Acupuncture can help with lower back pain. One recent review of clinical trials found statistically significant reductions in pain compared to sham treatment (1), and another concluded that acupuncture appears to be effective in treating non-specific lower back pain, and may be an important supplement to usual care (2). But often it’s going to take a bit more than the acupuncture, and there’s a bit of a journey involved.
When I posted before about how top athletes get acupuncture I wrote about
how professional cyclists use acupuncture to improve recovery and to boost performance, as well as to treat injuries.
Turns out a bunch of NBA players get acupuncture too.
I don’t know who this guy is. And he seems to be getting moxibustion.
Ginseng is an adoptogen. What does that mean? That it does what the person taking it needs it to do.
I had to do a bit of research because a doctor asked me it there was ginseng in a client’s medicine that could have made his blood pressure too high. It turns out that ginseng may raise blood pressure in individuals when it is too low, but reduces blood pressure when it is too high and is being investigated as a treatment for hypertension. 
Many of the herbs we use are adaptogens, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone should take them. Young people with lots of exuberant natural energy (Yang) may find that ginseng may make them a bit restless or agitated, or it may effect their sleep. People who drink too much coffee will probably feel a bit edgy if they also take ginseng. And older people whose cooling receptive nourishment (Yin) has declined may find ginseng overheats them a bit.
An Osteopathy student at uni told me that his Chinese mother took so much reishi mushroom and ginseng that she got headaches and nosebleeds. Too much heat in our book. But he couldn’t convince her to take less.
I’ve mentioned IBS in previous posts have about how emotions can affect our digestion, and how low FODMAP diets should be temporary. This is the post that focuses on IBS.
Simply IBS is abdominal pain and bloating, and altered bowel habits, that does not have an identifiable physiological cause. Conventional medicine recognises some connection between IBS and emotional state (1,2) and it has begun to be considered to be a dysfunction of the brain-gut axis, but as I’ve written elsewhere the Chinese model doesn’t separate the psychological and somatic. All physical complaints are thought to affect us spiritually to some extent, and all mental and emotional disturbances have the potential to affect us physically. This is what makes the tools of Chinese medicine particularly appropriate when these affects are stronger.
Many people with IBS are unsatisfied with conventional treatments and seek alternatives, including acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine (3). A recent review(*) of published studies found that there were clinical trials that showed that acupuncture was more effective at relieving IBS symptoms than pharmacological medicine, and that acupuncture combined with herbal medicine “had the highest probability of being the best option for improving global IBS symptoms”(3). While the authors thought that the evidence wasn’t strong enough to make them certain that acupuncture treats the symptoms of IBS effectively, they did recommend that IBS patients who were intolerant of the side effects of standard pharmacological treatment consider using acupuncture and related therapies.
* Actually a review of reviews. But that’s a bit meta to write in a blogpost.
A betterness certificate is a way of giving yourself or a friend some betterness in the future. Let’s call it betterness insurance, as it works a bit like health insurance. Certificates are redeemable against consultation fees and products from Betterness Acupuncture & Herbs. Individually named and numbered certificates will be emailed to purchasers.
It’s also a way of raising a bit of working capital for the business, so that it’ll still be around to help you out when you need some.
Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine have been shown to alleviate the symptoms of seasonal allergic rhinitis – better known to sufferers as hayfever. (1,2)
Another study has shown that acupuncture reduces the antihistamine use of hayfever sufferers.(3)
We realise that most people will just pop an OTC antihistamine for their hayfever, but don’t take them all spring and summer. Long-term antihistamine use is associated with obesity and insulin resistance.(4)
One of the herbs we often use is 辛荑 xin yi, or magnolia flowers
CBD parking sucks. We know that. But we’ll lessen the grievance by reimbursing your parking cost at the next appointment. The map below should help, and there is a City of Perth Parking app that tells you where there are empty bays. There is no street parking on the Terrace between Barrack and William, but there are sometimes 1 hour bays on The Esplanade that would be fine for a standard consultation.
Look after your health in spring. In short:
That’s right. While we prefer people to cook their herbs so they become involved in their own healing, we don’t want to create a barrier that is too high for busy people. So the clinic has welcomed a new bit of kit. It looks like something from the Tardis, but it will cook your herbs for you if you just can’t do it yourself.
