acupuncture Archives - Page 6 of 9 - Acupuncture in the Park

Acupuncture and Lung Health

Lately, we’ve been seeing a number of patients here at Acupuncture in the Park who have been struggling with lung issues. Beyond seeing lots of patients with seasonal allergies this hay fever season, we’ve also seen people suffering from pneumonia, pleurisy, and even pulmonary embolism (blood clots in the lungs). While acupuncture shouldn’t be considered the first line of care for these serious conditions, it can be a helpful adjunct in the healing process.

Your lungs are an interesting organ system in Chinese medicine in that they are considered the most exterior of your internal organs. Think about it–with each and every breath, your lungs come into contact with the outside world. In addition, any part of your body that has anything to do with breathing is considered to be part of your lung system. This includes your nose, sinuses, bronchi, and diaphragm.

When you seek out acupuncture for a lung problem, your practitioner has a number of things to consider in their diagnosis before they can begin treating you. Among them:

Is this an external or internal problem? External conditions that affect your lungs tend to be superficial and short-lived, including colds, flu, and seasonal allergies. Internal problems affect your lungs at a deeper level and tend to be more difficult to resolve. Such conditions would include pneumonia, pulmonary embolism, emphysema, asthma, and pleurisy.

It this a warm or cold condition? A warm (or hot) lung condition is usually accompanied by a fever, feeling warm, thirst, and thick yellow mucous (I know, gross!), and sometimes constipation. A cool condition generally is not accompanied by a fever, and the mucous, if any, is thin and clear.

Are the symptoms caused by some kind of excess or a depletion? An excess condition is associated with too much of something–heat, water, phlegm, etc., and can be especially challenging if it’s clogging up your lungs. Another sign of an excess condition is a loud, barking cough. A depleted lung pattern means that you’re run down, short of breath, wiped out, or have low immunity–essentially your energy is low. In this case, your cough may be quiet, unproductive, or non-existent.

Is this a Yin condition or a Yang condition? This one is a little more complicated. In your body, Yin is cool, moist and replenishing. In contrast, Yang is warm, dry, and active. In general, a Yin lung pattern is cool and moist (um… phlegmmy) and a Yang pattern is warm and dry. What if it’s warm with lots of phlegm? Then the pattern would be a little of both.

If you come to a practitioner of Chinese medicine, after determining the nature of your lung pattern, they would work with you using acupuncture, herbs, dietary guidelines, and even lifestyle tweaks to help you resolve your condition. And while most of us don’t think about our lungs until we have symptoms, there are actually some things you can do to ensure that your lungs stay healthy. Among them:

-The most obvious way to strengthen your lungs is to use them. That’s right, breathe. Whether through the intentional breathing of a Yoga class, or through singing, public speaking, or simply exercising briskly, activities that open your diaphragm and cause you to breathe harder are good for your lungs.

-Good posture is key to lung health. Stand or sit up tall to enable your lungs to pull in the air it needs that’s so vital to your well-being and to life itself.

-Foods that are good for your lungs are also foods that build up your Qi (energy). Light proteins, such as fish, chicken, or tofu are helpful. White is the color associated with your lung organ system, so foods such as white root vegetables and mushrooms are also good for your lungs. Pungent flavors open up your lungs, so mildly spicy foods such as scallions, basil, ginger, and other strongly flavored herbs can be nourishing.

-If you tend towards dryness in your lungs, white fruits such as apples and pears are cool and moistening. In contrast, if you tend to have problems with phlegm, avoid foods that make it worse, such as dairy products, rich or greasy foods, and foods that have been overly processed.

-Get and use a Neti pot, especially if you suffer from seasonal allergies. It’s a great way to cleanse your sinuses and wash out any offending pollen. You can find Neti pots at just about any drug store, and include directions for use. Remember, your nose and sinuses are considered part of your lung organ system, and keeping them healthy is the same as keeping your lungs healthy.

Garden Party!

One of the things I like best about summer is going out into my garden and picking my dinner. Right now I have lettuce, tomatoes, heads of cabbage, peppers, arugula, and some fine looking basil plants all just waiting for me to decide what to pluck and eat. In addition, my flower gardens are a joy to look at from the kitchen window as I prepare what I just picked.

