Betterness Acupuncture & Herbs

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June 3, 2025 by Giles

makaru


Heavy rains have brought Makuru.
The local people moved inland to take shelter, and ate meat instead of seafood. We should also avoid the cold and wet as much as we can, and eat warming, nourishing foods. Roasts and braises, soups and stocks.
My favourite Traditional Chinese Medicine cookbook is Food for the Seasons by Professor Wong. He suggests eating anchovies, bay leafs, capers, chestnuts, chicken, coriander, dill, fennel, leek, mussels, mutton, nutmeg, pine nuts, rosemary, spring onions, prawns, sweet potatoes, and walnuts. Try poaching quince with star anise, cardamon, and cinnamon.

Once more about avoiding the cold. It is important to protect our vital warming energy or 杨 yang. While young people have plenty of it and can indulge in winter sports, even neglect to change out of sweaty clothes, it taxes their 杨 to do so. This can affect their health later in life, and their reproductive health sooner. Young men may be concerned that a foundational text foresaw limpness as an outcome.

Blue is the colour associated with Makaru.

More on Winter Health.

Photo by Mark Cyster
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

 

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: indigenous seasons, makaru, warming foods, winter health

April 29, 2025 by Giles

personal growth acupuncture

grow like a tree towards the sun

There are systems of acupuncture designed to encourage personal growth. One uses the 奇经  or extraordinary channels of traditional acupuncture, and would suit people growing with qigong practice. Another maps the Chakra system onto the body’s acupuncture points, and could best help with yoga practice. They would help without these practices, but people interested in using them are probably doing their own work already.

These systems work because Chinese medicine never only focuses on the material body, and has tools to work with the immaterial. We call it 神, which can be translated as psyche or spirit.

Most people will only get acupuncture when they’re unhealthy, some will use it to stay healthy. There are a few who are becoming better versions of themselves. We can help.

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: bettereveryday, betteryou, personalgrowth

February 26, 2025 by Giles

Bunuru – late summer

We’re well into Bunuru. It’s the hottest and driest season and the locals moved close to the coast and estauries and ate seafood. It is a season of white flowers. We recent arrivals seem to spend as much time at the beach as we can, and shuttle between air-conditioned homes, workplaces, and gyms in our air-conditioned cars.
I’ve realised that I don’t often do posts about summer or Bunuru, and I guess it’s because I’m merely surviving and hoping for Autumn or at least “Final Heat“处暑.That’s come, and it has cooled down a bit.
Even when just getting through it, summer is the season of Joy. Find some.
And try to get out of the aircon. Get outdoors when it’s not like Dubai, minimise the use of AC at home and instead make the most of any cooling breezes in the evening, and try to avoid the direct icy blast of the refrigerated air.
A foundational text of diagnosing and treating respiratory and epidemic disease is literally about Cold Damage (伤寒论 Shang Han Lun). Later theories of Warm Diseases (温病 Wen Bing) developed. But even during Perth’s five months of warm and hot weather we see more cases of Cold Damage than Warm Disease because of the exposure to artificial unseasonal cold, and from exposure to breezes, slipstreams and draughts while sweaty and uncovered.
Don’t keep smashing frozen fruit smoothies, salads, icy cold beverages. Just eat one slice of water-melon, it’s enough sweet coolness, more taxes the digestion. Overworking the digestion with too much cold food can affect its performance and even lead to diarrhoea. The body may even react to too much cold food by producing more heat, but this can be wildfire that makes our face red, cause rashes or headaches, or anger; rather than the gentle warmth of proper metabolism.
Summer wilts us though, and Autumn is the time to remoisten. I’ll be more prompt with my post.

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: acupunctureperth, balancedlifestyle, betterhealth, chineseherbsperth, chinesemedicine, chinesemedicineperth, healthandwellness, herbalmedicine, herbnerd, holistichealth, holisticliving, londoncourt, naturalhealing, naturalhealthcare, naturalmedicine, perthcbd, perthisok, plantbasedhealing, powerofplants, smallbusinessperth, wellnessisdouchy #acupunctureworks #herbalmedicineworks #healthylifestyle #yourhealthmatters⁠ #herbalmedicineperth, wellnessjourney

May 15, 2024 by Giles

the beauty of healing

金継ぎ kintsugi is the Japanese technique of repairing ceramics with gold lacquer. It is an expression of seeing beauty in the imperfect, the weathered, the broken and repaired.

We should look at ourselves in the same way.

Our medicine heals and repairs. But sometimes there is a scar or loss of ideal function afterwards, be it torn hamstring or broken heart. Because our medicine addresses more than the physical or somatic body, it can help to see the beauty of healing.

This image is from urushinokomaya.

Here is a Tedx talk about kintsugi for many more words than I’ve written here.

