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What is Amygdalization? – Dr. Martha Lucas

 

 

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Dr. Martha Lucas, today we are going to talk about amygdalizing, and I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me the opportunity to share this information with you. You can also find information on LucasTeachings. com, my teaching website. So my practice is located in Denver, Colorado, but I love to teach.

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Teaching all over and having opportunities like this to spread the word about how wonderful Chinese medicine is. So today’s topic is something that I have called amygdalizing. And so I’m going to talk to you about telling your patients to amygdalize. Now, the amygdala is a part of our brain. It’s involved in our stress response, and a friend of mine and I have been studying the amygdala for quite a while in terms of how it is related, especially to anxiety, but anxiety and depression in our patients.

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Kathleen is one of my Pulse diagnosis students from years and years ago, and we’ve kept in touch all these years about how important the proper diagnosis is to help our patients find the cause or help us find the cause of their condition, because that’s what Chinese medicine is about, right?

It’s essentially a preventive medicine, so we want to see our patients to prevent. Conditions, in other words, keep them healthy. You all know the old story about the ancient medical doctors and how you went to see them all the time to stay healthy and you paid them, but if you turned up sick, they didn’t get paid because they’re supposed to keep you healthy.

Now, in our culture, we only we might go see our doctor once a year for our annual exam, but we usually only go when we’re sick. So it is an educational thing to get your patients to understand. You need to come see me. Let’s say they start with a symptom. Come see me. We get you quote unquote cured.

We get your symptoms to go away. We get you healthy again, and then see you in a month. That’s what I tell all my patients. I need to see you twice a week for a couple of weeks, and once a week, then every 10 days, and two weeks, and then see you in a month when you’re healthy. Because I’m getting them back to the time where I can prevent their conditions.

So I love to treat emotions. Emotions are, I, in my pulse diagnosis system, we can feel the emotions in the pulse. Like worry makes the earth, spleen, stomach, pulse go backward toward the kidneys. Part of the problem with that is, number one, it’s taking away from the kidney energy in a perverse way. And number two, it’s not connecting with the lung, large intestine, metal, and earth and metal are our immune system, right?

So people are going to show up with some sort of immune or skin or hair condition, along with their worry causing this to happen. Terms of anxiety and depression, we feel depression, chronic depression, current depression in the liver pulse, the liver gallbladder pulse. And then anxiety is felt mostly in the heart, but that combination of the liver and the heart.

So I have for years been telling my patients when I feel their anxiety to what I call amygdalize. Now, why choose the amygdala as the choice of organs for them to calm down? And remember, the master said that, and I remember this from the first week of Chinese medicine school, and I Really, honestly, at that time, I thought it was a little bit of a crazy thing to say.

I’m a research psychologist by training in the Western medicine, so to say, Oh, emotions cause all physical disease made me feel like, what? Are you kidding? But as I’m feeling people’s pulses, you can feel that back and forth movement, or the scattered of the heart pulse, is eventually causing a physical symptom.

And if you want to think about it, and when we talk about the amygdala, you will know, it’s a physical disease. The amygdala is a physical organ in our body. We’re feeling the person’s anxiety and or depression, and that’s physically in their body. We’ve managed to get this idea of anxiety and depression down to a physical problem.

Now, sure, we have bacteria, viruses, that sort of thing causes physical disease, but also your patient’s emotions getting stuck. Your patient’s emotions, like if the heart pulse is scattered, blood flow isn’t going to be very good, right? This is why our fertility patients need treatment on the heart because that blood flow is going to eventually go to the uterus.

And without that connection, people are not going to be able to get pregnant very easily. So we’re going to be talking about the physical brain and how we’re going to deal with that in Chinese medicine. But it all started with this idea about that. Emotions caused all physical disease. And now of course, I’m big on treating emotions.

I love to treat emotions. I think we all need to let our patients know that Chinese acupuncture, Chinese medicine doesn’t only treat fertility and pain. I think those are two of the big topics, but we also treat the person’s emotions and their spirit. So the amygdala is a little tiny part of your brain, but it has a big function.

It’s one of the major. are the major processing center for your emotions. It also links the brain with other brain activities like memories, learning, and our senses. So that’s why sometimes when people have a panic attack, they have all of their senses seem to be involved in that. But it’s main, going to be talking about is how it can cause disruptive feelings like anxiety and depression.

It’s inside your temporal lobe. As I said, it plays a key role in emotions and memory and learning and It’s actually a little structure, but it’s part of a bigger network called the limbic system. And we all remember that the limbic system has to do with emotions. It’s part of our, very important part of our survival, because without fear in the, what I call the old days, when we were, threatened by tigers at the door and dying in childbirth more and that sort of thing.

We had to have fear, like that idea that the hair stands up on end on your arms when we’re fearful or we are worried for our own survival. If you’ve ever almost been hit by a car, you will know that your hair stands on end because you, Your survival was threatened. So these parts of the brain, including the amygdala, what we call detect danger.

But now the danger isn’t a tiger at the door. The danger is we can’t pay our bills. We’re afraid we’re not going to pass an exam. Our business has declined. Maybe we’re having a little bit of a relationship problem. Those are now the issues that really aren’t what you would call survival. They’re not really, I’m going to die because I can’t pay this bill.

I can do other things about not being able to pay that bill. But the amygdala doesn’t know that. It, all it sees is it’s, Just processing the things that we are seeing and hearing, like literally look at the bill and the amygdala goes into that feeling of, oh my gosh, I’m going to die. So we get fear, we can get aggression.

As I said, it’s a part of learning through rewards and punishment. So again, we can cognitively train it to learn this is not a survival, death threat. And then with memory, and it also is a part of social communication, which is what amygdalizing is. When I tell my patients to amygdalize, it means that they need to just express the emotion they’re feeling, express the situation to someone.

In fact, they don’t even need to. They don’t even need feedback. It’s not I need to have a conversation with somebody about this. In fact, my friend and I do emails back and forth and we’ll say, I need to amygdalize in the subject line, which means to our friend, my friend and I, you don’t have to call me back.

You don’t have to even email back. I just am having this situation. I need to express it. I’m going to say it to you or leave a message, leave a phone message. Hey, this is an amygdalization thing. phone voicemail and just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, what’s happening because we need to express that. And the masters were right about that.

I tell all my patients, your emotions are better in, sorry, your emotions are better out than in. They’re better expressed than held in. It’s the holding in that creates the stagnation and the weakness, the deficiencies or excess. Stagnation can be. either deficiency or excess, but it’s the holding in of the emotion that’s going to lead to some physical problem or anxiety and depression, which we consider emotional problems.

So they were right about that. Now, I always tell my patients, I’m not suggesting that we all become raging maniacs and road ragers. I’m just saying that you need to say it. You’ve had a bad day at work. Your boss has been a jerk. You just need to get in your car and do the, Oh my boss, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Or you’re sad about something, I’m sad about this particular thing happening. And I always tell them if you’re sad and you can cry, or you’re crying with words processes things faster than just crying with your frontal lobe and your amygdala going on and on inside this loop, right?

That’s what worry does to the pulses, as I mentioned earlier. It’s a loop between earth and the kidneys back and forth. And that’s very dangerous to our health. So what the amygdala ization does, which that’s a phrase I’ve coined, amygdalize and amygdalization, is it helps your amygdala calm down.

It helps the neurons because what the amygdala is made of is neurons and they’re sending and relaying electrical and chemical signals throughout your brain and nervous system so that you see a threat, your bill, and then these neurons start to go through your whole brain, your whole nervous system. And It’s the protective cells for those nerves don’t recognize that this is not a threat to my life.

When we start to have anxiety disorders, PTSD, any mood disorder, panic disorder, these phobias, fearful things, these are all how These are all affected or started in the amygdala. So again, we need to be always thinking about getting that out for our mental health because your amygdala can get hijacked.

If we don’t recognize that this is not a danger to my life, then those emergency signals are just going to keep going and going and going and other parts of your brain are going to react you. to that. So you might have a startle reflex. As I said, you’re going to have anxiety or depression.

It’s an emotional hijack, if you will. So what the amygdala starts in your central nervous system is this process to protect yourself, protect your body, from a dangerous situation or from danger. So again, this helps in a dangerous situation, right? If a car is coming and your ears hear it and you’re on your bike and you’re, you suddenly get a fight or flight response, that’s going to save your life.

So it’s protecting your body from danger by putting you in fight or flight. But now, as I said earlier, The fight or flight isn’t survival. The fight or flight is worried about having a fight with our partner worrying about our business, having to pay some bills, something, our child is a little sick, but we turn it into a bigger worry.

Again, we need to. Nip that in the bud. So then that’s when I tell my patients to amygdalize. I say that’s not a life threatening thing, but your body feels like it’s life threatening. So you need to not neglect your mental health. You need to realize that your physical body is your mental health.

So again, talking to a friend, you don’t need feedback. So what I tell my patients is you don’t need to. Say to a friend, Oh, I need to talk this over with you. You just need to tell him, Hey, my practitioner told me to do this thing called amygdalizing, which means I’m just going to talk about the thing.

I’m just going to repeat the thing so I can get it out of my mind, get it out in a situation where I get my brain to realize, Oh, actually this is a bill. I can do something about that. I can call the company. I can make payments. I’m not going to die. And we can calm ourselves down by doing what the master said, which is getting the emotional, getting the emotion expressed right in a healthy way, not being over angry, not, it.

Not yelling at anyone, not hurting anyone. We just get the emotion out by expressing it to someone. Or like I said I call it talking crying is a great way to get it out and process it if you’re a crier. If you’re a crier and you say the words, I miss him, I’m in your frontal lobe. Let’s say it’s that you miss someone.

Your frontal lobe just gets in that loop. I miss him. I miss him. I miss him. I miss him. I miss him. I miss him. But if You can’t say that out loud when you’re crying. You can’t possibly say, I miss him. I miss him. I miss him. I miss him. I miss him. Like it goes on in your frontal lobe. You’ll start to process it.

