Allergic problem

Allergic reaction

People with allergic reaction tend to have frequent sneeze, running nose, with or without headache in the front head. For severe cases, they feel such problem even with air conditioning in a car. They may feel cold in hands and feet. Some have frequent diarrhea, or frequent urine (especially at night). Later on, they seem sensitive to more and more things: dusts, warms, wind, temperature chance, noise, air pressure, even to emotional stimulations.

From beginning, the running nose runs out of the nose hole. Later, it runs backwards in the throat. Furthermore, no running nose but heavy puffy feelings in the whole face.

Along with the process of the problem, people become so weak and feel drowsy day and night but cannot have nice or deeper sleep. They may be diagnosed as chronic fatigue, or hypothyroidism.

Term of the allergic reaction

When we talk about allergic, people usually mean the running nose or block feeling in the nose in spring when flowers are floating. When consulting with doctors, they may diagnosed as chronic sinusitis.

To us, all are the same kinds of body reaction to outside physical or chemical stimulations: the chronic sinusitis, asthma, chronic bronchitis, frequent ulcer in the mouth (including in the mucus of the mouth, on the tongue or the gum), even skin rash. For some women, it appears as ulcer in the women area or in the tract of the urine. All means the same: the body defense system is so weak, or the life energy is so weak to expel the stimulators from outside of the body and the healing process on the mucus is slow down.

Treatment of allergic reaction

In the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), it is treated with acupuncture and/or herbs. TCM works to improve bio-energy flow smoothly to the affected area (the nose, the bronchi, the skin, etc.). It is known that with the use of acupuncture and/or herbs, the amount of anti-body is increased, the number of T4 lymph cells increased, and the swelling of the inside mucus in the nose, throat and bronchi is reduced.

All of these can only be used to explain part of the mechanisms that acupuncture and herbal therapy work for the allergic reaction.

We know that it is not so difficult to reduce the acute symptoms of allergic reaction by the use of acupuncture and herbal therapy. The challenge for TCM doctors, as for the conventional medicine doctors, is how to prevent the recur of the problem.

If you know of some TCM doctors, you may find that some doctors are good to reduce the acute symptoms every time when you visit him, but you seem have to go to him again and again, as you experienced with conventional medicine.

This is quite common that if your doctor has no enough experience to verify your body condition is Yin or Yang. The concept of Yin and Yang is very important that it is not only a obscure concept in the TCM theory. For people with chronic sinusitis, their TCM doctor may find evidence to support a diagnosis of “Fire” syndrome for them, since the running nose is yellow in color, the tongue of the patient is with red spot in front of the tongue, and patients may feel dry in mouth and the urine is yellow in color too. As routine, TCM doctor may start to use a “Cold” herb to cool down the “Fire”. The clinic result is just as above: it works for this time but the patient has to come back for the same problem. After several year, the condition seems worse and worse. 

This is because the doctor did not find that the clinic picture is actually a mixture of the Cold with the Fire. They failed to pay attention that the tongue color of the patient is actually with more or less purple. Patients feel dry in mouth but they do not want to drink water or only want warm water to drink and do not drink lots. The face looks pale and the patents may also feel tired with slight physical or emotional work. All of these suggest that the patient is in a Yang deficiency condition. The “Fire” picture is false.

In the city where we are (Edmonton, Canada), more than 90% of patients with allergic reaction is in such condition.

There is another extreme condition that may confuse a TCM doctor. When the Yang Qi in the patient becomes worse, after heavy treatment with chemical drugs (chemical drugs are principally “Cold”), or with Cold herbs due to improper use by a doctor, patients may show as another kinds of false “Fire”: their face is pink in color, they feel hot (body temperature may be higher too) with sweat especially at night. Patients may also feel dry in mouth and drink lots water.

For the second false Fire condition, if a doctor uses Cold herbs, it will only make things worse even causes death. This is because that the false Fire is due to the floating of the primary life energy (we call it Yuan Qi) is now floating and tends to leave the body.

Your doctor must be experienced enough to understand that, once the allergic reaction becomes chronic, it usually means that your body Yang Qi has already been exhausted too much. You see, when your running nose cannot run out of the nose, but back to the throat, it means that your body has no enough energy to remove the running nose out of the body!

