With that in mind, I wish to reach out to people who think acupuncture is total nonsense. I have made up a mock Q&A based on the actual questions I have been asked in the four years of my practice in Portland.

A: The most recent understanding of the function of the skin is that the skin is a sensory organ. It is derived from the same embryonic layer as that from which the brain stems. It is natural to think that those two still communicate in an adult human body. In fact, the information from the skin’s surface (temperature, touch, or pain) is transmitted to the brain via the nervous system, and the brain reacts simultaneously to the information received from the skin.

Acupuncture textbooks tell you that there are areas on the skin that have a direct relationship to the organs, but none of the books I have read explain how they came to be organized into acupuncture theory. My wild guess is that people were more susceptible to the physical functions three thousand years ago with much less distractions and a lot more time. Let’s say, for example, that many people said that certain parts of the legs always hurt when they had an upset stomach. One wise person realized that pressing on those points relieved the upset stomach. Many other scholars joined in and gathered other information about different points and their impact on the human body. They tried many probing devises, and they had, oh, about two thousand years to categorize those points and test them on actual human bodies.

In the last few decades, we have witnessed aesthetic interests merging into the area of the medical profession.  For example, Botox, once a muscle relaxant, is now commonly used to reduce wrinkles, and plastic surgery is a very common practice nowadays to help people achieve their ideal beauty.  I have a feeling that this trend of merging beauty and healthcare will become more prevalent in the coming years.

It seems only natural and intuitive that women, as consumers, demand something more than a superficial cover-up in cosmetic products.  In fact, expensive make-up is almost meaningless if you have a digestive problem and it shows on the skin in the form of acne, dry skin, or oily skin.  Also, when you get a facial at a salon, if you smoke on the way home, it will cause an increase of oxidation in your body, which is detrimental to your skin.

You might not realize it, but the idea of inner beauty is the very concept of Eastern medicine.  The practitioners of Eastern Medicine view the condition of the face as a representation of the condition of the organs.  In our diagnostic process, we look for imbalance of the organs based upon the discoloration, the color tone, and the dryness/oiliness of the face.  For example, dry skin is caused by poor circulation of blood, weakened Lung functions, and/or a weakened digestive system.  On the other hand, people who get regular acupuncture treatments tend to have nice skin because the blood circulation is improved.  Many of my clients report a reduction in the swelling of the face and limbs; this is because the body processes excessive bodily fluid after acupuncture sessions.

The newest trend in the world of acupuncture is cosmetic acupuncture.  You might have seen it on TV or in magazines.  To tell you the truth, it is not much different from regular acupuncture sessions; it merely has as its primary focus the outward manifestation of the inner beauty/health promoted by regular acupuncture treatments.  I will do a detailed report on cosmetic acupuncture in my next article.

Traditionally, a feudal lord in Japan had a doctor whose job entailed examining the lords’ stool every day to check the conditions of his digestive system. (I am sorry if you are eating while reading this.) This is of course an extreme example of disease prevention, but the lord’s health affected the livelihood of tens of thousands of people who lived in his province.

Nowadays, none of you (as far as I know) has a doctor checking your stool daily, but your health is as important as the lord’s to yourself, your family, and people around you. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of self-maintenance, especially since all kinds of health information is readily available to everyone. You should take advantage of it and live a full, healthy life. To help you with that endeavor, I would like to show you one of the diagnostic techniques that acupuncturists use to check your health conditions.

Tongue diagnosis is one of the routine examinations to view quickly what is happening in your body. The tongue is a microcosm of the entire body, with each portion of the tongue representing each organ. For example, the tip represents the heart, the middle portion indicates the digestive system, the back (or root) shows the condition of the kidneys and bladder, and the area on the sides between the tip and the middle portion represents the lungs (just like the anatomical locations).

We observe pretty much everything about the tongue: its color, shape, moisture, dryness and furry coating. If your organs are healthy, your tongue should be bright pink, with a thin white coating. There shouldn’t be any cracks on the surface or scalloped shaping on the sides. When you look at your tongue in front of the mirror, you have to be in a natural light, and try to relax your tongue as much as you can. The following are some pointers. I hope they are helpful.

