Comments for Chinese Medicine Doc - Boulder Acupuncture

Comment on Slow Pulse – DGR – Draft by Z'ev Rosenberg

Z'ev Rosenberg — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 19:30:32 +0000

Jason,
Nice job translating this little gem. It is very helpful in clarifying this germane discussion on the slow pulse. .

Comment on Hearing loss / tinnitus by Jason Blalack

Jason Blalack — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:02:43 +0000

This was a blood (and yin) deficiency, with ascending yang leading to blockage in the upper orifices (ear). The treatment methods were to tonify blood and yin, descend yang, and open the ear orifice. The herbal combinations for the latter methods come from Qin Bo-Wei’s 56 methods.

Comment on Hearing loss / tinnitus by Sharon

Sharon — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:17:32 +0000

Hi Jason

Cool case. Can you explain your process and diagnosis?

Comment on Lurking Pathogens (Qin Bo-Wei) by Jason Blalack

Jason Blalack — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 01:49:40 +0000

I have no personal experience linking the two, and have never read any Chinese literature discussing this. However, certainly trauma can be an etiological cause for disease. The real question is, once it is there, how does CM treat it. Does it matter if the latent heat in the blood aspect of the Liver is from trauma or a cold pathogen that lingered and then transformed to heat. Thus how would one treat these differently? That is the magically question, and I personally do not have a good answer. This is an area that deserves our attention and research. I would love to hear other’s opinions.

Comment on Lurking Pathogens (Qin Bo-Wei) by David Brown

David Brown — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 04:23:13 +0000

Hi Jason
My name is David Brown. I’ve been a practitioner & teacher of Acupuncture & Chinese herbal medicine for 32 years in Australia.
I’m currently completing a study in counselling & psychotherapy. I’m doing a small research project on interpreting the symptoms arising during the release of emotions using Chinese medical theory.
I was searching articles on the internet and found yours on ‘Lurking Pathogens’.
Regarding your article – thank you for your ideas. I agree that there are a great number of ‘grey areas’ in Chinese medicine that we need to get clear on, especially in herbal medicine where precision in terminology is often critical.
Congratulations also on your soon to be released book, I have just read your article “The Warp & Weft of Qin Bo-Wei’s Methods” in ‘The Lantern’ journal, in fact the latest copy of the Lantern arrived while I was reading from your website!
So it seems that despite Chinese medicines correspondances between emotions and, phases, zang/fu,etc. Chinese medicine has yet to also develop clarity around repressed abuse & trauma.
Have you read “In An Unspoken Voice” by Peter A. Levine? Fascinating stuff! all about how the body holds and, when circumstances are right, releases emotion.
Could it be in some situations falling under the terminology of ‘lurking’ or ‘latent’ pathogens, that they may be due to repressed trauma?
It appears that some Chinese medical practitioners are connecting early childhood trauma & repressed emotion with latent heat entities or lurking pathogens.
What are your feelings about this?

Comment on Antivirals treat cold and flu? by Greg Livingston

Greg Livingston — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 02:55:04 +0000

Jason told me he received a fair amount of criticism over this article, but I personally can’t find anything wrong with it. I’ve spent ten years in China and he’s correct about the widespread use of ban lan gen here, largely by lay-people who self-prescribe over-the-counter preparations, but also by physicians of both Chinese and western medicine who prescribe various “anti-viral” preparations for common colds. However, the Chinese medicine physicians that I know here that pride themselves on using a straight Chinese medicine approach won’t use this approach, and will only use ban lan gen according to traditional indications and methodology. These people would fully agree with Jason’s article.

Lastly, for what it’s worth, my own clinical experience supports what Jason says. I’ve rarely seen good results with ban lan gen preparations, yet I consistently obtain good results with traditional methods.

Comment on High Fever -> Antibiotics by Jason Blalack

Jason Blalack — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:16:11 +0000

Sharon,

If it was not clear, when I treated the patient the pathogen was no longer in the “muscle layer”. The wind-cold in the muscle layer is part of the pathodynamic (etiology). Thus it explains the past to help us better understand the present.

