classic: The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine. It makes sense too - external disease are treated via external means (acupuncture) and internal diseases via internal means (herbs), as a general rule.
I cannot begin to explain the complexities involved in acupuncture - it is so much more than just selecting the right points and sticking a needle in it. As it is with herbal medicine, there many things to take be taken into account: the season, the hour, and if it is a woman that is being treated, where she is in the menstrual cycle, the way the needle is being inserted, the order in which the needles go in, their depth, the different kinds of stimulation when the needle is in, the duration that each one of them are left in... The list goes on. Practitioners that only understand dry needling will certainly not be paying attention to those things. But now, back to herbal medicine. You're spending money for a consultation, so you're going to naturally want to make sure you are seeing someone good. Here are some things to pay attention to when you seeing a herbalist: Diagnosis - this is SUPER important. The basic tools of diagnosis is pulse taking and tongue reading. I'm not going to lie here, but pulse diagnosis takes decades of experience (in a busy hospital), and when fully developed, one is able to make accurate diagnoses without the need to ask questions... Which means someone like me will still take a patient's pulse, but will need to ask a whole host of questions in order to come to an accurate diagnosis. If a practitioner is ready to give you herbs after telling them one symptom (e.g. headache, stress, fertility). They're shit. I'm sorry for being harsh, but it's bloody lazy and if they are going to charge you for something that you can do yourself (like reading the back label of a botttle) - then they don't deserve your money! Customisation - another thing that cannot be ignored is the customisation of a formula. We often tell everyone about how Chinese medicine is very individualised and everyone is different, etc etc.. But then a lot of these very same practitioners dish out the same standard formulas to patients left right and centre - what the hell are you guys doing??! I've seen too many patients that were given 'Xiao Yao San' for stress, but it's not for everyone! A lot of them are also yin deficient, and the formula contains warm herbs such as Sheng Jiang (ginger) and Dang Gui (Chinese angelica), herbs that are highly unsuitable for Yin deficiency, not to mention exacerbate damp heat (usually through bad diet), which is also very common. In short: if a practitioner who claims to be a 'herbalist' but doesn't know how to make a custom formula for their patient, they are shit. It's like going to a tailor that is sellling 'off the rack' clothing to their client, who obviously came to them for a custom fit. You know what they are? Bloody charlatans. I know not many patients are willing take raw herbs nowadays, and granules are super expensive (I don't particularly find them to be very effective either), but herbal extracts are also available - I work with Safflower, a great ethical company with high quality, customisable herbal extracts. I encourage practitioners to establish a relationship with them and help them expand their available stock. I am sure this blog entry may bring up some questions about whether my acupuncture sessions would suck because I clearly have more of a background in herbs - I assure you that they don't ;) I will address this in my next entry :)
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