Now, the same team, in a continued analysis of their data, showed that the Acupuncture also lowered the tendency of women with PCOS to get blood clots (In technical terms, the prothrombotic state was reduced, in that a coagulation (blood clotting) indicator improved).

While many of my women’s health patients come to me for fertility, menopause, painful menstruation (dysmenorrhea), or PMS related acne or migraines, I do see many other cases, including very complicated conditions like PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome). And I’ve seen women get better! That’s why I think it’s so important for women to know they have the option of trying Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine for their unique health conditions.

Related articles:

• What sort of treatment is available to women who have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)?
• What is Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome?
• Women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and Insulin Resistance can Lose Weight and Balance Hormones Naturally with Katie Humphrey’s New E-book
• What are the long term effects of PCOS on my body and how will it effect my ability to have children since it can cause problems with many aspects of a womans body including, blood pressure, hormones, sugar levels, and thyroid regulation?

1. Sleep when it’s dark out: Chinese Medicine teaches us that we are part of the environment, and our bodies are built to work with the daily and seasonal changes in light. At night, energy flows through the internal organs, and they are meant to be cleansing, AND storing any extra Qi, blood, and essence left from the day. If we are awake during this time, the body doesn’t get an adequate amount of time to do this and we end up drained rather than shored up. Ideally, it is best to sleep from 9pm – 5am. Since this is so difficult for many in our culture, I recommend at the very least not going to bed past midnight, 10pm or 11pm is even better.
2. Get enough sleep: This may seem like a no brainer, but many people tell me they would like more energy, and later on tell me they are only sleeping six to seven hours per night. Studies have shown that, regardless of what people say, humans need seven to nine hours of sleep a night.
3. Eliminate all caffeine: For some this may seem contradictory. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “I NEED that caffeine to have any energy in the morning.” Caffeine is like using a credit card with no money in the bank, as my herb teacher, Richard Liao, used to say. We feel the artificial high, but it is doing it at an expense, and we actually get depleted more and more each day. It also does interrupt sleep cycles, every two-hours for up to 24 hours. In addition, it blocks enzymes in the body that might digest our food or release energy in other ways.

Of course, there are many other things we can do, like exercise, slow down, develop a bedtime ritual so you sleep better, eat healthy food, spend time out in nature, but these are three things to start with that many people often leave for last. Good luck!

Thank you so much for alerting me to this article and for sending it to me. It’s an interesting article about placebo effect, but it concerns me considerably in the way the article treats Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine. It’s interesting in that Specter, the author, does give a very thorough review of what we know about the placebo effect and why and how people are studying it today. He gives a review of research, quotes researchers themselves, and gives summaries of research articles. The main interviewee, Ted Kaptchuk, an Acupuncturist and Herbalist, says he thinks there’s nothing “wrong” with the placebo effect, it does help people sometimes, and so he wants to understand it better.

I’m basically in agreement with that part. It’s obvious to just about any practitioner that a certain amount of benefit is derived for patients just from the practitioner-patient interaction. However, as one reader who commented on the article a month later points out, it is also known that the placebo effect can only go so far, and for so long. Deeper reaching changes and recoveries need more: “Experienced physicians know that sympathetic concern and reassurance can often allay subjective symptoms—at least temporarily—but only appropriate medical treatment has a chance of curing physical disease.”

The even more disturbing side of this article is that these same people, Specter and Kaptchuk, discount acupuncture in a harmful way, with just a few sentences, and with no proof or clarifications whatsoever! After such a careful elucidation of the placebo effect, why would they do this to acupuncture? At least one statement is not even true.

The article opens by saying that Ted Kaptchuk practiced acupuncture for many years, and then turned to research. There’s an implication that he thought acupuncture didn’t work, and yet later he’s quoted as saying he helped thousands of people. His quoted reasoning is that it wasn’t the needles, but something to do with him personally! This is a pretty big presumption to make without any reasonable evidence presented.

