An Herbal Walk with Jim Duke: Sat. May 30, 2009

Walking with Jim Duke in his Green Farmacy is a treat for an herbalist's sweet tooth. Dr. James Duke, for those of you who may not know him, earned his Ph.D. in Botany from the University of North Carolina, and is a world-renowned for his numerous publications on botanical medicine, including the CRC Handbook of Medicinal Herbs. He is notable for developing the Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases at the USDA. He is the author of the ultimate compendium on healing herbs, entitled "Green Pharmacy." In his "retirement" he is an adjunct faculty member of the Tai Sophia Institute (where I am Faculty Emeritus). This working botanical laboratory is a stone's throw from the school: 90 plots of land actively growing healing herbs. Specimens are arranged by illness: from Alzheimers and Arthritis to Sciatica and Vaginosis.

Wearing a huge woven sombrero to ward off the sun, Dr. Duke met us in the small driveway sporting bare feet, and a big walking stick which was used not so much for ambulation but for reaching plants and pointing out the herbs growing on the hillsides. This softspoken gentleman farmer with the slow southern drawl is a walking database on herbs, chemistry, pharmaceuticals, and diseases. We strolled for over two hours, with Jim pointing out the plants that are used as spices (all the plants here are medicinal, and today's featured plants are used to spice up culinary recipes, which was the theme of today's tour.) Reaching for samples of each plant, we tore off pieces, smelled them, "bruised" them (smashed them between our fingers), and chewed them. (I felt better immediately!)

In this haven, chairs and tables dotted the landscape to provide sunny and shady spots for scattered groups engaged in hands-on study. A black snake rested on a hot rock at the side of the pond lined with the mucilaginous herbs, undaunted by the two-leggeds walking by. Content to share the space, I wondered if this wild thing had learned to be tame enough to rest in the knowledge that nothing here could hurt him.)

This visit is one of many offered by the community education department of Tai Sophia Institute. Each season brings a different tour, with different themes. If you want an amazing experience in the Green Farmacy, go to the school's website: www.tai.edu, and look under the community programs link and sign up for one of these popular Herb Walks. Right here in our backyard we have a natural wonder well worthy of your time and small donation.

I love it when....

I love it when I find out, sometimes years later, that I helped someone.

I was in Lowe's recently, and ran into an "old" client whom I had not seen for years. I had thought that acupuncture mustn't have done so well for him, since he hadn't returned for treatment. He greeted me with great gusto, like an long-lost friend, and proceeded to tell his wife that I was the one who saved him from surgery. He went on and on, singing the praises of acupuncture (and me). I hadn't heard this before. He never returned to my office to let me know. (Note to professionals everywhere:It's a good thing I was wearing clean clothes, since this was a great marketing event: a bystander asked for my card!)

Soon after, I received a call from a regular client who left a message on my voicemail that I had "cured" her sinus infection. (I never use the word cure, and take no credit for "curing" since nature does the healing, not me.) But it was great to hear and very thoughtful for her to call to tell me.

And a colleague whom I treat just told me that her acupuncture treatments this winter really helped speed the healing from pneumonia, an illness that has had the tendency to linger for her in the past.

Then, a long-since-vanished client called to make an appointment after a 15 year absence, and we talked like we had seen each other only yesterday, like there was hardly a lapse in time. I recognized his name and voice immediately. He has an appointment this week, and I eagerly await his return.

These communications all came to me within a week's time. Perhaps the universe heard my silent musings of my occasional doubts, my wondering if it's time to retire, my fear of what will happen to acupuncture as health care delivery is overhauled in the near future, and my apprehension as money continues to tighten for my clients.

I know that I really needed to hear these things. And I decided to call the people who helped ME in the last several years to let them know how much their service meant to me. Sometimes we just forget to do it in the moment, forgetting that even the experts need the feedback.

Another East/West Difference

As a westerner who believes that talk therapy can be extremely useful to "turn the light on in the darkened soul" I find myself, as an acupuncturist, at odds with the modality that permits clients to perseverate on their illness, repeating the damage done to them in the past and re-living it with each telling.

The client who undergoes therapy and somehow finds himself "stuck" in the past ("My family is to blame for how I turned out"; "I can't be different because of what happened to me," etc.) often wants to share with me the etiology of their suffering. While it's interesting from a human-to-human, compassionate point of view, as an acupuncturist I find that repeating the story of their hurts is NOT useful in my treatment room since my work is geared toward helping them discover their own potential and finding ways to change their lives and their emotional experiences.