Color

Purple indicates the stagnation of blood in your body. Are you perhaps stressed or lacking exercise? Pale color is indicative of a blood deficiency or the sluggish functioning of organs as a whole. Do you get tired easily? You might need to rest well and nourish yourself with a healthy diet. Red color always means inflammation in the body. If you experience heartburn and your tongue is dark red and swollen, maybe you should adjust your diet to avoid ulcers in the future. Menopausal women often have a red and thin tongue, which means that the body is lacking sufficient body fluids and blood, as a human body becomes drier as one ages. If you experience hot flashes, you should know that acupuncture and Chinese herbs are great natural ways to restore hormonal balance.

Coating

It is perfectly natural to have a thin white coating. However, when the coating is so thick that you can’t see the tongue color, you are not digesting food properly. You might want ask yourself if your diet is too high in dairy products. You might have indigestion. Again, acupuncture and herbs can help. When you have a fever, the tongue color becomes yellow. Be very careful when the coating is yellow for a long time and you don’t have a cold or the flu; something is inflamed in your body.

Shape

The scalloped shape on the side means that there is excess fluid in the body, which is due to indigestion. If you are also experiencing diarrhea, your digestive system is weakened. Adjust your diet or try acupuncture. When you see cracks, it is good to understand the locations of them (see above), since the cracks appear over the location of the corresponding organ that is not functioning perfectly. If the cracks stay in the same place for a while, there will be a problem with the corresponding organ in the long run.

When the tongue is healthy looking, it means that the organs are well nourished and functioning well. If you want to see a perfect tongue, look at a healthy child’s. Comparing it with yours should give you some sense of what needs to be done to achieve optimal health. If the above is too much information and too much work, please remember one thing: acupuncturists can help your tongue look better and help you live a long, healthy life.

Exactly what is a migraine? The Merck Manual defines it a “headache that lasts 4 to 72 hours, is throbbing, is moderate to severe in intensity, is unilateral, becomes worse with exertion, and is associated with nausea, vomiting, or sensitivity to light, sound, or smell.” It is a mysterious, one-sided headache occurring when there is nothing wrong with you structurally. I say “mysterious” because there is no known cause for migraines.

A change in the volume of the blood flow in the scalp and the brain during migraines has been recognized. Some theorize that stress and depression cause a chemical imbalance in the brain. The chemical imbalance then leads to an inflammation of the brain tissue and an increased blood flow to the brain, and it is the resulting increase of pressure in the brain that may cause migraine headaches. Others hypothesize that it may be triggered by estrogen since it often coincides with menstrual cycles and is often diminished after the age of 50 in women. Migraines mostly occur to women, and the similar headaches in men are categorized as cluster headaches, rather than migraines.

I have been told that treating migraines with conventional medicine can be frustrating since there is no known cause for this condition. Patients are usually prescribed beta-blockers, antidepressants, and analgesics. If patients do not respond to any of these, the migraine becomes chronic with no real relief. For this reason, people are looking for alternative treatments of migraines, and one of the popular ones is acupuncture. Even with my limited expertise, I can say that migraines respond to acupuncture very well. In most cases, you are asked to get acupuncture treatment twice a week for three weeks, and the migraines usually diminish during that time. Most patients (women) decide to come back monthly before menstrual periods as a preventative measure and for their general wellbeing.

In Eastern Medicine, migraines are considered to be caused by an imbalance of the Liver and all Bladder channels. Stress and anger cause stagnation of the smooth Qi flow of Liver. The stagnant flow of Qi causes blockage in the Gall Bladder channel. The Gall Bladder channel runs from the eyes to the sides of the head, to the base of the head, the shoulders, the sides of the body, and down the sides of the legs to the fourth toes. I am sure you can picture this Gall Bladder pathway if you picture tight shoulders and temporal headaches when stressed. If you have migraines, try pressing on the sides of the lower legs next to the bone structure. You will find tender spots. These are blockages of the channel; rub those out to relieve migraines.

