Most people might not think of using acupuncture for skin conditions, but in fact, rosacea is something that we’ve effectively treated at Acupuncture in the Park. Rosacea is an interesting animal, as it not only affects your skin with acne-like pimples, but it also is vascular in nature, which causes the flushing and redness for which it’s named.

Rosacea affects both men and women who are middle aged and older.  It involves the nose, cheeks, and chin with redness, broken blood vessels, and pimples.  It’s often accompanied by easy flushing and a sensation of heat.  In more advanced cases, the cheeks can become so red that they appear almost purple, and over time, this condition can cause thickening of the skin, especially the nose, which was the case for W. C. Fields.

Treating rosacea in Western medicine is geared toward managing the acne and inflammation, and involves the use of topical and oral antibiotics or flagyl, a powerful anti-infective.  Any long-term solutions involve surgical debulking of thickened tissue or laser surgery to treat broken blood vessels.

In Chinese medicine, rosacea is considered to be a kind of heat in your body.  Like heat anywhere, it tends to rise upward, and in the case of rosacea, it affects your face.  Interestingly, a great many people who have rosacea also suffer from migraine headaches, which also tend to be caused by heat moving upward and creating symptoms.

We discovered the effectiveness of acupuncture for rosacea almost by accident.  We performed cosmetic acupuncture on a number of patients who had mild to moderate rosacea to see if the protocol would help their condition.  Not only did their skin look better overall, but their rosacea disappeared.  Over time, we discovered that some patients who have rosacea respond equally as well without the entire cosmetic protocol.  In some cases, we use a point prescription that combines some local points on the face to reduce the inflammation and redness with other points on the body to clear the systemic heat.

Part of our treatment for rosacea is to determine and eliminate the source of the heat and causes of flare-ups. This involves an assessment and history of the condition, lifestyle factors, diet, and triggers. Once our patients with rosacea  complete a course of treatment, we rarely see them except for an infrequent maintenance visit.  That’s because their once-inflamed skin is now cool, calm, and under control.  Who knew?

In Chinese medicine, allergies (along with viruses and bacteria) are considered external pathogens, or invaders from the outside that can make you sick. You have a defense system against these invaders, called Wei Qi, which guards the exterior of your body like a protective bubble or shield.  When your Wei Qi is weak, all kinds of pathogens can get past your defenses and cause colds, flu, and allergies.

The solution to dealing with allergies is two-fold.  You need to strengthen your Wei Qi and deal with the pathogens (in this case, allergens) that are causing your symptoms.  Strengthening your Wei Qi, and your energy in general, is important in relieving your allergies in the long run.  This can be done by eating really well: whole foods in their original form, lots of vegetables and fruits, avoiding sugar and sweeteners, and staying clear of saturated fats.  In addition, you may need to avoid foods that are hard to digest, such as concentrated juices, rich foods, and in some cases dairy products.

Acupuncture and Chinese medicine can be an effective way to deal with allergies on a fundamental level, too.  A good practitioner will combine acupuncture, Chinese herbs, food therapy, and some lifestyle tweaks to help boost Wei Qi and alleviate your current symptoms.  The best way to do this is to work with your acupuncturist before your allergies act up, if possible.  In doing so, you can face the assault of allergy season with a stronger defense system.

The second part of dealing with seasonal allergies is minimizing your symptoms by dealing with what’s causing them.  In this case, it’s pollen, which to susceptible people is like a toxic dust that settles on clothes, hair, carpet, and even pets.  A few simple tips for getting the p word out of your life include:

-Shower in the evening to get the day’s pollen off your skin and out of your hair.

-Realize that during allergy season, the wind is not your friend.  Close your windows when it’s blowing.

-Wash your hands after handling a pet that’s been outside.

-Change your clothes after you’ve been working or exercising outdoors.

-Get a Neti Pot and use it.  It’s a small pot to help you cleanse your nasal passages of all that pollen, and can be found at most drug stores.

-Think about buying a really good vacuum, as pollen is extremely fine and will settle on your floors.  Dusting is a good thing, too.

First, the properties of heat in Chinese medicine are that it creates movement. This means that fluids, blood, and energy in an injured area flow better with heat. This movement serves to dilate the blood vessels, loosen tight muscles, increase range of motion, and promote healing.

This sounds pretty good. So why wouldn’t you put heat on just about everything? Well, because good health is all about flow, practitioners of Chinese medicine tend to recommend heat in most circumstances. However, there are a few instances in which cold might be a better choice.