I miss him because he’s going to a different school now, but Hey, there are airplanes, there are cars. I can still see him. He’s growing up, whatever it is that you’re trying to process. That little bit of grief, but you need to process it. I remember my mother died suddenly and so when I went to see my doctor for my annual exam, she said I was crying because I just reported that my mother died a couple months ago or whatever, and she said, Oh, do you need some antidepressants?

I said, No, I don’t need antidepressants. My mother just dropped dead. I need to cry. is what I need. You put me on antidepressants, it’s going to make me stop crying because that’s what they’re really good at. You can feel that in the pulses. You can feel the liver energy go up to the heart and stop when a person is on antidepressants.

We of course need that energy to get over, over to the spirit, right? Over to the heart to keep the heart blood flowing and the spirit flowing well. I know for that from Chinese medicine. Now, if I wasn’t a Chinese medicine practitioner, I wouldn’t have needed that. I wouldn’t have known that. And maybe I would have said, sure, let me have some antidepressants for a while.

But we all know as practitioners, we have to get that depressed energy flowing. Get that grief, get that shock going because otherwise my kidneys were going to suffer, right? And the last thing.

When you feel the emotions in the patient’s pulses, sometimes get them to amygdalize while your hands are on the pulses. And I’ve done it plenty of times the other way. I make a joke in my pulse diagnosis class about how, you know what, you want to feel somebody’s anger pulse in the liver, talk to them about their divorce.

It’s the opposite too. I can tell them, amygdalize, get, and old childhood trauma. They’re amygdalizing in front of me about that and you can feel their earth pulse Sink down deep because this is something they’ve had in their system for a long time about not being nurtured So at any rate I wanted to introduce you to this technique I call amygdalizing able to tell your patients to amygdalize and If you have any questions, you can contact me at LucasTeachings.

com or my private practice site is AcupunctureWoman. com and I’ll be happy to answer your questions. I love to help practitioners be better at our craft because I really, after more than 25 years, I really do believe that Chinese medicine rocks. Again, I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to speak with you and, as I said Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

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Pelvic Floor and Menstruation – Krystal Couture

 

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hello, everyone, and welcome! I’m Dr. Krystal Lynn Couture, and today we’ll be talking about the pelvic floor and menstruation. But first, I want to take a moment to extend my abundant gratitude to the AAC, the American Acupuncture Council, for hosting this educational video, as well as other amazing videos that are on their vlog.

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Seriously, check it out. There are tons of clinical pearls and nuggets of wisdom on all topics acupuncture and Chinese medicine. So let’s get started with today’s topic. the pelvic floor and menstruation.

In today’s mini workshop, we’re going to be talking a little bit about the history of menstruation and how it was viewed through society. We’ll talk about some Chinese medicine philosophy, including what the Siwen says about menstruation. We’ll talk about the elemental cycles as well as the hormones.

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We’ll also talk very briefly about some of the common dysfunctions that are associated with menstruation, such as dysmenorrhea, or painful menstruation, irregular cycles, menorrhagia, which is heavy bleeding, or amenorrhea, which is the absence of the menstrual cycle. We’ll also chat about the connection to the pelvic floor throughout the menstrual cycle.

Let’s get into it. So let’s look at the Western history first. And there are some pretty interesting things to note here. In ancient Greece and Rome, in antiquity, menstruation was often viewed with a mix of awe and fear. The ancient Greek physicians, like Hippocrates, described menstruation as a natural process but it was surrounded by a variety of superstitions.

As we moved into the medieval period, menstruation was actually framed within religious and moral contexts, and the women’s menstrual cycles were actually associated with sin or divine punishment. Now moving into the 19th and early 20th century, This was our first sort of win, if we can call it that.

Menstruation was actually considered a biological process and given a scientific definition. And this was basic in that the blood and mucosal tissue fluid flowed once monthly throughout the vaginal opening. Now, as we move into the 1960s and 1970s, Okay, so this is really recent. Women have been bleeding since the beginning of time, and yet it was the 1960s and 70s when feminists began to challenge the stigma that surrounded menstruation.

And there was an increased awareness of the impact that menstruation can have on a woman’s social and professional life. Finally, in the state of present feminism, the world has recently started talking about menstruation. Amazing! And there are some really big voices out there in both Western and Chinese medicine that are setting the stage for women to learn about their bodies, to talk about menstruation, and to honor their cycles.

As a woman, this feels huge because there are so many questions that I feel women have regarding menstruation. And growing up in the 80s and the 90s, as a child during that time, I didn’t ask questions. I wondered what was happening in my body, but it didn’t seem like there was an opportunity to ask those questions.

I didn’t feel like there was a stigma, but there wasn’t an opportunity either. And I think of women feel that way. And a lot of women continue to feel that way. So as acupuncturists, we’ve got this beautiful opportunity to help clients understand their bodies, to help them honor their monthly bleed, to help them gain some knowledge.

about what’s happening within their biological system, within their ecosystem, so that they can then, one, get help when they need it, two, identify when something doesn’t feel right, and three, feel like what’s happening is okay. And it’s normal and there shouldn’t be shame and other negative emotions associated with it.

I love this quote from Christiane Northrup, an MD. She says, The macrocosm cycles of nature, such as the ebb and flow of the tides and the changes of seasons, are reflected on a smaller scale within the menstrual cycle. I think if we can instill One connection for our clients that are coming to see us for menstrual support.

It’s that the menstrual cycle is natural and it is called a cycle for a reason. It is not a stable process within the body. The hormones are changing throughout that cycle. And it is okay to feel differently. throughout the month. It’s okay that we might have more energy at some times and a little bit less energy at other times and that our output and our input might be gauged differently depending on what’s happening in our cycle and our own unique ways of processing that.

And again, as acupuncturists, if we can support our clients to feel into the cycles, to understand that just like the seasons outside change, the season in our body is changing on a monthly basis. And that’s okay. That’s brilliant. In fact, that’s an opportunity, not a negative subset.

So the Siwen, two times seven, the age of 14, the Du of heaven rises. The Ren channel begins to flow and the Chang is flourishing. Menstruation comes regularly.

In Chinese philosophy, when we’re talking about menstruation, I want to try to bridge the gap here a little bit between the tangible of what’s happening from a Western perspective, and the more ethereal that’s happening from an Eastern perspective, or Chinese. Ethereal emotional. So during phase one, we’ll call that menstruation.

The bleed. This is usually days one to four. Most of the hormones are going to drop off during this time. And of course this is when the uterine lining is shedding if one does not become pregnant. The uterus is cleansing out the old blood. In Chinese medicine philosophy, this is the time to regulate the flow of the blood and qi.

So that means that because so much is happening in the body, we don’t want to put a lot of demands on the body. We want to encourage our clients to eat easily digestible, protein rich foods like soups and stews with Iron in them as well that are going to help them to continue to regulate that flow and also build the blood throughout the cycle.

We want to prevent stagnation of blood. which can come in the form of endometriosis and excessive bleeding, which of course that can be our depletion, right? So during this time, I like to encourage clients to conserve their qi. I encourage them to rest during this time. If they’re going to do exercise to be doing exercise that is low impact like yoga or meditation, Or Qigong.

This is not the time to encourage your client to be going for, their strongest pump or something like that because the body wants to utilize that energy. And as acupuncturists we know, there’s only a certain amount of energy to go around the body. And at certain times, like menstruation, that energy is concentrated in the uterus, which, is why we feel a little bit more fatigued, which is why we feel a little bit more depleted.

The uterus is taking all of that energy to release the uterine lining, to let go, to shed. So when we start to shunt that energy in other places, what we can have is then the uterus not having the energy it needs. So resting, staying warm, gentle exercise, avoiding sex during menstruation is really important because the process of the bleed is a downward and outward process, right?

It is a releasing process. Taking in during a releasing process goes against, in Chinese medicine philosophy, what is naturally occurring in the body. And that’s the key. Helping our clients just to tap into the logic of what is their body saying and using the simple cues of how their body responds.

To then make choices. Avoiding heavy lifting, of course, and hydrating well. This is one of my big tips for clients is to encourage them to stay maximally hydrated. The blood in essence is water. It has that capacity to it, so we want to keep the fluids in the body flowing. We want to keep the digestive tract flowing.

We don’t want this to be a time when things are bound up. Let’s talk about phase 2, the follicular phase. So this is going to be approximately days 5 to 11. During this time, this is going to be when FSH is secreted follicle stimulating hormone. Follicles develop during this phase, and estrogen is secreted from the follicles.

FSH is secreted from the follicles. There’s the activation of the egg and the endometrium thickens. The Chinese medicine philosophy here is that it’s time to nourish the blood and nourish the yin. We also want, for fertility’s sake, we also really want to be strengthening that uterine lining and the follicles, which means that a diet should include proteins, it should include leafy greens, and it also should include foods that are moistening.

So sweet potatoes are a great example of a food that is moistening. During this time, we want energy to be contained, but we can have output. So that means we can start to move our bodies more. We can start to go to, maybe a hot yoga class. We can start to get back into the gym, doing some lifting, some of those activities that make you sweat.

a little bit. Ideally, you still don’t want your peak activity to be during this time, but you can definitely ramp up to, let’s say, what one would call their normal activity level. So if their normal activity level is going out and hiking nine miles three times a week, Living in Boulder, Colorado or something, then they should be able to do that with comfort during that time.

But they’ll save their, big hike, their 20 mile long weekend hike for a different season in the menstrual cycle. So let’s talk about ovulation. Days 12 to 16, approximately. During this time, we’re gonna see luteinizing hormone LH surge. We’re going to see the basal body temperature dip down and then increase.

The egg is going to be released from the ovary, okay? The cervix is going to start to soften. Cervical mucus is also going to thin, so it’s going to be like the consistency of egg whites. This is so that the sperm can easily pass through and fertilize the egg. Now, during this time, the Chinese medicine philosophy is really such that we want qi and blood to be moving.

There’s going to be a lot of energy in the system. We want to use pungent foods to help us move that qi and blood on a dietary level, and we want to strengthen the yang. So this means this is our time for vigorous exercise. Obviously, if one is trying to get pregnant, that there’s some exceptions here.

