The difference between acupuncture and acupressure for morning sickness symptoms.

Acupressure for nausea is very common. You can buy acupressure based bands in many travel and airport stores for instance which work on treating the pressure point "Neiguan Pc 6". In my clinic as an acupuncturist over the years i've heard many patients say they tried the bands but didn't feel any real effects. When they have had acupuncture for the same condition it had a much more pronounced effect on the same symptoms so why might this happen? Lets take the example of treating morning sickness for example. 

MORNING SICKNESS

Morning sickness can also lead to tiredness, if the symptoms of dry heaving, nausea and vomiting make it hard to hold down or eat food. Tiredness can come from not bieng able to digest enough foods. Acupuncture and acupuressure is a commonly used treatment for morning sickness. Even if acupuressure does not work to releive the symptoms, there is a big difference between the two therapies.

Acupuncture can access the bodies Qi (Energy) in multiple places at once, while acupressure can only access it in one point at a time (as you press each one). While some treatments of self acupressure can be powerful, there can be many reasons why acupressure dosen't work for morining sickness.

1. Incorrect point location. One common reason is the point location is wrong. Neiguan Pc 6 (called Pc 6 becuase it's the sixth point on the pericardium channel), is a common point for nausea. it's used in treating travel sickness and you will often see the bands you can put around your wrist to supposedly stop the nausea. If the band is in the wrong place, or the tightness of the band isn't sufficient to press the acupressure point then no effect will likely take place.

Location of Pc 6 Neiguan is deep between 2 tendons

2. Not enough or correct stimulation of the point. Points are deep in the body not on the skin. Another common reason why acupressure fails some people is that they don't obtain the Qi (Energy) of the acupuncture points by the pressure. An acupressure practitioner (also called a tui na practitioner) is a skilled practitioner of Chinese Medicine (in China it's a 5 year course) and they use around 28 different techniques, all with many hours of repeated, dedicated and specific training to be able to get the Qi (energy) of your body in the acupressure points. Not to say a layperson can't get the Qi, there is just a bit more skill involved than finding a point and pressing on it.

3. Wrong point for the pattern. In Chinese medicine, morning sickness doesn't have a one-size-fit's all diagnosis. When you see an acupuncturist they don't do acupuncture points for morning sickness. they do points for your pattern of disharmony thats causing the morning sickness. Two common patterns are "Liver Energy invading the Stomach" and "Deficiency of energy and blood leading to weakness of the Spleen and Stomach energy"

Essentially with nausea and vomiting, there is a mechanism of action problem with the Stomach Energy. Stomach Qi (Energy) should go down. When Stomach Qi goes up, we call it rebellious Stomach energy. Rebellious Stomach Qi can cause nausea, vomiting, refulx, acidic regurgitation and even epigastric pain. There are other points used for different reasons why the Stomach Qi has become rebellious. Often a combination of points is needed to have a thereaputic effect (as with acupuncture) rather than one point at a time (possible with acupressure).

By the way, the location of Pc 6 Neiguan is 2 cun* above the crease of the wrist, on the inside (medial aspect) of the wrist. *a cun is a measurement used in Chinese medicine, based on your body. 2 cun is is two fingers (of your fingers) spaced slightly apart. (1 Cun is the width of a thumb), so Neiguan, PC 6 is:

The point is that if you've tried acupressure for morning sickness before and it didn't work, it does not mean that acupuncture won't work. Also, that a more targeted or specific approach of acupressure could still be effective. It's worth seeing a professional, qualified practitioner of Chinese Medicine if you are suffering with morning sickness in pregnancy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Marie Hopkinson is a Chinese Medicine Practitioner, Practicing from her clinic in North Perth, WA- METRO HEALTH AND MEDICINE. Marie can be consulted for appointments, while in-person is preferred, Email /phone consultations can be arranged. Marie has been practicing since 2000, completing initial 3-year course in Chinese Medicine at the Perth Academy of Natural Therapies in WA. Marie has been to China for additional training in the Hangzhou Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital (Hangzhou Shi Zhong Yi Yuan) twice as well as completing a Master of International Health at Curtin University in 2006. Marie is passionate about the effective practice and understanding of Chinese Medicine and enjoys the opportunity to educate patients about the benefits of self-help aspects such as diet therapy, as well as teaching Chinese Medicine at the Endeavour College of Natural Health.