The Chinese think of cold as a river freezing up in the winter–it contracts and slows down. This is also what happens in your body when you apply ice to an injured area. It constricts the vessels and minimizes swelling. During the first hours and days after a traumatic injury, it’s actually a good idea to use ice to keep the swelling down.

Choosing between hot and cold becomes a little trickier in cases of inflammation. In general, inflammation is hot, so you should put cold on it, right? Well, not always. Remember that heat increases blood flow to the area, and increased flow promotes healing.

So how do you determine which to use? Here are a couple of guidelines:

-In general, use what feels better and pay attention to the weather, especially with chronic pain. If your pain is worse in the cold, damp weather, apply heat. If it’s worse in the warm weather, use cold.

-Feel the area of pain. Actually touch it. Frequently it will feel cold from lack of circulation or warm from inflammation. If it feels cold, warm it up. If it’s swollen and hot, use some ice.

-Don’t be fooled by the numbing properties of cold. Your injury may feel better for an hour or so after you’ve iced, but if applying cold makes it worse in the long run, go for heat.

-For sports injuries, physical therapy exercises, or just using your injured area; warm it up for ten minutes or so before use. This will loosen the muscles and increase your range of motion. Then cool it down for five or ten minutes after your workout.

-Do not apply ice to a muscle spasm; it will make it worse. Remember, cold contracts, so icing a painfully contracted muscle will make it hurt more. I learned this the hard way. By the time I figured out that the cold was aggravating a spasm in my lower back, I could hardly walk. How do you know if it’s a muscle spasm? Generally, the pain is pretty sharp, comes on quickly, and inhibits your movement. A high percentage of back pain is caused by muscle spasms.

-If you have a traumatic injury, apply ice for the first 24 to 36 hours to keep the swelling to a minimum. After that time, apply ice if there’s still swelling, if not go with heat, or alternate between heat and cold.

As for my pulled quad muscle, I decided to start with cold.  The muscle wasn’t in spasm, just sore that first day.  After one day of icing in the morning and evening, I switched to heat for a couple of days, and after two days, the muscle felt pretty good and ready for more boot camp punishment.

While what’s going on may seem like a simple bladder infection, in Chinese medicine they’re anything but simple.  Like headaches, colds, or back pain, bladder infections (or UTI’s) have a distinct personality.  Symptoms can run the gamut from urinary urgency, frequency, difficulty, dribbling, sharp urethral pain, spasms in the lower abdomen, and pain radiating to your lower back.

In Chinese medicine, UTI’s generally fall into a pattern of excess or depletion.  Excess patterns are due to an accumulation or too much of something.  Bladder infections that are excess tend to be a combination of dampness (an accumulation of fluids) and heat.  The most notable symptom of this kind of pattern is a burning pain during urination.  A damp heat UTI can be the result of too much alcohol, hot spicy food, sweets, or poor hygiene.

UTI’s that are caused by depletion are usually the result of being run down from aging, not sleeping well, poor diet, and…um, too much sex.  Living life a little too fully can wear down your Chinese Kidney and/or Spleen to the point that you’re unable to metabolize water or control the mechanism of the bladder very well.  The end result can be incontinence or dribbling, dull and achy pain, and a sore lower back.

To further complicate the diagnosis, in Chinese medicine, bladder infections are grouped into six different types:

Heat.  This is the typical bladder infection, with sharp, burning pain.  You may also run a fever; have constipation, thirst, or a bitter taste in your mouth.

Stony.  This one really hurts with the kind of pain that can bring you to your knees.  This is essentially kidney stones, and the symptoms include severe low back or abdominal pain, cramping, difficulty urinating, urinating blood, and passing stones in the urine.

Qi.  This is all about your energy, or Qi, and can be either excess or deficient.  An excess pattern means that your energy is stagnating and causing symptoms, which include difficult urination, a feeling of fullness or pain in your lower abdomen, and possibly chest tightness or rib pain.  A depleted Qi pattern is caused by not having enough energy for your bladder to metabolize water.  Symptoms in this case may include a feeling of heaviness in your lower abdomen, dripping or incontinence, possibly a pale complexion, feeling tired, shortness of breath, and an achy lower back.

