Iowa City Pain

 

Over the past 5,000 years or so the Chinese and their forebears developed a comprehensive system of medicine that is designed to be able to address any health condition effectively. The medicine originated, like many primitive medicines, dominated by ideas of possession by negative spirits but has evolved over these medicine to be a systematic approach to all types of illness.

In China practitioners may specialize in treating trauma, broken bones, perform surgery, treat infectious illness, all aspects of women’s reproductive health, or pediatrics. They do this with a wide array of tools, many of which are not seen in the US.

The primary tools that Americans know are acupuncture, oral medicinals such as herbs, and cupping. There are also moxibustion (burning of moxa near the skin) and bleeding (where small amounts of blood are released from the body safely). All acupuncturists trained in the US learn these primary tools in their three-to-four year graduate level education programs.

The diagnostic system of Chinese medicine may seem strange to westerners, but it is grounded in Eastern philosophies and world views that are completely natural to their place of origin.

We do not depend on a Western conventional biomedical analysis of a health problem to be able to determine what treatment is appropriate in Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine was developed long before these modern scientific approaches came along.

So, for example, in the fall in the midwestern part of the US we see an increasing amount of  illnesses that are considered “dampness” in Chinese medicine. That includes increased runny and stuffy noses from ragweed, mold spores from rotting leaves, and airborne material from farm activity as they remove dusty moldy crops from the fields. People complain of increased joint stiffness and swelling, and feeling worse in damp cold weather. To the Chinese, this indicates an excess of dampness inside the body. So herbs can be used to improve the situation, or acupuncture strategies that help the body metabolize dampness better.

As the weather shifts through the seasons we tend to see physical health problems that parallel those shifts and we can respond to each pattern effectively with diet, herbs, and acupuncture.

Call today for help with your fall illness. 319-341-0031