Unfortunately, my garden also yields something that’s not so healthy–a sore lower back. The pain in my back is my body’s way of telling me I’ve done a little too much weeding, planting, and mulching. Luckily, with a little rest, and the humility to ask for help with the heavy lifting, I know I’ll be fine in a day or so.

As much as I love to see patients in my clinic, I hate to see people in pain, especially if that pain is avoidable. The good news is that with a little planning and prevention, gardening can be pain-free. Here are my best tips for keeping you outside in your garden and not at your local acupuncture clinic:

Avoid repetition. Many of the injuries that occur from gardening come from performing the same motions over and over. Switch it up to avoid repetitive stress injuries. If you have a job in the garden that’s going to take a couple of hours, take breaks, walk around, stretch, or do something else for a few minutes.

Your aching back. I’ve learned this from personal experience; to avoid back pain, use a wheel barrow or share heavy loads with someone else. If you’re weeding or planting, kneel if possible to avoid constantly bending over; it’s tough on your back!

Let pain be your guide. If you’re feeling any pain, especially in your back, it’s your body’s signal that it’s time to stop. Trust me, it will not get better if you keep going; it will only get worse.

Pace yourself. You don’t have to finish it all today. Remember, gardening is supposed to feed your soul as well as feed your family–the joy is in the process as well as in the end result.

Use the right tools. Use well-designed tools with grips that are either padded or non-slip material. Keep your gardening tools sharp and in good shape to reduce the physical effort needed to do the work.

Protect yourself. Wear gardening gloves to avoid injuries and infections. All kinds of bacteria and fungus live in the soil, and the smallest cut, if unprotected, can become infected. Wear sunscreen or cover up to avoid sunburn that damages and prematurely ages your skin. In addition, when the clouds of mosquitoes and black flies are really bad, I use a little bug repellant or wear pants and a long-sleeved shirt.

Beat the heat. When it’s really hot and/or humid, shorten up your time in the garden, or work in the early morning or evening when it’s a little cooler. Be sure to drink plenty of fluids to stay hydrated–you’re working hard!

If all else fails…Get some help in the form of Chinese medicine and acupuncture–sooner rather than later. The longer you wait to treat an injury, the longer it takes to heal. Your acupuncturist can help loosen up your lower back, relieve carpal tunnel pain, treat your tennis elbow or any other injury you might get from over-gardening.

Working in the garden is a great way to get some exercise, grow your own local and organic foods, honor the season, and feed your soul. With a little prevention, the only thing I’d like to hear about is the abundant produce and beautiful flowers you’re growing–not your aches and pains!

Depression, Lack of Motivation, and Chinese Medicine

Last week I was at a networking event of CAM healers in the Minneapolis area, where I met a number of practitioners working with really interesting therapies. During one conversation, I was asked what kinds of conditions I treated most frequently. Hmmm…good question.

Actually, my answer was pretty simple and straight forward: Lately I seem to be seeing a lot of working women (and some men) who are dealing with depression, anxiety, and stress. One of the reasons why so many people are struggling emotionally is our current economy. While things seem to be getting a little better recently , I still see many people who are stuck in jobs they dislike (okay, hate) because they feel like any job is a good one right now. Many are working in positions where their co-workers have been laid off and not replaced. As a result, they are doing more work in the same amount of time for the same amount of pay. Under those conditions, who wouldn’t be depressed?

While depression is associated with a whole host of symptoms, one of the most life-altering is the lack of motivation and fatigue that some people experience. I have worked with a number of patients who experience this kind of sluggish depression in which they struggle to do anything during the course of the day. For some, just getting out of bed each morning or going to work is a challenge.

Why does this happen? In Chinese medicine, there are a number of answers. The simplest is that depression is considered a blockage–clearly something in the emotional realm is not moving smoothly. Over time any kind of blockage wipes you out–it literally depletes your energy–and you feel exhausted. Energetically, depression is like physical pain in that if it isn’t resolved, it takes all of your resources just to deal with it. This tires you out.