Imagine a person on a clear, linear trajectory that gets "bumped" off his/her path by a life event. Abuse: bump!--off target. Hurt or loss: bump!--jolted off again. By now, the person is "lost" and desperately trying to be back on the original path to the divine. With each verbal repetition of the events, especially without some kind of resolution in the immediate telling, then the body experiences the assault or loss as having occurred AGAIN! If the telling happens often, the body believes it to be true NOW just as much as it was true THEN. But NOW is not "THEN": it may be 20 years later, and the person isn't moving on as an adult, but is re-living "past-life" again and again. Energetically, that's STUCK!!

As an acupuncturist, if I permit the client to tell, re-tell, and essentially re-live it all, I am permitting illness to deepen right in front of me. I must stop the conversation, AND I have to look for a healthy moment in which to needle---to ask the body to find its way BACK to the divine path that the universe intended. I have to help the client find ANOTHER WAY. I feel that if I put the needle in while the patient is living in the past (during the re-telling) I am anchoring the past into his/her body.

I expect to encounter anger, sadness, grief and all the other emotions. Those are normal and, believe it or not, fleeting and ephemeral. To "solidify" them with a STORY about the past-- a time that does not exist anymore-- is to ask the body to return to that time and place and re-experience it. Acupuncture asks the body to find it's way back to the ideal, to health, to a path of destiny where the client isn't stuck, but is moving toward their future in a balanced, easy way.

This is really the meaning behind the title of this blog: moving the qi. Not "getting stuck." (That was an acupuncture joke.)

The LA Times just published a story about the efficacy of using ginger to curb the side effects of chemotherapy. While I am delighted that the public is learning that simple herbal substances can have an affect on health, it concerns me that articles like this will often lead some readers to follow this advice blindly. So here's the original story:

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-nausea15-2009may15,0,3896541.story

The upshot is that scientists have discovered that a teaspoon of ginger daily will help to curb the nausea of chemotherapy. Actually, Chinese herbal medicine uses ginger for upset stomachs, but there are some caveats: if the patient has a lot of heat already present in the stomach it may not be a great idea. (Those who are on multiple rounds of chemo will often have eroded stomach lining, and the chemo slows or stops the creation of more epithelial cells. That's why the hair falls out and mouth soreness happen, too.) Ginger can be warming to the stomach, and when the stomach is "hot" then it could make things worse. A LITTLE ginger could go a long way, and too much,....well....

This reminds me of a client who came in about a year ago who had successfully used acupuncture to help control his blood pressure, among other things. All of a sudden, he started getting high BP readings at home and at his doctor's office. After questioning, I discovered that he, too, had read an article in some health magazine about how cinnamon helps to prevent heart attacks. The article stated that 1/2 tsp. of cinnamon per day was tested and found to be efficacious, and ended by saying "at least it won't hurt you." So my client thought, "Well, if a little won't hurt, then more would be better." He began taking 1 teaspoon of cinnamon per day. Nobody told him (and it wasn't in the article) that cinnamon can raise BP!! The mystery was solved, his BP is now under control again.

While these substances are "natural" remember that "natural" doesn't always mean safe for YOU. It's possible to overdose on any natural substance, and even without an overdose, some substances may not be good for all people under certain conditions. So if you have questions about that article you read in the most recent edition of the health magazine (or even the LA Times) go online to check or ask your acupuncturist or local qualified herbalist.

Joe Biden Was Right

Joe Biden was right

This week, a flourish of backpeddling by the Obama administration tried to make up for the “gaffe” that VP Joe Biden made on morning TV, saying that he wouldn’t advise members of his family to use airplanes, subways or other “enclosed spaces” as a prevention for the spread of the swine flu.

In an age where the airlines are losing money, and public transportation saves air quality, the administration doesn’t want panic on behalf of those industries, and doesn’t want to incite even more fear in the public.

So what are the facts? Any place that re-circulates air also re-circulates viruses of all types. This includes your car, your home or your office building when the windows are closed. Most of the time, our immune systems and general health can handle it. So Joe wasn’t doing anything but truth-telling to a public in desperate need of the truth.

So is it time to panic? No.

Most of us are healthy enough to withstand a virus doing battle with our bodies. If we do get the swine flu, it is likely that most cases will be mild, because we are healthy and can fight this battle easily. If your immune system is compromised, you should be concerned about exposure (including being in closed spaces), and should take precautions to prevent contracting the flu. You have probably heard about hand washing ad-nauseum, but it is the most effective strategy for prevention of contracting the flu AND for limiting the spread of the virus to your family and friends.

WebMD’s website is a wonderful resource to let us all know about further steps to take to limit the spread and keep us from getting sick. Here’s the link for a slideshow about the swine flu: http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/slideshow-swine-flu. The CDC also has an informative website that is updated constantly. This one is about prevention: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/preventing.htm.