If I saw the patient three weeks earlier (and my assumptions were correct) I would’ve treated a wind-cold pathogen in the muscle layer. However, by the time I saw the patient the pathogen had already transformed to heat and I used a more warm disease strategy.

Hence, by understanding that a pathogen can get lodged in the muscle layer and cause this sort of problem indirectly informed my diagnosis and treatment because one can understand that this type of pattern can occur without entering into the interior. That is, it gave me the confidence (by understanding the possibilities) to still treat the protective level, which many say is a slightly deeper layer that surface patterns.

Could one get to this point without understanding the etiology? Yes… and remember, it is only a story…

Make sense?

Comment on High Fever -> Antibiotics by Sharon Weizenbaum

Sharon Weizenbaum — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 08:54:20 +0000

Thanks Jason for your thoughtful reply. I think you are saying that you would use this term when the pathogen – in this case a wind cold pathogen – goes a bit deeper and yet is not in the Qi level nor in the Yang Ming or Shao Yang…It is stuck just a bit deeper than the surface layer…In this case it was the lingering nature of this fever that took you to that terminology? How did this effect what you than did?

I appreciate your careful use of diagnostic terminology to locate the place that needs help and to determine just what type of help is needed.

best,

Sharon

Comment on High Fever -> Antibiotics by Jason Blalack

Jason Blalack — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 14:44:11 +0000

Hi Sharon,

Thanks for taking the time to read this case. The diagnosis of wind-cold in the muscle layer is retroactive, since I was unable to perform an intake it represents a diagnosis over time, which relates to the pathogenesis of the condition when I saw him.

I did not initially use the term “protective level” because I reserve this term for warm disease conditions. Thus, I used this term when the pathogen transformed into a more heat presentation. In the very beginning stages the pathogen was (most likely) in the exterior and one could use the term protective yang, which is commonly used to describe the location of a (wind) cold pathogen.

However, after the antibiotics the fever spiked and the symptoms worsened. One might ask, why did the symptoms increase in severity? Initially though, there was no indication that the pathogen had transformed to heat. Therefore the logical conclusion is that pathogen was pushed inward and was constrained.
The muscle layer is said to be slightly below exterior of the body. There are superficial and deeper layers of the muscle layer.

The term “muscle layer” is used in a few patterns in CM and there are handful of medicinals that are said to address the muscle layer. For example, ma huang, gui zhi, shi gao, ge gen, chai hu, bo he, sang ye, mu zei, sheng ma etc.

Gui zhi tang is a common formula that releases pathogenic influences from the muscle layer. Its symptoms are “Fever and chills unrelieved by sweating, headache, aversion to wind, stiff neck, nasal congestion, dry heaves, and no particular thirst”

There are other formulas associated with the muscle layer such as, Bupleurum and Kudzu Decoction to Release the Muscle Layer (chai ge jie ji tang), which is considered a fundamental formula for venting lurking pathogens from the muscle layer, where it discusses Bupleuri Radix (chai hu) as “an essential herb for releasing the muscle layer because it has the ability to vent heat from below the immediate surface of the exterior.”

Hence, before warm disease theory this was a primary location for lurking pathogens and was also a common location for pathogens to become constrained, especially when turning heat.

But in the end, this is all a story because I was unable to see the patient at that point in time. Hence, I could only treat what I saw, and did. But sometimes making sense of the etiology is helpful. For example, knowing that a pathogen can constrain in the muscle layer and cause severe symptoms helps me have the confidence that the pathogen did not enter the interior, and understand what the Antibiotics may have done. Therefore, it is not a symptom per se, of for example muscle aches, that leads one to believe that the pathogen is constrained in the muscle layer it’s more about the progression of disease. Hope that helps…

Comment on High Fever -> Antibiotics by Sharon Weizenbaum

Sharon Weizenbaum — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:18:08 +0000

Hi Jason, Great case! A question I thought of as I read this is about your diagnosis of constraint “in the muscle layer”. What led you to this idea. I only saw the symptom of achy muscles in the result section. If he did have achy muscles at the initial visit, couldn’t that be from constraint at the protective level? Also what is the muscle layer? How did this diagnosis influence your treatment? It seems that the treatment only addressed the protective layer heat.

Thanks

Sharon