"Mommy Thumb", or Why do I have so much pain postpartum?

If you found your way to this post, you may have already heard about “mommy thumb”.  But there is also mommy back, mommy shoulders, mommy neck.  Luckily I do not normally suffer from much pain, After giving birth to our daughter, I had the opportunity to suddenly experience what it is like to have your back go out, and to have excruciating pain in your neck/ shoulder that has you moving gingerly, because the slightest wrong movement causes severe spasming.  I also got to experience the relief of visiting an acupuncturist and postpartum chiropractor and letting them help me.  I have to say, when you are on the receiving end it feels incredible and seems magical.

If I had known then what I know now, I could have prevented this pain.  I, and everyone else who has given birth within the past year (or four), and especially if also combined with breast feeding, is prone to fluid and blood deficiency.  It is the liquids of our body that keep our muscles like a moistened and wrung-out sponge – able to bend, be squished, change position.  During the gestation of a child, we become filled with extra blood and fluids to support the growth of our baby.  This is why your skin looks younger, and your hair gets extra full like any fertility idol ever dug up.  

When we give birth, we lose a lot of this.  This is why just following the birth we can have nightsweats, and why our lush hair starts to fall out, leaving us with our usual thickness.  Now of course, our bodies were made to do this, but we have lost a lot of the traditional social and dietary supports that help replenish these fluids postpartum.

Some people continue to have nightsweats long after giving birth, or leak milk in their sleep and can fill a whole other bottle from the opposite breast while feeding their child.  I fit the second of these categories.  I found myself waking up in puddles of milk. I asked my midwives about “oversupply”, and they told me there is no such thing.  Perhaps I did not describe what was happening completely, in part because I also didn’t really think it was an issue. I was just surprised that breastfeeding was so messy because I hadn’t heard anyone talk about it.  Now I know that this is a kind of “leakage” according to East Asian medicine, a sign of deep deficiency, and should absolutely be treated to prevent further issues and deficiency (which in my case, did come).  Luckily, it is not hard to treat this situation, or the more mild version of relative postpartum deficiency.

When these fluids are lost, our muscles become dried out.  They can feel stiff, almost like cardboard, or a dried out sponge, or feel spasmodic.  This is often accompanied by strong thirst in the postpartum person.  If left untreated, it can lead to fatigue, low grade frequent nausea, achey joints, and other kinds of malaise.  If you visit a postpartum acupuncturist and herbalist, they will treat the branch (the pain), and the root (the fluid deficiency).  Not only will this ensure that the problem does not return, but it also prepares you to be in full health for the next step in your reproductive journey, whether that is another conception and pregnancy or perimenopause.

Why do I have pain since using Spironolactone?

Do you have neck, back or shoulder pain while using Spironolactone for acne?  Read on to understand why and learn about other ways to get rid of acne while improving your overall health.

Here in Los Angeles I see a lot of adult patients taking Spironolactone for acne.  These patients are pleased with the results of this medicine, and have only come to see me because they have some sort of upper body pain or stiffness.  They may also mention incessant urination.  Often they do not associate these common side effects with their medication.  Spironolactone is an aldosterone antagonist and used to treat high blood pressure.  Aldosterone regulates how much water your kidneys filter out of the blood for discharge, acting as a diuretic. 

Traditional East Asian medicine has a very sophisticated lens for assessing fluid metabolism and the health of the blood.  Blood should not move too quickly nor be too static, and it should contain the right amount of “water” (fluids).  Healthy blood both nourishes muscles and contains the functional energy of the body, distributing it through the entire body the way sap distributes life function throughout a tree.  When the blood is deficient or dry, muscles can become stiff and dry.  The blood can no longer contain the life force so it no longer spreads healthily through the body but rather flares up into the upper body, causing headaches, pain, even hair loss!

Your local skilled acupuncturist and herbalist can address these imbalances.  More importantly, we can treat the acne so that you don’t need to go on the Spironolactone in the first place!  It is common to use beautiful flowers to treat acne because they are cooling and clear toxic heat.  Some common flowers we use are honey suckle (shown above), forsythia, and violet.  Beauty to beget beauty, what could be more magical?

Not only will you feel more radiant and be in less pain by using Traditional East Asian medicine to treat your illness, your long term health will benefit.  The health of the blood determines so much, even emotional wellbeing!  Issues with blood may go unnoticed until there are important hormonal shifts in the body, such as a viral illness or perimenopause.  