But this is the time to do that super long hike. This is the time in one cycle, if they’re going to be doing a triathlon or a marathon, something like that. This is the moment to do it. And then we want to encourage that creative output, that manifestation and expression, right? Because the egg serves as that.

When the egg is unfertilized. We’re not producing a child, but utilizing that energy of creation, that energy of manifestation, that energy of expression, encouraging our clients to get into that slipstream. Progesterone is so important for their spirit during this phase, for them to stay on the path of their Dao.

The final phase we’re going to talk about, phase 4, the Luteal phase, days 17 to 28. So this is when progesterone is going to increase, estrogen is high, and the uterine lining thickens. The Chinese medicine philosophy here is that we need to boost qi. So we can get into this phase of vigorous and competitive exercise until about day 26, leading right up to the bleed, because we don’t want to be utilizing all the energy we’ve got and then bleed the next day, ideally.

So eating lots of veggies to increase fiber. And of course, starting that heavy increase in hydration is really important. during this phase. I wanted to post this image of the balance between yin and yang. So we see when we start off with the menstruation phase on the bottom of the chart there.

We start off with menstruation, go into the follicular phase, ovulation, and then the luteal phase. Of course we’re gonna see the red line is young, the blue line is old. Yin. Now, we’re going to see that Yin and Yang rise in correlation and coordination with each other. Yang becomes Yin during menstruation and Yin becomes Yang during ovulation.

The seasons within. Okay. So let’s think about that phase one, that menstrual phase. This is going to be our inner winter. This is a phase where we have. Blood, we have the element of water, which makes sense, and the seeds or the essence are where we return to. In the spring, our follicular phase, we’re going to have the fluid of yin.

the element of wood, and we’re going to start to see those buds form. During our inner summer, we’re going to have ovulation. This is when yang is building. We have that fire energy, right? And of course the flowers are blooming. In the autumn, the luteal phase, we’ve got the qi, we’ve got the metal element, and then we’ve got those petals starting to shed, right?

And of course, earth remains as the element in between. So just like it does in the seasons when we don’t know if it’s winter or spring, that’s the, that’s Earth, when it’s an equinox, that’s Earth, right? When things are harmonious or we can’t quite tell what they are. That’s that Earth element coming in to provide that balance and totality.

I love explaining a menstrual cycle to clients through the lens of the seasons, because it really gives them like that aha moment, that fresh breath of Oh, it’s okay that I feel this way. Okay. So let’s talk about the hormones. First off, estrogen. Estrogen is going to peak in the days just before ovulation.

It is made in the ovaries and it is secreted by the adrenals as well as the adipose tissue. It thins the cervical mucus. This keeps the walls of the vagina thick and elastic and also lubricated. The estrogen is going to support a healthy libido. It’s also going to regulate the metabolism of litter.

Lipids and our cholesterol levels, so this is really important to consider as well. It stimulates cells to develop insulin to the muscles which actually lowers blood sugar. So I’m putting some of these sort of effects of the hormones in that don’t menstruation, but they’re things that we might commonly see.

with women that we’re treating. So the connection between cholesterol and the collection between blood sugar. Okay. So estrogen also is known to improve muscle mass and strength. Again, makes total sense from Chinese philosophy as to why when the estrogen peaks, that we are really able to start pushing ourselves with exercise, right?

Promotes activity of the osteoblasts. And these are the cells that make bone. So this is important to consider, especially as women age. Finally, estrogen binds to the fibroblasts and supports collagen production. So if you start to put pieces together here, face, aging, collagen, menopause, right? It all comes together.

And finally, estrogen is neuroprotective, which means it supports brain health. Let’s talk about progesterone. It peaks after ovulation in the luteal phase. It is produced by the adrenal cortex and the ovaries. It is produced and secreted by the corpus luteum, and that’s really that uterine lining. So a new corpus luteum is formed during each ovulation.

Thickens the endometrium for fertilized egg to implant and grow. Regulates bleeding during menstruation, prevents ovulation during pregnancy, prepares the mammary glands for lactation, that’s important, and has a reciprocal relationship with thyroid hormone. So if you have a client that is having menstrual challenges and they’ve got a thyroid condition, There’s a link there and a place to start looking might be Progesterone.

Their Western physician may or may not know that there’s a connection there but it’s an important one for us to be aware of and to know especially if they have not had a blood panel done. Let’s talk about LH, luteinizing hormone. Luteinizing hormone surges to cause the egg release, peaking of course at ovulation.

It is secreted from the pituitary gland and it works alongside follicle stimulating hormone, which makes sense. Causes the corpus luteum to produce more progesterone during that luteal phase. It plays an important role in sexual development as well as an important role in fertility. So some of the chromosomal disorders that result in Sexual anomalies are related to luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone deficiencies during the embryonic development.

Follicle stimulating hormone. It is produced by the pituitary gland, works alongside luteinizing hormone, stimulates follicles, and stimulates follicles. On the ovary to grow and prepare the egg for ovulation plays an important role in the sexual development and of course infertility. So here’s a chart. I actually really like this chart.

Believe it or not, it is from Encyclopedia Britannica in 2013. But it is a great chart that shows The rise and fall of the hormones. It’s another great tool to have in your clinic to be able to show clients what’s going on with their cycle at any given time. Menstruation. In Chinese medicine, a harmonious cycle begins with the kidney supplying Qi to the organ systems that produce the blood and lining of menstruation, while also filling the extraordinary vessels.

which are essentially the reservoirs for the five vital substances. Once these vessels are full, then menstruation can begin. Healthy menstruation is pain free, with bright red blood and a moderate flow. Blood should be minimal. Sorry, blood clots should be minimal. Short cycles are generally caused by excess heat, whereas long cycles are generally caused by excess cold.

So that’s an important one to keep in mind. And to define a short cycle is going to be a cycle that is 26 days or less. Long cycle is going to be 32 days or more, depending on where you use your def you get your definition. But generally speaking, that’s how we’re going to look at the concept of what a short cycle is and what a long cycle is.

So it’s the totality from menstruation, through ovulation. Let’s talk about dysmenorrhea. So dysmenorrhea is painful menstruation, which can include menstruation. It can include pain in the abdomen, the pelvis, the lower back, even the thighs before and or during menstruation. It is also often combined with a feeling of heaviness or pressure, and in severe cases, the pain can be correlated with nausea or vomiting.

Okay, so primary dysmenorrhea is somewhat poorly understood. And it is usually linked to the excess production of prostaglandins, which cause the uterus to contract and shed its lining. That contraction is a bit of an over contraction, which is why there’s pain. Secondary dysmenorrhea is a diagnosis within the organ systems, such as endometriosis, fibroids, pelvic inflammatory disease uterine lining growing into the wall of the uterus.

And of course Stenosis of the cervix. The pain patterns that we usually see with dysmenorrhea are blood stagnation and Qi stagnation. Now blood stagnation is often going to have a sharp, localized, unrelenting pain. There’s going to be commonly blood clots And there will be relief with NSAIDs so non steroidal anti inflammatories would cause relief because they’re going to change the patency of the blood.

Now with Qi stagnation, this is usually going to be a dull, achy, widespread, diffuse type of pain. It’s going to be relieved by pressure, massage, movement, and heat. Let’s talk about irregular cycles, or chaotic menstruation, as they’re often called in Chinese medicine. They are chaotic? Inconsistent and unpredictable.

So the liver stores blood and the kidney stores essence, right? The combination moves qi and blood into the uterus and the extraordinary vessels. Thus, irregular cycles are essentially caused by either liver qi stagnation, kidney indeficiency, or kidney yang deficiency. Liver qi stagnation is going to be marked by scanty, dark blood with clots.

and difficulty releasing the blood. Kidney indeficiency is going to have a component of heat or empty heat. And kidney young deficiency, of course, the opposite is going to have that cold. Now overwork can cause Inconsistency in the filling of the vessels, right? Again, it’s about the distribution of energy.

There’s so only so much in the body. So that overwork, of course, as it affects the kidneys in many ways, it can certainly affect the kidneys in relation to how they move blood and qi into the uterus. Menorrhagia, excessive menstrual bleeding. This is defined as a heavy menstrual flow. Abnormal uterine bleeding.

We have to Define this separately because that is spontaneous and out of cycle bleeding and can also be considered flooding when we look at the Chinese medicine definition. So we’re not going to talk about abnormal uterine bleeding today. We’re going to stick to heavy menstruation or menorrhagia.

So this is often caused by spleen cheat efficiency or blood stagnation or heat in the blood specifically. Now cheat efficiency. Is going to allude to the qi not being firm enough to hold the blood, right? So often we’re gonna see a combination of spleen qi deficiency here or the spleen not controlling the blood with spleen qi deficiency, right?

Blood stagnation is going to create an overfilling of the vessels and the uterus with no place for the blood to go. So it’s a little bit of A little bit of confusion in our mind when we think about this because we say we have stagnation and an overfilling. But what happens essentially if we think of this like a stream in a river yeah, stream or a river, and there’s lots of logs and leaves and stuff like that’s blocking it up.

That’s stagnation, right? And also there’s this overfilling. There’s a seeping of the water. into the land, into the space around that river or that stream, right? So that’s essentially what we have going on when we’ve got blood stagnation. No place for the blood to go, it goes out the uterus. Then we’ve got heat in the blood, and this is essentially heat going to be agitating the blood and causing the blood to just not want to stay in the system.

Finally, amenorrhea. This is the absence of menstruation. We’ve got primary and secondary. Primary, those assigned female at birth who have not menstruated by the age of 18 years old. Secondary, no cycle for three months or more. Any age above 18. This is very often caused by dampness in the uterus. So spleen chi deficiency is often the cause here, creating poor transformation, thus obstruction of the lower jowl and the uterus, which then leads to a series of other problems in patterning, right?

We essentially end up with chi and blood deficiency due to poor nourishment throughout the system or chi and blood stagnation, which is more of an excess condition and the blood is stagnant but not deficient.

