acupuncture and phytotherapy |

An extremely important aspect related to the diagnosis of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is how to distinguish the positive symptoms and the negative symptoms. This often goes unnoticed. But is the differentiation between positive and negative symptoms that sometimes help us to distinguish certain clinical patterns/syndromes.

Some readers may be wondering what are negative symptoms and positive symptoms. Well, the answer is relatively simple.
Positive symptom comprises a symptom that is manifest in the patient. When we say that a patient presents himself with shoulder pain we have a positive symptom.
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As I mentioned several times, yin deficiency, one of TCM several clinical patterns, is a way of classifying symptoms. In the text about the yin deficiency I explained what are these symptoms. In this article I will do a brief review of these symptoms, then we will focus on the selection of acupuncture points for each symptom in particular.

In the end I will examine several variations of the acupuncture protocol which will help us understand how to personalize the acupuncture protocols.

It is accepted that there is a yin deficiency in the presence of some specific clinical symptoms and signs. In this text we will only look at the symptoms. The symptoms of yin deficiency are: (a) physical and mental agitation, (2) insomnia, (3) sensation of heat in the body, (4) evening fever, (5) and night sweats (6) dry mouth and throat.
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It is noted that diseases in Western medicine has a logical cataloging of symptoms and clinical signs similar to disease in Chinese Medicine than in relation to clinical patterns.

What matters, for the reader, is that the same disease may be presented with different clinical patterns. Imagine a urinary tract infection (urinary infection is a western disease, but serves for our example).

Low urinary tract infection will be characterized by various symptoms such as dysuria (painful urination), hematuria (blood in urine), pollakiuria (increased urination) and urgency to urinate. Can still be pain/discomfort in lower abdomen and changes in smell of urine. The presence of all these symptoms makes us think of the urinary tract infection. However, the urinary infection can present itself in the form of different clinical patterns.
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Too often I find myself where my discussions were my interlocutors do not well understand what are symptoms, clinical signs, diseases or clinical patterns/syndromes. This text serves to explain exactly what these terms mean.

A symptom is no more than one complaint reported by patients. It refers to something the patient feels as pathological. For example, when a patient says “I feel toothache” is referring to a symptom. The symptom indicates that something is not right, that there is a problem, whether imagined or not the patient.

For its part the clinical sign is something that can be perceived by health professionals without resorting to the patient’s report. It is something directly perceived by health professionals.

Let’s assume a simple case study. A patient presents himself with joint pain that worsens with exposure to heat and in times of changing weather. Also you can feel hot skin to the touch and observe local redness.
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Now that we have seen that the TCM is essentially symptomatic we should raise another question: is Western medicine symptomatic? Is this form of medicine primarily symptomatic? Does it need symptoms so much as TCM do? Is it based solely on relief of symptoms? Does it treat something else rather than symptoms?

O have already denounced this kind of discourse in other articles, in particular, in another text related to this, entitled “Other´s treat symptoms, we treat the causes.” I advise a careful reading of it. For now I’d like to focus on an example, extremely common today.

A woman is diagnosed with a benign tumor in the breast (breast cancer). This mass is too small to be felt on palpation and the patient has no symptoms. It is 100% asymptomatic. Her diagnosis was due to cutting-edge medical technology that can detect tumors (breast cancer, lung cancer, etc… ) that are not visible to the naked eye, or touched.
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Chinese medicine is essentially symptomatic. Her way of thinking is made in order to treat symptoms. If I already gave an acupuncture example, allow me to cite an example from the book “Gynecology of Traditional Chinese Medicine”. In this book of the specialty of gynecology, the authors, in the treatment of menorrhagia and metrostaxis due to heat in the blood, referred the following symptoms:

“Occurrence of menstrual blood not at the due time, and fulminant or profuse blood flow, dripping bleeding, bright-red or deep red color and thin texture menses, accompanied by disphoria, dry mouth, or fever, yellowish urine, constipation, red tongue with yellow fur, slippery pulse or thin and rapid pulse ”
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One of the phrases, much heard in the Portuguese world of TCM (Tradicional Chinese Medicine) is that Western medicine is symptomatic, ie, treats symptoms. Although not directly, this statement is linked to another very common belief in TCM: acupuncture therapists treat energy imbalances in the body. We regulate the body’s energies, since we have a more holistic view of the process of being human. It´s a holistic diagnosis.

What is important to bear in mind is that the experts in TCM do not simply treat the symptom of the patient. They treat something else that nobody knows very well how to express, but it must have something to do with the energy´s we like so much and so little known. I have shown in other articles, the validity of this speach of energy and how empty of meaning are the words which it is based. In this article I want to focus on other equally ridiculous assertion: Western medicine only treats symptoms while TCM treats something else.
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Yin is, as understood in Chinese medicine, responsible for organic liquids and anchor the yang. If Yin becames weak then we assist to an increase of Yang in the way that a clinical pattern of yin deficiency will be characterized by the following symptoms:

1. Agitation: a person can not be quiet, feel more agitated than normal because there is the rise of yang. Agitation can be internal or external and divided into 2 aspects: physical and/or mental. If the yin deficiency affects the liver symptoms of irritability can occur.

2. Insomnia: This symptom can be characterized by an initial difficulty in falling asleep (blood deficiency), waking up repeatedly during the night (yin deficiency), or waking too early without feeling you have rested enough and unable to go back to sleep . Yin represents night and reassembles during the night. With yin deficiency, there is an increase of yang that make it difficult to sleep the patient causing insomnia. The characteristics of insomnia duo to Yin deficiency are characterized by waking up several times during the night, and difficulty sleeping a feature of blood deficiency (in the Portuguese blog I have developed a discussion because several professionals call my attention to the fact that diferente school´s are saying diferente things. In the future I will translat that article for this blog).
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The stagnation of qi beggins from the formation of a blockade that does not allow the deployment of qi. The symptoms are described as a consequence of the stagnation of qi and the regular functions of the organs involved. However, a more thorough examination of the organs, it is necessary to understand well all the different contexts in which symptoms may appear.

Oligomenorrhea: The Stagnation of Liver Qi usually affects the Liver and this is responsible for the storage of blood during the night so that a Qi Stagnation can affect the performance of their duties reducing thus the amount of menstrual flow;

Long cycle: for the same reasons given above includes the increase between the time of periods;

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Blood stasis is a clinical pattern that betrays a series of symptoms that are associated with the interruption of blood flow, as understood in the TCM.

There is always a correlation between the stagnation of qi and blood stasis because it is the free flow of qi that allows the mobility of blood. It is very common these 2 patterns are related. Furthermore external factors such as cold can also cause clinical patterns of blood stasis

The blood deficiency, the qi deficiency or the full heat in the blood may also cause such patterns of blood stasis. Often there are small symptomatic differences derived from the pattern that provokes blood stasis

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