How to Stop a Cough with Acupressure

Thanks to Emily Konstan of River Valley Acupuncture for the link!

My Foot

I know we promised you all diabetes, all the time for the month of November, but I have to take this rare opportunity to present you with a fresh case study.

My foot.

So, I was sparring in Kenpo class last Wednesday night when the most unfortunate thing happened. My right foot was forward, my left foot behind, and I was gearing up to punch this guy. As I was lunging forward, but before making any contact with my opponent, I heard a loud "SNAP" and I fell to the floor.

This is what happened:





It's amazing all the different colors the body can make!

I believe it's a severe ligament tear, though I haven't gotten the MRI to prove it. It's definitely not a broken bone, and nothing is completely severed as far as I can tell. The night it happened, I was fortunate enough to be near the clinic while it was still open, and Keven Uchida - a wonderful supervisor and orthopedic specialist - took a look at it. I also showed it to three different MD's who agreed that it's probably not broken. So don't worry. I know those of you out there who know me well and are concerned that I'm not taking the proper precautionary measures can rest assured that I'm not self-diagnosing... not entirely, anyway.

But I am self-treating, and it's been great!

Day One:

• 30 minutes on ice immediately after injury
  
• E-stim acupuncture at SI-3 and SI-4 on contralateral for 15 minutes
• Dr. Brady Chin's dit da jow all over top and bottom of foot
• San Huang San plaster made of huang qi, huang lian, da huang, pu gong ying, hong hua, and zhi zi powdered, mixed with just enough green tea to make a thick paste. Wrapped my foot loosely in gauze roll and medical tape overnight
• Five Photos Brand hit pill (these always make my heart a little thumpity, but work like a miracle every time)
  

Day Two:

• Woke up with no swelling and no bruising, but my skin around my foot was red. Removed plaster, and within five minutes my foot started to balloon. Reapplied dit da jow til dry, then another coat of plaster and gauze. The swelling went down immediately
• Needled contralateral hand sensitive points near SI-3, SI-4, LU-10, Luo Zhen, Yao Tong Xue, and SJ-4. Manually stimulated for 20 mins.
• Change of plaster and gauze overnight
• Jin Gu Die Da Pian patent pills for the pain
  

Day Three:

• Definite bruising! All blurple in color
  
• Acupuncture treatment at the clinic with Kumiko Yamamoto (wonderful intern, by the way). E-stim acupuncture with same points on contralateral hand. Additional points without e-stim: ST-36, SP-9, SP-10, LV-8, GB-34, and Yin Tang
• Epsom salt soak
• Plaster and gauze
• Jin Gu Die Da Pian
  

Day Four:

• More purple and green in color
  
• Epsom salt soak
• Moxabustion all around foot for 30 minutes
• Dit da jow
• Jin Gu Die Da Pian
  

Day Five, Day Six, and Day Seven

• I stopped using the plaster because my foot wasn't swollen; it had effectively kept the swelling to a minimal, and then no swelling at all. The bruising seemed to reach its climax around day six (the pics are from day five), and is now lightening around the edges
  
• Moxabustion 2 times a day over affected area on foot, and on reflective areas on the opposite foot. Also ST-36, SP-10, GB-34, UB-60, KD-1 on affected foot/leg.
• Acupressure on contralateral hand
• Jin Gu Die Da Pian
  

And here I am on day eight! I can move my foot fairly freely in all directions, and wiggle all my toes, but am still unable to put any weight on it. Throughout the week, I've been doing strengthening exercises with all my new-found spare time, flexing and extending through the ball of my foot and ankle. I can stand on it just long enough to pick my other foot off the floor, as long as I'm holding on to something for balance.

There is no swelling, but there's a significant amount of bruising all along the top of my foot, as though I've spilled a bucket of ink on it or something. It's kind of purple, kind of blue, kind of green all in one. It still hurts, but at least I'm sleeping through the night now and can get around on my crutches without it hurting due to movement.

All in all, a steady and fairly speedy recovery. I'm planning on using a tendon soak from here on out, coupled with the moxa, acupuncture and exercises. I'm not taking the pills anymore, since they're really dispersing and moving, and hope to be back on my feet in another week.

If you have any questions about the herbs I used or where to find such wonderful remedies, feel free to contact us!

Qu'est-ce que c'est, le EFT?

This is an intro video from the founders of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). EFT is a relatively modern way of accessing the meridian system of acupuncture. In the video it's described as "acupuncture without needles", and that's a pretty good description, except that you may get much quicker results with EFT than with acupuncture.

How is that possible? First, understand that there are as many different styles of acupuncture as there are of cooking. To say that you practice acupuncture is the same thing as saying that you cook "Chinese food" - there really isn't any such thing. Yes, all acupuncture uses needles, but that's like saying all Chinese cooking uses heat. What is the theory behind where you put the needles? How big are the needles you use? Do you even break the skin at all? (Some styles don't.) What names do you have for the points? Do you needle symmetrically or asymmetrically? Every day or once a week? And on and on and on.

