When I meet a new patient, I wonder, “Who is this person? How is she feeling? What does she need to become whole on all levels — physical, emotional and spiritual?” To find out, I ask deeper questions about her well-being in order to find the symptom’s cause and treat it.
Any symptom a patient reports can be the result of an imbalance in one of the five elements — Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal. Once this happens, the imbalance can spread throughout the body, because all five elements are connected like members of a family. When one member is sick, unable or unwilling to do his tasks, the rest of the family suffers. In time, they all become symptomatic, too.
Because symptoms and imbalances are interrelated in this way, I need to know more than just that my patient has migraines, arthritis or insomnia. Those symptoms can be the result of imbalances in any organ or function, so I have to find the elemental cause.
In classical five-element acupuncture, this is done through the senses — perceiving the odor (yes, odor!), color, sound, and emotion that identifies which element is out of balance. Then I work empathetically — feeling what the patient feels in order to understand the level of disease.
If a roof gutter fills with leaves, water may stagnate rather than drain, encouraging clogging and the growth of unwanted seedlings. In the same way, when the body’s gutters and drains stop flowing, manipulation of an acupuncture point opens and clears out stagnation, encourages flow and returns the body to a balanced state so that it can heal itself.
Symptoms are the body’s distress signals, clues to what’s going on inside. When symptoms are suppressed by prescription drugs, the body is being told to “shut up!” But centuries of Chinese medicine have demonstrated the wisdom of listening.
Today is the first day of Autumn is an important transitition in Five Element Philoposphy. The long days of sunshine slowly peaks and gives way to a time of decrease. The leaves turn color, fall from the trees and decay to replenish the earth. Daylight hours shorten, the weather turns cooler.
Our bodies naturally feel the effects of this transition and if we do not pay attention to subtle changes in nature during this time, we may feel out of sorts. Symptoms may include: shortness of breath, and a dislike of speaking. Catching colds easily. Coughing, a hoarse or weak voice, a dry mouth and throat. Difficulty dealing with loss, vulnerable to outside criticism. Tiredness, constipation or diarrhoea.
In Chinese medicine – the Metal element is associated with Autumn, a time of harvest, where we reap the fruits and vegetables of the season and prepare them for storage duirng Winter. The Organs Associated with Metal are the Lungs and Large Intestine.
Dr. Worsley, my teacher, spoke of the lungs as “the Official who receives the pure Ch’i from the heavens”. The first breath at birth sustains our life force throughout our lives until we take our final breath. The Chinese view the the Lungs as the receiver of energy and the Large Intestine as the “Dust Bin Collector, the Drainer of the Dregs” where its main functin is to store and eliminate waste. These two Officials when balanced work beatuifully together to allow us to “take in” air, chi, inspiration and “let go” of waste, and negativity.
Autumn is the perfect Season to support the Lungs and Large Intestine with habits that strengthen these Officials.
Here’s simple ways to smoothly transition through Autumn.
1. Awake during Lung’s peak time, between 3-5 am. Practice 30 minutes of Tai Chi, Qi Gong, or Yoga, meditate or just breathe deeply. Deep breathing stimulates the Large Intestine to eliminate (good for those with constipation) between 5-7 am, it’s peak hours.
2. Use a Neti pot with a saline solution to irrigate your sinuses. This simple habit can be incorporated into your morning routine and acts to prevent sinus infections and sore throats. I use a Neti Pot during Autumn to help alleviate seasonal allergies. It works, along with taking 500 mgs of Quercitin-C.
3. The gift of the Metal element is the ability to inspire. Hike or drive to the mountains and renew what inspires you. Grief is the emotion associated with Metal. Extreme grief can injure the lungs but can be processed through the awe-inspiring reach of the great outdoors. Nature herself is healing and transformative.
4. Eat mildly spicey foods to help support the Metal element. Tai, Indian, and other Asian foods try and balance the five flavors of bitter,sweet, spicey, sour and salt. Try combining all these tastes at EVERY meal instead of dieting. Our modern diet has too much sweet (in the form of refined sugars) and salt and too little of bitter, sour and spicey.
As is true in nature, Autumn is a time were we consolidate our energies and prepare for the austerity of Winter. When that breaks down, so too, does our ability to preserve what is nourishing to the body, mind and spirit.
Most people are already familiar with the concept of acupuncture: releasing the blockage of essential Qi, or life force, to promote healing. But I am often asked about Five-Element acupuncture, which is the classical Chinese form that I practice.
According to classical Five-Element acupuncture, the five elements – Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water – exist in everything and everyone. When an imbalance occurs, illness can result. So, Five-Element diagnoses and treats the element that is out of balance, enabling healing to occur in the body.
Each element has an odor, color, sound and emotion attached to it that can be perceived when that element is out of balance. In addition, each patient’s unique body, mind and spirit are taken into account when determining diagnosis and treatment, so that each individual receives customized treatment.
Each person has a unique balance of the five elements – no two people are the same, regardless of the similarity of their symptoms. The goal of the 5 Element practitioner is to pin-point and treat the underlying causative factor of “Dis-ease”. Treating the causative factor enables the person to heal completely.
This is the essential difference between acupuncture and Western (or allopathic) medicine, where patients presenting the same symptoms usually are treated in the exact same way and given the exact same dose of the exact same prescription drug. An acupuncture patient receives an hour of my time – more during the intake session – to diagnose and treat an imbalance and, in most cases, arises from my table already feeling better.
This is one reason why more people are turning to alternative medical treatments – for individualized care, a personal relationship with the practitioner, natural treatment free from adverse side effects and the promotion of improved sleep and overall calmative effect.
I tell my patients that acupuncture has a cumulative effect and that scheduling a series of treatments is the most effective way to help resolve imbalances. Why is this so? The endorphin theory.
Bruce Pomeranz, M.D., PhD., a neurophysiology professor at the University of Toronto School of Medicine and one of the world’s foremost acupuncture researchers, has reviewed more than a dozen studies on the effectiveness of acupuncture.
To challenge the belief of many conventional doctors that acupuncture simply produces a placebo effect, Dr. Pomeranz spent 20 years trying to disprove his hypothesis that acupuncture blocks pain pathways in the brain. Put another way, the question was, does acupuncture stimulate peripheral nerves that send messages to the brain to release endorphins (morphine-like compounds)?
A Chinese student working in his lab studied acupuncture as anesthesia on animals. If it was a placebo, then it should not work, he reasoned, because placebos only work if the patient is conscious. The student had previously observed that acupuncture worked on farm animals and infants, who cannot experience the placebo effect. His experiments on anesthetized animals demonstrated that what acupuncture actually does is block pain pathways.
In testing the acupuncture-endorphin theory, Dr. Pomeranz tested 16 lines of evidence with 16 different kinds of experiments based on 16 different assumptions—all supporting his hypothesis. He concluded that there was more evidence in favor of the acupuncture-endorphin hypothesis than there is for 95% of conventional medical treatments.
Dr. Pomeranz says the advantage of the endorphin theory is that you can improve acupuncture treatment. Endorphins have a cumulative effect. The first treatment is mildly effective, the second, if given within hours or days, is even more potent. Endorphins have a memory. If you give an acupuncture treatment a third time in close succession, it’s going to be even stronger.
