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Info about chinese medicine
Information on herbal medicine, pulse diagnosis, acupuncture etc can be found by clicking on the tabs above.
simplicity
It’s great returning to student status after all these years. Just spent the weekend with my fellow students and teacher going through formulae of the ‘Jing Gui Yao Lue’ which is the second part of one of the greatest medical texts ever written (in my totally unbiased !!! opinion). Specialism is a necessary part of Chinese Medicine these days, it’s such a huge subject, but interesting to realise that the core of most gynaecology treatment for example lies in this text. In my academic world you find people criticising these herbal formulae as being too simplistic; the fashion these days seems to be complex formulae covering all different aspects of the problem. Personally I think simple is best. The body does complexity to an outrageous extent – I’ve studied biological systems from one angle or another for most of my life and the more I look the more I see we can’t hope to understand it in totality. Fortunately, if you start from the principle that the body heals itself; illness starts from a glitch in that process of self healing. A good herbal formula is one which is focussed exactly on the area where the body is stuck; if successful then the body will move on; maybe get stuck somewhere else but then you can deal with that… and so on. That’s the principle of this system anyway.
Qi sandwich
Someone the other week intimated that the classical Chinese concept of Qi, being some kind of energy which motivated physiological change in the body, is actually a bit weird in this day & age when we understand so much about the human body. I mean we know all about molecular level interactions …. you know … we’re all chemicals innit ?
I readily agreed. ‘Look at the wonders of oxydative phosphorylation’ I sagely replied. Krebs cycle, the production of chemical energy from the raw materials of glucose and oxygen happening in every cell in the body, actually in cell organelles called mitichondria. A production line with 3d protein molecule enzymes in an unfathomable dance during which the raw materials get processed into carbon dioxide, water …. why? there’s plenty of that stuff around…. because the process produces chemical energy.
What’s that ??
Actually it’s the creation of a high energy phosphate bond onto the molecule adenosine diphosphate to create adenosine triphosphate. Effectively this is the body’s battery cell providing energy wherever it’s needed by releasing the energy in that phosphate bond and reverting back to adenosine diphosphate.
But what is ‘that energy’
Well it’s … er … just energy innit…. just something nebulous & unfathomable in a chemical bond… but by ‘eck nothing happens without it despite it’s nebulousness…..maybe we should give it a name????
But anyway, back to Qi….. how absurd eh? Those primitives and their weird ideas.
(One day being a smartarse will get me into trouble…… oh wait a minute, it already has, many times)
RULES NOW ENFORCED BY AD. STANDARDS AGENCY
This is the statement we’re having to put out on the clinic website:
So I’m trawling my blog to remove any evidence that suggests that I may be able to treat your eczema, or migraines etc etc. Of course I hasten to add that in the past the significant number of lifetime migraine sufferers that attended my acupuncture clinic and experienced alleviation or cessation of their migraines….. IT WAS ALL COINCIDENCE !! I’m sorry if any connection was in any way made with the treament you had, and the relief you experienced, even those of you where symptoms were apparently significantly reduced while lying on the treatment couch; sorry my friends, all in your heads (no pun intended).
So bear with me while I digest this ridiculous new edict and find out what I’m allowed to vaguely allude to as a slight possibility that maybe acupuncture might have some bearing on treating. Possibly. Though of course unlikely.
SO HERE”S THE LIST !!
Conditions for which suitably qualified medical advice should be sought
Addictions Alcoholism (Dependence) Age related Macular Degeneration, AMD Anaemia Angina Anorexia Arthritis [c.f. Arthritic Pain (M)] Asthma Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD Autism
Blood Pressure, High Bronchitis Bulimia
Cancer Cataracts Crohn’s Disease Circulation, Poor [c.f. Circulatory Problems] Chronic Obstructive Airway Disease, COAD Compulsions (P)
Depression [c.f. Feeling Down or Feeling Blue] (P) Diabetes Diverticulitis Dizziness
Drowsiness Drug Addiction (Substance Abuse)
Ear Disorders, Serious Eating Disorders Emphysema Epilepsy
Erection Problems or Erectile Dysfunction [c.f. Temporary Erection Problems, Temporary Erectile
Dysfunction] Eye Disorders, Serious
Fibroids Fits Frigidity (P)
Gall Bladder Disorder Gall Stones Genito-Urinary Disorders Glaucoma
Gout
Impotence [c.f. Temporary Erection Problems, Temporary Erectile Dysfunction] Infectious diseases Infertility [c.f. Sexual Counselling]
Insomnia, Chronic Jaw Joint Dysfunction
Learning Difficulties Leukaemia
Kidney Disorders
Malignant Diseases Mania (P) Multiple Sclerosis, MS Malaria
Memory problems or Memory Lapses Menopausal Symptoms Menstruation, Regulation of Metabolic Diseases
Migraine [c.f. Migraine Headaches] Muscular Dystrophy Myopathy
Obesity [c.f. Diet, Trouble Sticking to] Obsessions (P) Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, OCD (P) Osteoporosis
Overdose
Pancreastitis Paralysis Parkinson’s Disease Prostate Problems Psoriasis [c.f. Skin Problems] Psychosis (P)
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Respiratory Diseases
Schizophrenia ‘Senility’ Sexually Transmitted Diseases Skin Disorders, Serious Spinal Injuries Stroke
comments & contacting me
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Chronic back pain
We treat a lot of back pain in this clinic (Physic, Girton just on outskirts of Cambridge). I say ‘we’ because since I joined the practice 18 years ago, myself and Roger Giddings, the owner & senior osteopath, have developed protocols for using acupuncture & osteopathy alongside each other for complex musculo-skeletal stuff – a strategy enthusiastically embraced by some of the osteopaths here. Certainly justified by the results we get and by talking to the recipients of such treatment.