On a deeper level, depression is considered constrained Liver energy, or Qi. Your Chinese Liver is the organ system that regulates the smooth flow of all your body’s functions–physical and emotional. When the realities of your life are not what you want, it causes stagnation of your Liver Qi. Furthermore, each organ system in Chinese medicine has an emotional component, and the emotion most closely associated with your Liver is anger. It is frequently said that anger turned inward becomes depression.

So how do you explain the sluggishness sometimes associated with the depression/Liver Qi stagnation? Well, one of the first casualties of Liver constraint is that it heads right on over to your digestive system and shuts things down. Like an emotional upset that causes you to lose your appetite, depression messes with your digestion in slo mo. You will know that this is happening if you have symptoms like crazy cravings for sweets, weight gain around the middle, and absolutely no energy. The problem here is that your energy comes from eating good, healthy food, but also from digesting it well. When your digestive system is closed for business, you have no way of producing more energy, hence the feeling of exhaustion.

And there’s more. Your Chinese Liver is paired with the Gallbladder, which has a number of functions. However, it’s the emotional aspect of the Gallbladder that’s pertinent here. The emotion associated with your Gallbladder is something called courage. What we call courage may be the fearlessness that comes to mind for most. However, in this context, courage is also the ability to make a decision or a plan, move forward decisively, and follow it through to completion. Therefore, the inability to decide, act, or the lack of motivation to act is associated with a weakness of the Gallbladder system.

As an acupuncturist, the path to healing this chronic, sluggish, no-motivation depression is complicated. It involves soothing your Liver, strengthening digestion, rebuilding energy, calming your emotions, and addressing Gallbladder issues. This sounds like a lot, but through acupuncture, the use of Chinese medicinal herbs, diet, and some lifestyle modifications, many patients who are struggling with this kind of depression find relief from their symptoms.

Treating Elbow Pain with Acupuncture

I (Lynn) have been going to a boot camp class for the past six months. Twice a week, I get up at 5:45 am. to be at class at 6:15, so I can have my butt kicked for an hour. It’s a great workout, and over time, it’s getting a little easier.

Yesterday morning, when my alarm went off at 5:45, I turned it off and went back to bed. Five minutes later, the guilt of not getting up pulled me out of the sack. I brushed my teeth, got dressed in my workout clothes, and…went back to bed.

It’s not that I didn’t want to get up. It’s that my elbow was hurting. Just the thought of planks, burpees, and bicep curls made it hurt more. As an acupuncturist, I know exactly what’s going on; I have Tennis Elbow–without ever hitting a single tennis ball.

The technical term for Tennis Elbow is lateral epicondylitis, which simply means the tendons on the outside of my elbow are inflamed. Tendons attach muscle to bone, and the muscles involved in Tennis Elbow are those at the top of my forearm. Tendonitis is usually the result of overuse or repetitive movements that put extra pressure on the tendon. The constant stress on the tendon causes small tears, which my body will repair…if I just give it a rest. While the thought of a little more sleep yesterday was appealing, it was knowing that boot camp would slow the healing process that sent me back to bed. Honest.

Typically, the pain you feel with Tennis Elbow is on the outside of your elbow, and it becomes worse when you’re grasping or twisting objects, like a tennis racquet, hammer, or opening jars. The pain often is worse in the evening and can even make it difficult for your to sleep. Over time, the pain may radiate up or down your arm, especially as you try to compensate for the pain by using other parts of your body. Interestingly, there is rarely swelling associated with Tennis Elbow.

Golfers can also develop Tennis Elbow, but it presents itself in a slightly different way (besides being caused by golf, not tennis). Tendonitis associated with tennis most frequently affects the outside of your elbow with the pain radiating down the outside of your forearm and into your wrist. Golfer’s Elbow usually affects the inside of your elbow (closer to your body) with the pain radiating down the underside of your forearm and into your wrist.

Whether from tennis, golf, boot camp, or anything else, tendonitis is a fairly common condition. Its prevalence increases with age as our tendons become less flexible. The incidence of tendonitis is higher in athletes for obvious reasons, and Golfer’s elbow is more common in men.

