tales from the Shang Han Lun
My studies have taken me full circle back to the roots of Chinese Medicine. I found a scholar in the ‘classics’ recently, someone who studied and practiced Chinese Medicine in China (even though he’s a European) then went off piste and found a ‘lineage master’; a teacher in a particular tradition, which happened to be the ‘Shang Han Lun’. This is the first extant (i.e. still in existence) text on herbal prescribing written by an intellectual giant called Zhang Zhong Jing. You could say old means primitive, but what counts in medicine is not theory but results. I’m finding that using these formulae exactly as defined in this text far outweighs the current mode of prescribing by taking a classic formula and ‘adapting’ it, or even, heaven forbid, making up your own mish mash of herbs.
the curse of spam
I’ve had so much spam as comments on the site that I’ve had to restrict comments to wordpress users so sorry if you want to comment but can’t. To give you an idea of the problem I had over 5000 junk comments in 2 weeks… mostly from Hungary, thank you Hungary, nil points. And I thought junk mail was a problem…
aphorisms prompted by reading about miracle cures
Courtesy of this month’s Journal of Chinese Medicine
‘There exist no miraculous methods in the world, only plain ones, and the perfection of the plain is miraculous’ (Fei Bo Xiong)
‘We are what we repeatedly do’ (Aristotle)
‘Medicine can only cure curable disease, and then not always’ (Chinese proverb)
‘One thousand days to learn, ten thousand days to refine’ (Japanese proverb)
and just for good measure………
‘Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them………well, I have others’ (Groucho Marx)
skin conditions & acupuncture
I saw someone recently with dermatitis/eczema covering the whole body. ‘We always do this with herbs’ I confidently said. Then got stymied; for various reasons they couldn’t take herbs so reluctantly I used acupuncture. First session no change, second session I did serious rethink re strategy and … fantastic result with redness and severe itching dramatically reduced. My apologies to my fellow acupuncturists for doubting the efficacy of acupuncture for skin…it’s just if you’re a herbalist you’ll usually go there first. Progress has continued by the way with third session seeing us nearly there. Just seen Nicky’s comment in the ‘acupuncture’ section on her itching skin condition so looks like flavour of the month !
Colds and flu with acupuncture & chinese herbs
I’ve had many people over the last few weeks with one respiratory infection or another. To my horror I started going down with severe shivers and throat swelling the other evening. My wife Charlotte is an acupuncturist; she gave me treatment the same evening as I lay moaning at death’s door (I don’t do ‘illness’ very well, though I have to say I felt dreadful with the headache from hell and severe chills and fever alternately). She treated me again the next morning and by the middle of the day I was well enough to go out. I’ve treated people with flu after they’ve had it for days or weeks; it’s usually much harder than this. Moral: catch it as early as possible & you have a good chance of success. This is all in the ‘Shang Han Lun’ treatise on cold damage, a manuscript dating from around 2000 years ago charting the development of ‘externally contracted’ illness as it goes through different levels of the body’s immune response depending on the areas of your strengths or weaknesses. A large part of my training as a microbiologist was immunology, but the sophistication of theory and medical observation in this ancient text is astonishing.
Myofascial trigger points, the poor relation of acupuncture
These muscular problems cause so much pain - small points of structural shortening in muscle as a consequence of strain - sudden or repetitive (see my main article on the physic website, physic.co.uk). The technique of needling them was developed by western medicine but apart from a few gps and pain consultants who practice these needling techniques, many people get told they’ve pulled a muscle & have to live with the pain. And in the world of classical acupuncture trigger point needling is often derided as too simplistic. I recently got one myself in shoulder girdle musculature (teres major) and was astonished at the level of debilitating ache. Now I have absolute sympathy with all the people I treat with similar problems.
Welcome to an Acupuncturist’s Blog
Hi, my name is Tony Sugden an acupuncturist based at Physic Therapy Centre, Girton Cambridge. I provide acupuncture, chinese herbal medicine and trigger points therapy to treat a wide range of complex conditions. In this blog I’m keen to spread the word and knowledge about these areas of alternative medicine plus squash some of the myths that surround these topics. I hope you find this blog educational….