So what about menstruation and the pelvic floor? This is an important conversation and one that I have very often with my clients and my students. So there are three components that we’re going to talk about very briefly and basically. One is the muscles, two is inflammation, and three is pressure changes.

Muscles. The changes in estrogen create changes in the muscle suppleness throughout the body. Okay. This also occurs in the pelvic floor. So estrogen is the lowest when we are leading up to and during the monthly bleed. Okay. So what this means is that the suppleness is at its minimal during this time.

There’s also an increase in prostaglandins, which further relaxes the smooth muscle tissue leading up to the shedding of the uterine lining. And of course, the shedding of the uterine lining creates a micro inflammatory response, right? So now we’ve got muscles that are starting to be less supple, we’ve got inflammation, and on top of that, Progesterone increasing can slow digestion, estrogen rising can cause gas and air to be trapped within the intestines, which means we have pressure changes.

So we have some slack muscles, we have inflammation, and we have pressure changes. All of this means that leading up to one’s bleed and during one’s bleed, they can experience increased urinary and bowel incontinence, urinary and bowel frequency, urinary and bowel Urgency, loose stools, of course abdominal distention, and pain leading up to the cycle and during the cycle.

The pelvic floor is directly impacted by what’s happening with the hormones during, leading up to, and during menstruation. Now why is this important for us to know? One, when we’re questioning our clients, when we’re asking them about their cycle, when we’re asking them about their pelvic floor, and the function of their pelvic floor, it’s important for us to know, is the pelvic floor, let’s say weak or tight, all the time?

Or is the pelvic floor just tight? At a disadvantage, a hormonal disadvantage, let’s say, when they are leading up to their cycle. Now, as acupuncturists, we have a brilliant gift of connecting with our clients and understanding a little bit about their bodies on both a Western and an energetic level.

We also have this great tool in our toolkit called acupuncture. And what does acupuncture do? It creates a neuroendocrine effect. So great news about that. We can understand hormones, but we don’t have to totally understand hormones to make a difference within the body because if we understand the pattern and we’re inserting needles into the body, we’re going to elicit a neuroendocrine effect.

What does a neuroendocrine effect do? It balances the hormones. in the body system so we can really make a big impact. And I honestly see a lot of clients that have pelvic floor dysfunction specific to menstruation have a major improvement just from having general acupuncture that isn’t specific to the pelvic floor.

It’s such an amazing benefit. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such an honor to have you with me for this workshop. I want to again take a moment to thank the AAC, the American Acupuncture Council for hosting this video. If you don’t already know, I have recorded a pelvic floor intro, and coming soon, you’ll have the opportunity to watch my fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause videos in relation to the pelvic floor.

And again, thank you so much for joining me. If you’d like to look at my references, go ahead and just pause this slide. Otherwise, I’ll see you next time. Thanks to the AAC!

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Pelvic Floor Introduction – Krystal Couture

 

 

I was also really drawn to treating the pelvis because these clients kept showing up in my practice.

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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hello, everyone, and welcome! Welcome! Welcome! This is an introduction to the pelvic floor. My name is Krystal Lynn Couture and I am the pelvic acu. I want to first take an opportunity to thank the American Acupuncture Council for hosting this webinar. this video, as well as the many other educational video series that they have on their vlog.

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Let’s get started. First off, I want to let you know just a little bit about me. I became a PT in 2006 and later became an acupuncturist. I actually started dry needling in 2009 and very quickly I found that the power of a needle was more than just muscle release. I was immediately drawn to Eastern medicine.

And as doing so, I was also really drawn to treating the pelvis because these clients kept showing up in my practice. They didn’t know that much about it. I didn’t learn about it in school, in PT, in school for acupuncture, just, And it just kept happening that these clients needed help, they trusted me, they were seeing me for something else, and then it was like, hey, by the way, I’ve got this thing going on that I really don’t know who to talk to about it.

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And so at first I just listened, and I educated myself and educated myself. And eventually, I developed a system to bring pelvic care to clients. Through the lens of acupuncture to create successful treatment plans for these clients that address the root of the dysfunction through the physical body, through the emotional body, and of course, through the spirit, which is what we do really well with our medicine as acupuncturists.

Today, we are going to have a very brief introduction to the anatomy of the pelvis and the pelvic floor. First, we’re going to talk about the bony structure of the pelvis, then we’ll start talking about the superficial and deep musculature layers. We’ll talk about the differences between the female and the male pelvis.

We’ll get into the functions of the pelvic floor in relation to organ support, in relation to sexual function and reproductive function, as well as bladder and bowel function. And then finally, we’ll have a quick chat about qi and blood. If we can understand the science and the physiology of the pelvis.

and the organs that are contained within it, as well as the muscles and also the energetics that are contained within the qi and the blood, we can start to produce a really amazing way to treat the pelvis comprehensively. And this is what I love about bringing pelvic care into your acupuncture practice.

So let’s start with anatomy.

All right, I have my amazing pelvis here, and I’m going to use this as a model to serve us. So what can see first in the bony anatomy? We’ve got our iliac crests. Our iliac crests come into the pubic bone and the pubic symphysis. This forms our ischial, there we go, ischial tuberosities, or our sit bones.

And then on the back of the pelvis, We’re going to have our sacrum right here in the center with the sacral foramen, right? And then we’re going to come down to the coccyx. So that’s the basis of our pelvic bony anatomy. Now if we orient ourselves to the pelvis in the position from inferior to superior, we’ve got on each side those ischial tuberosities.

We’ve got our pubic bone, pubic symphysis, and then we’ve got our tailbone, right? So that forms a diamond. That diamond is what supports the hammock like structure of the pelvic floor musculature. Speaking of, let’s talk about the pelvic floor musculature. All right, so this is a very brief lesson today.

We’ve got a female pelvis here, so let’s go ahead and just orient ourselves. So we’re going to have the tip of the coccyx or tailbone. Then we’re going to have the external anal sphincter and the opening of the anus here. We’ve got the perineal body, right? And then we’ve got the vaginal opening. So if we want to talk about the superficial musculature, first off coming off of that perineal body, we’re going to have the transverse perineal muscle.

Okay. Next we’re going to have. Next to the vaginal opening, we’re going to have the bulbospongiosus muscle. And then coming right along the ridge, the underside of the ridge of the pubis, we’re going to have the ischiocavernosus muscle. Now let’s go to the deep layers. So we’ve got the levator anni, which is the magic of the pelvic floor muscles that most people refer to.

So levator anni is going to be these layers here. We start off with the puborectalis muscle. Then next we have the pubococcygeus muscle. And next we have the ischiococcygeus muscle. I hope the anatomy lesson provided you with the start of a foundation for understanding the pelvis and the pelvic floor.

Now let’s talk about the differences between those assigned female at birth and those assigned male at birth when we’re talking about the pelvis. So first up we’re talking about the inlet. Okay. This is the inlet. This oval shape here of the female pelvis is going to be wider and oval shaped. In the male pelvis, we’re going to see a little bit of a narrower opening, as well as a more heart-shaped inlet.

When we talk about the sacrum in the assigned female at birth pelvis, we’re going to see a wider and shorter. sacrum with a greater curve to it. In the male pelvis, we’re going to see a longer and narrower sacrum. But when we talk about the coccyx, what we’re going to see is actually the male coccyx has a little bit more curve to it than the female coccyx.

The female coccyx is going to be a little bit straighter, which allows that opening to be a little bit more open and spacious when we push A baby through the opening. The iliac crest. We know this from palpation and also observation. The iliac crests. on the male pelvis are going to sit a bit higher than they do on the female pelvis.

So there’s actually a little bit of a height differentiation. And then of course we have the pubic arch, which you can see here. This pubic arch is going to be much wider in the assigned female at birth pelvis versus the assigned male at birth pelvis. Finally, the bones of the female pelvis are going to be a bit lighter and thinner than the bones of the assigned male at birth pelvis.

So now we’ll go ahead and look at some graphics. Since my demo pelvis is just a female, we’ll go ahead and look at some graphics to explain these differences. So here we have the illustration of the pelvic inlet shape. On the left we see the male pelvis. We can really see that heart shaped On the right we have the female pelvis and we can really see that we’ve got a more oval and wider shaped inlet.

Next, with the sacrum and the coccyx shape. We can see on the left that male pelvis has that elongated sacrum that’s a bit straighter. Whereas the female pelvis is going to have that wider, shorter, more curved sacrum. On the contrary, we’ve got the Coccyx on the male, which curves forward a bit and the coccyx on the female, which is a little bit straighter.

Chatting about the pelvic height and pelvic angles. This is displayed a really nicely here. We can see that those iliac crests on the male pelvis on the left are a bit higher than those of the female. You can see there’s a little bit more width in the female. pelvis, right? And this makes sense when we just look at body shape, very often the male has that more triangular shape and the female has a little bit more curve shape to it.

So that makes good sense. In this picture, we can also see that pubic arch very well. illustrated. And so the pubic arch is going to be 60 to 70 degrees on the male pelvis and on the female pelvis that’s going to be more like 80 to 90 degrees. So now we want to talk about pelvic floor function.

Okay, so first off, the muscles of the pelvic floor provide that hammock like structure. As you can see, in our model, right? We’ve got that beautiful hammock like structure. What that does for organ support is it keeps the lower abdominal organs in alignment. And this is so important because the pelvic floor is actually activated in conjunction with the abdominal muscles and the muscles of the back, especially when we’re doing activities like lifting and bending and carrying and jumping, right?

What happens when we’re doing these activities is actually the pressure in the abdominal muscles. increases. Now the pelvis, the pelvic floor and the pelvic openings are obviously below when it comes to gravity, the abdomen, right? So what that means is the pelvic floor is particularly important in keeping those lower abdominal organs from being pushed outward.

or prolapsing. So you can start to see the importance of the pelvic floor, right? It keeps everything up and in and also helps to support the pressure between the abdomen, the back, the base of the pelvis, and also that respiratory diaphragm. When we talk about sexual function, and reproductive function.