For more info about booking an appointment with Marie CLICK HERE.

For more info about conditions treated with Acupuncture, and Chinese Herbal Medicine CLICK HERE.

How Can Chinese Medicine Help Me Live A Better Life?

Chinese medicine is founded on major prevention and health promoting principals:

• It’s the practitioners job to keep you healthy, rather than just focus on the health problem you have now
• Chinese medicine sees more inter-connections in the body than mainstream medicine (biomedicine or western medicine). A practitioner looks for how
• Chinese medicine follows ancient wisdom from practitioners who are tried, tested and true…there is thousand years old literature which was just as useful back then as it has been in the centuries proceeding. Practitioners today have the benefit of centuries of clinical practice to see time and time again the outworking of acupuncture and herbal medicine formulas.
• Chinese medicine promotes lifestyle and diet changes first, then use treatment (herbs and/or acupuncture)

Famous doctor from the Tang Dynasty, Sun Si Miao said “Dietary therapy should be the first step when one treats a disease. Only when this is unsuccessful should one try medicine”

Diet therapy is actually very easy to apply and it makes a lot of sense when you understand the why behind the what. Chinese medicine is based on observing our body’s interaction with nature and the enviornment we live in, so it is lodgical.

Marie’s practice centers around optimising patients health via diet and lifestyle. Increasing health by optimising your digestion helps you to recover quicker from illness (colds, flus and viruses etc), helps your body to perform at it’s best, promotes good mental health, helps you look better as you grow older and increase your stamina to last longer and be more resillent in stressful times.

As Hippocrates said “let food be thy medicine”

Could you use more Energy?

Energy is a central focus of Chinese Medicine. In the clinic it’s common to hear people say they feel tired, or even just that they could use some more energy. Energy is called Qi (pronounced Chee) in Chinese medicine. Although Qi is more than the ideas that the English word Energy contains. Its a lifeforce, the force which provides movement, flow, and at the same time nourishment to the body.

Qi is more of a Yang quality. There are more than 10 different kinds of Qi in the body – Defensive Qi – or the energy that protects us from getting sick from exposure to external pathogens, is just one example. Food Qi, know as Gu Qi is another.

How do we make Qi? Food and Air are the two main ingredients. We can breathe in Qi. This is why breathing is so important and exercise therapies in Oriental cultures are centered around breathing (Qi Gong, Yoga, Tai Chi etc).

The second way to make Qi is from food. “Gu Qi” literally means “food Qi” – which is the energy our bodies get from nutrients extracted from our diet.

Making energy essentially depends on 2 things:

1) The source – having fresh air and nutrient appropriate food to begin with

2) The machine – Our body is essentially a machine to make energy. The bodies ability to process the air – the techniques we use to breathe, our posture, our habits and the bodies digestion are essential to extracting good Gu Qi from food and fluids. If you tune up your car to make it run better, doesn’t it makes sense to tune up your body from time to time?

Chinese Medicine practitioners are very concerned with your digestion as it’s the essential way for the body to make the energy it needs to heal itself. Even if you’ve come in with a sprained ankle or a headache, good digestion is important to the long term healing of your body.

Practitioners will often ask about bowel movements, appetite and the in’s and out’s of what you eat on a regular basis.

Good digestion means you will recover quicker from injury, react better to stressful and unforeseen events and generally be able to eat a wide variety of foods without too many side effects.

If you experience bloating, gas, diarrhoea or loose stools or constipation (not going every day) on a frequent/normal basis then your body could probably do with a tune up.

When you have acupuncture, there are many ways an acupuncturist can “boost your energy”. One common way is throught strengthening the organs in the processes above – the Spleen and Stomach are central to healthy diegestion. The Lungs are essential to breathing and getting Air Qi into into your body.

THIS ARTICLE IS WRITTEN BY CHINESE MEDICINE PRACTITIONER MARIE HOPKINSON. THERE ARE MORE ARTICLES ON MARIE’S BLOG ABOUT WHAT TO EAT TO OPTIMISE YOUR DIGESTION ACCORDING TO CHINESE MEDICINE.

Healing Vegitarian Paleo Salad

This salad is an unusual mix with a really delicious taste, and only takes 15-20 minutes to prepare.

THIS RECIPE IS VEGETARIAN, PALEO Diet Friendly Options, GLUTEN-FREE, and HEALTHY in a CHINESE MEDICINE sense. IT CAN NOURISH SPLEEN QI, NOURISH YIN and mildly CLEAR HEAT. Combines cooked and raw, eaten Warm.

I created this recipe with a friend who was post-surgery recovery in mind, to aid warding off potential infections. Both Hyssop and Mint have heat clearing functions. Hyssop has historical use dating back to the Bible, where it is often referred to in ceremonial cleaning and cleansing people of infections diseases.

INGREDIENTS:

1 can chick peas

1 purple sweet potato

1 regular sweet potato

~1/4 cup pecan nuts

~1/8 cup pistachio nuts, un-shelled.

4 tomatoes

sprig of fresh hyssop

sprig of fresh mint

Pepper or lemon pepper

METHOD: 

1) Cut up one large sweet potato (or two small sweet potatoes, I like to use half white/purple one and half the regular orange sweet potato), boil in pot on the stove until soft - 10 - 15 minutes.

2) Prepare the salad dressing

• Finely chop one sprig of fresh Hyssop and 1 large sprig of fresh mint.
• Add a generous amount of extra virgin olive oil (about 30-50ml)
• Add a large handful of pecan nuts and 2 teaspoons of un-shelled pistachio nuts
• Grind some pepper or lemon-pepper into the salad dressing mix.

3) Cut up tomatoes, and any additional variation ingredients

4) Combine Tomatoes (and any additions) with 1 can of chick peas (drained) in a large, heat proof bowl.

5) once cooked potatoes are soft (but not mushy) remove from heat, strain water from them set aside in strainer ready to add at the very end.

6) Pour salad dressing mixture over the ingredients, stirring thoroughly,  then add potatoes and stir the mixture around carefully to ensure all combined but potatoes don't go mushy.

VARIATION INGREDIENTS:

1/2 Purple onion - Moves Qi (chee or energy) for Liver Qi Stagnation

PALEO DIET OPTION - Remove Chick Peas and increase cooked Vegitables, adding variety from Purple carrot, carrot or pumpkin. Baby Spinach leaves can be added just before serving.

Tips For Going Sugar-Free

Tips For Going Sugar-Free 
- Marie Hopkinson

Trying to kick Refined sugar in your life? 

1) Go cold turkey - it’s better just to quit sugar, throw away your sugary
treats and spend a few days letting your body and mind adjust. Pick a time when things aren't too stressful. After a week, the cravings will significantly subside and your body will thank you enormously.

2) Remove temptation - throw away or put the chocolates and lollies out of sight so your not visually tempted.

3) Plan your treats. Quitting sugar doesn't mean you can’t have any treats. There are tons of sugar-free recipes online. Refined sugar replacements like maple syrup, coconut sugar, dried fruits, agave syrup can be used in cooking or making raw sweet treats. I recommend getting away from the sweet flavour as much as possible but having access to some of these in the first week or 2 will make it easier.

4) Look after your Spleen. The more you nurture your Spleen Energy, the less your body will crave sugar and the better you will feel.

Why Should I quit sugar? 

Sweet is the flavour of the spleen energy in Chinese medicine. It’s a very important organ for digestive processes. A small amount of sweet helps the Spleen, but too much can overwhelm the Spleen Qi (pronounced “chee”). When we crave sweet especially after eating a meal, it indicates the Spleen Qi is weak. (You will usually get diarrhoea or loose bowel movements, and see toothmarks on the tongue as well). Since the Spleen makes energy for your body to function, when it can’t diegest well, it can be a cause of tiredness.

Refined cane sugar overwhelms the Spleen energy. In a biomedical sense, this corelates with rise and subsequent drop of blood sugar levels. This gives you an instant burst of energy or buzz, followed by a low...usually lower than you felt before you ate the chocolate or lollies.

Sweet-natured foods that can nurture the Spleen energy include root vegetables like sweet potatoes, carrots, pumpkin and unrefined, cooked grains like barley, rice and millet.

In a biomedical sense, theses foods have a low gylcemic index, which means they take longer to break down and don’t require the same biochemical reaction that refined sugary-sweet natured foods do. They won’t quickly spike and lower your blood sugar level.

The golden rule of Chinese diet therapy, and longevity practices in general is EVERYTHING IN MODERATION. Balance isn’t just a  token yin-yang symbol, but it’s a guiding key principal to achieve health and longevity in life.

FREE Sugar-Free RECIPES ARE AVAILABLE ON OUR WEBSITE

www.metrohealth.com.au 

Metro Health and Medicine

200 Whatley Crs 

Maylands, WA 6051

Beat the Heat

If you live in Australia, no doubt you know it’s summer. Where I am in Perth, it's been up to 44 degrees already! Did you know that the weather is significant in the cause of disease according to Chinese medicine? 

Heat is one of “6 Pathogens”, that can invade the body and cause disharmonies. Heat can commonly invade the channels of the neck, face and throat causing sore-throat, hayfever or seasonal allergies. Symptoms of heat include pain – usually severe or throbbing, as heat dries up fluids it can cause body fluids to congeal. For example phlegm will get thicker, yellow or sticky, urine can become more concentrated, darker and the tongue will get redder and more dry (as the moisture of the mouth can be dried up by Heat).

Heat clearing foods can be used as a preventative during the hot weather. Fruit & Veg that are watery and not too sweet like Watermelon, cucumber, lettuce are good at keeping away heat invasions. Drinking Chrysanthemum (Ju Hua) honeysuckle(Jin Yin Hua) and dandelion (Pu Gong Ying) herbs (by themselves or add to green tea) are more targeted ways to clear heat – especially from the face and throat.

Heat can invade not only via the environment but from our diet also. In Australia this weekend (26^th January) we are coming up to Australia Day – a time of national celebration where the classic Aussie thing to do is to drink alcohol. Alcohol’s nature is essentially warm-hot, so combining lots of drinking with warm weather is a perfect environment to cause Heat-invasion disharmonies. Intoxication from drinking can cause what we refer to in Chinese medicine as “toxic heat”. 

Diarrhea, vomiting, breakouts of acne are all common hangover symptoms which essentially come from the self-induced toxic heat invasion. The simplest way to avoid this is to drink less! Space drinks out with water, use some self-control, and enjoy Australia day. If you do find yourself suffering the effects of a toxic-heat hangover Chinese medicine employs more “detox” methods to clear out the toxic heat. Our Tong Kuai Hangover tea is based on the idea of clearing toxic heat from the digestive system via the bowels. Watermelon is a good hangover food as well.    

You're a Peach

In Chinese herbal medicine, the kernel of peaches are used as a herb, but it's fruit also has medicinal properties. While the kernels must be used by a trained herbalist as they contain poison, which is controlled by their preparation methods, the fruit is quite easily accessible and safe to use.

Peaches are coming into season in summer, soon you'll find all kinds of delicious juicy peaches around you in your local fruit and veg store.

The nature of the peach is sweet and warm, which means it's nourishing to the digestive system (Spleen-Stomach in CM) and it's moisturizing nature makes it great fruit for habitual constipation sufferers.

A recipe for high blood pressure is eating one or two fresh peaches (without stone or skin) daily.

Green (unripe) peach can be used as well:

To make the "Dried Green Peach"  simply dry unripe green peaches, with stone removed, in the sun.

The dried green peach can then be used for other recipes:

1) High Blood Pressure: Simmer 30g of dried green peach in water, drinking the liquid as you would tea.

2) For seminal emissions or spontaneous night sweating: Stir-fry 30g of dried green peach until almost scorched, then add 30g of Chinese Dates and water. Steam to cook and eat in the evening before sleep.

Hope you have fun with peaches this summer!