But so many times you get improvement up to a point, then just maintain it at that level.
I’m a back pain sufferer because of childhood (undiagnosed problem leaving thoracic spine weak & a bit misshapen), and subjecting my back to ridiculous overload when I was in my twenties and immortal. So I talk from experience. Acupuncture & Osteopathy have helped me hugely, I think I’d be in a bad way now without them.
But ever questing for perfection !!! how to take things further.
When I was at uni in London in the seventies, I studied (then taught) Yoga with an excellent teacher from the Swami Satyanand (Sivananda school) line. Then recently I took it up again, my teacher this time the unassumingly wise Alison at the ‘old red lion’ backpacker hostel and Yoga centre at Castle acre, in Norfolk.
It’s making a lot of difference. I won’t use superlatives here because the key is steady perseverance, but the rewards are there in flexibility, reduced pain, healthier muscles & joints, and I’m pretty sure this applies to many other people.
More on this in my next post.
electrosensitivity
I recently had someone come with sensitivity to electrical switches and devices. It was the first time I’d ever tried to treat such a condition, and told the person I could only try if I could make sense of the pulse diagnosis (see tab on pulse diagnosis, at top of home page, for more info). The pulse diagnosis pointed to a very specific area of herbal medicine prescribing which matched the symptoms; heating up after exposure leading on to palpitations and weakness. More importantly the herbal formula which matched this pulse diagnosis started to improve the symptoms almost from day one. The formula was one from the ‘Shang Han Lun’, a text written around 200 AD when they didn’t have electricity.
Arthritis, joint & muscle pain
THIS ARTICLE SHOULD BE READ IN LIGHT OF THE INFO IN MY RECENT POST RE CONDITIONS I”M NOT ALLOWED TO CLAIM THAT I CAN TREAT. SO PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT I CANNOT CLAIM TO TREAT ARTHRITIS !!!!!
‘Well you’ve got arthritis, what can you expect’….. A common thing to hear at the first sign of any new ache or pain. In fact once we’re over the age of 40 it’s assumed that joint & muscle pain comes with the territory.
In my Acupuncture practice I have two approaches to joint pain.
FIRST I look for muscular problems. Localized acutely tender points in muscle were first documented by Professor Janet Travell, a brilliant American physician. She mapped out areas of dull aching referred pain which often spread into joints and become confused with joint problems. Many of the muscles around the shoulder blade send aching into the joint for example, and often down the arm. Muscle ‘trigger points’ in the haunch may get confused as hip joint pain.
The answer it was found, is to use a needle to stimulate the muscle at the point which can then release it, thereby removing the pain.
If the muscle points are there you can easily tell because when those points are pressed, they hurt even though the area around doesn’t.
Clear the superficial problem first. If the muscle problem is gone and the pain goes also, we know it was being created by that muscle problem. If the pain’s still there then we know it’s probably created by the joint itself (In my experience, don’t assume that just because an xray says there’s arthritic change in a joint, that’s automatically going to cause all the pain).
SECONDLY if there are no muscle trigger points, or clearing them doesn’t resolve the pain, then I look at Classical Chinese Acupuncture where we use points away from the area as well as points around the joint to try and help blood flow in the tissues of the joint (helping to clear inflammation) leading to a possible, albeit gradual, improvement in joint health. Fact is, however it works, this kind of acupuncture has been used for over two thousand years and nothing survives that long if it’s just the latest health fad.
In some cases I also use Chinese Herbal Medicine. Plant-based medicine has been the primary form of medicine up to the last hundred years or so. In the Han dynasty of the second century a.d. a sophisticated method of treating severe epidemic disease using combinations of plants (formulae) is well documented and that sophistication has developed over subsequent centuries. Certainly many plants we use have anti inflammatory properties and have been used in arthritic pain for at least one to two thousand years.
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)