Hives

It often happens that while people are going through a particular part of their lives, I see them on a fairly regular basis, maybe once a week, sometimes more often... Sometimes I liken it to a short story: a character is presented dealing with a situation, the story unfolds, changes, and thankfully acupuncture usually moves the story to a happier outcome!

When patients get better, they disappear...Sometimes I never hear from them again, sometimes I hear about them through someone they refer to me. And sometimes later, even years later, they show up in my life again - this time in a different chapter in their lives, and it's like I have the sequel short story to the one I got before! 

I had one patient who came to me when I first opened my practice, in 1999. Back then she was just starting out as a paralegal, after having been a nurse for many years. We talked a lot about medicine and hospitals, and so on. She was coming in with shoulder pain, which is easy to treat with acupuncture... I think it was just one treatment for that!

I didn't hear from her for a long time - then 8 years later, she calls up. She's gone on to have 2 babies... and now she has a new thing. She gets hives! She used to get it periodically before, but now, it's really bad hives, seems that stress brings it on. And western drugs don't seem to help all that much.

Chinese medicine thinks of hives as a kind of heat in the blood. If we can clear the heat, the skin clears up. And the heat can come from different sources but in her case, it was how her body was manifesting stress. Stress or tension cuts down the circulation of qi. When qi is not moving well, all sorts of things can happen. One manifestation can be that wherever the qi is stuck it builds up heat, sort of like a pressure cooker. Another factor here is the birth of 2 kids. We consider pregnancy to be a drain on the mother's qi and blood, and giving birth to be a loss of blood. This is why she can be tired during pregnancy, have a lot of Spleen issues (I explain elsewhere, but basically the "Spleen" is a digestive organ in our medicine that takes qi out of food and translates that into energy the body can use for movement - and to make more blood). In this case, qi stagnation was heating up the blood already deficient blood. By the principle of balance of yin and yang, "temperature" is governed by the heating and the cooling aspects being in balance. Qi is warming, blood is cooling. Too little blood and too much qi congesting in one area was heating up the blood and causing it to manifest on the skin as hives: hot red patches appearing all over the body, but especially difficult to tolerate higher up in the body, like the face... why that is? Because heat rises.

Amazingly, acupuncture was making a difference! After even one treatment, she was feeling better. That year she came 4 times in a row. The hives came back periodically, but it seemed that several sessions in a row seemed to take care of things for several months.

But this year, a confluence of events led to a very serious outbreak. No matter what I tried, the acupuncture wasn't making as much progress as before - she would feel better right after the treatment, but then it would come back. Medicine and the healing process is nothing if not humbling... The case was so bad that she had to go to the hospital... Since then it's been lingering even with the drugs she has been taking. Now it's time to go back with the acupuncture and get off these drugs!

There is something called "root and branch" in Chinese medicine: there's treating symptoms (branches) or treating the source (root). Sometimes acupuncture alone is not enough to treat the root. Lifestyle changes, such as including time for relaxation or meditation, can make the biggest difference. Sometimes the diet needs to be tweaked. Sometimes a course of herbs is needed to tip the balance. Treating the root takes more patience and time... and with the western impatience we are brought up with, all we want to do is get rid of the symptoms, now!