Bloody.  This pattern can also be from either an excess or depletion, but either way, there will be blood in your urine.  An excess pattern is essentially heat causing you to bleed, with symptoms such as urinary frequency, urgency, sharp burning pain, and of course, blood in your urine–usually a fair amount.  Being depleted can also cause blood in your urine, but there typically won’t be as much blood, or the bleeding will occur over a long period of time.  Also, if this pattern is from being depleted, it won’t generally be as sharply painful, but you may feel tired and you may have a weak, achy low back and/or knees.

Cloudy.  Like the bloody pattern, this one can come from either an excess or a depletion.  The common denominator however, is cloudy or milky looking urine.  If caused by an excess, this type will have very cloudy urine with urethral pain and burning.  If from a depletion, your symptoms may include dribbling of cloudy looking urine, mild urethral pain, dizziness, ringing ears, and again, a weak or achy lower back and knees.  This pattern tends to affect people who have a thin, weak, or depleted body type.

Taxation.  This is a total depletion pattern, and comes from overdoing it or being totally wiped out.  The symptoms include periodic dribbling of urine, stress incontinence (leaking after jumping or sneezing), fatigue, and an achy, weak low back or knees.

Each type of UTI has a specific method of treatment in Chinese medicine.  However, in general, an excess pattern will involve clearing heat and resolving the dampness. This may be done through a combination of acupuncture, Chinese herbs, and food therapy.  A common herbal formula for bladder infections is Ba Zheng San, (also called Eight Herb Powder for Rectification). This particular formula works to clear heat and drain out dampness, and in some cases can be used for UTI’s where there is some blood in the urine.

For UTI’s that are caused by being depleted, the first line of treatment may involve Chinese herbs to supplement Spleen or Kidney Qi (energy).  Acupuncture and foods chosen to build up your strength may also become part of your treatment.  It’s important to remember that it usually takes longer to treat a depletion pattern than an excess pattern.  That’s because when you’re depleted, the treatment involves nourishing or rebuilding your body, and this can take time.  However, with the proper treatment and time, you can rebuild your body and prevent your symptoms from recurring.

The news the next day told of the carnage brought about by the high temperatures. The First Aid tent was overflowing with overheated and dehydrated runners, some of whom ended up in the hospital. However, the runners in the worst condition were those who had drunk too much. It’s true—there were some runners that day who followed commonsense advice of drinking lots but got into real trouble because they were grossly over hydrated.

How could that happen? Well, drinking too much water can cause an electrolyte imbalance in which the dilution of sodium in your body becomes life threatening. Marathon runners sweat heavily over the course of a 26-mile race, and lose both water and electrolytes. When a dehydrated runner drinks too much water without supplementing the necessary electrolytes, water intoxication, or hyponatremia, can occur. The symptoms of water intoxication aren’t pretty. The electrolyte imbalance causes tissue swelling, which in serious cases can lead to an irregular heartbeat, fluid in the lungs, pressure on the brain, seizures, coma, and death. The good news is, if it’s treated before the swelling causes too much damage, a water intoxicated athlete can fully recover within a couple of days.

So what does this story have to do with Chinese medicine? Well, in the past year or so, I’ve seen several patients in my clinic who in one way or another have been over hydrating. While they weren’t dangerously ill, their water consumption was enough to have a negative impact on their health.

In one instance, a woman in her early 40’s, named Jane, had what felt like a chronic bladder infection that was not responding to Western or Chinese medical treatments. Finally, she went to a clinic specializing in bladder health, and the doctor determined that her bladder was healthy, but inordinately large. Now if you’re a regular beer drinker, that may be a good problem to have, but in Jane’s case, it was causing her discomfort. On questioning, Jane reported that she drinks several 32 oz bottles of water every day. Essentially, the doctor said that drinking so much water had enlarged her bladder to the point of discomfort. Her course of treatment is to drink a lot less.

A second example of so-called water damage has occurred in a number of patients I’ve seen who struggle with chronic diarrhea—the kind that’s life-altering. Most of these patients are having episodes several times a day and can’t eat a meal without having to hit the bathroom shortly afterward. In almost every case, when I ask about water consumption, I find that these patients are drinking a lot–sometimes several liters a day. This causes their digestion to be so waterlogged that it almost completely shuts down. The course of treatment is to drink less, especially with meals, and to switch to room temperature or warm drinks. Through acupuncture, herbal medicine, and dialing back the water, these patients have seen their diarrhea go away completly or be greatly reduced.