Our bodies are programmed to heal themselves, but sometimes that doesn’t happen, or we just don’t give it a chance before going out and aggravating the injury. When that happens, acupuncture can be very effective, either as an adjunct to standard Western treatments or on its own. One of the theories of how acupuncture works is that the tiny needles, when inserted, create a microtrauma, or tiny injury, that signals your body to get busy and heal itself. Researchers have also documented that acupuncture blocks the production of adenisone, which is a chemical that transmits pain signals to your brain. According to Chinese medical theory, however, acupuncture works because it increases the flow of energy and blood to the injured area, helping your body to heal.

Other tools that an acupuncturist may use to heal tendonitis include heat therapy to increase circulation; electric stimulation or microcurrent (devices that stimulate healing through electric impulse); massage; and in some cases Chinese herbs.

So, as an acupuncturist, what will I do for my…uh, boot camp elbow? A little acupuncture, some heat, some microcurrent , and rest. Also, I’ll lay off the burpees and push-ups for a couple of days, and should be as good as new asap.

Chinese Medicine and Self Care for Seasonal Allergies

During certain times of the year, I see an increase in patients who are suffering from similar conditions. In the late fall, I tend to see more patients who are struggling with seasonal depression, and around the holidays I see an increase of patients coming to acupuncture to be treated for stress. I also see a bump in patients with seasonal allergies in May and again in late August/early September. However, this year spring has sprung early, and throughout April, I have seen a spike in people suffering from seasonal allergies—a month early!

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.

Acupuncture for Hot Flashes and Night Sweats

Not long ago, I sent my sister a care package. It wasn’t packed with brownies and cookies and other goodies to eat. Her care package had only one thing; a Chinese herbal formula to treat the night sweats that are waking her several times every night.

How you experience menopause is different from every other woman. Your family history, physical and psychological makeup and overall health all play a role in whether or not you will have menopause symptoms or sail right through unaffected. Your views of aging and menopause, and those of the people around you, may also shape your experience. Over the past 50 years, with the availability of hormone replacement therapies, women have had the option of treating the discomforts associated with menopause medically. The upshot of this practice is that menopause if viewed by some as a disease or hormone deficiency, with hormone supplementation required to reestablish a healthy balance.

Practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine offer another paradigm in which to consider the experience of menopause. They understand that signs and symptoms associated with menopause are indications of some kind of imbalance deep within the body. In general, imbalances are years in the making, and physiological events, such as adolescence, childbirth, or menopause, magnify the imbalance and result in symptoms. With menopause, underlying imbalances can certainly affect your symptoms.

So what’s out of balance if you’re struggling with hot flashes and/or night sweats? Well, it could be a couple of things. First, your Essence could be depleted. Essence is one of the most important substances in your body and provides you with the energy you need to power all the functions of life. As you age, Essence slowly becomes depleted. This depletion causes many of the common signs of aging, such as gray hair, thinning bones, weakness in your back and knees, memory loss, and fatigue.

Depleted Essence can also cause menopause symtoms, too; here’s how: Essence is similar to estrogen, in that Essence is responsible for puberty, fertility, libido, and menopause. During menopause, Essence drops dramatically, and this loss can create an imbalance that is associated with a wide variety of symptoms. A common problem is that when Essence is depleted, it may lose the ability to keep Yang in check. Yang is the active and warming energy in your body, and when it flares unchecked, you may feel that warmth in the form of hot flashes or night sweats.

Another common scenario for women who are struggling with menopausal heat is an imbalance between Yin and Yang. If Yang is hot and active, Yin is the opposite; cooling and rejuvenating. In many ways, Yin is similar to Essence in that it is restorative and nourishing. During menopause, Yin also tends to drop, causing Yang to flare up and make you feel hot. The heat associated with this drop in Yin is frequently felt at night, which is the cool, restorative, and quite time of day–just like Yin. Against the backdrop of night, the active heat of Yang is more pronounced, resulting in night sweats.