It’s quite obvious that during pregnancy, the pelvic floor is going to support the pregnancy. It’s also going to relax and stretch during labor and delivery to allow that baby to come out, right? To be delivered. But sexually, what happens? The pelvic floor muscles actually play a key role both in those assigned female at birth and those assigned male at birth in labor.

providing movement of blood flow. So in females, the pelvic floor muscles help to increase blood flow to the genitals, which promotes arousal promotes lubrication, and it allows for ease of penetration and thus orgasm. In men, of course, the pelvic floor muscles help to manage the blood flow to the genitals by compressing the veins to the penis and thus trapping blood in the penis which creates an erection leading to eventual orgasm.

So those pelvic floor muscles have a big impact on our reproductive and our sexual function. Let’s talk quickly about the urinary and bowel function. Now, the pelvic floor is going to house the openings for the urethra from the bladder, the anus from the bowels, and the vagina from the uterus in females.

The pelvic floor is going to help close those openings to prevent leakage and then relax them for emptying. The pelvic floor essentially supports continence in both males and females. So here’s a quick image so that you can just orient yourself to the opening’s anatomy. So we can see on the left we have the male image, on the right we have the female image.

Left to we have the pubic bone to the tailbone. In between the pubic bone and the tailbone, guess what, we’ve got the pelvic floor. And then, in males, we have the bladder, the prostate, and the urethra. Then we have the bowel. So those are our two openings and our two spaces to consider. In females, we have the bladder opening to the urethra.

We have the uterus opening to the vagina, and then we have the bowel opening to the anus. So here’s your example. You can also see this really well from my superior to inferior view. of my pelvis here. So we can see there we go. We can see the rectal opening, we can see the vaginal opening, and then we can see where we’ve got the urethra as well.

Up next, let’s get in to chi and blood. Okay. Chi and blood are that crucial energetic aspect that are going to help us put everything together as we bring a unique lens to treating the pelvic floor as acupuncturists. The Great Void consists of qi, and qi condenses to become the myriad of things. In terms of Chinese medicine, qi is the energetic foundation of the universe, as it is the physical and spiritual substrate of human life.

Life.

So what does Qi do? Qi is going to promote, it’s going to warm, it’s going to protect, it’s going to hold, and it’s going to transform. Qi promotes the essential functions of the organs and channels in the human body. So when we think of the body as the body kingdom and the organs as officials, And the channels as communication between the officials, we can see how Qi is the director of essential function, warming.

Qi is going to be young in nature, and it’s tasked with warming the body and providing heat. Qi defends us against pathogens or the six evils, which we know in the winter we have colds, In the spring, we have wind. In the summer, we can have summer heat, which is that damp heat, or heat, which is dry heat.

We can also have damp or dry in their own right. Qi is going to hold and contain substances in their respective places and control secretions. We know this when we think about spleen qi deficiency becoming, um, spleen chi sinking, right? Transformation. Chi also metabolizes fluids and substances within the body, which includes our blood and the chi itself.

So when we’re looking at chi as a vital substance and thinking about these functions, we can already start to see how we’ve got all these fluid balances that are occurring in the pelvis. itself within the organs, but we also have that musculature that’s going to require qi and blood as well.

Let’s talk blood. Put simply, blood is going to carry oxygen and nutrients to the cells while carrying away waste. Chinese medicine believes this too and Chinese medicine believes that blood carries the human conscious or consciousness within it. So blood has this very physiological robust nature to it, and by carrying the consciousness within it, it’s got a very robust spirit as well.

Just to review, the spleen is going to make the blood. The heart will govern the blood, and the liver will store blood. When it comes to the uterus will store and release the menstrual blood. Blood functions include nourishment, moistening. Holding the mind or the spirit and determining menstruation.

The blood circulates continuously through our system, providing us with nutrients to our organs on the interior and to the muscles, the tendons, the bones, and the skin on the exterior. The blood of each specific organ ensures that the skin. and the hair and the eyes and the sinew and the tongue are properly moistened.

So the blood has a direct role in moistening. This is really important as we start to think about female cycles. Chinese medicine teaches us that the heart and specifically The blood vessels hold the shen or the spirit. Finally, blood determines menstruation. The quality of blood determines one’s bleeding cycles monthly and also throughout the lifespan.

So how are qi and blood alike and different? First off, blood, of course, is the mother of qi. And qi is the ruler of blood. Talk about that for a mouthful, right? Blood has a yin nature to it, where qi has a yang nature to it. Blood nourishes and sustains the zongfu organs that help produce qi, while qi provides the force and the energy to the zongfu to produce blood.

So we can see that they have a pretty symbiotic relationship. Qi is I’m sorry, blood is essentially a denser form of qi. Blood and qi are inseparable. Qi will move blood. And Q will also hold blood. So once we understand the energies of QI and blood, we can start to understand the source of the function or dysfunction within the pelvis.

We can start to understand how to put the layers together, and then all of a sudden, instead of treating the diagnoses of erectile dysfunction, we’re able to go to the depths of kidney young deficiency, or whatever it might be, whatever pattern we come up with, and also identify emotional patterns, spirit patterns that could be contributing, and get really deep into the source.

And treat the pelvic floor, treat the pelvis, treat the root of the body, and treat the root of the dysfunction to really help our clients to feel better and to improve their quality of life. So once again, this presentation is brought to you by the AAC, American Acupuncture Council, and I hope you loved it.

We are also going to be doing a few more presentations. We’re going to be sharing presentation on the pelvic floor and menstruation, the pelvic floor and fertility, the pelvic floor and pregnancy, The pelvic floor and postpartum, and of course the pelvic floor and menopause. I would love to have you join me for this series.

Once again, my name is Dr. Krystal Couture, and I am the pelvic acu. It has been a pleasure to be with you today, and I can’t wait to see you soon.

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Food as Medicine Part 2

 

 

So today we’re going to go over a little bit of the specialness, if you will, of how TCM looks at food.

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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi, this is Dr. Martha Lucas, and today I am. I’m doing part two of the presentation, Food as Medicine, and I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity. So let’s go to our slides.

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Okay, so last time I mentioned that we, that language can cause experiences, and that a part of what our medicine can do for our patients is give them advice about food. Because food, let’s face it, food is medicine that you can take. three, four, five times a day. Also, Western medicine is looking into it too, but we have a different viewpoint of food.

So today we’re going to go over a little bit of the specialness, if you will, of how TCM looks at food. First of all, we’re going to talk a little bit about the seasons, because in Chinese medicine, food advice can vary with the seasons. Spring is the season of new birth and new growth. And according to Chinese medicine, spring is about the wood element and about liver functioning.

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And we know that some places where we live have a lot of wind in the spring, and the liver is especially susceptible to wind. We know that it regulates chi, regulates emotions, and the liver is a part of our digestive system. If it’s out of balance, then we can say that it’s attacking the digestion. So we don’t only think of spleen and stomach, but also, obviously, liver and gallbladder.

If our patients or us think that If we don’t adapt to the changing climate in spring, we may get susceptible to seasonal health problems like flu, pneumonia, or a relapse of a chronic disease or allergies. How many of our patients only in spring seem to get allergies? And I’ve noticed over the years that sometimes it’s in the more windy spring.

So there we have that relationship between the liver and wind. So we would recommend that they reduce the intake of sour flavors and increase sweet and pungent flavors, because those are the flavors that facilitate the liver to regulate the chi throughout the body. So examples of recommended foods for the spring, there’s a list, would include onions, leeks, leaf mustard, Chinese yam, wheat, dates, cilantro, and you’ll notice that we have a wide variety, like wheat is one of them.

If you have a patient who’s gluten intolerant, we need to have other options for them so that they don’t feel like they are going to have to eat some. In fact, You need to always read the labels of the herbs that you recommend to people because some of them do have weed in them. Fresh and fresh green and leafy vegetables, include those in meals, sprouts and in addition, uncooked, frozen, and frozen vegetables.

Fried foods should only be taken in moderation because, number one, the liver has a harder time digesting fried foods, and of course, cold foods are harder and harder for the spleen and stomach, or your overall digestion, to tolerate. Because remember, You partly don’t get all the nutrition if your digestion is spending all of its time trying to warm up the food.

Also, because previous to spring, sometimes people spend a lot more time indoors during winter. Then they might more quickly develop a heat imbalance in the spring. So some other symptoms people might have in the spring include having a more dry throat, bad breath, constipation, or a thick tongue coating, because those are heat signs, right?

So then we would recommend foods like bananas, pears, water chestnuts, sugarcane, celery, and cucumber to help clear excessive heat. What I do sometimes is suggest that my patients do something like put slices of celery, cucumber, and watermelon rind in water. And that makes a nice hydrating drink. Plus it’s more tasty than just drinking plain water.

So sometimes you have to be a little creative because as I mentioned in part one, We’ll call it attached to their diet plan. They’re very attached to how they eat food. So sometimes they really don’t want us to be playing around with it. In summer, plants grow fast, right? People have more energy. The body’s qi and blood become more vigorous than in other seasons.

Now, Chinese medicine can say that physiological changes make the heart over function and that there’s a little too much yang flowing. around and in the body during summer when it’s hotter. According to five elements theory, an over functioning heart restricts lung functioning. It’s advisable to eat more foods with pungent flavors and reduce bitter flavors, because that’ll enhance the lung and maintain normal sweat mechanisms in summer.

Sweat is the fluid of the heart and also the bladder and the lungs, and excess of sweating can scatter hardship and weaken the mind, according to some theories. So the person can have be more annoyed, have a little bit of depression or a lower spirit, and be restless and have sleeping issues. And this would be during summer heat.

Foods with sour and salty flavors help ease these symptoms. Now, summer isn’t the same in every region, right? I am in Denver, the high desert, so our summers our whole year tends to be drier. I might give my patients slightly different advice than Some are somewhere where it’s hot and rainy, or it’s very humid and damp.