One example is given (the only example) of a patient Kaptchuk said he treated for chronic bronchitis, who then came back saying her ovaries were “cured” as well because of his treatments. Ted says there’s no way the acupuncture and herbs could have done this, but how does he know that? They give no facts, and leave things very vague. How many times did he treat her? Was the woman actually diagnosed with an ovarian disorder, or were they going only to investigate (they say she cancelled her surgery because the pain was gone). Perhaps she just had pain. If just pain, perhaps it was actually related to the chronic coughing, but referred, and clearing the bronchitis cleared that pain as well. If she did have an ovarian cyst, the most likely cause of ovarian pain, cysts are almost always due to what we call “dampness” (think of the fluid inside), and chronic bronchitis is, too (think of the phlegm and inflammation in the lungs). If he cleared this for the lungs, to me it is very likely that it cleared the ovaries as well. We even sometimes use some of the same herbs and points.

Later in the article, Specter states in just one partial sentence that clinical studies don’t demonstrate the effectiveness of acupuncture. Despite the thorough citing of sources elsewhere in the article, here there are no sources or references to research at all. And, in fact, the statement is not even true. A large number of studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of acupuncture, to the point that, ten years ago, the National Institute of Health (NIH) recommended acupuncture for a long list of conditions (PDF). The NIH doesn’t recommend things lightly, and in fact, they said they recommended acupuncture because enough evidence already existed at the time to show its effectiveness. Since then, even more studys have been completed that show the effectiveness of acupuncture.

What is also true is that a number of studies on acupuncture have not been able to show effectiveness, but if these are what Specter is referring to, here again, there is no questioning in his article of why the studies fail; whereas in examining the placebo effect, the article does question the formats of the studies. It has been my experience that many acupuncture studies are not drawn up in a way that can accurately measure the effectiveness of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. In order to fit the current research paradigm, many studies treat everyone with the same disorder with the exact same treatment. This is not how Chinese Medicine works, which is part of its beauty.

It is a statement of fact in Chinese Medicine that each symptom or disorder might be treated by a number of different point prescriptions or herbal prescriptions because every human body is unique. In TCM, we treat based on each individual’s pattern. One person may have menopausal symptoms for one reason, and another person might have a different imbalance that exhibits the same symptoms. Treating them both with the same points and herbs might make one better and the other not, or might even make them worse!Other difficulties in doing research on acupuncture is, in fact, having an effective “placebo” treatment to use as a control. To date, no one has come up with something that feels to all patients like they are getting acupuncture, but which is not acupuncture. No wonder some studies aren’t able to show anything! Add to this that acupuncture is just not a big money maker, so no one wants to put much money into research (a big problem with all research today), and you start to touch on the difficulties.  We need to come up with a new paradigm.

This is something I’ve thought a lot about, having a B.A. in Biochemistry, having worked in research in the biotech industry, and having taught research methodology at TCM schools. (But to go into depth about it is a subject for another article.) Unfortunately, however, I think Michael Specter’s article has some serious flaws that need to be addressed and I’m a bit surprised that Ted Kaptchuk allowed the article to be published; however, not really knowing the man, it’s hard to say. Coincidentally, I happened to just meet someone who is also involved at the Harvard Institute, an insider, who mentioned that several of Kaptchuk’s colleagues were also upset with him about this article. While I understand the need to study the placebo effect, and I also can understand changing from clinical practice after 40 years (it’s hard work) to something that gives more prestige and millions of dollars in grants, I don’t understand why Specter and Kaptchuk felt they had to discredit acupuncture in the process. The nature of the article belies the rigor they say they are trying to promote.

Happy Winter Solstice everyone! I am taking a much deserved break with my family. For information about Winter Solstice, I found a few interesting articles today:

• When is the Solstice in California, and how will the weather be?
• What does this time of year mean in various religions?
• Too stressed this holiday season? A bit of advice!
• Are you being pagan by putting up Christmas lights?
• Wikipedia’s precise explanation.

Thousands of years ago, Chinese Medicine practitioners started with the idea that we are part of the environment, and that our bodies need to be tended, like a flower in a garden.  We need to be in sync with nature to achieve optimum health.

My own journey down this path started back in my 20’s.  I had begun to be interested in what was called back then, “Natural cooking” — we hadn’t quite gotten to organic yet.  But I’d only just begun, and I entered a turbulent phase of my life where I ended up getting one infection after another, sinus, urinary tract, bronchitis.  One weekend, a urinary tract infection I didn’t even realize I had landed me in the hospital with a fever and the shakes.  It took three days of IV antibiotics for my fever to come down, two more before they let me out of the hospital.  The infection had started toward my kidneys, and they said if I’d waited much longer, it might have gone to my blood.  Yikes!

