Tag Archives: wellness

self-care

4 Key Signs of Inflammation

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You may be wondering, do I have inflammation? So I`m going to share with you all an easy way to know and remember the signs of inflammation and how you can check for them.

There are four cardinal signs of inflammation. These four signs are found in an easy mnemonic which are their Latin names because medicine was and still is often written in Latin. These four signs are:

Calor, Dolor, Rubor and Tumor.

Let`s go through them.

  1. Calor – this refers to a feeling of heat. Its also similar to the French word chaleur which also means heat. If you have a right wrist that isn`t healing well, feel the right wrist temperature, and then compare that with the left wrist temperature. Better yet, have someone else test both wrists for you. An elevated temperature of the area is a key sign of inflammation. Figure 1 - The pillars of inflammation.
  2. Dolor – this refers to pain. Its also similar to the French word douleur which also means pain. Pain is often the first signal that something is wrong and the signal we tend to act on quickly. Pain and inflammation are linked because inflammation creates pain. Pains` function is to put us into fast action to care for the injury. If pain has gone on longer than six weeks, youre now dealing with chronic pain. In a chronic pain case, acupuncture points that help the body turn off continuous pain signaling by the nervous system will also be used.
  3. Rubor – refers to colour, the reddish colour that happens during an inflammatory process when blood has rushed to an area to feed the injured tissues, providing key nutrients to the area as the building blocks of the repair process. Blood flow to the area is part of the acute healing process. However, acute inflammation should not become chronic, meaning more than six weeks. If you`re still having signs of inflammation past six weeks what you want to do is get in for acupuncture treatment to decrease inflammation in general as well as decrease inflammation to the injured area. The acupuncture treatment goal will be to increase micro-circulation to the injured areas, and the affected channels so that the repair work can complete and the inflammatory process can be put to rest.
  4. Tumor – is just like the English word we use with the same spelling. Tumor in Latin simply means swelling. You can check for swelling of an injured area by comparing the size of your right wrist for example, versus the size of your left wrist. The swelling happens because of the increased blood flow to the area that is there to complete the repair work of the injured tissues. Again, although swelling is a normal part of acute injury, this process should not be going on longer that six weeks. If your knee is so swollen to the point that you haven`t seen it in a year, it`s time to come in and get acupuncture and clear up the swelling by increasing circulation to the area.

Are you noticing any of these four signs? If you have even one or two of these signs, its very likely that inflammation is part of the picture. Give me a call at 647-378-3182 and let`s talk about getting you out of inflammation and allow your injury to complete the repair process.

Yours in health,

Cynthia McGilvray, R.Ac.

vertigo/dizziness

Vertigo: Healing the Internal Wind Storm

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The word vertigo comes from the Latin word vertere which means to turn, whirl or spin. When the room spins or we have that light-headed feeling, it does feel like a wind blowing through our head – and we aren’t wrong.

young female patient suffering from dizziness

Eastern medicine has long understood the Wind element to be a pernicious influence. When the Wind element is in excess we can also experience things like tremors or twitches, rashes that migrate, headaches that also move around the head, joint pains that move around the body, and any symptoms that come on rapidly or move rapidly, or where there is an excess of movement are said to be caused by the Wind element. In the case of vertigo or dizziness, the excess Wind element is in the head.

Three main causes of vertigo which I will cover here are:

  1. Extreme Heat Generating Wind
  2. Liver Fire Generating Wind
  3. Deficiency of Liver Blood leading to Liver Wind

Extreme Heat Generating Wind

Symptoms that fit this pattern include elevated body temperature, stiff neck, spasms, tremors or convulsions, opisthotonus or extremely arched neck

and spinal column as seen with meningitis and tetanus, and there may be loss of consciousness, delirium.

Signs of Extreme Heat include: complaints of feeling hot, poor tolerance to hot weather, when I take the pulse I can feel their skin feels abnormally hot, the pulse will often be fast, which in Eastern medicine terms is anything over 80 beats per minute (bpm), but in this case 100 bpm would also be very common. and the tongue will often be bright red, and/or have a yellow coating.

If the heat is long-standing, there may be cracks on the tongue as well. Some people with a heat-related vertigo also have ringing in the ears that has a high-pitched tone.