 

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: #acupuncturist, acupuncture, alternativehealing, balancedlifestyle, beautiful repair, betterhealth, chineseherbsperth, chinesemedicineperth, cupping, everydayhealing, londoncourt, natural medicine, naturalhealthcare, wellnessjourney

April 28, 2024 by Giles

djeran – cooler weather

Djeran’s cooler weather finally arrived. We should help our body recover from summer and early autumn’s dry heat with cooling moistening foods, and some root vegetables and pumpkin that boost our digestion.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: #acupuncturist, acupuncture, alternativehealing, autumn health, balancedlifestyle, betterhealth, chineseherbsperth, chinesemedicineperth, everydayhealing, londoncourt, plantbasedperth, powerofplants

February 5, 2024 by Giles

autumn begins – LiQiu 立秋 snow fungus

February 4 is roughly the the southern hemisphere equivalent of 立秋 Li Qiu, Autumn Begins. It is the first term of autumn in the solar calendar but in China it is still hot, indeed the dog days of heat are ongoing. But it is an autumnal time as farmers need to prepare for harvest and an acknowledgement that cooler days are on their way.
White fungus soap is a traditional autumn food. Its main ingredients are white fungus* and lotus seed, that together moisten and nourish the body, and are thought to rejuvenate skin, improve immunity and digestion.
This moistening is important because Chinese autumns are dry. But while in Perth autumns we may expect some rain, our long summer is parching and needs to be remediated. And there’s gonna be plenty of hot dry days yet.
Soak 1/3 cup of lotus seeds in hot water for one hour.
Soak one flower of white fungus in room temperature water for 5 minutes, it will expand to three times its dry size. Rinse away any dirt or impurities and cut the dark yellow base of the fungus away with scissors, then shred the remaining part to smaller pieces.
Split the lotus seeds in half and remove any green sprouts as they are bitter.
You could add Chinese red dates or dried longan fruit for sweetness, half a dozen of each should do. Soak them before using. Gouji berries could also be used but add these towards the end of cooking as they can become bitter when cooked for more than a few minutes.
Simmer the ingredients in a covered pot for 45 minutes.
A bit of rock sugar may be used for sweetening if desired.

*White fungus 银耳 yin er is also known as snow fungus.You can find it and lotus seed 蓮子 lián zǐ at Chinese grocers.

Filed Under: blog

November 26, 2023 by Giles

yes it’s hot, but it’s spring so avoid wind

fan blowing on girl and dogIt’s 36 degrees for days in Spring and that fan feels so good. But wind is the seasonal pathogen of spring, and we are easily damaged by it. I wrote a little more about that on the Insta.

To which I will add, neck pain can be made worse by wind.

The Chinese Medicine classics recognised that when the weather was different to what it should be in a season we should act according to the real situation instead of the seasonal ideal (for instance Huang di Nei Jing Chapter 71 line 477). The seasonal ideal of spring is warming, but when it is unseasonally hot we should cool ourselves instead. This is best done with water – swims, cool showers, and cooling foods and drinks. But not icy cold, as extremes generate their opposites, which in this case is heat. But as well as wind being the dominant qi of spring that brings wind diseases, it is a time of rising warm energy or yang. Migraines and hayfever are conditions that can be made worse by the seasonal rising yang. Wind can stir and unsettle rising yang, so rising yang illnesses can by made worse by wind, and they often involve combinations of both.

So again, try to avoid the wind. That little fan that blows on your face on the treadmill – turn it off.

Photo: Andre Zaripov

Filed Under: blog

August 8, 2023 by Giles

djilba – spring begins

In the five phase seasons it is still winter, ruled by the water element. But on Noongar Whadjuk Boojar it is also Djilba, when spring begins.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: acupunctureperth, acupunctureworks, alternativehealing, balancedlifestyle, betterhealth, chineseherbsperth, chinesemedicineperth, djilba, everydayhealing, healthandwellness, healthylifestyle, herbalmedicineperth, herbalmedicineworks, holistichealth, holisticliving, londoncourt, naturalhealthcare, naturalmedicine, perthcbd, perthisok, plantbasedhealing, plantbasedperth, powerofplants, shoplocal, smallbusinessperth, wellnessisdouchy, wellnessjourney, yourhealthmatters⁠, ⁠ herbalmedicineperth

August 2, 2023 by Giles

the reservoir – jing 精

“Why aren’t we having a child?”

The answer could be that the deep reservoir of vitality and endurance has been emptied.

Our model calls this deep reservoir jing 精. [Read more…]

Filed Under: blog Tagged With: jing, natural fertility, vitality and endurance, why aren't we having a child, 精

July 27, 2023 by Giles

convenient parking

There is convenient parking near the clinic but you pay for the convenience. Someone who didn’t mind doing so put me on to the valet parking at the State Buildings. It’s $40 for less than three hours, but you get a coffee along with the benefit of a short walk to the clinic, and not driving around trying to find a spot.

In another post about parking I said I would reimburse parking costs at the next appointment. If you use valet parking we’ll go halves.

Filed Under: blog

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