Now back to Joe, and his admonition about “enclosed spaces.” We can’t always avoid enclosed spaces, such as office buildings whose windows don’t open, public transportation, hospital visitation, etc., but we CAN use the precautions advised by t he CDC and keep ourselves as healthy as possible. This is a social (ie: public health) problem, and it takes everyone doing his/her part to protect all of us.

Generally prevention is so much easier than fighting an infection once it has come aboard. So if you want to consider measures in addition to those recommended by the CDC, here’s what this acupuncturist advises:

1. Eat right. You should know what this means for you. Often, lots of fruits and veggies, limited fats, little if any sugar, food that you brings you joy and good health.
2. Get necessary sleep.
3. Be with friends. Don’t eliminate your social life because of fear. Be responsible, however, and think about having a picnic outdoors rather than in the office basement lunchroom.
4. If you must travel by public transportation, then use common sense. Anti-bacterial wipes will clean the tray table and arm rests on a plane. Anti-bacterial lotions can clean your hands after touching the pole in the subway. And don’t touch your nose, eyes or mouth (entryways to your insides) before you have had a chance to wipe your hands clean.
5. Wipe down all surfaces that you commonly touch or breathe on. Examples: your cell phone, telephone, computer keyboard, remote controls, desktops, doorknobs, etc.
6. Use some Vaseline or other “sticky” product at the entryway of your nose. When you breathe in, you can trap particulates (viruses, bacteria, pollen, etc.) and they won’t get into your lungs.
7. See your acupuncturist. Regular treatments can optimize your immune responses. And generally good health limits the receptivity of your body to disease.
8. Take precautionary supplements. Maybe some additional Vitamin C? Make sure your Vitamin D levels are up to snuff (this might require testing by your doc.) And your acupuncturist may have some herbal supplements that will help you ward off invading viruses. If you don’t have an acupuncturist handy that can prescribe the appropriate supplements, you can get Airborne at the drugstore. It will chase off many viruses that make us sick.
9. And lastly, don’t let fear grip you unnecessarily. We have the best healthcare in the world, which brings together the gifts of the ancient medicine of the first century AD and the modern scientific advances of the 21st century AD. It is VERY unlikely that Americans will suffer the degree of illness, overall, that has already been found in Mexico because of the quality of our healthcare, and the better overall health of our citizens.

So Joe was right. Just not politically correct.

Allergies or Irritants?

Spring signals itself in many ways…the world gets greener, we get eager to spend more time outdoors, AND many of us start with runny noses and itchy eyes.

Allergies, right? Well, maybe.

Allergies are the body’s responses to foreign matter when the invader is specifically identified as being a life-threatening attacker. For example, lots of kids these days are “allergic” to peanuts. If they eat one, their bodies can’t discern that a peanut is a harmless thing used to make kid-friendly sandwiches. Their cells go on alert; they swell, itch and have trouble breathing. Same with allergies to pollen, dust and other respiratory triggers: eyes, nose and respiratory organs think that a small grain of pollen or dust is a terrorist in disguise.

So if these are your symptoms, then it might be allergies. BUT, it could also be an irritant. Irritants are thing that enter the nose and eyes (dust, pollen and other things floating through the air in spring) and they simply irritate the tissue lining your eyes and respiratory tract. Anyone could get an irritation if enough of the offending floating stuff is taken in. Think of what happens when you get something in your eye--even something you aren’t allergic to. When you wash it out, the tissue settles down. And if you do have allergies, irritants can make the symptoms worse.

So before you reach for an “allergy pill” doing some of the following actions may resolve the symptoms because it may not be an allergy at all. If you reach for the pill first, you may be medicating unnecessarily. Or if it is an allergic reaction, you may be overdosing when smaller doses will do.

1. Probably the very best thing to do is to use a neti pot. A neti pots is a little vessel that looks like an aladdin’s lamp. It is used to wash out the nose and clear the irritants from your nose hairs and turbinates (skull bones that form a maze behind your nose) that trap particulates and keep them from your lungs. There are internet sites that show you how to use a neti pot, so I won’t describe it here. (See one at: http://www.thegreenhead.com/2006/11/neti-pot-nasal-passage-cleanser.php as an example.) I have had clients who swear by the use of this simple, old-fashioned device. Here’s my latest testimonial:

“I first heard about a Neti pot about a year ago and didn't think it sounded very appealing or like anything I would even consider doing. Because I have allergies and occasional sinus problems I eventually decided to try the Neti Pot. My first few attempts were sloppy, and I really didn't enjoy using it. I did begin to notice a big difference in my sinuses however. I now use my Neti Pot about two or three times a week and love it. Not only does it clear my sinuses, it also keeps them from drying out during the winter. I love my Neti Pot now and look forward to using it. I describe the results as the fresh, clean smell of the air at the beach. I highly recommend it. “ Margaret K.