The head is the area of most Yang (Heat) because it is the highest point on the body. In thermodynamics heat always rises to the uppermost point. When the head gets hot enough, then Wind is generated just like this wildfire storm. The main problem here is the Heat. The Wind issue (vertigo) is secondary (caused by) that Heat. So in terms of healing, the main priority is to clear the Heat (aka inflammation) and once the heat is cleared, the Wind and its’ manifestation, the vertigo, will abate naturally.

This scenario is similar to the way a windstorm is generated during a wildfire. Here you can see these palm trees getting fiercely blown during a wildfire. In fact, what also happens here is that wildfires draw in wind. In other words, the Yang of Fire generates more Yang in the form of Wind where they synergistically feed off each other to create more Fire and Wind.

For this type of vertigo, I have seen good results using Fire-clearing guas on the channels most indicated by the tongue and pulse. The Small Intestine channel carries the most heat in the body, and second to that is the Heart channel, and experience has shown me how clearing heat from these two channels is very effective in this instance. When the body starts to cool down, the vertigo tends to dissipate, and the person comes back into balance.

Liver Fire Generating Wind

Here the experience of dizziness will feel more like strong vertigo or the room spinning.

The pathology is in the Liver channel primarily, often with Liver Stagnation that lead to the development of Liver Heat. In this case the tongue is red or purplish-red colour or the sides of the tongue are curled. The pulse may be fast and/or showing fullness or wiry-ness on the Liver pulse position. Some may have headaches behind the eyes or ringing in their ears with a high-pitched sound indicating Liver Fire.

The Liver system has the most affinity with the Wind element. Poorly balanced Liver energy will create Internal Wind disturbances such as those listed above. In this case, regulating the Liver energy will cause the Wind element to dissipate. The acupuncture treatment here is a about descending Liver Heat from the head as well as balancing both the

Liver and its’ sister organ, the Gall Bladder system to dissipate the Wind. Using the Five Element system, the Liver and Gall Bladder channels are controlled by the Metal element (Metal Cuts Wood) so a Metal Gua is helpful in controlling the Excesses of the Liver. Points on the Governing Vessel channel are also effective in controlling the excess Yang (Wind and Fire) at the same time.

Deficiency of Liver Blood leading to Liver Wind

In this case the dizziness is felt more as a light-headedness. Often people with this pattern will feel better from lying down, because the dizziness is coming from a deficiency and a hallmark of deficiency patterns is improvement from rest. There can be weakness, fatigue or faintness with this picture. There can also be blood sugar issues, hypo-glycemia. The tongue will be pale, and can also have paler sides. In extreme cases the sides may be orange. The pulse will be weak overall and even weaker in the Liver and Spleen positions.

With Liver Blood deficiency, the healing is about nourishing the Liver both energetically and with the Liver Blood-building foods. Acupuncture is targeting the Liver and Stomach/Spleen to allow for the Earth element

to harmonize with the Wood element (Liver) according to the Five Element system. When the Spleen and Stomach energy are stronger there will be improved absorption of nutrients. We aren’t just what we eat, we are what we can digest. In this case, Earth guas on the Liver, Gall Bladder, Stomach and Spleen channels are used.

If you or someone you love is experiencing vertigo or light-headedness, Eastern medicine and acupuncture have much to offer in terms of diagnosis and effective treatment. Reach out to me at 647-378-3182 and let’s get you on a path to good health.

Yours in health,

Cynthia McGilvray, R.Ac.

mental aspects of acupuncture, women's health

Healing the Mental Aspect of the Liver, the Hun (Part 1)

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The classic Eastern Medicine text, the Huang Di Nei Jing (Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon) explains that “ the liver opens to the eyes”.  The health of our physical eyes but also our ability to *see* on a more mental plane is related to our Liver, and the spirit of the Liver, the Hun.  Our vision has two parts. One is the physical ability to see objects outside ourselves, such as reading the words on this page.  The other is a little more subtle: the vision in our mind, the vision where we “see” the life we want, the dreams we weave as we stare out the window in our quiet moments and picture life in 1 year, 10 years from now.  Or it may happen when we see others living in ways that we long for; we light up when we “see” our future dream through theirs.  

From our inner visions, inner seeing, we use dreaming to craft a plan which we then use to bring these dreams into reality.  This planning

aspect is the subtle aspect of the Gall Bladder energy, the sister organ to the Liver.  This is affirmed by the expression “to have a lot of gall” in describing a courageous person.  To have gall, is to have the guts, the courage, the chutzpah to make our dreams real, to plan and act on those plans without fear, fear of what others will think, or what might happen next.  The vision comes first, then the gall, the courage to plan and act out that plan. 