It’s important to mention that stress can aggravate your heat symptoms. That’s because strong emotions, especially stress, have the ability to make your energy stagnate. Similar to a car engine seizing up without oil, your stress, anger, or frustration creates heat.

An untreated depletion of Essence or an imbalance between Yin and Yang will ultimately cause symptoms. So what can you do? First, you can protect your Essence through good diet, sleep, and balancing your work with rest. An over-the-top lifestyle, such as working long hours, late nights, and too much sex, drugs, and rock and roll will, in time, deplete your Essence.

You can also address depleted Essence or a Yin/Yang imbalance through acupuncture and Chinese medicine. After a complete evaluation, you acupuncturist will develop a treatment plan to address your specific imbalance(s). She can incorporate the use of acupuncture with herbs, diet, stress relief, and lifestyle changes to balance your body and alleviate your symptoms to help you sail through menopause in a natural and drug-free way.

The Healing Modalities of Chinese Medicine

Whenever someone asks me what I do for a living, I tell them that I’m an acupuncturist. This is a half-truth, as I am really a practitioner of Chinese medicine. To most people, this may feel like nit picking, but in reality there is a big difference. That’s because acupuncture is only one method of treatment under the wide umbrella that is Chinese medicine. As a practitioner of Chinese medicine, I have a number of healing tools that I can use to help my patients get better. Among them:

Acupuncture is the best-know healing practice in Chinese medicine. Through acupuncture, disease and pain can be treated and prevented through the insertion of fine, sterile needles into various points on your body. Acupuncture is based on the theory that energy circulates in numerous pathways, and pain and disease are the result of a blockage or imbalance of this energy. Through acupuncture points, usually located in small depressions in the skin where your energetic pathways come closest to the surface, this energy can be accessed and balanced to return your body to its healthy state.

Acupuncture is very safe when performed by a licensed practitioner. This is especially true when compared to Western medicine and the statistics on prescription drug side effects and complications from surgery. An acupncture treatment consists of a selection of points based on your specific diagnosis. The needles, when inserted, produce some sensation, but generally not pain. Most people find acupuncture to be very relaxing and revitalizing.

Auricular Acupuncture is the practice of preventing and treating disease and pain by stimulating certain points on your ear. When disease occurs in an internal organ or other parts of your body, reactions will also appear at corresponding points in your ear. For example, someone who is struggling with pneumonia or bronchitis may also have tenderness, discoloration, or skin changes at the point in the ear that corresponds to the lungs.

The needles used for auricular acupuncture are generally smaller and finer than body acupuncture needles. Auricular acupuncture may be performed in conjunction with body acupuncture or by itself. Auricular acupuncture is commonly used in the treatment of addictions, such as smoking, chemical use, and weight loss.

Practitioners of Chinese Herbal Pharmacology rely on formulas or a combination of herbs to achieve the desired healing effects. Herbs come in many forms, including pills and capsules, powdered or raw, which are cooked in hot water and taken like a tea.

Chinese Herbal Pharmacology is an important treatment modality for many practitioners. It began thousands of years ago in southern China, where the weather was warm and humid, producing a rich variety of plants from which to choose. Herbalists today draw on formulas that have been in use for hundreds, and even thousands of years.

Chinese Herbal Pharmacology is effective for a number of reasons. Practitioners are better able to fine-tune their treatments, and formulas can be custom tailored as an illness or condition changes. In addition, people take herbal formulas to augment their acupuncture treatment and continue their care at home.

Oriental bodywork is the use of massage or Tui Na, which is a form of Chinese massage, to treat a variety of conditions. Oriental bodywork usually incorporates the stimulation of acupuncture points and energy pathways into a massage format to achieve the best results. Oriental bodywork may be used for any condition, but is especially effective for musculoskeletal injuries and pain. A practitioner may work on the entire body or just the affected area.

Cupping is a method of treatment that uses suction to move energy and blood. Glass cups are applied, usually after a lit alcohol swab inside the cup has created the vacuum necessary to create suction on your skin. The cups may be left in one position on your body or slid across your skin to affect a larger area. Cupping is especially effective for painful conditions. Most frequently, your back or the larger muscles of your legs or arms are cupped.