The liver also stores blood. Women with tendencies towards blood deficiencies often experience headaches before their periods because blood concentrates in the Chong Mai channel in the center of the body to prepare for menstrual cycles, and the liver lacks sufficient blood supply. Lack of blood in the liver causes stagnation of Liver Qi.

Stress universally happens to both sexes. It seems unfair that only women get migraines because of it. Maybe the hidden cause of the migraine is the very fact that women tend to ponder things more deeply than men.

Some call the skin the largest organ of the body. A Recent scientific trend says that the skin is the second brain. What both of these statements indicate is that the skin is not just a package that wraps a human body, but an important part of a human body that processes information and performs vital functions. For example, the skin consists of several different nerve endings that detect cold and hot, as well as receptors that detect pain, touch, and pressure. Through the skin, we automatically assess the information from our environment. Based on the assessment, the skin controls the temperature of the body with perspiration. Also, the secretion called sebum has a very important bactericidal function that creates a barrier against germs in the environment.

As with the brain, there are still unknown aspects of skin functions. Some researchers conducted a study of the influence of the light on a visually disabled group of people to see how a circadian rhythm is maintained for them. Since they are not experiencing the sunlight visually, the researchers hypothesized that the change of the light must be detected through the skin.

Another interesting aspect of the skin is its emotional function. Since all body functions are processed through the brain, they are all attached to some level of emotional response. Some scientists are theorizing that emotional responses are elicited from the skin as well. We all know that caressing by someone we love makes us feel content. Uncomfortable silence between strangers in a room sometimes can be ‘felt’ without having any knowledge of the uncomfortable situation.

I recently read an article on this topic in which the authors made an interesting connection between the tattoo and piercing trend among youths and the lack of skin stimuli as children. I am thirty-seven years old now, and I remember being constantly covered with fresh wounds from playing rough as a child. According to those authors, the younger generation lives in a more sterile world nowadays, and parents are overly cautious about infections and excessive caressing in order to develop independence in their children. However, the skin needs to be stimulated just like any part of the body. When children lack the stimulation through the skin, they become attracted to the extreme version of it such as tattoo and piercing. There is no scientific evidence of this, but doesn’t this make sense to you intuitively?

When a fertilized egg develops into a fetus, nervous tissues (including the brain) and the skin are derived from the same structure called ectoderm. This explains why the skin is recently being referred to as the second brain. It is probably for this reason that most people feel calm during acupuncture treatments and also a major reason that needling the skin has a great impact on the functions of the entire body.

Japanese culture emphasizes the importance of the abdomen (hara). There are many expressions in Japanese that contain the word, hara. The most common one is hara wo kukuru, literally meaning “to strengthen the abdomen.” In common usage, it means to make a big decision. This hara tradition stems from bushido, which taught that the spirit resides in the abdomen. For that reason, when a follower of bushido, a samurai, made an unforgivable mistake, he committed hara-kiri, literally the cutting open of the abdomen, rather than the heart.

In Eastern Medical tradition, the lower abdominal region is called Tan Den in Japanese (Dan Tien in Chinese). This area is believed to be the source of our Qi, our vital energy. When a healthy person breathes deeply, he or she takes in Qi from the environment. This Qi is drawn down to the Tan Den to mingle with the internal Qi. This drawing down of external Qi is accomplished by the Kidney, which is also the source of our internal Qi. Acupuncturists often work on Kidney functions to treat asthma or allergies because a weak Kidney does not grasp and draw down the Lung Qi to achieve the healthy functions of the Lung.

Deep, natural breaths occur with the rising and descent of the diaphragm, the parachute-shaped muscle located at the base of the chest cavity (between the lower part of the ribs and the stomach). When we take a breath, abdominal muscles and the diaphragm in coordination cause the diaphragm to descend, which expands the chest. The increased volume in the chest stretches the lungs, the pressure in the lungs becomes less than that of the atmosphere, and air flows into the lungs (moving naturally from the higher pressure to the lower pressure). On the exhalation, the opposite occurs, and the air leaves the lungs. Most lung problems happen when the lungs are not at their full capacity. Just like any other cells in the body, the unused portion of the lung cells becomes atrophied.