In the same vein, the Chinese character for gall bladder contains the character, “dan”, which means courage, bravery. When someone’s gall bladder is weak, there is the opposite, timidity.  Timidity is a clear sign of gall bladder deficiency. Tonifying points are used on the Gall Bladder channel to bring back courage.  

Inability to plan also shows up when these channels are weak.  Problems with planning curiously can manifest as chronic habitual lateness.  Do you experience habitual lateness even when you conscientiously try to not be late,  or are you embarrassed by your chronic lateness?  It comes down to poor planning which falls under the jurisdiction of the Liver, the mental aspect which is the Hun. All the steps to get to where we need to go, the ability to nail down how much time it takes to do the various things that have to happen before we can get out the front door, and allocating the right amount of time for each part of the journey are the jobs of the Hun.  When our Liver system is working well this happens easily, perhaps without a lot of conscious thought. But when the Liver Hun is weak, well, not so much. So there you have it, a very esoteric (but valid) explanation for being late should you need one.  Your acupuncturist said its your liver/gall bladder (Hun) systems  that are too weak.  

The Liver/Gall Bladder is associated with the Wind element.  When the Wind blows, leaves scatter.  Apply this to your own life.  Are your plans often getting scattered?  Blown around and changed far too often creating little structure or consistency for your dreams to be realized?  What were your goals , hopes and dreams one year ago?  Have you been anchored enough to put those plans into action and see them through, or did things get blown by the wind and scatter, waiting another year?  If one is so often changing ones mind, flitting about from this to that, it actually works against the liver system and our ability to plan and see manifestation in our lives.

But it can get better with the right tools.  One tool I use to help people with this situation is to book their appointments at the same time every week.  So if Thursday works, then Thursday at 11AM, for every appointment, every week.  This  commitment helps patients healing the Hun to develop their planning muscles.  They start to get used to having a clear plan. They can “see” their week in advance because it stays the same, EVERY SINGLE WEEK. 

With this time commitment to work around, people with weak Liver/Gall Bladder systems also find that other parts of their lives start to become more structured and routine.  If you are feeling very scattered, take one small activity and try committing to a routine time to focus on it. See what happens.  This regular stable rhythm is a magic sauce that nurtures our plans so that they come to fruition; providing enough anchoring for goals to be completed, for dreams to come true.  

Women need special advice when it comes to their Liver and the spirit of the Liver, the Hun.  With the blood loss we go

through monthly for much of our lives, our Liver Blood runs low, especially during the menses.   If it’s not  replenished monthly by a diet rich in foods that build the liver blood (dark greens, red meats, beets, egg yolks, molasses), our Liver, and hence the Hun become weak and deficient.  This shows up in many ways in  our lives.  We can be inexplicably held back from moving forward, lacking plans and initiative to move towards our dreams, sometimes from not even having a vision for our life, or lacking actionable clarity in this regard.   This can also show up as depression, feeling stuck in a rut and feeling unable to plan a way out, or envision another kind of life, the one we actually want. This is where acupuncture and correct diet therapy for the Liver help create the physical and mental terrain to support us living out our true calling.

Some keys signs that the Liver Hun is healing:

  1. A steadiness in your chosen path, less shakiness or switching directions too often due to indecision
  2. A greater ability to *see* your life path, why you are here, and envision a healthy, happy future, resulting from a more lavish and vivid imagination
  3. Greater courage to be assertive about one`s beliefs
  4. More propensity to take action on making your dreams come true, with less stalling, delaying or feeling stuck in a rut.

If any of these themes are resonating for you, please reach out and let’s talk about how I can help you get your liver and gall bladder systems running at greater capacity so that you can move forward and make your dreams come true.  

Yours in health,

Cynthia McGilvray, R.Ac.

References:

  1. Dechar, Lorie Eve, M.Ac. 2006. Five Spirits: alchemical acupuncture for psychological and spiritual healing. Lantern Books.

Understanding acupuncture

5 Signs that your Acupuncture Treatment is Working

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You may be getting acupuncture treatments and wondering, how do I know if it’s really working? You may have never had any explanation for what signs to look for and the healing process can be gradual. So here I will share with you five signs you can look for. It’s unlikely that you would have all five signs so please don’t be waiting for all of them to happen. Most often it would be one or two signs per issue being treated, depending on the nature of the complaint.

