Category: Medical

Acupuncture, General TCM, Medical, Wellness

Acupuncture for Children

by kaiwang492Leave a Comment on Acupuncture for Children

In China, patients go to acupuncturists from all ranges of ages — newborn (or even pre-born because of the mother) to any age. In the United States though, it looks like people are concerned about the discomfort and pain for kids because they are so protective of kids. That is why here there are much fewer kids exposed to acupuncture, and trying it.

My feelings are that it is just a cultural difference. Imagine when kids need to go to a dentist, a surgeon, or to have a simple vaccine or injection, etc. all of these medical procedures actually hurt much more than acupuncture. If kids can do those things, they can definitely tolerate acupuncture. Some people must wonder about kids who cannot stay still and they might think it will be difficult to do it. This is actually not true. For most kids, they are still when receiving acupuncture treatment just like adults. There are a few kids who may be a little bit fussy at the beginning and then a few minutes later they will be fine too. Of course, there may be 0.5% of kids that are not suitable for acupuncture, just like some certain medical procedures aren’t good for some people.

In China, when we started to give kids acupuncture for PDD research in 1987, we went to special schools to have acupuncture service for kids. We treated kids in their classrooms (five to thirteen years old) in an efficient order, like an assembly line with many of them sitting in a row receiving the treatment. Their behavior was fine. The reality is if the acupuncture is performed by well-trained acupuncturists, nothing really hurts. Since it is new here because of the cultural difference, we always ask both parents to come for the first visit with the child. We ask the parents to try the needle first so they can know what kind of sensation the child will have. If they feel it is fine, we’ll continue with the child. That procedure with the parents is done purposely to convince the kids that it’s okay to have acupuncture. So far, we have helped many children without any problems from the parents.

Pediatric acupuncturists appeared in China a long time ago, just like OBGYN acupuncturists, internal medicine acupuncturists, etc. Generally speaking, in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and acupuncture theory, children’s problems are easier to deal with than adults because they are still in the developmental stage so they grow fast, heal fast,  and are full of energy. If the treatment is correct, the reaction will be very positive and quick. For most kids’ situations, they don’t need as many treatments as adults. For many of them, just one or two treatments shows results. Here, you can see to send a child to an acupuncturist is much simpler and less uncomfortable than going to other medical professionals. It is also actually very safe for kids to have acupuncture.

The most effective and commonly used acupuncture points are between elbows and the ends of hands, and between knees and the ends of feet. Acupuncture for children doesn’t need as much time for the needles to stay in, and for some problems the needle only goes in and out. Even further, some kids don’t need needles at all – they just need acupressure. There’s no risk to the treatments, especially since so often the kids fall and hurt themselves and that is much harsher of an injury than acupuncture ever will be. Sometimes, just changing the diet makes a big difference too.

Acupuncture, Diet, General TCM, Medical, Wellness

What is the diet’s effect on our health according to TCM and Acupuncture?

by kaiwang492Leave a Comment on What is the diet’s effect on our health according to TCM and Acupuncture?

TCM and acupuncture were formed at least 3,000 years ago. TCM and acupuncture doctors applied natural phenomena to our bodies’ individual situations in both ways – physically, and pathologically. They believed that the nature of the food we eat daily, and the herbs we consume, and acupuncture we receive when we have a health problem are similar, but are on different levels. It is just like the idea that we eat when we are hungry, or put on more clothes when we’re cold, etc. Herbs and acupuncture work in the same way. We have four seasons, day and night, rainy, windy, different environmental and climate changes, and other natural phenomena. We as human beings need to compensate for what is happening around us. Diet is the main part of the compensation.

We have so many types of food to choose from. Just like everybody’s foundation of different, our body’s reactions to food are more or less different. If we eat certain “wrong” foods on a consistent, long term time frame, we are harmed. When some people eat hot/spicy food often for a long time, at a certain point, they are going to experience anxiety, bad breath, dizziness, red eyes, headaches, restlessness, sore throat, etc. People like this just think they have a health problem, but when they check in a medical setting, there is nothing wrong with them. But they know they feel different than before, and have a problem. In TCM and acupuncture theory, this is because if a person belongs to the warm/hot type, the hot/spicy food (if taken often) can only make their body hotter. The sore throat, headache, thirstiness, dry mouth, are indications of the hot type and getting hotter. If you ignore the symptoms, and continue having more of the hot/spicy food, it will affect you further. It affects the gallbladder and liver, and can cause serious health problems.

It is a good idea for us to understand how different foods affect us. The first thing we need to know about what we eat is the nature of the food, meaning our body’s reaction to the food. In general, anything hot/spicy such as peppers, cinnamon, coffee, dried ginger, lamb, walnuts, goat, chives, etc. can be harmful for us if we are the warm/hot type of person. On the other hand, anything cold-natured, such as mint, watermelon, pear, papaya, tofu, crab, etc. can be harmful if we are the cold type of person.

In our practice, we see many patients coming in with various health problems, simply because their lifestyle or diet are the opposite of what their body needs. Some patients that have gone to doctors for their problems and have received test results showing that they technically have nothing wrong with them, but they know it is not what they are normally like and want to get back to their old self. If you ask them, there is nothing really wrong with them except they have been eating certain types of food for a long time. For some patients, we only need to ask them to change their diets in the way their body needs. After a while, coupled with acupuncture treatment, they will feel better. For some other patients, if it is a more serious condition, they will need to add herbal medicine to their acupuncture treatment and diet changes.

