06.15.10
Posted in Chinese medicine, Health tagged acupuncture at 11:36 pm by kyrias
As a result of the on-going effort to find out just what is wrong with me, my mother hunted down an acupuncturist and has been dragging me to go see her for about three weeks now.
Short version of my health problems: PCOS, major depression, debilitating ADHD, extreme fatigue (sleeping 18 hours a day), disfiguring amounts of acne, and a noted failure to lose weight. I suppose there’s some other stuff around there, but that should cover most of the major points.
Everything aside, just the inability to stay awake for more than 2 hours at a stretch and feeling extremely tired all the time was pretty frustrating.
The first week, the acupuncturist felt up my pulse, told me that I had “heart fire”, a “kidney deficiency”, “liver fire”, a “spleen deficiency”, and then proceeded to stick needles in me. If anyone tries to tell you that acupuncture doesn’t hurt — they’re lying. What they’re leaving out is that when something is wrong with you, then it can be painful to press on certain pressure points corresponding to whatever has gone awry, and sticking needles in said pressure points can be quite painful. Sometimes it just hurts going in, sometimes it hurts like the dickens going in, and sometimes it will continue to feel sore, throbbing, and in general not at all comfortable.
Second week, she took a look at the mass of acne on my forehead, and decided to “cup” it to make it heal faster. According to her, I have congested blood in that area which will not dissipate readily on its own, which was also probably causing the on-going acne, and that a couple of sessions of cupping should solve matters. I wasn’t quite so credulous, but decided to go with it anyways in the hopes that it would help. She pricked the area all over with a needle, causing pretty acute pain, and then created a vacuum in a glass cup and proceeded to try and suck out all the bad stuff. By the way, by acute pain, I mean “nearly peeing in the pants” pain. The vacuum action was also very, very painful. It felt that there was stuff trying to crawl out of my skin and rupture my face. The “cupping” did indeed suck out quite a bit of black blood, more than you would guess from ten or so needled pricks, so I guess something good (?) happened. When she was done, although I had a raised bump on my forehead from the vacuum action, it seemed like the acne did go away much faster than it otherwise would have. The discoloration that remained from previous acne bouts also seemed to be gone. Perhaps that was the congested blood she was talking about?
Today was the third appointment. She took one look at the acne on my forehead and asked me if I had been eating spicy foods. I had to admit that I did. She proceeded to give me a laundry list of things I can’t eat.
- spicy foods
- black or white pepper
- beef
- lamb/mutton
- lobster
- shrimp
- fried foods
- “heating spices” which probably include cinnamon along with star anise and stuff like that
I’m sure I’m forgetting something because that honestly was a long list. Then she proceeded to stick more needles into me, stuck electric currents to needles in my face and head, and in short delivered PAIN. I was almost disappointed when she didn’t cup my face this session, but the rest of the painful stuff and the NUMEROUS needles in my face with electrodes attached dissuaded me from asking for it. Next time maybe. I do want that acne gone, gone, gone.
I kid you not, every single time I leave a session, I feel utterly drained from all the pain and anticipation of pain and stuff and end up spending at least a day or so sleeping it off. Today, there was pain in the places where she stuck needles in my head every time I bent or crouched or did something to my head that I haven’t quite figured out what except that it hurts to move too much.
I’d quit going, except going to a Chinese doctor in Taiwan did help me immeasurably, and I did commit to giving it a fair try. Also, it might just be a placebo effect or cognitive dissonance at work, but I think it might be helping. Cognitive dissonance doesn’t sound too far off though: Needles! Pain! It HAS to be doing something!
Oh well. More updates to follow! At least I can attest that whatever she does will work on bad acne.
ETA:
No alcohol, curry, chives, or spices of any sort. Yes, that includes cinnamon. FML.
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06.09.09
Posted in Chinese medicine, Health tagged constipation at 12:09 am by kyrias
Sorry, couldn’t help it. I know far too many people who only “go” once a week or less.
According to all the articles I’ve read on this subject, we humans are supposed to have bowel movements after every single meal. In fact, supposedly, the feeling of a full stomach is supposed to send signals to your body to clear out the old inventory, so to speak. Going once a day is considered abnormal and unhealthy.
Yes. Well. I don’t know any person not on laxatives who goes that frequently, but I figure that we might as well aim for the minimum of once a day.
Disclaimer: If your diet is basically that of a carnivore’s — I have no idea if this will help you or not. Probably not. But it’s worth a try at any rate, right?
- Drink a glass of warm water first thing in the morning. In fact, drink a warm glass of water before every meal if you can help it. The water supposedly helps stimulate your digestive system so that your bowels start moving — thus hopefully prompting the need to go. In fact, drink more water, period. It’s good for you. Most people don’t get anywhere close to the amount they need.