#1. The area of the complaint, or the area of pain starts shrinking. An example of this is someone coming for shoulder pain, initially the shoulder pain can be all over the shoulder, the front, side and back of the shoulder. After a few treatments the pain is only at the back of the shoulder. The size of the area is smaller.

#2. The pain or complaint is diffusing, spreading out across a larger area but becoming less intense as it spreads out. In this case the pain is

leaving by fading out. I’ve seen this with headache pain where the pain was once very localized and fixed and after a few minutes the feeling spreads out but becomes lighter and lighter as spreads and fades away. I’ve also seen this happen with skin rashes, say an angry red rash above the knee, with a few treatments it spreads across the thigh but as it spreads the colour changes becoming lighter and lighter from red to pink and then fading into skin colour as it disappears. This sign can be a little confusing at first because it may seem like it’s worse because the area is larger but since the intensity is less and less, this is a sign that it is fading out and leaving the body.

#3. A stubborn old symptom changes in a new way. An example of this would be a migraine that always happens over the right eye, for years the person has suffered migraines, and reliably always over the right eye. Then after a few treatments, the migraine shows up over the left eye instead! When there is a stubborn symptom that has gone on for years and nothing seems to fix it or change it in any way and then after acupuncture it changes, this is a great sign. Yes, the pain or complaint is still there, but it’s a positive development because if the pain or symptom that was unmoving starts to move then it’s a good sign that acupuncture can get it to move out of the body completely with more treatment. Healing often happens on stages so this may be the first sign that the treatment is working, and with more treatment it should clear further and further.

A common example I’ve seen repeatedly is where a person comes in with lateral hip pain and after some treatment, the pain is now on the lower back or around the SI joint. It’s not that the pain has actually moved. We have to think of healing as peeling layers of an onion. So the pain from the hip resolved, and that was an outer layer, and then once that layer got cleared, now the deeper layers of issues or pain such as the low back are felt. This is happening because pain signals are competitive. We can usually only feel the worst pain signals at any one time and older areas of pain or milder complaints fall into the background until the most pressing issue gets cleared. Often as the healing progresses the pain or complaints will happen in reverse order from how they occurred, so in this case the low back pain is usually the older symptom and will usually take more time to clear because of it’s longer history.

This symptom can also be harder to detect because the pain can sometimes move from one channel to another channel that is merely an inch or two away. It can seem that the pain is still at the elbow, and it is, but one channel has been cleared of pain and now another layer needs to be worked on for the full healing to be seen.

#4. Symptoms are moving from the top, downwards. This one can often

go unrecognized as a sign of healing but it is well understood from Herrings Law of Cure. If the symptom is moving is this direction, top to bottom, rather than the reverse, this is a good sign. This can be likened to leaving a building, it’s down the elevator and out the door. An example of this is with heat symptoms, a person comes in complaining of feeling waves of heat in their head. After a few treatments the heat feeling has moved to the chest, and after another treatment, the heat feeling is only in the thighs and then it’s gone.

#5. The pain or issue happens less often or for a shorter period of time. This one is pretty obvious but still worth mentioning because it’s helpful to have a baseline before treatment is started. It helps to know how often, for how long, and how severely a symptom is happening at the beginning of the treatment. This helps you to see what’s changing and also to share with your acupuncturist for them to understand your progress. For example, if you’re having sleeping problems, how often are you waking up at night, and how long before you fall back to sleep? With treatment there should be fewer wake-ups and falling back to sleep happens sooner, and the following morning you should feel less tired. Or in the case of afternoon fatigue, perhaps initially the fatigue would start at 2 pm and happen until 6 pm, but with treatments now the fatigue happens from 4-5 pm.

What you should have is at least some small shift within the first 1-3 treatments to know that your acupuncture protocol is working, then if this is the case, further treatments should clear up the issue completely. If there has been zero change after three treatments then what I will definitely do at this point, if not before, is to switch to another protocol to get the healing happening because the body wants to heal. The body has vital force and acupuncture stimulates that vital force. It’s the same thing if a patient hits a plateau, they were healing up nicely and then after a while they hit a plateau and now symptoms are stable but not progressing further. In this case, a different protocol would be used, for example, opening up all 12 main acupuncture channels is often enough to activate the healing response again.

So there you have five specific signs you can look for after you’ve had several treatments. For each acupuncture treatment, please give your body at least 24-48 hours to respond to the treatment. Acupuncture works in a series of treatments to achieve a result. If it’s an old issue that’s been there for years it will usually take a few months of regularly biweekly treatments. Sometimes there will be a healing crisis where symptoms can feel worse for a few hours or a day or two, after which the issue will feel better than before treatment.