In Chinese medicine, these are both cases of something called dampness, in which your body is unable to metabolize water effectively. In both of these instances the dampness was brought about by drinking too much water. Dampness is almost always a digestive issue, in which your Chinese Spleen gets bogged down and can’t make good use of the fluids in your body. Dampness can be the cause of a number of symptoms including diarrhea, bladder infections, yeast, poor energy, joint pain, headaches, and a feeling of heaviness. In addition, that excess roll of fat around your middle or on your thighs is also considered to be damp tissue—it’s moist and heavy—a little bit like wet sand.

There are a number of reasons you become damp. The most common include drinking too much, eating too much, eating the wrong foods (sweet, rich, greasy), stress, and living in a damp place, like England or a basement. Dampness is a drag, because like wet sand, it tends to take a long time to dry out.

The best way to deal with dampness is to not become damp in the first place. This means eating good food in moderation; getting a little exercise; saying hydrated, but not over drinking; and maintaining your weight. Being proactive against dampness also means paying attention to your digestion. Some simple ways to improve the digestive process include sitting at the table when you eat, chewing your food well, and drinking small amounts of room temperature water or hot tea with your meals.

While symptoms caused by dampness, and dampness itself can be a challenge in the acupuncture clinic, it can be resolved. Through the use of acupuncture, drying or draining herbs, Chinese food therapy, and some lifestyle tweaks, dampness can be something you talk about in the past tense.

It’s hard to understand how a weather condition could be causing such misery. But it’s true, in Chinese medicine wind can be the evil force behind tremors, dizziness, numbness, and twitches.  It can also cause seasonal allergies,  colds or even the current flu that’s going around.

Let me explain.

First of all, wind is considered a pathogen, or something that makes you sick.  Many of the concepts of Chinese medicine are based on the natural world, and what makes you sick is no exception.  Pathogens are a little bit like bad weather in your body.  When you have a fever or inflammation, you have heat; when your arthritis flares up during the cold weather, you have a cold pathogen; and when you retain lots of water, you have dampness. (This is a very simplified explanation.)

Wind is considered movement where there should be stillness.  As a pathogen, wind is dry, light and active.  It tends to be Yang in nature—like the sunny side of the hill—it’s slightly warm, and it generally moves upward and outward. 

There are actually two kinds of wind—internal and external.  Internal wind tends to affect your body on a deeper level.  It’s frequently associated with a malfunction of the Liver system to control the smooth flow of energy in your body, and can cause symptoms associated with movement—vertigo, tremors, twitches, and seizures.  Wind is usually the dark cocktail behind illnesses such as Meniere’s and Parkinson’s.

While frequently related to a Liver system malfunction, internal wind can also be caused by systemic dryness or malnourishment.  Much like a dry tree, the brittle leaves at the top rattle in the wind.

Wind can also be external, affecting the outer layers of your body, which is the pathogen behind everyday colds, flu, allergies, and viral infections.  In addition, the cause comes from your inability to fight off outside “influences”, such as viruses, bacteria, and pollen. True to its nature, the wind associated with a cold tends to affect the upper part of your body and move around—first you have a sore throat, then your nose is stuffed up, and then your cold sinks into your chest.  External wind can also cause itching, hives, and rashes.

External wind tends to be associated with your Lungs, which encompasses your respiratory system and skin.  In Chinese medicine, your Lungs are considered the most external of your organs, because with every breath, you come into contact with the outside world.  So, external wind tends to affect the outermost part of your body—your Lungs and skin.

External wind usually teams up with other pathogens, such as heat, cold, or dampness.  For example, if you have the flu with an extremely sore throat and a high temperature, you have external wind plus heat.  If you get a cold that makes you feel achy and chilled, you likely have external wind plus cold.

Treatment for wind conditions depends entirely on the circumstances.  Is it internal or external wind?  Has it paired with other pathogens?  What’s causing the wind in the first place?  Your acupuncturist needs to take all of these factors into consideration before developing a treatment.

Because internal wind conditions tend to be caused by depletion, a treatment plan would entail building up the depleted substance(s), such as Yin, Blood, or Qi (energy), which would ideally relieve the symptoms of wind.  This would likely be done using acupuncture, Chinese herbs, choosing the right foods, and getting adequate rest.

If you’re suffering from external wind, acupuncture combined with herbs would be a likely treatment protocol.  For early stage external wind, when you feel like you’re coming down with something, you can sometimes head it off with herbs you have at home.  Boil grated ginger and chopped scallions in a cup of water.  You can add a little broth or flavoring if you like.  Drink it down, wrap yourself up, and go to bed.  The idea is that these warm herbs open your pores, causing you to sweat, which expels external wind.