The style of acupuncture most people learn in Chinese medicine school in the U.S. is a kind of "herbal acupuncture" - the points themselves get stuck with specific functions that are always the same. But this is not how the points work. It was an herb teacher who told me that acupuncture is actually much more complex and harder to master than herbology, even though there are a limited number of points (about 400) and virtually limitless numbers of herbs (300-500 used in daily practice, but hundreds of thousands of natural substances - animal, vegetable, mineral - have documented medicinal effects in Chinese medicine). Once you learn what each specific herb does and how it combines with other herbs, you can rely on it to have more or less the same action every time you use it, adjusting for individual constitutional types.

Acupuncture points are much more mysterious. What happens when you put a needle into a person's body is influenced more than anything by the state of health of the acupuncturist - and secondarily by the meridian it is located on, how skillfully you locate it, how skillfully you manipulate it, if you get the qi, what you do with it once you get it, the time of day, the weather, geography, the doctor-patient relationship, and on and on. Acupuncture points don't necessarily do the same thing every time, and to pretend that they do is a little silly.

There are other schools or styles of acupuncture that have many followers. For instance, there is the Tung style, about which this website says:

Tung Style Acupuncture uses points different from those found in most present-day TCM acupuncture texts. While many of the Tung points are found on the twelve regular channels they are, however, in distinct locations from the 360+ points presented in the aforementioned TCM acupuncture texts. They are also largely distinct from the miscellaneous 'extra' or 'non-channel' points described in most contemporary TCM acupuncture texts.

The Tung Style Acupuncture points chosen for the treatment of any given malady are located mostly on the extremities and at a distance from the site of the lesion or pathology. Furthermore, the number of points required to successfully ameliorate any given ailment is fewer than that required in most current TCM acupuncture texts to treat the same malady.

The best acupuncturists, in my experience, are those that have a good "eye" for "seeing" blockages in various meridians. Information about blockages can be gathered in many ways - taking the pulse and palpating various body structures is one of the most reliable. When they find a blockage, they unblock it. That's it. Sometimes a diagnosis is not even necessary. Look for blockages, unblock them. Patient gets better.

EFT is a way for people to very quickly assess where the blockages are in their body. Through some admittedly funny-looking techniques (tapping yourself with your fingertips on the face being one of them) you can find blockages and release them.

If you read yesterday's post, you know that blockages can be caused by three things: the weather (traditionally called the six evil qi - wind, heat, cold, dryness, dampness, and something called summerheat), excessive emotion (that's your internal weather - anger, fear, joy, grief, worry, shock, melancholy) and external trauma caused by snake bite or kung fu battling.

With EFT, the cause of the blockage doesn't matter. With the help of an experienced EFT practitioner, you can find and eliminate the blockage very quickly.

Yosan alum Yang-chu Higgins is an EFT practitioner and is leading a workshop this Wednesday in Los Angeles called Enhancing Self-worth with Tapping. For more information, call 310-397-8523.

For more information on non-mainstream acupuncture, see these books:

• The Practical Application of Meridian Style Acupuncture by John Pirog
  
• Navigating the Channels of Traditional Chinese Medicine by Yitian Ni
  
• Optimum Time for Acupuncture: A Collection of Traditional Chinese Chronotherapeutics by Liu Bing Quan

Pre-Menstrual Syndrome aka Hostage to The Rages

I am fortunate enough to say that I have been largely unaffected by the scourge known as PMS. On a month to month basis, I rarely feel the hormonal changes that turn some of my friends into beasts, nor do I experience the cycle of cramps that can knock a girl out and render her debilitated for the day or week. HOWEVER, every now and again, some kind of ugly rears its head in my direction, and I have to lock myself away to avoid the potential of carrying out the homicidal urges that overcome me.

Why, I ask? WHY???

One of my best friends would have fits of vomiting right before her periods, another would have to take two to three days off to do nothing but lie down in fetal position with a hot pad, and yet another one of my friends would have the overwhelming urge to cry about anything and everything only during the week before. I always thought that PMS must be a fluke of poor design. Why would nature program into our bodies this pseudo-self-destruct mode? I don't buy into the whole "it reminds us that we are women" bit, because there are plenty of reminders in our day to day that don't require bringing on the pain.

I'm guessing that 70% of our readers understand what I'm talking about, and the other 30% have been and will remain clueless for eternity. Anyway, what I'm saying is, how can we work with this in order to benefit all of humanity?

Like almost any other state of dis-ease, the best way to alleviate the symptoms of PMS is through diet and exercise. If you find yourself already in the thick of it, meditation and stress management will help to relax all the muscles in your body, including the ones that are cramping, and will increase the proper flow of qi and blood throughout the body. If you are too debilitated to do anything yourself, enlist the help of a friend and try this:

• Massage SP6 三阴交 San Yin Jiao, on the inside of the lower leg about 3 inches above the ankle
• Massage SP10 血海 Xue Hai, at the meatiest part of the thigh, right above the kneecap on the inside of the leg
• You can also massage anywhere along the lower leg, pinching both sides of the shin bone as you go up and down

If you have an acupuncturist handy, s/he can provide a more complete treatment for your particular needs. S/he can also provide you with moxa, which is a processed form of the herb Ai Ye 艾叶 used to regulate the blood. A moxa stick is burned like incense and held a few inches above the skin. Treatment with a moxa stick over the abdomen for at least 15 minutes can alleviate some of the most monster of cramps. You can get a moxa stick from your acupuncturist and, with easy instructions, do this yourself at home when needed!

Of course, sometimes nothing works, and you just have to resort to telling your loved ones to take cover.