- Eat apples. If you have no other vegetable/fruit matter in your diet, try to eat an apple before or after every meal. Apples have both water soluble and non-soluble fiber, thus helping move things along. According to Chinese medicine, apples are also very good for your stomach. If Chinese quackery doesn’t appeal to you, just think of the saying: “An apple a day…”
- According to Chinese medicine, honey also helps things along. So, if you like drinking sweet stuff — just swap over to tea sweetened with honey instead of juice. Juice apparently has little to no nutritive value if you’re buying it from the grocery store. Supposedly.
- Massage your stomach. Rub your stomach in circles first. 20 times clockwise and 20 time anti-clockwise. Then follow up with up to down motions.
- Eat yogurt. The good stuff, not the stuff that’s pretty much skim milk, gelatin and jam in a plastic container. Try aiming for something that has nothing more than milk and bacteria as the ingredients.
- Go out and walk around. Or run up and down the stairs.
- Black sesame smoothies are good for you. Good for your stomach, your bowels, and a whole lot of other reasons. I’ll follow up with a post at some point regarding my attempts to make this — but considering that some people are too lazy to hunt down fruits and veggies to eat already, I’m not particularly convinced they’ll be making this themselves. Hence being last on the list.
The bottom line, if you hate vegetables and can’t be arsed to eat fruits straight — buy them frozen, toss them in a blender, and drink it down that way. Spinach really doesn’t taste that offensive when it’s a minor note in a ton of fruit — but your mileage may vary.
If you hate smoothies then I guess I’m out of ideas and you’re fresh out of luck.
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06.06.09
Posted in Chinese medicine, Health tagged menstrual cramps, old wive's remedies at 12:58 am by kyrias
‘ve recently been reading up on Chinese medicine and found a couple of interesting things. Believe it or not as you will, but if you’re consistently plagued by menstrual cramps it might be worth a shot.
A common concept is that menstrual cramps occur when the woman’s body is too “cold” — in fact it’s probably the easiest concept to grasp and hence also the easiest one to deal with.
So there are a couple of things to note:
Try to avoid foods that are commonly thought of as “cooling”. This includes most types of melon, such as watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe, and cucumbers. For those of us that enjoy mung bean smoothies? That’s a no go also. A short list includes apples, pears, oranges, mangos, celery, strawberries, eggplant, spinach, cauliflower, tofu, mint, kiwi, tomatoes, crab meat, and chamomile.
It’s not to say that you should avoid all of these foods altogether before and during your period — but if most of your diet is composed of said foods, perhaps some adjustment needs to be made.
Or, you could eat some foods that are thought of as “heating” to balance it out. Heating foods include cherries, peaches, cinnamon, ginger, brown sugar, nutmeg, onions, garlic, scallions, and most sorts of meat.
Which leads to an easy method to ease menstrual cramps:
Take a goodly amount of ginger, as much as possible. Slice it thinly into a pot of water and heat it to a low simmer for about 20 minutes. Add brown sugar to taste — since brown sugar is heating, add as much as you like and ignore the thought of calories for now. Drink while warm and as much as necessary. Some say that sour stuff also helps, not quite sure why actually, so hot lemon ginger tea could also help.
Personally, since I’m not that fond of ginger tea by itself, I usually like making a pot of chicken soup with mushroom and lots of ginger. Enough ginger to make it sinus-clearingly spicy and it’s a meal to boot.
Avoid caffeine since it tends to constrict the blood vessels and make the body more sensitive to pain, thus not helping the cramps.If possible, also avoid spicy foods as it can adversely stimulate the body.
Hot compresses can help, but so can hot foot baths. Asides from massaging the abdomen, massaging the legs can also help. There’s also a pressure point that is supposed to be very effective.
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Avoid icy drinks at all cost and if possible, avoid even cold drinks. Chinese medicine does not recommend anyone consuming large amounts of cold or icy food — including drinks fresh from the fridge, icy smoothies, ice cream, and milkshakes. Personally, I avoid them because I find that cold drinks to tend to exacerbate my menstrual cramps and anything that gives me brain freeze is unlikely to make said cramps feel better.
My old phys. ed. teacher also never let me sit on the ground directly. He’d always hurry over with a notebook or the gradebook and make me get up off the ground and sit on that. He said that it was a bad idea to allow the wet and the cold seep directly up into the uterus, potentially causing cramps.
My mother told me to keep showers to a minimum during a period and to always dry my hair thoroughly no matter the time of the month. It’s thought that because so much heat escapes through the head, to keep it cool is a bad idea. Personally, I’ve had problems with head aches that went away as soon as I got a heated compress for my head and kept it there until I was toasty warm. As before, your mileage may vary.
The simple way of looking at it is sort of that your body is like a huge pot of water and what you eat and do will affect the temperature in it. If you’re balancing things out, then things should more or less be fine unless you have some sort of blockage somewhere. If you’re not, then you’re either gradually bringing the temperature of said water in the pot down or up. Either is an imbalance and even if you don’t see the effects immediately, they will take a toll on your health eventually. Then there’s the unlucky sorts who eat something they shouldn’t have and it hits them immediately. Ever hear of growing zits after eating fried stuff? That’s the idea.
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