I was both literally and figuratively sick of this pattern, so I started to look into how to keep from getting infections.  Besides the specific things for avoiding urinary tract infections, like avoiding sugar and alcohol, wearing cotton pants, etc., I read that taking vitamins might help.  I started taking a multivitamin for women every day.  Lo and behold, it worked!  I stopped getting infections all the time!  I read more, and realized that I might have been deficient in a specific vitamin.  Like many others, I saw that a lot of the vitamins I was taking were passing out in my urine, so I wondered if there wasn’t a way to figure out precisely which vitamins I needed, and not take a lot of stuff I didn’t need.

More research turned up that it is in fact very difficult to determine exactly what vitamins a particular person might need.  It would be extremely expensive to test, so that is why people mostly just take a multi in hope of covering the bases.

Well, I went on my way, kept taking multivitamins, got into organic food when it came out (one taste of an organic carrot sold me!) and finally stumbled upon Chinese Medicine, a story I’ve told in other blog posts.  When I first started digesting the detailed diagnosis methods of this sophisticated system (which took years to learn), I gradually started thinking, hey, THIS is the way to figure out exactly what nutrition I need, in the form of herbs!  The diagnosis methods in Chinese Medicine use detailed questioning, in addition to observing the persons face, body type, tongue and feeling pulses, in order to ascertain an exact pattern of imbalance for a particular person.  The patterns of imbalance can be quite complex, involving excesses and deficiencies of Qi, Blood, Yin, and Yang, in addition to excesses of Wind, Damp, Cold, Heat, and Phlegm, and involve assessing 10 major organs, and relating it all to the Five Element Theory.

Such a system can get extremely specific with the details for each person.  Depending on these specific details, we prescribe an herbal formula tailor-made for that person, generally containing anywhere from 8-16 herbs, occasionally more.  This formula gives that person the exact nutrition they need to balance them. Each herb has been studied in detail for thousands of years, so it is known which nourishes Qi or Blood, which cools heat or warms you up.   In modern times, most of the herbs have been studied in the lab to a greater or lesser degree, and we now know that many of the herbs contain high levels of certain nutrients or compounds.

With this in mind, I do generally still take a multivitamin and some Omega Fatty Acids, but I don’t feel I have to take mega doses. Instead, I eat a healthy diet, and take herbs most days, knowing that these herbs are giving me the exact nutrition I need.  This especially since the modern diet is often bereft of nutrients, since foods are grown in depleted soils, shipped, stored, and over processed.  And the types of foods we’ve come to eat are not always the healthiest.  During millions of years of human development, people gathered and ate what they could, and this included all these roots, twigs, leaves, and berries that are Chinese herbs and that are left out of our diets.  I feel these herbs are essential to optimum health.  So, why take Chinese herbs, and for how long?  If you ask me, if you want to be really healthy, you take them as a regular part of your diet, for the rest of your life, just like food.  It’s the same as asking, why should I eat green leafy vegetables, and for how long?  Because they’re extremely good for you, and why would you stop that?

Years ago, I took a class called “Awakening Joy,” taught by James Baraz, a meditation instructor some of you may have heard of. In it, we were encouraged to try a daily gratitude practice as one of many tools to help us down the path towards happiness. The instruction was to find at least one other person, or several others, and share small things you felt grateful for every day. These days, the easiest way to do this is by email. So I asked several friends if they’d like to participate, and two girlfriends outside the Bay Area agreed. Every day we emailed to each other at least three things we felt grateful for, sometimes more. I was amazed at how quickly and profoundly this affected my mood and outlook. Looking for moments when I felt gratitude helped me attune to it each day, and writing these moments down, then reading what the others wrote, filled my heart with tenderness. I began to feel grateful for everything from a droplet of water hanging from a blade of grass, to the unconditional love I received from my daughter. It was interesting to see what we found gratitude for when it was suddenly missing as well, like running water in the house when a plumbing problem arose.