 If you are a TCM practitioner, I would like to remind you use Hot herbs rather than a Cold herb to patients with the chronic allergic reaction. Even if you believe that there is evidence of Fire for the patient, you should take care of the Yang Qi of the body after you stop the use of Cold herbs for the treatment. You will be able to notice the difference right away. I am sure. 

It is possible to  cure the chronic allergic reaction but it is not a one day, one month or one year job. If you get better this year after the TCM treatment, you should go to the TCM doctor again during the summer for a maintenance. Summer is the best time for TCM to correct your body constitution.

Your TCM doctor may use moxibustion therapy on some of your body acupuncture points.

Repeat each year, you should experience less and less reaction, until you do not feel any.

In our clinic, we teach you how to use the moxibustion at home. It is not so complex and you can do it as a Chinese family does in China. Medicine should not be so complex and your doctor should also be you tutor, as the word doctor mean in English.

Although we mean the treatment here for allergic reactions, the principle of the diagnosis and treatment is also applicable to other diseases. For example, auto-immune disorders, such as MS, lupus, arthritis, fibromyalgia, all are due to too sensitive of the immune monitoring mechanism in the body, the same reason as the allergic reaction.

In TCM, the Spleen (note, meaning of the word Spleen, Liver, Kidney, Heart, and Lung in TCM is not just the organs in the conventional medicine. We cannot find proper words in English dictionary to express the exact meaning of the five major systems in the body in TCM.

In TCM, the Spleen system works as immune monitor/detect department, besides its function in digestion, buffering, and other functions in the body. It is the Spleen that sense any disorder in the body and passes the signal to the Heart that, as a king or president, functions to guide/lead a maintenance work in the body.

Because the functional disorder of the Spleen, it transports too much signals to the Heart to launch immune defense function (the work of the Liver is the performing department in the immune defense), so you have too frequent running nose and other allergic reactions. During this time, the chance to develop a cancer is low, since the Spleen is very sensitive to any small disorders in the body so the cancer cells can be cleared even if it is small in size.

However, after long time “bothering” by the Spleen system, the Heart system is out of tolerance. It is tired to lead an immune defense campaign in the body, so the chance for a cancer becomes higher. In this case, we have to stop the allergic reaction as soon as possible to restore the body immune detect function at a reasonable tone.

Another consequence of the overwhelming immune reaction (allergic reaction) is the bothering to the Liver system.  The result is similar to the slow down of the Heart: cancer.

The Spleen system can also be bothered by frequent stimulations (allergens). Once the function of the Spleen system is slow done, the result is: overweight, since the Spleen is no longer able to find that something is wrong in the fat metabolism now. This is especially possible if one with over weight actually has no higher appetite.

All above discussion means that we should take care of the function of the Spleen, Heart, and the Liver in the treatment of allergic reactions, though the allergic reaction is expressed in the Lung system (the nose belongs to the Lung system in TCM). It never cure the allergic reaction if a TCM doctor only pay attention to the nose itself. This is a very common error for those of doctors they do not speak Chinese and are educated out of China. For them, if they are qualified in clinic, they would recognize that the running nose is the Cold in the Lung system, but in the treatment, it is easy for them to forget or not at all realize that their treatments have to take care of the function of other organs. This is principle for TCM to cure any disease.

Nowadays, the reasons for many popular diseases are not clear: cancer, overweight, diabetic, high blood cholesterol level, hypertension, hypothyroids… To TCM, they are all connected, though each people expresses different clinic picture.

Then, the question is: why the Spleen system becomes highly sensitive? In TCM, it is explained as this: the Spleen system works in the body as a buffer in many aspects, as the soil on the earth. If the soil is soft and loser, raining water will be hold in the soil so not to cause flooding. Even if we deliver garbage (or other dirty things) to it, the garbage will disappear becoming part of the soil after years. Now, the use of chemical fertilizer makes the soil harder. The hard soil loses its buffer function: flooding in the rain and hard to dissolve any garbage for ever.

Similarly, if we take too much chemical stuff (you know what belongs chemical in your daily life), our Spleen system will also lose its buffer function. It passes any minus stimulation signal to the Heart to start a allergy, without filter the non-harmful stimulations!

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