Moxabustion is a method of warming that involves the use of the herb artemesia vulgarius. The artemesia may be loosely rolled into cones or tightly rolled into a stick, and is lit and placed near your body, usually at acupuncture points. The smoke produced is extremely warming and penetrating.

Moxabustion originated in the northern part of China, which has a cold and dry climate. It is commonly used to treat cold conditions such as arthritis that is affected or becomes worse during cold weather.

Practitioners of Chinese medicine believe that lifestyle and diet play a large role in health and illness. As a result, most offer lifestyle guidelines on topics such as stress reduction, exercise, and sleep. These practitioners believe that food is the same as medicine. Therefore, most will offer advice and guidelines about dietary choices. Dietary therapy may consist of ways to improve digestion and choosing easily digestible and nourishing foods, or they may prescribe foods that warm, cool, or nourish a particular organ or system in the body.

What Your Symptoms Mean to an Acupuncturist

If you visit an acupuncturist for a specific symptom, you might be surprised to be asked all kinds of questions that seem to have absolutely nothing to do with what brought you in. In fact, you may become impatient as your practitioner asks you about your digestion when you’re there to be treated for acne. What’s going on?

For your acupuncturist to arrive at an accurate diagnosis, he or she must have a complete picture of your internal makeup. Your symptom is simply a manifestation of an imbalance, and to treat it correctly, your practitioner will put that symptom into the context of a pattern in order to treat the source of your problem.

It is interesting that a single symptom can be a manifestation of very different patterns in different people. For example, three people may come to Acupuncture in the Park wanting to be treated for insomnia. The first, a busy executive, explains that he has difficulty falling asleep because his mind is racing when he goes to bed. He shares that he frequently feels stressed by his job, and when he gets home, he’s irritable with his family. He says he feels thirsty, and his face appears red. This man would be diagnosed with a pattern called a stagnation of Liver energy, which is causing heat and restlessness and making it hard for him to fall asleep.

The second person to be treated for insomnia is a smallish woman who is about fifty years old. She reports that while she can fall asleep at night, she wakes about 3:00 a.m. with night sweats and has difficulty getting back to sleep. She also complains that she has a chronic dull ache in her lower back and that her knees feel weak. Her face is pale, but her cheeks are red. This woman’s insomnia is due to a pattern of depleted Kidney Yin.

The third person with insomnia is a woman in her thirties who had surgery about six months ago for appendicitis. She complains that her sleep is restless all night long, and she wakes frequently. She also has heart palpitations, occasional dizziness, dry skin and brittle nails. Her face looks pale and drawn. This woman’s sleep problem is caused by a depletion of blood.

All three of these people would be diagnosed with insomnia in Western biomedicine, and would most likely be prescribed a sleep aid. However, in the Chinese medical model, the only thing these three people have in common is that their imbalance is manifesting as insomnia. For each, the underlying cause of their insomnia is different from the others, and each would be treated with acupuncture and herbal prescriptions unique to their particular imbalance.

Why Your Acupuncturist Feels Your Pulse

If you’ve ever been to an acupuncture clinic, chances are your acupuncturist felt the pulse on your wrist as part of their exam. In Western medicine, your doctor or nurse feels your pulse to determine it’s rate. However, in Chinese medicine, pulse diagnosis is far more complicated.

In Chinese medicine, the quality of your pulse can offer your acupuncturist a great deal of information about the strength of your energy. Taking your pulse is complicated because there are almost thirty different kinds of pulses–many of which are really hard to distinguish from one another. In addition, different positions on your wrist, and the difference between left and right indicate the status of specific organs in Chinese medicine.

Despite being really, really complicated, here are a few simple guidelines that can offer some insight as to what your practitioner is looking for when taking your pulse. Among them:

Rate. As mentioned above, when you go to your doctor’s office, they take your pulse to measure the beats per minute, or pulse rate. This is also the case in Chinese medicine, but your pulse rate is usually measured in relation to your rate of breathing. In general, a normal pulse rate is four to five beats per breath (inhalation and exhalation). A pulse that’s markedly faster usually indicates some kind of heat in your body. A pulse that’s slower indicates a cold condition, or an abundance of a cold pathogen, like dampness or phlegm.

