breath, bloating, bulging (hemorrhoids). From the Chinese medical perspective the excess quantity of water was bogging down the body's ability to maintain other functions. The most obvious symptom of this relates to bloating, but the hemorrhoids reflect the same problem. Although she had been drinking such large quantities of water for years, the force necessary to process such quantities had diminished. This may be due to years of water consumption or the normal decline in force reserves as a natural part of aging. Whatever the reasons, it is important to note that her body's rapid response shows simply that less water should be consumed and that supplementing with herbs at this juncture appears premature.

It is reasonable to conclude that the large quantity of water consumed had not only created bloating but also diluted Patricia's stomach acids, a test not normally made at routine examinations. The stomach in Chinese medicine is considered the organ of "rotting and ripening." Perhaps her stomach did much rotting and little ripening as a result of diluted stomach acids.

Patricia's bowel movements were normal, except for the hemorrhoids. A hemorrhoid can be seen as a type of prolapse, i.e., falling, from the Eastern medicine perspective. Prolapse is a sign that the body's force to carry forth normal function in the prolapsed area is deficient. Area here refers to the digestive trac, the puffiness at the abdomen also being similarly expressed at the anus for the same reason. Similarly, the vast quantity of water had diluted or overwhelmed the kidney's ability to maintain electrolyte balance, thus the leakage of sodium and potassium.

Quality blood production by the body requires that the body possess the initial capacity to extract essential nutrients from food. If energy is otherwise allocated toward processing water and if water is bogging down the system, then the body simply hasn't the reserves to produce high quality blood. Numbness and tingling is often a sign of poor quality blood. Despite Western tests' inability to detect this, her symptoms alone points in this direction. Patricia's leg numbness upon exercise demonstrates a mild case of blood deficiency, confirmed by the positive results from the herbal tea she drank. It will not be surprising to see this problem abate with energy being freed up for other functions.

Conclusion

Hopefully this discussion has provided a good illustration of holistic medicine in action from a Chinese medical approach. It is a medicine assessing balance between extremes: the Goldilocks principle. Water, despite its obvious life sustaining attributes, should be consumed sensibly, otherwise it can overwhelm the body. When the body's ability to perform work is less than the work required to be performed, exhaustion occurs. This goes for all aspects of the body and life activity. From the above example, however, we can see that even water requires the body's work. The kidneys and digestive system must work to process water. At a young age, the body's capacity to compensate for excesses of all types is much greater than a body in its late 40s and beyond.

Finally, a little bit about Chinese medicine practiced in a Western world. The way that Chinese medicine describes physiology to "the Western mind" is still incomprehensible. Western medicine stands as the standard around which discussions of body occurs. Patricia cited her test results as indication that everything was fine even though symptomatically she wasn't. Fortunately, Chinese medicine relies primarily upon the symptoms themselves as an indication that something is indeed wrong.

When a patient comes back with test results that report a clean bill of health, rare is the instance where a patient is equipped to determine the appropriateness of particular tests or even the their meaning. The physician who took the original bloodwork should have queried further about her deficiency in electrolytes, but increasingly modern medicine can only afford to do such detective work on TV shows with fancy equipment, or so it too often appears. As a conceptual adjunct to the prevailing understandings about how the body works, Chinese medicine can nevertheless avail itself of Western data to corroborate Chinese medical diagnoses. Fortunately, the collaborative approach toward detecting the problem allowed for the time where the patient could divulge core Western data that could be used to convince her of the diagnostic veracity of Chinese medicine in this instance.

Constipation: Revisiting My Anti-Dairy Dogma

This lent my partner and I have been enjoying a protein drink in the morning and a green drink in the evening. After 10 days we were both experiencing an uncharacteristic sluggish movement of our bowels, mine being sticky and incomplete and hers requiring considerable effort to pass. This article discusses constipation from a Chinese medicine perspective and how we resolved our problem with yogurt.

The causes of constipation vary in Chinese medicine. The most typical causes are heat and stagnation, but qi, yang, and dampness can factor. Say what?! Well, heat causes dryness, making it difficult to pass the stool; stress causes stagnation, which inhibits movement. Qi designates functional capacity. In the intestines, qi refers to motive power. Contrasted from "stagnation", where the power to move is not at issue, qi deficiency means power reserves are too low to fuel peristalsis. Yang deficiency is essentially a deeper aspect of qi deficiency where the impeding effects of cold also contributes to constipation. Finally, dampness is a cause and effect of qi deficiency. It often results from eating constitutionally cold foods like salads and drinking juices, green or fruit.

Dampness, according to some, marks the presence of dysbiosis, or what may be called bacterial and yeast overgrowth. Damp-heat is a type of dampness commonly arising from one's constitution, eating greasy fried foods or alcohol consumption. Alcohol kills friendly intestinal flora, similar to what happens when taking antibiotics.

As a general rule, I encourage all my patients suffering from internal conditions, e.g., asthma, migraines, sinusitis, allergies, irritable bowel etc., to eliminate all dairy. Given years of diary-industry indoctrination, however, the most common response is, "But what about calcium?" I do not encourage calcium supplementation, rather believing that adequate calcium can be gained by eating sufficient amounts of vegetables and weight-bearing exercise, the latter being necessary for the uptake of calcium already present in the bloodstream.

By Chinese medicine reckoning, dairy is constitutionally cold, which translates functionally as that which will slow digestion. Nothing in itself is solely bad or good. In instances where one experiences chronic dryness and thirst, dairy may prove beneficial, though it would never be my first choice. The stomach prefers to remain cool and moist. Conversely, the spleen, which is the organ that powers digestion and bowel motility, prefers dryness and warmth.

Chinese medicine doesn't discourse upon yogurt, though functionally it is vastly different from other dairy due to the presence of probiotics. Probiotics are various bugs, i.e., bacteria, who make their happy home in our intestinal lining. They are an essential part of our natural immunity by keeping unwanted cooties and yeast to a minimum.

When I added three tablespoons of yogurt to our morning protein drink after three days the sluggishness, strain and stickiness issues resolved for us both. This means that probiotics boost qi, i.e., increases motility, and a resolve dampness by eliminating stickiness. Interestingly, I had experimented with the old Chinese medicine "reliables" for handling dampness, but the results were NOT anywhere as effective as simple yogurt. We may conclude then that health regimes that include juices and supplemental drinks will benefit greatly by the addition of yogurt. Bowel movements will not only improve, but one will be assured of greater absorption of the vital nutrients from the juices and drinks. I am particularly keen on a brand from Trader Joe's that comes from cows NOT treated with Monsanto's bovine growth hormone (rBST), proven to cause cancer in European studies but nevertheless marketed in the United States.

Conclusion:

In the course of experimenting with the increase of juices and powders, my partner and I began to experience uncharacteristic constipation. Chinese medicine classifies constipation based on causative factors like heat, stagnation, qi deficiency and dampness. I had taken reliable Chinese herbs to address my particular pattern with marginal benefit. Although dairy is typically considered an aggravating element for digestion, yogurt functions in an opposite fashion due to the presence of probiotics. Yogurt is not only an immune booster, but it is also an effective first course of action in addressing constipation characterized by qi-deficiency and dampness.