Acupuncture, Medical

Rebecca’s Story: Acupuncture and Constipation

by kaiwang492Leave a Comment on Rebecca’s Story: Acupuncture and Constipation

Case Study

Constipation is one of the common complaints we hear about on a daily basis. There are many reasons for this kind of digestive problem. One of the causes is: Ignoring the urge to have a bowel movement or delaying it until later. However, in daily practice, both professionals and patients often neglect this as a cause. At our office, we’ve helped many patients like this.

Rebecca Tillman, female, 46 years old, came to our office with a 20 year history of constipation. During this time she would only have a bowel movement every 3-6 days. The problem started at the age of 26, when she started her PhD program. The program required her to study hard, read a lot and write many essays. Although eating carefully and healthy at the time, she started to develop an irregular bowel movement. She ignored these signs and then soon enough the constipation started to affect her daily life and studies. Ever since, she went to many doctors and specialists. No one could find anything wrong with her, they either told her to take laxatives or change her diet. However, the results were unsatisfactory.

In our office, we went through all the details about her daily life, from early morning until she went to bed. In terms of the details regarding her bowel movement, she told us she developed a habit, during her PhD program, to read necessary information for her work or exams during her bowel movement to save time. At times she would even forget to go to the bathroom, even though she was sitting on the toilet. Once we combined the diagnosis from the other specialists with the details of the bowel movement habit, we realized what the problem was. It was obvious she developed a bad habit with her bowel movement. She would be distracted so much while she was using the bathroom that her nervous system would concentrate more on reading instead of the bowel movement. At the time, the nervous system became used to dealing with two things: reading and going to the bathroom. As a result, the bowel movement was no longer as easy as a normal one.

We suggested to Rebecca, that in order to change this habit she should concentrate on the bowel movement, to not read or think about anything else, until she finished. Meanwhile, we gave her some Shen(spirit and mind) related acupuncture points such as: Si-Shencong, Shenmen plus Chengshan, Zhigou, Tianshu and Siguan. After 12 sessions, within a month and half period, her constipation improved significantly, she would have a bowel movement either once a day or once every other day. She was very happy with these results. We followed up with her for half a year, her bowel movement was fine ever since.

What you should take away from this case study:

Although she suffered for a while and it looked like a complicated case, it was actually very simple. As soon as we found the cause we treated her with acupuncture points for regulating and re-balancing her nervous and digestive system, then her bowel movements became normal. TCM and acupuncture has a long history of treating constipation either simple or complicated cases. In fact, there are many acupuncture points and herbal formulas that are good for constipation issues. If you do have a complicated case, you would really need to follow the TCM and acupuncture rules, which are pattern differentiation and treatment. Only in this way can you really get good results.

Acupuncture, General TCM, Medical

How Does Western Medicine Explain Acupuncture?

by kaiwang492

Even though acupuncture has been practice in China for about at least 2-3,000 years  and spreading in the adjacent countries such as Japan, Korea, etc. as the time goes on. For the rest  of the world it is maybe only acknowledge less this 400 years and the spreading of it is much slower than the origin  area. It is being said that Japanese, in the early 1950s declared that even though acupuncture was orientated in China, the explanation with modern medicine theory would be done in Japan and there ambitious is to develop acupuncture furthermore then that of Chinese. This stimulated Chinese government to organize a big acupuncture program from 1950s and on until in the end or 1980s for about thirty years. Chinese government wanted to do the research with the modern medical theory, bigger, stronger, wider and faster than that of Japanese.

What they have  achieved so far:

1. Develop a new method of anesthesia  with acupuncture for operations in the head, neck, etc. even though it isn’t perfect yet.

2. We found about 10% of Chinese are general sensitive people which means if  you put needle on one point on one channel then the sensation are for the chi movement or sensation can go through the whole channel which approved the existing channel. Even though we do not know the nature of it.

3. They have found the traditional acupuncture points area/spot are higher electrical resistance than the none acupuncture areas/spot. Which proved the existing of acupuncture points.

4. They also found 90% of the acupuncture points are more or less are associated with the nerve system.

5. This speed of chi traveling in the channel slower than nerve but quicker than the endocrine system. They assumed that channel system is another balancing system in our human body other then nerve and endocrine system – the third balancing system.

6.  In session of acupuncture needle and manipulation can affect our body in every level meaning from organ to tissue to cell to molecule.

7. One of the most important finding about acupuncture is  what is called both direction regulations which means  making the high abnormal level lower until normal level or vice versa. This explains why the same acupuncture points on one person it can make the high blood pressure lower until to the normal level, and on the other low blood pressure person it can increase the blood pressure higher to the normal.

8. About 450 conditions under diseases can be helped by acupuncture. Overall during that 30 years period of time almost all the medical schools and the other related scientist were involved in this program which is one of the biggest in scientific work research because of this the first world wide scientific organization were headquarters in China in November of 1987 in Beijing.

Ever since the spreading of acupuncture is getting quicker. Many scientist including doctors all over the world started to do more research about acupuncture because of its treatment results. Acupuncture is based upon channel theory according to traditional Chinese medicine. Even though we can see the channel existing with instrument, but we still don’t know what is the nature of it because of the restriction of science and technology. Acupuncture is not perfect explained by modern medicine yet. However, it has many advantages over the modern medicine theories such as it always promotes our bodies ability for fighting diseases with no side effects if you perform it right it stresses the connections and affects each other of the body It also stresses individual differences so in turn it is always tailored treatment procedure. We hope modern medicine can borrow some ideas from acupuncture to make modern medicine perfect.