There will be a small fee to discourage wanton use of the service.
Herb cooking: $25
The three months of winter,
they denote securing and storing.
The water is frozen and the earth breaks open.
Do not disturb the yang [qi].
Go to rest early and rise late.
you must wait for the sun to shine.
Let the mind enter a state as if hidden,
as if shut in
as if you had secret intentions;
as if you already had made gains.
Avoid cold and seek warmth and
do not [allow sweat] to flow away through the skin.
This would cause the qi to be carried away quickly.
This is correspondence with the qi of winter and
it is the Way of nourishing storage.
Opposing it harms the kidneys.
In spring this causes limpness with receding [qi],
there is little to support generation.
– Huang di Nei Jing Su Wen trans. Paul Unschuald
Chinese winters are cold, particularly in the North. So Chinese Medicine texts talk of cold, dry winters. Perth’s winter months are the coldest of the year, but are relatively mild and quite wet, typically with cold fronts bringing south-westerly winds and days of heavy rain. By the local Nyoongar calendar, we are moving from Makuru, the coldest and wettest season to Djilba or first spring, with some wet days, and more clear, cold nights and pleasantly warm days.
Despite this difference with the cosmic flow of yin and yang in the Middle Kingdom, Chinese Medicine still has good tips for winter health.
As the Su Wen outlines above, we should stay indoors and avoid the cold. Most of us will welcome the advice that we shouldn’t get out of bed until the sun comes up. Winter is a time to reserve and store and some have interpreted the rather cryptic third stanza above as applying this to sexual activity, but the ninth century commentator and editor Wang Bing commented ‘All this to say one does not wish to go out needlessly lest one is struck by cold’ (Unschuld p. 49). Those that like to snuggle up in winter would prefer this interpretation. Notably Makuru is the season of fertility, and many indigenous plants flower in winter.
We should be particularly careful about not getting chilled after exercise. Young people have abundant warm energy or yang so it is ok for them to perspire at footy training in the evening, but even they should be sure to have a hot shower afterwards and change out of sweat-damped clothes. The rest of us should be even more cautious about exercising late, or outdoors.
Winter is the time to eat warming, full-flavoured foods and to nourish the Shen organ-meridian system linked to the kidneys. Wong’s ‘Four Seasons’ suggests: anchovies, bay leafs, capers, chestnuts, chicken, coriander, dill, fennel, leek, mussels, mutton, nutmeg, pine nuts, rosemary, spring onions, prawns, sweet potatoes, and walnuts. Trout and salmon are warm-natured fish. Eat stews, soups and curries, particularly of flavoursome foods with plentiful qi such as mutton or brisket. As well as eating warming foods we should moderate our consumption of cooling foods. Winter is not the best time to eat a lot of raw foods, salads, sushi or icecream, tofu should be cooked or even fried.
Winter is also time when it’s thought to be healthy to enjoy a little alcohol. Chinese will drink rice wine that has had warming herbs steeped in it, but regular wine is warm enough to help us through winter. Wong says that it ‘enlivens the spleen, warms the digestive system, expels wind and cold, promotes circulation of the qi and blood, improves appetite and dispels fatigue.’ But alcohol would kindle any fire in the body, and red wine seems particularly unhelpful to people who overheat at night. The alcohol in beer is warming, but beer can bring dampness. Dark beers warm the yang more than light ones, and some beers are brewed with orange peel, cardamon, and other spices that can warm the digestive system and reduce dampness.
Be careful though, while the seasonal qi is cool, we have the adverse qi of even winters being warmer than usual. And western diet and stress tend to generate pathogenic warmth, particularly when alcohol is added.
At the first signs of having caught a cold simmer two slices of ginger with three spring onion stalks for twenty minutes and drink the broth.
A warming nourishing dish from Professor Wong’s Food for the Seasons that doesn’t use meat:
stir-fried daikon radish with carrot
Stir-fry finely diced daikon radish with carrot until al dente and slightly browned. Add a handful of chopped shallots and cook for another minute. Add soy sauce and black pepper to taste.
Wong says that the carrot supports digestion and the radish clears damp that hinders digestion.