Breathing also stimulates the circulation of blood throughout the body. The blood from the heart goes to the lungs for a gas exchange. The blood that is now rich with oxygen goes back the heart to be distributed throughout the body. The oxygen it delivers stimulates the metabolic functions.

As you can see, full and healthy breathing is very important to us. Unfortunately, a lot of us have acquired the bad habit of shallow breathing. Also, stress causes us to have tight upper abdominal muscles, which hinders smooth, full breath. When you need to relax, focus on the lower abdomen (Tan Den), visualize the diaphragm descending, and draw in a deep breath. When you stretch out your spine, you will find that the lungs are fully stretched. Breathe out, visualizing the diaphragm ascending. Do this several times and you’ll be amazed how relaxed you feel.

Herpes zoster is caused by the varicella zoster virus, the same one that causes chicken pox. After this virus is contracted in the form of chicken pox, usually during childhood, it remains in the body in a latent state. When disease, old age or stress weaken the immune system, the virus is reactivated and attacks the nerve root. At first, people notice pain, usually on the body trunk, lower back, legs, or the face. After two or three days, skin eruption occurs in the exact same area, and the area of eruption becomes very painful and sensitive, even to the touch of clothing. The rash will disappear in a week or so. The good news is that once you have had shingles, you most likely won’t have it again. The bad news is that the nerve pain may remain for months, and even years, after the rash is gone.

In Eastern medicine, infection is categorized as a Heat condition. You can clearly see why this is because infection causes redness of the skin and fever. With the rash involved, it is also a Damp condition in which excess fluid is accumulated in the form of rash. This Damp Heat causes obstruction along different channels and causes shingles. For example, the rash on the chest and face are located on the Spleen and Stomach channels. The rash on the lower back, hip, and the underside of the rib cage is indicative of the Liver and Gall Bladder channels’ involvement.

Acupuncturists usually prescribe an herbal decoction to clear Damp Heat when treating shingles. Many of the ingredients have antiviral properties. Depending on the distribution of the rash, we also treat the pain and underlying organ conditions with acupuncture.

As a virtual clinic, I would like to present a very successful case of shingles here. This person came down with the symptoms after a very stressful event (stress suppresses the immune system). Since I know this person very well, I was able to treat the disease very quickly. In case you are wondering if I needled into the area of extreme sensitivity, I did not. I worked on the channels that were located beneath the rash every day for four days. The severe pain was reduced to half after one treatment, and the pain was completely gone after one week. During the course of the treatment, this person was also given an herbal decoction and a high dose of vitamin C.

It is best to seek treatment in the acute stage to minimize the development of the pain. Also, if the rash is on the face near the eyes or the ears, it is important to see a physician immediately because it could cause blindness or hearing loss. Acupuncturists can always take care of the resulting facial nerve pain afterwards.

From the Eastern medical standpoint, most people live their lives with “Han-Byo,” complaining of migraines, shoulder stiffness, digestive problems, and so forth. It is astonishing that most people choose to get an oil change for a car before they decide to do something about their physical complaints. In Asia, acupuncture and herbal practice were initially developed to cater to the privileged who had longevity in mind. The practitioners have developed diagnostic skills to find imbalances of the body, even in the healthy state, in order to postpone life-threatening situations as long as humanly possible.

As we have different body types, so we all have different constitutions. One example that all Japanese can relate to is “Fuku Mimi,” or large ear lobes. They are often a symbol for good fortune because large earlobes are indicative of longevity in Eastern medicine. Ears are associated with the kidney, the source of “Qi.” When the lobes are well developed, it is acknowledged that the person has abundant kidney “Qi.” Brittle nails, on the other hand, are indicative of blood deficiency and a tendency toward liver deficiency because blood nourishes nails (and hair) and is stored in the liver.

Also, since each organ system is associated with an emotion, behavioral patterns are often influenced by organ systems. It is said that people who sound angry or oppressive when they talk have a tendency toward liver imbalance because anger is associated with the liver. People who worry too much often have weak digestive systems since worries and pensiveness are products of spleen imbalance.