Depth. Have you ever tried to feel someone’s pulse and had a hard time finding it? Chances are you were struggling because that person had a deep pulse. The level at which your pulse is felt offers some important clues as to the location and nature of your imbalance and symptoms. A pulse that is felt deeply–meaning that you have to apply pressure to feel it–indicates that the cause of your symptoms are deep in your body, and your organs are probably affected.

When your pulse is easily felt without using much pressure, and it disappears when more pressure is applied, then your pulse is considered to be floating, or right on the surface. This means that any pattern affecting you is very exterior in nature–such as a cold or the flu. The next time someone you know gets the flu, ask to feel his or her pulse; it will likely be floating.

Force. The nature of your energy, or Qi, can be determined by the force of your pulse. A pulse that feels weak or forceless is a common indicator of a Qi or Blood depletion. A soggy pulse is one which is felt easily but feels spread out and soft. It may also indicate a Qi or Blood depletion, or, in many cases, dampness (poor water metabolism). An extremely thin or fine pulse also points to a depletion.

In contrast, a full, lively pulse that’s felt easily indicates a healthy abundance of energy. It’s possible, however, to have too much of a good thing. A pulse that feels wiry or extremely tight, like a guitar string, is common in someone who’s experiencing severe pain or someone who is under a lot of stress or has had an emotional upset.

Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts. With a pulse diagnosis, it’s the combination of factors that reveals the most information. An acupuncturist will take into account the rate, depth, quality, and differences among the various positions in reaching any conclusions from your pulse. Chinese pulse diagnosis is a subtle art; it takes years of experience for a practitioner to become proficient. While there are infinite pulse variations, which can make interpreting the nuances of your pulse very difficult, pulse diagnosis is an important component of an accurate diagnosis.

A Comparison Between Chinese and Western Medicine

One of the first things I learned as I began studying Chinese medicine was that I should not try to think of Chinese medicine in Western terms, and for good reason. Both systems of healing have their benefits and drawbacks, but they are otherwise nothing alike.

Western medicine is based on scientific study, and is a century or two old. It is generally best for the treatment of acute conditions, and uses drugs or surgery as the first line of defense against disease. Western medicine treats symptoms very well, but in many cases does not cure the illness. If the symptoms of an illness go away after a Western treatment, it is often a temporary fix, or other symptoms will arise at some future point.

For example, the use of antidepressant medications has increased dramatically over the past several decades and can be effective in reducing the symptoms of depression. However, the patients I have seen at Acupuncture in the Park who take these drugs generally don’t like the side effects and want to stop taking these medications. Unfortunately, they find that their depression returns when they decrease their dosage or stop taking the medication altogether. For them, it seems to be a tradeoff between being depressed or having unwanted drug side effects. To me, this is not a cure.

Chinese medicine is based on observation, and is three to five thousand years old. It tends to be a better choice in treating some chronic illnesses, using a variety of healing techniques. It treats the underlying cause of an illness, and in doing so also treats the symptoms. In addition, Chinese medicine treats the whole person, taking into account not only the physical aspects of a patient, but also the emotional and spiritual.

Treatments in the Western medical model usually work very quickly, but either tend to have side effects from prescription drugs or problems resulting from surgery. In contrast, Chinese medical treatments tend not to have any side effects and are generally considered to be safe. The downside of Chinese medicine is that because it balances the body to promote self-healing, it can take time to be effective.

One of the most frequent questions we get from patients is when to use acupuncture and Chinese medicine, and when to go the Western route. The bottom line is that there is a time and a place for both Chinese and Western medicine. In addition, the two systems, while completely unlike each other, are not mutually exclusive. They can work as complementary systems of healing, which means that they can work well together, depending on the circumstances. Sometimes Western medicine may be a better choice for care, and at other times Chinese medicine will be more appropriate and effective.

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !