June 19, 2018

Dear Acupuncture Patients and Friends,

Happy hot and humid June. Wow! Still recovering from yesterday's blast...

I thought I'd share a brief treatment outcome from the last few weeks. I was treating a man in his 70s for a particular complaint. He had a variety of health concerns, some pain, some metabolic, and one probably hereditary. It's not always clear the effect of any one treatment but sometimes a symptom changes and it's obvious - "Oh, that was the acupuncture".

One of the points I needeled was Spleen 9.



You can see it just below the inside of the knee. It's that one point that people inevitably say "That's tender. Why is that tender?" My answer is usually "That's acupuncture." It's a map of interesting points that sometimes have obvious functions (a point on the wrist to help wrist pain), but sometimes less obvious. 

The patient's initial reaction to the treatment was an urge to empty his bladder. Upon returning to the treatment room he claimed that was the easiest "flow" in a while due to long term prostate issues. 

Now I also put a needle in in his lower abdomen which could have stimulated the bladder even more directly. And it's hard to say what any one given needle is doing exactly. But the takeaway is that you might come in for one reason, but other quality of life issues are also helped from acupuncture treatment.

Oh, and just another thing about Spleen 9. It's a major point to treat "Dampness" disorders. The Chinese Spleen (sometimes called Spleen/Pancreas) is known to encompass several functions, but one of them is to help regulate water metabolism. One famous practitioner even calls that a "kidney" point, perhaps more in the conventional medical sense.

Regardless of the mechanism, Sp 9 will help you pee! if that is indeed one of your issues.

Well I got a little more excited about this than I had intended. Perhaps it's the heat...

Stay cool.