We have to realize where we are living and. and create the plan according to that. For example, if you, in Chinese, in ancient Chinese medicine, the suggestion was to eat the food you grow. In Denver, we don’t have a really long growing season. It’s probably three or four months, but in a place like Gunnison, Colorado, I think it’s 31 days.

In some, again, you have to look at where you’re living And create the food plan according to where the patient is living. Now hot humidity, rainy atmospheres can disturb the fluid and electrolyte balance of the body. And there again, lead to lethargy, weakness, fever, thirst, lack of appetite, and even in the extreme, loose spleen.

stools. So again, looking at that’s dampness causing those issues. So foods that will help keep the body cool and balanced include things like watermelon, strawberries, cucumber. Again, you can help your patient just put those in water and create a nice hydrating cooling drink for the body. In general, The daily diet, even Western medicine says, should contain more fruits and vegetables, always, but especially at this time because they’re cooling and they can help provide adequate fluids to the body.

Now warm and cooked foods help the digestion work better because spleen and stomach love warmth. They do not like heat. Ice cold drinks. So with my patients, I like to start their nutritional advice in what I call baby steps. The first baby step is no ice drinks. So well, maybe sometimes the first baby step, to be honest, is no soda.

I recently, I’m working with a woman, one of my weight loss patients was drinking sodas every day. And so for her, the first step was no soda. Again, know your patient, listen carefully to What they usually eat, and so I might say in this case, no iced drinks, and explain to them that in Chinese medicine, and even in Western medicine, your digestion is warm.

It’s not ice cold there inside your body. So if your digestion has to spend all of its time warming up the food, you’re missing out on some nutrients. So even in the winter, sorry, even in the summer, it sounds like lots of people are like, oh, I could never eat soup in the Summer. Your warm and cooked foods help your digestive system work more effectively.

Whereas, greasy, raw, frozen foods can, what we call, damage the digestive system. And then the person might have less of an appetite, or diarrhea, or acid reflux, or some other stomach upset. In, even in Chinese tradition, in summer, making soups, you can add ingredients that help clear heat and reduce dampness and help the person’s digestion keep working well.

In autumn, things begin to fall fall off the trees and fall off stems, and, but mature, right? Remember, it’s always a cycle, right? help support good soil, and then the next year they grow again. In Chinese medicine, autumn correlates with the lung system. We have things that regulate the skin, respiration, body fluids, immunity, and can be res associated with depression.

The lungs hold grief, so if someone has grief or depression you always need to treat the lungs. Like Lung2, the translation of it is something like cloud break or release the clouds, because it’s talking about the cloud of emotion, and it could be some damp also, but the clouds of grief. Now the vigorous summer is over, and things are moving inward to prepare for winter, where we might even be more inward.

Right now, we’re going to adjust our nutritional advice for the changing seasons, because it, the weather can be drier, and again, the person might get things like an itchy throat, or a dry nose, chapped lips and You might see more hair loss in autumn and also allergies again. Now those can be really related to things like a dry nose.

So I have all of my, I ask all my allergy patients, do you do a nasal rinse? Because a lot of lung issues, it turns out, start up in the sinuses. So doing some sort of a nasal rinse, keeping your nose more hydrated can help with, help prevent things like the flu. For one thing it’s less, the flu doesn’t like moist, doesn’t like dry nasal passages, so it’s helpful to do a nasal rinse.

And we’ll need to promote because they’re going to help lubricate the body as the weather is getting drier. So nuts and seeds are appropriate, pear, pumpkin, honey dairy products. But again, remember too much dairy is cloying and damp. I had a patient who had, was growing these little, tiny little clear nodules on his skin.

They were so small, but you could feel them. It turns out he drank, I’m serious, like a gallon of milk every two or three days, ate ice cream every night. The worst thing you can eat according to Chinese medicine, right? Because it’s dairy, which is cloying and damp and it’s frozen. I suggested that for two weeks, he, cut down on his dairy and lo and behold, those little growths went away.

Dairy can be really cloying and then you can eat more food with sour flavors and reduce pungent flavors like onions and ginger and peppers that can lead to a decrease in body fluids. And then in winter things really. Slowed down to save energy, right? This is why root vegetables grow underground.

It’s like how animals hibernate and even humans might conserve energy and build spring, sorry, build strength wanting to move into spring. Now, there are a lot of people who exercise all winter, who go out all winter, but in Chinese medicine, theoretically, it’s when we’re slowing down and we’re trying to save energy.

So we want to enrich our bodies at that time. Maybe we eat a little more protein at that time. Beef, goose, duck, eggs, Chinese yam. There’s a list of ingredients that are common in Chinese dishes during the wintertime and winter corresponds with the kidney system. So it’s, advisable to eat more foods that associate with the kidney.

And the kidney’s flavor are, is salty. Its color is white. So we might choose foods like, for example, I have asparagus on the list, but maybe you would get white asparagus during that time.

Winter is also a good time to boost your natural constitution. At this time we can help. boost the constitution so that in spring the person’s chronic conditions don’t show up again, for example, allergies. We would be working on the person’s allergies during the winter time so that their body is absorbing the nutrients from those foods that we recommend so So that in spring, their allergies don’t come back.

So it’s harmony between food and weather on a more practical experience. As I said, this, some of this advice might seem to contradict what Western medicine says, or again, you’re going to have to be careful in what part of the world patients live in so that you know how to coordinate the food advice with the weather in their area.

Foods become a part of our body after they’re consumed, so we are treating the person’s body with food. Food is one of the eight foundations of traditional Chinese medicine along with other things like herbal medicine, body work, including things like gua sha and twina, and of course acupuncture, which is the most well known therapy in Chinese medicine, but A knowledge of food energetics can deeply supplement your ability to help your patients.

This next section, we’re going to talk a little bit more about how to work successfully with food with certain conditions or procedures that your patients are going to have to go through. Because the stronger our digestion is, the better we are able to tolerate, The food we eat, we’re better, we are better processors of the food.

If we have to have a procedure, for example, a surgery, our immune system is going to be stronger because our digestion is our earth element. It’s the core. Everything surrounds the digestion. So trying to make our patients have good digestion or improve their digestion is going to help everything, including their skin.

And remember, if they’re going to have something like a procedure, they’re likely to start worrying about it or ruminating about it. And we have to help them with that also, because As we know, worry actually makes the digestive pulses go backward and then back toward the kidney, what I call attacking the kidney.

So something like worry and ruminating, we really do need to help our patients with that. So for example, before a surgery, I recently had a patient have surgery for breast cancer, so I always tell my patients you need to come in before your procedure and then after your procedure. Before your procedure, this is what we need to do.

Build up your system, your digestion, build up your immune system, because surgery is really it’s, Even though the person may need it, it’s a quote unquote good thing because they’re having something like a cancer removed. It’s still going to potentially create some negative impact on the body. For example, stagnated chi.

So we want to get their immune system working. We want to help them with some ideas. Don’t mix food and work. In other words, pay attention to eating. Chew well. That’s how you get nutrients out of your food. Stop before you’re full. Let’s cut down on cold foods. No diet, no soda or diet soda I have down there.

It just has too much sugar and chemicals in it. So helping them work with their digestion before their procedure looking at, Are they cold? Do you need to add warm foods to their diet? Do you need to warm them up before their procedure? If they’re yin deficient, now, here’s this woman was She’s in her 60s, so probably yin deficient.

If they’re going through, they’re elderly, going through perimenopause, or they have issues with yang rising like headaches, then you need to add yin strengthening foods to their diet. Like I love sea plants for that. And so keeping them looking at what’s going on, getting their digestion stronger before their procedure.

Chi deficient patient, you’re going to, number one, recommend fresh air and exercise. Those are actually good recipes for your chi deficient patient. Obviously, they might need to start slowly, but that’s okay. Fresh air and exercise are good for them. They can make an oat porridge. You can recommend qigong to them.

You’re blood deficient patient. Now they’re going to be blood deficient after surgery. So this is why they need to come in before and after surgery. So we might have some post op recommendations for them too because they need to build blood again. So foods that are chlorophyll rich Of course, meat has blood in it for your vegetarian.

They can use things eat foods like beans. And then blood is particularly weakened by sugar. So trying to get people to cut down on the amount of sugar in their diet, plus we know too much sugar negatively affects the spleen, right? It’ll start to create dampness. The spleen is, Its flavor is sweet, but it doesn’t like too much sweet.

And then looking for people who have phlegm, right? Now they might have acne, right? Acne is absolutely can be a damp issue. It can be a heat issue. That’s why we not only need to treat it topically, but we also need to treat it internally. So you might have them reduce things like dairy products if you know that they have too much damp in their bodies.

Foods that can resolve dampness are adzuki beans, barley, celery, radishes, seaweed, and garlic. And remember, some of these foods have more than one property. Most of them do. Looking at that helps. If a patient’s going to surgery, they’ve had surgery, they’re going to have chemotherapy, they’ve had chemotherapy, food is a great way to help treat them.

Boost their immune system for chemotherapy, you always need, also need to make sure that you’re helping reduce the toxic heat that’s affecting the kidneys. And then, boost their immune system, get their, reduce mucus, if they’ve had chemo chemotherapy. Analgesia, which they have for surgery.

You want to help the liver process all that. So there’s a lot to do post surgery. Boost their immune system with cruciferous vegetables. Garlic has antibiotic activities and inhibits viruses. So that might be helpful for them after their surgery. Deep water fish are rich sources of omega 3 fatty acids.

And seaweeds, of course, for overall. Immunity boosting. Almonds have a lot of amino acids and essential fatty acids. Ginseng and chicken is a great combination for people recovering from surgery, childbirth, or prolonged illness. And then improving the digestion, you can use things like ginseng licorice tea.

And ginger is, of course, great for the digestion. Oats strengthen digestion and build qi. Omega 3 fatty acids are important for immune function, brain development, and treating malnutrition. And then also another source of omega 3s is alpha linolenic acid. And this is in vegetable oils, flax seed, pumpkin seed.