We kept it up for months and then it fizzled out, but even today I’m able to call up tender feelings very quickly just by going back to thinking about gratitude. It came up today while hiking in Mount Diablo State Park, near the Donner Cabin site. I decided to rest on a rock in the middle of the almost-dry-creek, and there waiting for me was a white plastic-bead necklace with a cross at the end. A sticker attached said, “Accept a Miracle” on one side, and “Please accept this gift” on the other. Now, I am not Christian by religion, was not raised that way, and have persistently followed Buddhism for some time, but I was touched by this gift. To me, it did remind me to be open to small miracles, the good things in my life. It also inspired me to meditate, a kind of prayer. So I sat on the rock and meditated with the necklace in my lap, and among the multitude of thoughts and planning that generally tries to take over my mind, I did notice the gratitude I felt for many small things: for the beautiful day, the way the sunlight was shining at a slant across the mountainside, falling gently on the leaves at my feet; for all the people in my life who love me, my daughter, my boyfriend, my mother and brothers, my sister-in-law, my dear friends; for the chance to do what I love, to help people, and for all the kind and appreciative clients I get to work with. Afterwards, I dedicated the merit while holding the necklace, feeling grateful for the feelings of gratitude and compassion it had helped bring about, and so too the person who left it there.

I encourage you to try a gratitude practice. This week of Thanksgiving might be a good week to do it! In the midst of all the bustle of activity, take the time to write down just three things you feel grateful for each day. If you can share it with another person somehow, that’s even better. See if you can do it for seven days. You might be amazed, like me, at the power it brings. You might not want to stop.

For those who are new the practice of meditation, here is a great post on starting a gratitude practice.

However, from Chinese Medicine point of view, any time we overeat it will create what is called “Food Stagnation.” This is most definitely the bloated feeling you get after the big meal, loss of appetite (of course), and sometimes pain, or trouble sleeping. For many, there is just this temporary feeling that goes away by the next day once our body has dealt with it. But sometimes a bout of overeating can create problems that stay around for days or even weeks. A person can have abdominal pain, nausea, burping, acid regurgitation, vomiting, diarrhea, or even insomnia or emotional upset, days or even weeks later, and it can be attributed to what is formally called “Retention of Food in the Stomach.”

Fortunately, there is great acupuncture and herbs for this. In particular, I like a famous Chinese formula called “Bao He Wan,” translated as Preserve Harmony Pills. I keep a bottle of this around at all times, and definitely for the holidays, especially Thanksgiving. Catching Food Stagnation in the early stages is the way to go, and this is the basic formula to do that. It consists of seven herbs, many of which are now known to contain digestive enzymes! From Chinese Medicine point of view, it also moves the Qi, dissolves phlegm, clears heat, and more. I always take it after a too-big meal, and it does the trick, so I sleep better. I highly recommend having some on hand at all times; in my home, it is a household expression, “Time for some Bao He Wan!” It can also be used after drinking too much alcohol, or eating too fast! I have a stock in my office, so pick some up next time you come in, and it’s so common, I’m sure you can also find it at your local health food store. If you can’t get some before this Thanksgiving, a basic digestive enzyme complex will also help, although it doesn’t cover as many bases as the Bao He Wan.

I think in particular of one patient, Marshall (names have been changed to protect privacy, but this is a true story), who came to me several years ago. Marshall, sadly, had been diagnosed with intestinal cancer at an early age, in his mid-30’s. Luckily, they caught it early enough that they stopped it in its tracks by removing a large section of his intestines, and then using chemotherapy to kill off anything that was left. So you can go ahead and feel good, he’s a cancer survivor, it’s been more than five years now that he’s been cancer free. Hurray!

Unfortunately, while chemotherapy is one of the best things we have for killing cancer cells, most chemo drugs these days and in the recent past target all fast growing cells in the body, not just cancer cells. That’s why those going through chemo lose their hair and their nails become brittle; like malignant cancer cells, those cells are fast growing so chemotherapy kills those cells along with the cancer. Chemo also often messes with nerve cells, leaving the person with neuropathy, or nerve damage, called peripheral neuropathy when it is in the peripheral system, which includes the hands and feet. Peripheral neuropathy is the most common kind of post-chemotherapy nerve pain. This damage can make the hands and feet both numb and painful, sometimes extremely so. Patients are usually told it is a possible side effect that may go away in a few months, or may never go away. Rarely are they warned how bad it can be. I’ve read too many stories on-line of people in extreme pain after chemotherapy, even to the point of taking methadone, having trouble balancing, and not able to get much help, even years later.