Yours in health,

Cynthia McGilvray, R. Ac.

anusitis

Anusitis Pain and Symptoms

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It is clear that anusitis is a case of inflammation. The “itis” in anusitis is Latin for inflammation. Western medicine used to be written in Latin back in the day so learning the meaning of some of these Latin root words can help to decipher all manner of medical language without Google.

In any case, inflammation is another way of saying Heat or Fire which is how inflammation is described in Oriental Medicine. This word meaning gives us clues, but the focus of treatment is on the actual symptoms. Symptoms such as burning (heat) and itching (another symptom of heat) and bleeding due to inflammation, all give direction in how to treat this condition. Then from looking at the presenting tongue and pulse, I gather further information about treating the individual case.

What I have seen with long-term anusitis is bright red tongues (another heat sign), as well as cracking or fissured surface of the tongue and a peeled coating. A healthy tongue coating is thin and white, neither thick, nor totally stripped off.

We must understand the way heat works in the body over the long-term. Excess heat starts to burn up the fluids. In this case, the Stomach Yin that builds the normal healthy coating on the tongue has been burned off by long-term heat of anusistis lasting 5+ years. The fissures or cracks in the centre (the Stomach/Spleen area of the tongue), is further evidence that the moisture of the Stomach/Spleen has been burned off, leaving the internal landscape resembling a dry desert.

Cracks on the tongue look like cracks in the soil of very parched earth when there has been no rain. It’s always helpful to use patterns in nature to understand the body because our bodies are often mirroring things that go on in nature.

Pain in anusitis may come from swelling of the rectal tissues. Both pain and swelling are classic signs of inflammation. Some patients may also have rectal bleeding which can be another sign of inflammation. Bleeding should also clear up as part of the heat-clearing treatment strategy. If the bleeding is truly from the rectum or anus it will be a bright red colour and not a darker colour such as black. Black means bleeding from higher up the digestive track such as in the stomach in most cases, and has become dark because of oxygenation during the passage of time where it takes roughly 18 hours for the stomach contents to get to the anus. In other words, black blood means old blood. The colour of the blood helps us to know which area has the bleeding problem.

For anusitis cases I like to use a Global Balance treatment approach of balancing the Stomach, Spleen, Large Intestine and Lung channels. The reason is, the rectum connects to the Large Intestine channel, which carries the food products stemming from the Stomach. The Large Intestine channel will often carry similar pathologies stemming from the Stomach so it is often useful to treat these two channels together. The Spleen channel supports mucosal lining repair and it supports the Stomach channel as it’s Yin-Yang pair. The Lung channel deals with skin issues (itching, cracking, bleeding) and it supports the Large Intestine channel as its’ Yin-Yang pair. With these four channels, I use appropriate points for inflammation by selecting the Water over Fire Gua #36 elemental pattern because, as we all know, one of the best ways to put out a fire is with water. Applying this Gua to these channels produces a treatment plan as follows:

In addition to those channel points, I also use two points around the navel which is a mirror image of the anus. In this way I can target the anus tissue using the navel points so that I never need to put needles in private areas.

The result of this treatment in my experience has been that the itching and burning sensations have decreased significantly over usually about ten treatments and then finally disappeared. The tongue becomes less red, dry and cracked, evidence of less inflammation and then finally the tongue returns to normal pink colour. The tongue cracks starts to be less deep and then disappear altogether and a normal amount of tongue coating returns showing that the heat is more under control and no longer burning off fluids in the Stomach.

As for the self-care routine, I recommend topical castor oil liberally around the anus because castor oil used topically functions as an anti-inflammatory that de-flames the skin as well as deeper layers of tissues beneath the skin. You may find that its’s best to do this at night wearing a pair of old pajamas because castor oil is very messy and stains clothes badly.

I also recommend avoiding Heat-producing foods until the anusitis gets under control. Heat producing foods include red meat, (especially lamb), peanuts, chili, cinnamon, wasabi, vinegar, chicken and turkey, alcohol, eggs (the yolk, egg whites are fine), garlic, ginger and coffee. Although these foods aren’t necessarily bad foods in and of themselves, for a person with heat issues, they will often make those heat issues worse. When the body has deflammed and come back into balance then you can return to those foods in a balanced way.

Yours in health,

Cynthia McGilvray, R.Ac.