A lot of things we can do for our patients. after and before surgery. Have them add dark green vegetables. The western diet really doesn’t include enough omega 3s, so anything we can do to help people get those into their bodies is important. As I said, sugar, they need to cut down on that. Especially processed sugar.

Natural sugar takes longer to digest in the body, just like whole grains, but we need to have them reduce their sugar because it can actually damage the digestion and the immune system. Also, too much processed sugar contributes to herpes outbreaks, PMS, nervousness, and irritability. So the best source of sweetness for our patients are foods like sweet potatoes, natural sweeteners, instead of allowing them or giving them good advice on why not to eat too much processed sugar.

And then the post surgery diet can include a lot of things I’ve said, grains, vegetables, seaweeds supplementation with fish for essential fatty acids and then a little more So we can get the toxins out of their body. And finally, to treat arthritic or rheumatic conditions, avoid excess meat or protein, alcohol, tobacco, coffee.

Again, refined sugar, all of those can lead to having a little more pain. And Some say nightshade vegetables can increase pain, and then I have down eat fresh goat milk because it’s a more digestible fat and has a broader mineralization, but barley and wheatgrass, anything that’s anti inflammatory and detoxes, for example, I have that.

arthritis and rheumatic conditions can be treated well with the post op diet that I just mentioned. So there you have advice about using food as medicine. It is one of the basic standard traditional Chinese medicine therapies that we can help our patients with. And again, this is Dr. Martha Lucas, and I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for allowing me to share this information with you.

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Acupuncture in the Heat of Summer

 

 

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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi, my name is Moshe Heller, and I’m from the Moshen Herbs. I’d like to thank the to AAC for, for hosting my talk on the heat of the summer, how to support children and adults through this hot summer or the heat of the summer. So I wanted to mention that I’ve been seeing in my patients lately a lot of Heat diseases which manifest with sore throats and typical heat symptoms and a lot of damp heat.

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I’ve had quite a few cough, this dry, barky cough patients that also have this heat symptoms that usually comes with cough. Fever, they feel feverish, whether they have a fever or not. And also, a lot of COVID 19 presentations with slight fever, feeling very body achy. And also sore throat as part of that presentation and after a few days that develops into a dry cough.

So as I was seeing these cases that came very soon after that kind of damp heat weather that we were I think that I correlated that together and I started thinking of how I can support these patients that are going, that are presenting with these very hot and damp symptoms to prevent those things from happening.

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So let’s move to the slides. And this is going to be what I’ll be talking about, is the heat of the summer. And I just wanted to, I wanted to talk about this subject because this summer has been particularly hot. And, and, uh, there has been, I have been noticing that, And that there have been more than usual cases of colds and flus and strep and COVID 19.

More than usually what I usually see in the summer. So usually in the summer we see a lot less. illnesses. And so we’ve seen in the past two months that we’ve had already a few heat waves, and that is a little bit that shows that there’s a unusual pattern this summer. So this summer has been unusual in that sense.

And that’s why I wanted to talk a little bit about how do we support our patients in this kind of A different type of weather, and especially when we see that there are changes in, in, in the presentation of our patients. I usually don’t think of this formula, I think of this formula more in the weather changes, but since this has been an unusual weather pattern, I have seen, I have been prescribing more and more of this formula, what I call the SHIELD formula for Moshen herbs.

And it is based on Jade Windscreen and in combination with Gui Ji Tan to help support the yin and the wei. And this combination together with some more harmonizing herbs and supporting the wei qi has been very effective in treating and supporting and preventing diseases in my patients. Thanks. It is, um, it’s it’s Uh, a formula that really supports this kind of wei qi on the exterior, but also I added some ban qia and qian pi to help transform some dampness.

Since this summer is damp and hot, we needed those. It actually works really well to support releasing or preventing some damp from accumulating. I also added Gaggen to support the muscle layer, and Lingzhi as an adaptogenic mushroom that supports the immune system. So this formula creates a really great support for the immune system.

You can see how it’s laid out here. We have Yu Ping Feng Sang as the base, Gui Ji Tong added, and also JinYinHua, I’m going to mention this herb again, is a very important herb. A lot of times we’ll see in China the summer tea of just JinYinHua and JiuHua together to support this ability or to help the ability to go through these summer damp, hot days.

And the combination of Urchin Tongue in this combination. I also wanted to mention Cunning Tongue. This is a great preventative formula for summer digestive issues and summer colds and stomach flus. And I usually use this formula in, in, while I’m traveling or away and especially in countries that I’m not, that have these.

It tends to be damp and hot, like India or even China. And we add, so the, you’ll see the original formula here is in black. Fuling Yi Ren, Ho Xiang, Hupo Bai Zhe, Shenshu and Changzhu, and you’ll see all the other ingredients. This is a great formula. I usually add, I do some changes when I’m working with that formula, either because Shenshu has.

Wheat, I sometimes substitute that, and especially if there’s some concerns about wheat allergies, and sometimes either substitute Zhuhong with Chen, or, um, or add Chenpi. I also like to add Qiankuang as this kind of anti inflammatory, it’s basically turmeric, and also, as I mentioned before, Ji Ninghua, Sha Ren, and Jurgen Sao.

So this cunning tongue or curing formula is another amazing formula that you can give to your patient during the summer months as a preventative for getting, uh, sick. I also wanted to mention Digest, Because this is, um, similar to the curing formula, but it’s based on Baohe1, um, which is, um, slightly different and works a lot on the ability of the body to digest food.

Um, and we’ve, again, I modified it a little also to support digestion and clear wind heat and regulate the qi. And so I included Lian Xiao, Ge Gen. And Ji Ning Hua, as I mentioned, and Zhu Hua. So, actually, this digest could also be used as a preventative during the summer months to keep our systems clean. A very, very balanced.

Again, you can see here, strengthening the spleen and generating fluids, transforming foods, stagnation. I have Sanjiao, Liufuzi, Laifuzi, uh, Sha Ren and Gu Ya and Wu Mei. And then I have again, Urchin Tongue to resolve dampness. And some herb, wind, wind releasing herbs. As far as acupuncture, and this can be also given as acupressure, we, of course, when we’re seeing our patients, we need to make our basic pattern diagnosis.

But, on top of that, I usually think of adding things like points Do 14, Large Intestine 11, to help the body clear heat. As well as Stomach 36 and Spleen 9 to support the qi and drain dampness. Stomach 25 to regulate the intestines and pericardium 6 to help regulate the qi and this sometimes this combination of heart 6 and kidney 7 is appropriate when you see some heat going or tendency to have these heat coming up like night sweats and symptoms of this kind of deficiency in Rising.

Stomach 36 and spleen 9 is something I teach my patients to do a self acupressure to help, especially in those damp days, to help that the damp won’t penetrate and keep the chi flowing well. And so this is something I just give as a tip to my patients to help them move through these damp, hot days.

Thanks. In terms of diet, we also, we also remember that the summer is a season of fire and young and growth and maturation. So the food that we eat should reflect that. It should be light and colorful and lots of vegetables that are in season at this time. We usually tend to cook lightly, steaming, sautéing, um, a quick sauté so it gives them the first boost of heat but not overcooking or even grilling slightly to give that first fire going on.

And usually we tend to recommend to eat slightly spicy and pungent because actually a lot of times, We think that we need to eat cooling herbs to reflect the summer, to be in contrast with the summer hot and damp. But the truth of the matter is, if you think about it, it actually is better to eat warmer foods during the summer because that heats the interior and then there’s less of a difference between the body and the exterior and the body can withstand that much better.

So, these are just examples of how you can, what you can give as a, as a support for the summer in terms of diet. And also, one kind of traditional remedy is this mung bean soup or mung bean tea, where we use mung beans since they are cooling and supporting and helping to relieve summer heat. It’s a great addition to the diet.

To support these months. I hope I gave you, uh, a little bit of an in introduction to what are the things you can do to help your patients move through these summer days, and I’ll be happy to. If you have more questions, you can contact me@theMoshenherbs.com or in the Moshen center.com. That’s my new office, and I, I thank you for listening.

And please visit us at the websites.

 

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Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance – Using Touch and Moxa to Change the Pulses

 

 

As that’s pulse diagnosis. Now, with my system, it’s very important that we feel a flow in the pulse. So when we have our fingers on the patient’s pulses, both left and right, we want to be able to feel a flow of sine waves.

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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi, this is Dr. Martha Lucas, and I am here to talk to you a little bit about pulse diagnosis today. I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to talk to you to speak with you because if you know me at all or have watched any of my presentations here, you know that I think the most important skill that we have in Chinese medicine is the correct diagnosis.

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And for me, As that’s pulse diagnosis. Now, with my system, it’s very important that we feel a flow in the pulse. So when we have our fingers on the patient’s pulses, both left and right, we want to be able to feel a flow of sine waves. So for example, here, we would want to be able to see a flow of sine waves.

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Going from this way, and then on the left side, we want it to go this way. And as a sine wave is up and down, right? Yang rising to the peak, and then the yin down. And between these, so between our left and right pulses, we will see the sine waves connect in what looks like the infinity symbol.

These connect this way. around and over and up. So we get the infinity symbol from these wrists. Infinity coming over like this. Sine wave. That’s how we know that all of the organ systems are connected. connected and flowing with each other because good health is the flow of energy, the flow of yin and yang from organ system to organ system.

Now, if you’re not paying attention to the flow, let’s say you never heard of that before, things, yin and yang do the tai chi symbol, they flow with each other, but you’ve never thought about that in the pulses. Do what? You take what you think is slippery away, or you take what you think is wiry away, and then you say, Oh, good.

It doesn’t feel wiry anymore. That’s not really a sufficient goal for treatment. Sure, the acupuncture needles did something. They, theoretically, what they did, if it doesn’t feel wiry anymore, was, They opened up the channel to more energy flow, which is always a good thing. Or if you feel like you felt slippery and that went away.

Then again it opened up the channels for flow. I always pick on slippery and wiry because the name of my book is Pulse Diagnosis. One of my books, pulse Diagnosis Beyond Slippery and Wiry, because I feel like in a lot of schools, especially the school I went to. We all knew how to feel slippery and wiry, but there’s so much more than that, and so many depths of pulses than superficial, middle, deep.

