Common cold vs musculoskeletal.

[Acupunk]

Hello everyone. Was wondering what peoples opionions are on trating the common cold, or even flu or whatever wind heat/cold type attack people commonly are affected by in times of weather change and broad exposure to infection. I ask this because I have to honestly say with acupuncture I have never gotten instant results as in the person has a marked shift within one session or dramatically improved the next day. IN contrast I have had "complicated" chronic problems such as bad back/shoulder and digestive issues that have had major resolution within one treatment with sustained results over time.
The books on cold damage, and the wen bing discuss the herbal possibiliies, and while they have merit i have not extensivley dealt with this area, and have found my mammas lemon juice, hot water and honey, and garlic to be effective. Olive leaf extract has kept my partner and myself free from any full blown flu or cold for over a year, as we have taken it before warning signs.
One of our lecturers said that without TCM one could expect a flu or cold to resolve in seven days and with TCM within one week only. ANy experience otherwise. I suppose prevention being superior to cure we may have kept people healthy and thus prevented such problems by I am referring more to acute presentations of such pathoilogies. One would expect acute problems to be easier to deal with yet i havent always found this to be the case.
Cheers

[Heather Bruce]

Hi Acupunk again . . .


Was your lecturer ACTUALLY a practitioner, or were they reporting on the practice of healing??

I was fortunate enough to have masters and followed them around as much as possible - if it was not clear to me then - I realized that it was a matter of humility/patience and self development.

I know this is not where unis/C21st living stands - but where are the inspired healers now - are they even teaching any longer? Are students being fed PC content or being turned on to think independently?

Acupuncture works.
Perhaps you need to expose yourself to more than the TCM /biomedical approach and go into wellness - naturopathic old manuals would do it. Master Tong's work is full of brilliant odd points - all the old family traditions that TCM swept away would have these also should we be able to locate remnants.

Also the vaccination debate site I mentioned on that thread - wellness is a dynamic state that allows us to NOT get ill to start with - and what most people are ill with is their inner life not being where they would like - and their choosing to do nothing to change this - so gradual lives of quiet desperation - and they get worn away like rock by water.

Reasons for illness - it does eventually catapult us out of life/belief stagnation.


Playing about with TCM may not (the sages would be horrified with it - where is the I Ching in all of this??) - we have different layers, different therapies to do at different times of the 'cold' penetration - and needles are totally inappropriate at the very beginning - as it is often so very superficial that scrapping/cupping (with WARMED cups - don't need to be giving them more penetration therapeutically) may be enough . . .

When I was teaching 27 years ago, I had the lesson sussed - we were covering penetration of cold. . .
and who should walk in late but one of the students, who had a classic running like a tap nose and headache /back of neck and chills and feeling all blocked up - and there I was with cups, spoon, Vick's Vaporub - so . . .. just like the Tylenol ad - What penetration of cold?

She couldn't have been a better candidate for an instant miracle if she tried.
Then there is just needling the immune point I have mentioned before from Kiiko's work . . .

Chinese herbs also work like a dream.
Daniel Weber has some capsules that supposedly were designed to knock SARS and bird flu on the head - and I get people to take them away and have them sitting about for the first sign of anything fluey /sore throat etc - 3 hourly - and it is again - like a miracle . ..

so there are many ways
- the 'old wives' tales worked - even if they didn't know why.

Most people also don't get that they let illness in - and Dr VB used to teach Shokanten points for that very reason - when we are out of sorts, we are likely to surcomb.

The THEORY of penetration has to be seen as just reporting on a process.
We can short circuit this.
We can however instantly alter the progress.

Once when dreadfully clogged up and snotty, I went to a yoga class - and the whole lesson was breathing - cleared it all right out = very surprised me as up until then lungs very weak and forever taking weeks to rid self of what went in an hour . . again - no needle in sight, but healing happened.

Perhaps a more catholic approach is required in these colleges that are now so academic?
Perhaps you are discovering that this style of training is not very user (graduate) friendly? Is it clinically useful to have all the content you got, yet not be able to do magic reliably - with just a 'cold'?
Does improve patient returns . ..

Why did the person get sick - at this moment . . .invariably something upset them , then their immune system went on strike - hence the Shokanten points - perhaps time to start looking at the classics?
Wendy's site?

I was at Peter Firebrace's (yet another ex Dr VB past student . . .) seminar in Wellington yesterday and THANK GOD someone is still out there teaching what was acupuncture prior to TCM - not 'evidence' based but stuff to touch the heart and get the spirit soaring.

Paraphrasing . . . as the early vaccination discoverers said - it is the GARDEN not the SEED that is the issue.

[Acupunk]

Hey heather.
I hear what you are saying. the lecturer in question was somewhere in between the academic world while they did practice and actually showed us how to needle. Perhaps more on the academic side.
regarding the old wives tales and cupping/scraping i have met many muslims, greeks, and north african s who use this practices for the common cold. I do believe it draws out heat and wind. In arabic it is called hejama. GOod old grandmothers also have some recipes for broken bones i wanna track down. I spoke to a uni friend the other day that told me she gua shad her lung channel to nip a wind cold heat in the butt. she did later get a stomach bug though. Oh well

Regardning the needling though we have points such as Li 4 or lung points,yintang , ear lung, and while I have found they can give releif I am looking for something similar to the instant releif that i have seen in food poisoning, musculoskeletal issues, and headaches which I have been able to get instantaneous results with. i know this sounds a bit rigid and narrow focused. I suppose i am trying to build my faith so i can apply it to my intent> your simple words that remind me that it works and works well, helps bolster the faith that cops a battering from those outside and more pertinently those within our area of knowledge.
Thanks for your response(again)

[Melee]

Hi Acupunk,

I found some useful information on the "common cold" by Bob Flaws he makes a strong argument that most westerners do not present simply with an external or replete pattern. i.e. a simple attack of wind heat. He claims, that typically, it's a combined internal/external pattern and therefore one should treat both levels simutaneously. He gives a herbal forluma based on the following patterns.

