Tag: digestion

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, Diet, Wellness

Acupuncture for Acid Reflux

by kaiwang492

Reflux is a common complaint people have when it comes to their stomach and digestive system; related diseases or other diseases can affect the digestive system or CNS. In Chinese medicine and acupuncture the nature of the reflux, nausea, even vomiting is about the same. Therefore, the treatment used is very similar. Here, mainly, we will focus on the condition associated primarily with digestive problems.

Generally speaking, it is very beneficial to use Chinese medicine including acupuncture for reflux, such as for GERD, digestive ulcers, stress, nerves, and associated bad food consumption. China is one of the biggest countries with the largest population in the world. Historically, fighting for food was common in the Chinese nation. In the past, Chinese people did not have enough to eat. Some people only ate one or two meals per day, most foods were so scarce that a person would eat the bark and flowers of an elm tree, Chinese grasses, and even soil. Chinese doctors realized that stress, anxiety, an irregular diet, overeating or starvation, etc. can really cause digestive and nutritional problems or diseases that include: nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, etc. That is why one of the main tasks for Ancient Chinese doctors was to develop a good system to treat these problems.

Chinese medicine and acupuncture treat reflux, nausea, vomiting, etc. differently according to the accompanying symptoms. This is called Pattern Differentiation/Individual-Based-Fit-Treatment, which is a unique part of Chinese medicine and acupuncture. In this case, the pattern-differentiations could be 1. Stomach Cold – patients do not like to take anything cold, if they consume cold things, it can worsen the complaint. The patient will also feel cold easily – 2. Stomach Heat/Fire – patient does not like to take anything warm, spicy, or hot if they do the complaint will get worse. The patient may feel warm easily – 3. Liver Stagnation – frustration or stress can make the situation worse, happy and easy situations will make the complaint better. Patients may also become irritated easily with no reason – 4. Spleen Deficiency – patients may feel tired easily, especially their extremities, or tiredness will make the situation worse. Patients even have no energy to talk. – 5. Stomach Yin Deficiency – this is similar to stomach fire/heat, except that the body is much weaker than those within the stomach fire/heat category. – There are other pattern differentiations too but the above 5 patterned categories are the main ones and they can appear separately, or at times there can be a combination of two of them or more.

For the treatment, it completely depends on the pattern-differentiation. If anyone has the same or a similar situation as the above patterns, it is a good idea for them to go to a Chinese medicine and acupuncture specialist for a comprehensive diagnosis and treatment. They can help you accordingly, especially if you’ve been dealing with this situation for a while.

If your situation is far less complex, then there are some simple ways to deal with this for temporary relief. For example, a diet change will help. If you do not want to visit a specialist, you can take the following suggestions and see if they help: 1. Fresh ginger root juice – this is typically good for any stomach problems, but especially for nausea, vomiting, and reflux – 2. Avoid sweets, greasy, or very dry food 3. Avoid food that is difficult to digest such as beans, nuts, etc. 4. Eat food that is well done and not raw, with the exception of salads and juice or fruits 5. Avoid cold food, since you don’t want your stomach to serve as a stove to heat the food 6. Avoid hot/spicy food and drinks, this includes alcohol too.

In regards to acupuncture, there are many points that can help as well, even if you put pressure on them. This can sometimes give you relief too. An example of an acupoint is Pericardium 6 (PC 6, Neiguan) which is 2 units above the wrist crease between the tendons of palmaris longus and flexor carpi radialis (these are based upon the 12 units between the crease of the wrist and the inside of the elbow). Another acupoint is Spleen 4 (SP 4, Gongsun) located at the median aspect of the foot, in the depression distal and inferior to the base of the first metatarsal bone. These are major acupuncture points that help the digestive problems we have described. Once in a while, you can put pressure on these points and it should give you some relief. Of course, there are many more acupoints that can help too.

If nausea and vomiting are due to morning sickness, then acupuncture and Chinese herbs will definitely help. If these symptoms are caused by a tumor, CNS, etc, it would be best to go to a correspondent specialist such as an Oncologist or Neurologist instead of first visiting a Chinese medicine and acupuncture specialist, even though acupuncture and Chinese herbs can help relieve symptoms too.