I have been asked by clients how often they have to use a neti pot. I reply by asking them how often they bathe. When they tell me “every day,” I respond by saying that using a neti pot is the respiratory system’s bath. Daily washing will only help your respiratory system keep clean.

2. When you go out, think about putting some Vaseline or a similar product at the very bottom of the lining of each nostril. This can potentially trap the flying debris and keep it “glued” to the outside of your body, rather than letting it go up through your sinuses.

3. Wash your face and hands after coming indoors or after touching your pets.

4. Wash your hair and change your clothes. Being outdoors means that all that stuff is trapped in your hair and on your clothing. So don’t wear the same clothing, especially around your face, day after day. Your hair should be washed, especially before going to bed, where your face rubs all over your pillowcase. And wash the pillowcase nightly too, especially if you want to be efficient at this cleaning thing.

5. Wear a hat and eyeglasses/goggles if you are going to be outdoors for a long time, or in the wind. This keeps your hair and eyes from collecting the unseen debris.

6. Close the windows in your house and car on days when the particulates are especially bothersome. If you need to, use an air conditioner (but be sure that the filters are clean!)

7. Use an air purifier next to your bed or desk or any place that you stay for many hours. An air purifier only works in the immediately adjacent area, so don’t expect miracles from one little machine. And keep the filters clean!

8. Reduce the degree of irritants and allergens by being conscious of what you put into the surroundings in your home and car. Because changing your home and car is a more expensive endeavor, you can be mindful of these things when redecorating or buying a new car:
•Put in hardwood floors rather than new wall-to-wall carpet;
•Use leather furniture rather than fabric; (or use fabric furniture covers that are easily washed and replaced:
•Don’t have drapes or fabric wall art that collects dust easily, (use blinds, shutters, or easily washed curtains)
•Keep your dog’s hair short and bathe him/her more frequently;
•Don’t let the dog sleep in your bed. (yeah, right!)
•Install leather seats in your next car---no fabric.

9. Get regular acupuncture. Acupuncture has been recognized by western medicine as one of the modalities that helps reduce allergies. Sites such as www.WebMd.com have many articles that talk about how acupuncture has been found to help many people permanently. To be effective for seasonal allergies, don’t wait til spring to start. What you do in the seasons before spring will have an impact on the following seasons.

These steps should help reduce the junk in your nose, eyes and lungs, so that symptoms may be more easily managed. If, however, you are still bothered by symptoms, the most effective medications available over the counter tend to be really expensive, with the cost being close to a buck a pill. (They know when they have you over a barrel, huh?)

If you are a client of an acupuncturist or Chinese herbalist, you can ask if she prescribes any herbal supplements. I prescribe a very inexpensive formula (it has a Chinese name that nobody remembers, but I call it “magic snot pill”) and the cost is extremely low compared to the OTC western stuff (about 7 bucks for 100 pills/taken 2 at a time). Even my neighbors show up every spring to get some.

Spring is so wonderful that it would be a shame for you to miss out on any part of it, or feel too symptomatic to enjoy the season’s wonders. With a little consciousness, some effort at cleaning your respiratory organs and your environment, and doing some complementary medicine (acupuncture and herbs) you can be relieved of your cabin fever of winter, and be out in nature during all it’s blooming bounty.

Where is Grandma when you need her?

The stomach flu is going around. Several clients came in recently either having had it, or were just getting it. Besides needles, what can help relieve the upset?

When I was a kid with the stomach flu (or food poisoning, or the "heaves") my mom used to give me room temperature "coke syrup" that she got from the corner soda fountain. A teaspoon or sip of that would help to resolve my upset stomach. No other food would be given to me for a day or so, until my stomach had a chance to rest; only the thick syrup would comfort it. We didn't really use the carbonated form of the soft drink, because carbonation and coldness tend to upset the stomach more, and watering down the syrup decreases the sweetness that we needed.

Today, it's hard to come by coke syrup, although there are a couple of mail order companies that sell it (eg: The Vermont Country Store Catalog). Instead, I keep a can of heavy syrup fruit cocktail in the back of the cupboard for such needs. I drain the fruit out, and then sip on the reserved liquid.

In Chinese medicine, the flavor of sweet is said to nourish the stomach. That's why sweet things appeal to children, and why we feel we MUST have dessert after large meals. When Chinese herbal formulas are given, especially to those with weak digestive systems, herbs are added such as licorice or dates to sweeten up the formula making it more easily digested.

It's almost always true that your grandmother knew the best home-remedies for everyday illnesses. They are also almost always quite consistent with Chinese medicine.