1) External Wind heat
2)spleen qi xu-
3) latent phlegm and/or damp
4)liver qi stasis and heat
5)blood xu especially in women 35+

the name of the formula is called "xiao chai hu tang he si wu tang jia jian"

I tend to agree with concept and if using acupuncture I would adapt the ideas accordingly. Aslo treat everyday for at least a few days.

[Michael Broer]

Hey Acupunk,

Melee's (Flaws') ideas are very consistent with the classical concept of nourishing the blood when treating wind attacks. Where this gets misinterpreted, I reckon, is when the practitioner tries to clear wind and nourish blood at the same time. This could be why multi-phase treatments work so well. You clear the pathogen then build the person up.

As for specific techniques, for clearing wind heat/cold/damp whatever, I like anything that causes bleeding. The concept of giving the enemy an escape route is straight out of Sun Tzu's Art of War. Deliberately bleeding points, esp. jing well, can often give you "instant" as can scraping and cupping (still bleeding but just below the surface). Then, once the pathogen is more or less out, using moxa is my personal favourite way to rebuild. I find tonification-wise that herbs (straight tonics at least) are useful for more chronic deficiencies.

[Heather Bruce]

Acupunk -

Perhaps if we got right out and said TCM is 'acupuncture in short hand for dummies' out of the way . . . then we are free from the idea that this point SHOULD do whatever . . .

That said, I think we need to have at least THREE different acupuncture mind sets - and TCM is one - and useful for simplistic explanations - which is what it was designed to do.

But it is NOT all there is in acupuncture.

So as far as I can determine - what is lost with TCM being the dominant discourse is
1) any understanding of energy.
2) Any understanding of healing (esp of the body healing itself)
3)Any understanding of meridian and subtle flows.

Not everything that happens is a zang fu disturbance and looking for it doesn't make it appear - just blind you to what is presenting.


You have to treat not what you THINK should be/is happening and try to marry it to a damn boxed concert - but what going on/is happened? Where are they in their lives? Freaked out? I would see very few actually happy people getting ill . . .

Guard goes down and . . ..

(Did we forget about major 'cause of disease being emotional - the communists sure did - everyone was so happy under Mao . . yeah right! - we have been too polite about all of this and if you take a more sociological look at any culture, you start seeing why we are running our old programmes - even when we think we are 'helping' . . .. ).

Needling is too deep - even superficially.

Cupping is to get rid of the cold.

Cupping is AFTER scraping - not navel here talking about the back or anything muscular.


So in MS can get out the stuck blood.
Superficially on the Tai Yang division, it lodges in the skin.
All the 'old wives' were on about getting sweating to happen - the cayenne and mustard etc.
"The fever broke" is what saved people prior to antibiotics.

Speaking actions of points as though they are herbs is if NO HELP in clinic - makes a slick lecture . . .and texts all hold together but what do you do when no one comes in like that?

I remember getting really excited in about my third year of practice when I recognized a syndrome walk in - for the first time. So when I was teaching, it was what worked - as I was and am a good clinician.

May be very inelegant to those who study Chinese PC thought - but if it works, then why is it not taught?

We are also all different and carry different energies.
We are all at different levels of evolution and soul growth - shoot me down quick - I might start spouting shamanism (oh whoops!!! that is where acupuncture started . . .where did the sages get their inspiration?

Not from someone telling them it was evidence based - as we are all anecdotal (may have said this more than once).

Going to Peter Firebrace was such a change from all that has come before in the name of 'education'.

HE was back at the roots. TCM is a blow in and the sooner it blows out the faster we will really understand how to help people - instead of earnestly throwing hopeful darts about - all with theory behind, and now soon no doubt 'research' - what ever did we think the past several 1000 years of practice and writing it all down was about?

Acupuncture is not a matter of this point does that.

But is what happened to that person?

Husband just dropped the bombshell of an affair?
Employer just upped the ante on sexual harassment and the mortgage rate went up and can't think of leaving work - so more antidepressants and then can't wake up and putting on weight, so now smoking again and . . . . messy is what we all live.

Points - if it is cold invasion at the start - sometimes is painful in the skin. Cold lodges there.
Need to study the Ling Shu etc.
May well look as though is in code, but is acupuncture.

Sometimes a ginger bath fixes it better than anything else.
Understanding the role of the eight extras - and WHO had a clinician who used them as the basis for all their practice teach them this?

How many of us are there out there even?
So if you get the "role of Eight Extras in Woman's Lives/Maternity" my previously whole weekend workshop on them - stopped doing this seminar 22 years ago - is now condensed to a three hour MP3.
Then the whole maternity weekend is about actually treating women as people - not as categories and western labeled conditions . .. - and this includes men as they are part of the whole .. .

What is the function of Yang Wei Mai?
MP?

So then you may understand why TH 5 is such a great point .. . .

Perhaps go back to the accumulation and luo (transverse and longitudinal ) - I know the TCM surge has gotten rid often more classical, but it is what works . . . as is in the classics for a reason . .

So is not a matter of what the book says but what the body tells you . . .

Bleeding is great for acute wind heat - but no good if cold invasion at the beginning , . .is all a matter of what is happening?

And as with acute methadone withdrawal - it is instant often the switch from one state to another - and wonderful to ride the wave with the patient - exploring that all that old theory is actually playing out in front of you . . .