Well, Marshall came to me almost two years after the end of his chemo, with significant pain in both his hands and feet. His feet were much worse, with a lot of numbness and more severe pain. He had hoped it would go away like they said it might, but it hadn’t, and wasn’t changing much. He loved to hike, but couldn’t hike more than about a mile without severe pain in his feet. We started in with a vigorous course of acupuncture, two-to-three-times per week for the first few weeks. I also had him put a special Chinese Herbal salve on his hands and feet every night. Very quickly, the pain and numbness in his hands reduced to next to nothing, and the feet began to improve as well. After the first few weeks, as things were improving, we reduced the acupuncture down to one session a week. After six months of treatment, his feet were in so much less pain, he was already very happy, and he was starting to get feeling back in many areas of his feet. Gradually, the area of numbness was reducing, narrowing down to a central band in the bottom of his foot.

We decided to reduce the treatments to once every two weeks, and this was so doable, and the acupuncture treatments themselves so enjoyable for Marshall, that he’s kept doing this over the past several years. What we’ve seen is that, after the initial fast reduction in pain, improvement slowed, but continued. After one year, he rarely if ever had any problems in his hands, and the pain was so low in his feet he could hike miles again! Now after several years, his feet also rarely have much pain, unless over used. He still experiences some significant numbness in the center of his feet, but that even seems to be slowly, slowly improving. Those with peripheral neuropathy may find it hard to believe that he just came back from a two week vacation to the tropics where he was able to walk in flip-flops all the time, mostly on rock, gravel, and sand! He did have some increased tenderness afterward, which he came right in to clear up after he returned.

So if you or anyone you know has peripheral neuropathy, from chemotherapy, or for other reasons, please, please let them know about acupuncture, and how much it can help. I’ve also seen it help diabetic peripheral neuropathy, and neuropathy from nerve damage due to injuries. For instance, one patient had pain in her left foot ever since falling and breaking her left hip. She tried many things, and has found that acupuncture is the only thing that helps, again reducing her pain to next to nothing. Obviously, I could go on and on about many cases. Please, just don’t stay in pain, try acupuncture.

If you are now wondering if it can help you or someone you know, the answer is probably yes. Pre-menstrual symptoms of all kinds? Yes! That includes irritability, bloating, breast tenderness, and just about anything else you can think of like acne, getting sick at menstruation time, and more. Painful menstruation or dysmenorrhea? Definitely! There is no reason to be in pain every month or to take Motrin every month and ruin your kidneys. Excess menstruation? A big resounding YES! So many women bleed too much and either live with it or think they have to take hormones. I’ve helped women slow mildly excessive menstruation, and even stop nearly hemoraegghic bleeding, all without hormones.

While women rarely come for this, Chinese Medicine can also help with scanty menstruation. It might feel great to only have a day or two of not much flow, but it’s actually not healthy. Is it coming too early or too late? We can regulate it. Are you having perimenopausal symptoms? Come on in! Acupuncture and herbs quiet hot flashes, improve sleep and focus, resolve skin conditions, help grow hair, and on and on.
I wrote last time about how I help women get pregnant. Once pregnant, Chinese Medicine is sometimes the only thing a woman can do to help alleviate her symptoms. I induce labors, and help with postpartum depression, milk flow, and mastitis, to name the most common.

Even if you have some kind of excess vaginal discharge, I might be able to help. If it’s mild yeast or bacteria, the herbs and acupuncture with probiotics have often done it. Of course, if it’s more serious, you need to go to your OB/GYN. Chinese Medicine also helps with conditions like fibroids, fibrocystic breast disease, endometriosis, and polycystic ovarian syndrome. These complex and deep seated patterns take some diligence to treat, but it can be done. About the only time I tell a woman I can’t help her is if her fibroids are too large. Chinese Medicine can reduce small fibroids if found early, 2 -3 cm or less, but any larger than that and it becomes more difficult. However, even while I might recommend surgery to remove them, I still recommend that they use Chinese Medicine to balance their systems to keep the fibroids from coming back, as they all too often do.

Do I sound adamant about this? It’s because I want so much for all women to know they have this choice. I don’t care who you go see, but you are not limited to hormones or surgery. There IS an alternative. If you have any women’s health condition, go find an acupuncturist who specializes in Women’s health. You will be like a recent patient of mine who said, “She’s helping me with so much! I never knew!”

My patients often ask me the difference between a cold and a flu. Here is a a chart to help you understand. You might be able to keep going with a head cold, although continuing activity rather than resting can easily drive it deeper; but continuing to try to keep up with your schedule with a flu can lead to infections!