We can feel the depth of even pre birth emotional issues in the pulses, so we know that We can feel the person’s whole life from the very beginning to up to the end when yin and yang start to separate, which looks like this, right? The yin is going, the organ systems are getting empty. They can’t hold the energy anymore.

And so that allows the yang to just rise up uncontrollably. So the pulses literally start to separate like this. And it’s interesting that students sometimes in my. Intern courses will bring, I always tell them, bring in their toughest cases. Oftentimes it’s somebody who’s a little bit older, maybe they’ve got some cancer going on, and they’ll say, feel how this person’s 84 years old and feel how strong their pulses are.

And I will point out to them that isn’t a good thing. That’s not a healthy, strong pulse. It’s yin and yang starting to separate like that so that the yang is hitting your fingertips very hard because it doesn’t have any control. Core down there. So there are many beautiful things to learn about the pulses.

These are what has kept me interested in Chinese medicine for 25 years. In fact, I recently took a little trip to the town where my mentor lived and took it. It’s now a barber shop, but I took a picture of the little building and I’m going to write a little newsletter about how that What is now a barbershop was really my beginning in Chinese medicine with my pulse diagnosis mentor Jim Ramholz more than 25 years ago and how that has just kept pulse has kept Chinese medicine alive for me.

So I wanted to tell you a little bit today also about a recent situation where I Balance the pulses, but I did not use acupuncture because, I like to tell people Chinese medicine is a complete system of medicine, right? Acupuncture is just one of the therapies that we use. It’s probably the most well known therapy, the most very much.

well studied in terms of research studies therapy, but it’s not the only therapy we can use when someone comes in and we need to give them some treatment. And you all know Gua Sha, Tui Na, all that, but with this particular case, I used a combination of just touching the person while I had my hand on certain points.

on either the left or the right wrist, depending on what I was trying to change. And some moxa. So just stick moxa. I didn’t use a moxa bong. In this case, I wanted to be able to move the moxa around to different places with my hand on the pulse. And so I use stick moxa. So this person someone I’ve treated for a long time.

She initially came to me many years ago, probably. 20 years ago because she wanted to get pregnant, she ended up adopting a child, but that child is now in college. So I know it was a long time ago and she’s gluten intolerant. So she was, she, I’ll never forget, told me that if she goes to a restaurant and a piece of wheat has touched the plate on which she ate, she would have some sort of a gluten intolerant reaction.

So in her case The diagnosis of gluten intolerance and her experience with it was intermingled with fear, right? And fear we see in a scattered kidney pulse. The kidneys look, I draw them like little dots on the piece of paper, which means there’s no form to it. It’s just, little pieces of energy that are just scattered in and among the kidney position.

So in this case, we had a few things to deal with, but for example, this patient never traveled because she was so afraid of gluten. We, I, she ended up being able to travel. She got I think a scuba diving certificate. So she was able to travel and do that. And her life, she still. She doesn’t eat anything with gluten in it, but you can tell that her life was more robust.

She had less fear, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, adopting a child added a good deal of joy to her life. So I would see her on and off after that. But she recently came in just, she looked, she almost looked like a ragdoll. Her spirit was, Not really even there. I thought she looked a little gray.

She was very thin. She’d lost 15 pounds very quickly. She was just basically an emotional wreck, which is why her spirit looked so dull and just almost not there. She looked, she might have, you might say, like an empty vessel. She had a number of emotional. Her daughter went away to college, but that was about a year and a half ago.

She claimed that it all went well, but she had gotten a divorce prior to that. There was divorce, there was the daughter going away to college, which again, she claimed she was totally well adjusted to, but I have my misgivings about that. But she had most recently had a very Separating interaction with her parents and her sister, and her parents are aging and need some care, and so there was the burden of the guilt of feeling like, oh, I’m going to need to take care of my parents.

And now I’ve broken up with the more or less. Plus, she also had a relationship breakup. And because of all this emotional burden, and, she was not able to eat. So that was where the weight loss came in. Everything she ate, even the things she knew were quote unquote safe to eat, she couldn’t eat, lots of vomiting, and panic attacks.

The day she came to see me was in the afternoon. She told me she’d had five panic attacks that day. So I thought, alright, just looking at her, I, and I’m a good and gentle needler. And she is one of my less is more needle patients. I’m sure we all have some of those where you’re, you take the pulses and you study the, I study the pulses to think, what are the four to six needles I can use with this person that’s actually going to change the pulses back to normal and back to balance.

So she’s one of those. But I just said to myself that day, I’m not going to do any needles. So I said, look, let’s get you up on the table and see what’s happening. One of the things that was happening was that her heart was completely blocked. So the liver came up toward the heart, but there was just a big block there.

No movement in the heart pulse at all, which made sense to me because she had just separated herself from some people. It didn’t really go well. She had a breakup, et cetera, et cetera. So the heart doesn’t want to, feel any of that kind of energy. Remember, all of the organ systems are set up to protect the spirit.

So the I, so I had my hand, that’s the left side, right? The left pulses. So I had one hand there, my pulse taking hand. And all I did was put my right hand over her heart. I didn’t put it on any acupuncture points. I just thought, I’m just going to put my hand here as a comforting, comforting.

Motion and lo and behold, it was just unbelievable, the heart pulse opened up. So I thought, alright, so the heart is feeling, it needs to be open, right? How are, how is this energy going to get over to these kidneys, like I told you in the figure 8, if this isn’t open, if the heart isn’t open, the heart’s small intestine position.

I was very thrilled about that. So I just kept that position for a few minutes, just, letting her calm down, letting her breathe, letting her spirit be open, feeling the liver calm down, feeling it get much more smooth, then the kidneys can come in, right? Because the kidneys want to protect themselves against getting stolen away by perverse liver energy.

So I thought, all right, once I get that open, I went over to her. took her right pulses, right side, because of course, she’s got that gluten intolerance, digestive issues. And so in this particular case, her spleen and stomach pulse was empty. So it went down like this. It was, I draw it like a down arrow. So from childhood, she had issues around nurturing.

And and that ended up as gluten intolerance. So in this case, I kept my pulse taking hand on that, those fingers on that pulse and put my hand just on her abdomen. So I spread it out between REN8 and REN12 because I wanted to get as much of her abdomen as I could. And I let that fill up.

I let that particular, the earth pulse, the spleen stomach pulse start to fill up a little bit. So she had some energy to live, right? That’s our nurturing part of our pulses, the earth. So we needed to build that up so she had some energy for actual living. So I got that going, spent a few minutes with my hand right there and then I went back to the left side, tested out, made sure that the kidney, liver, heart positions were still open and flowing.

So I knew I could get some cross pulse flow going. And then I decided I was going to use some Moxa because I thought let’s get some heat back into the system, rebuild the digestion. I think that’s one of the things Moxa is really good for. And I love doing it over REN8, of course, because then we’re really building up the, her basic core, which I think had been damaged by all of this emotional stuff.

So I did Moxa. There for a few minutes again, constantly checking the pulses to see how they were changing. Then I went down to Kidney 1, excuse me, I did it on Kidney 1. And and just generally around the kidney, Kidney 1, Kidney 2, Kidney 3. Again, I wanted to build that energy up, getting it going.

Forced up through the system because remember in the pulses, the kidneys fund everything. In the, in pulse diagnosis, we know that the kidneys Sorry, the kidneys fund everything. So all the energy to all of the other organ systems is coming from the kidneys. So I knew I needed to get those built back up.

So the getting the heart built up, getting the earth rebuilt is going to start from the kidneys. So I worked on the kidneys. I went back up to the abdomen again, did more moxa around. Ren8, Ren12 to rebuild that up. And then I finished the whole treatment by once again putting my hand on her heart area to get the kidneys and the heart flowing together.

And, oh my goodness, after the treatment, she looked So much brighter. Her spirit was alive again. Of course, she felt better. She felt calm. I was a little nervous about the panic attack part. For one thing, I didn’t want to put needles in, leave her in a room when the patient had just told me that she was possibly gonna have a panic attack.

I felt really good about that treatment. And the reason I wanted to share that story was because it goes to show we don’t always have to do acupuncture. The pulses will respond to other kinds of energy. So use all of your skills. If you’re thinking, Oh, today we don’t want to do any I don’t want to do any needles today.

Always take the pulses. Make notes about what the pulses are doing, draw a pulse picture, and then you will have that to compare with at the end of whatever it is, the treatment that you give. In one of my internships, we just did, I did gua sha and some spinal work on a man that one of the students brought in, who came in super crooked and a lot of pain.

He could barely walk. And at that time, again, I felt like, all right, let’s take his pulses because it’s a pulse diagnosis internship. But we just worked on his body using physical medicine from Chinese medicine, instead of using acupuncture needles. And again, we saw a great change in not only his physicality and pain and ability to walk, but in his pulses.

So I just want to encourage you that no matter what. Whatever therapy you use, your pulse diagnosis is your way to get down to what is the cause of going on with the person and how is your treatment working or not. Because remember, if the pulse doesn’t change, then you need to change your treatment plan because the pulses will always respond when you are on the right track.

with your treatment plan. So that’s just one story that I thought just really struck me as let’s use all of our skills. We don’t have to just use that one therapy acupuncture, but we always have pulse diagnosis as our best. basic line of treatment. It tells us what’s going on with the person and their body gives us that feedback of what worked, what didn’t work.

And then we just keep going until we get those nice sine wave, very smooth, balanced, yang and yin connecting each other. So if it’s Martha, again, this is Martha Lucas. If you would like more information about my courses or my post diagnosis internships, you can go to my website, lucasteachings. com. My private practice site is acupuncturewoman.

com and you can email me with questions at drmlucas at acupuncturewoman. com. I am always happy to help someone become the best doctor Chinese medicine practitioner that you can become. And so once again, I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for letting me talk with you about pulse diagnosis and good luck in your practice.

 

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