The environment can affect our emotional state as well. Suppose you seem to be in good health, but you start a very stressful job. The stress might affect your weak area(s). If, for example, that is liver and spleen, the stress may cause irritable bowel syndrome or stomach ulcers. These types of digestive issues are commonly seen and treated in an acupuncture clinic. If the patient had only known about his or her tendency toward stress-related digestive problems, he or she could have paid more attention to stress management (and wouldn’t have had to pay for a visit to a doctor’s office, medication, and a visit to an acupuncturist).

If you are feeling not particularly sick, but tired, irritable, and not quite like your normal self, it is the perfect time to get an acupuncture treatment, for there is probably an imbalance in your body that might lead to something costly if left ignored. When you hear a strange rattle under your automobile, everyone knows it is dangerous to ignore it, and if you keep driving your car with the problem, it will cost you a lot to fix it in the future. Why don’t we apply the same sensibility toward our bodies?

However, I have learned that there is a name for the disorder: Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, which affects approximately 5% of North Americans. Its symptoms include depression, lethargy, weight gain, and a craving for carbohydrates during winter months in the Northern Hemisphere.

Researchers have theorized that a lack of sunlight affects the secretion of melatonin from the pineal gland. The exact role of melatonin is uncertain, but it is known to lower the body temperature and to induce sleep. In short, lack of sunlight tricks our minds into thinking that it is time for sleep in the middle of the day and disrupts the healthy hormonal cycle of the day.

In Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine, it is stated that people and nature are inseparable, and the coldness of winter forces inactivity and storing. According to the Eastern Medicine tradition, winter belongs to Yin, meaning that it is the time for rest and nourishment.

Our bodies lack energy in winter because we have to constantly fend off the cold to keep warm. This lack of energy leads to lethargy and depression. We also crave carbohydrates for quick energy; overeating and a lack of physical activity leads to weight gain.

The recommended treatment for SAD is to spend as much time as possible in the sunlight (even on cloudy days) and to do some exercises in the sunlight. Another option is to buy a happy light, which is an electric light box that is supposed to mimic sunlight and to have the same effect on your body as natural light. To avoid weight gain associated with SAD, try to eat foods with a high protein content when you are craving carbohydrates.

Acupuncture is a great way to treat SAD because it reinstates the body’s natural hormonal balance. Also, Acupuncture moves Qi in your body, which naturally improves your mood and increases your metabolic rate.

An old Japanese saying goes, “Hara Hachibu Ni Isha Irazu” (“You don’t need a doctor if your belly is only eighty percent full”). Studies show that the volume and quality of food intake greatly affects our immune system. It is known that a low calorie diet stimulates the growth of T-cells and the production of interleukin II (both play important roles in the Immune System). On the other hand, excessive calories hinder macrophages and neutrophils from destroying foreign bodies, making our bodies more susceptible to infections. It is recognized that limiting calories to sixty percent creates the optimal environment for healthy immune functions in trials done on mice that had free access to food. It is intriguing to mention that another old Japanese saying, “Hara Rokubu Ni Kusuri Nashi” means “No need for any medicine if your belly is only sixty percent full.”

In Japan, many cases of allergies started to be noticed in the early 1960′s, when coincidentally our diet improved, and we started to consume more animal proteins and fats. Many Japanese scientists link atopic dermatitis and asthma, increasingly widespread among children in Japan, to a calorie rich diet that we are not traditionally accustomed to.

The best solution for surviving this season is to chew well, maybe more than what you think is enough. As a Japanese, I am guilty of swallowing my lunch in fifteen minutes and slurping noodles often, but please remember that chewing stimulates secretion of digestive juices which aid digestion and reduces food intake by tricking your brain into thinking that you have eaten enough.

Eastern Medicine offers great remedies for over-eating. Acupuncture is a great way to restore over-worked digestive functions, and it works great for constipation and diarrhea. An herbal formula called Bao He Wan is popular in acupuncturists’ offices in this time of the year because the formula stimulates digestive functions and helps healthy bowel movements. Please consult an acupuncturist or herbalist if you are interested in taking this formula.

Have a great holiday season!