For someone who is considering a future pregnancy, this is also extremely important.  We prepare people for pregnancy by promoting healthy fluid metabolism and harmonized blood.  Diuretics disrupt these mechanisms. Acupuncture and herbs regulate these symptoms so that your symptoms resolve, and your body is at peak fertility.

Why I Love to Treat Uterine Bleeding

My favorite things to treat are those that

• Make a big difference to someone's quality of life and healthcare

• Have limited treatment options in conventional medicine

• Leave no doubt about whether or not treatment has been successful

Uterine bleeding checks all those boxes.  I have had people come into my office who have been bleeding non stop for months.  This is serious cause for concern and can lead to the need for blood transfusions.  Even without meeting that criteria, that much blood loss leads to such a deficiency that it can be difficult to work and go about one’s life.  The extreme deficiency in turn can exacerbate the bleeding.

Sometimes the excessive uterine bleeding is within the menstrual period.  Some people bleed so heavily that they cannot leave the house during certain parts of their cycle.  This, too, can lead to anemia, as well as worsening symptoms after the cycle, such as headache, nausea, anxiety, etc.

Sometimes it is heavy bleeding interchanged with incessant spotting. 

Sometimes it is bleeding, light or heavy, during pregnancy, also called a threatened-miscarriage. (I had this kind of bleeding at week 14 with our daughter, and it was treated quickly and successfully by my gynecology professor with herbs.)

All of these patterns require treatment.

According to Traditional East Asian medicine, inappropriate bleeding comes from heat, stagnation, deficiency, or blood that is not moving well (blood stasis).  In practice, these patterns are combined.  The beauty of our herbal medicine is that there are many many plants and minerals that stop bleeding, and we distinguish between how they stop bleeding.  Some herbs stop bleeding by cooling the blood, others by shoring up the body and making it more absorptive so that blood and fluids can’t leak out.  Some herbs even stop bleeding by moving stagnant blood, because quite commonly blood will push it’s way around blockages, causing wreckless bleeding where there should be none.

Nothing is more satisfying than seeing a patient who has been suffering respond to treatment.  Once the bleeding has stopped, our task is to replenish their blood.  As color comes back their faces, symptoms of blood deficiency improve.

If you or a loved one has been suffering from this issue, send them to their nearest acupuncturist and herbalist for treatment.

Joy and Ease in Your Postpartum Phase

I was hanging by a thread, and then I fell.”  —A real live patient describing her last postpartum experience

“I didn’t even realize I was depressed until 5 months went by and I looked back.  I remember sitting in the dark, alone, scared to move because I didn’t want my baby to wake up and start crying again.”  —Another real life postpartum experience described to me by a loved one. 

In our contemporary American culture, so much effort is put into getting the egg to meet the sperm. Yet precious little energy goes into surrounding the new parents and their little as they navigate formidable new territory.  Indigenous medicines all around the world are rich with wisdom on how to transition mothers through the portal and to the other side, how to nurse their wounds and refill their empty belly that no longer contains the warmth of another life.  I am lucky to practice one of these ancient medicines.  My skill set comes from the traditional medicine of ancient China and it’s contemporary diaspora.  It is my passion to treat as many people as I can during this rite of passage. 

Families are stronger when supported with proper postpartum care.  EAM practitioners know what to look for to minimize the common postpartum symptoms of depression, anxiety (just as common as depression, by the way), insomnia, and feeding difficulties.  We can also help you recover from the amazing physical, emotional, and spiritual feat that is birthing a child.

In a typical postpartum visit, I make sure to assess the state of the person’s blood. It will be relatively weak compared to before giving birth, but is it also stagnant, or especially deficient, and do body fluids also need to be replenished?  When the blood is weak, yang can flare, making it hard to sleep at night even when you are off duty.  Insufficient blood or fluids can also cause low milk supply as well as tingling in the extremities, a surprisingly common postpartum symptom.  I remember one mother who felt tingling in the stomach channel of her leg whenever her baby latched further up the stomach channel on the breast, a clear manifestation of how emptying the channel left room for wind to get in and cause tingling.  Stagnant blood can cause pain in the lower abdomen, but even a stagnation that goes unnoticed by the patient can keep the body from making new blood, causing feeding difficulties and mood changes.  One of my obstetrics teachers says that she has found blood stagnation to be the most common cause of postpartum depression, and I have to agree.  I would add that postpartum blood deficiency is the most common cause of postpartum anxiety, an adrenalized sensation of being on hyper-alert, unable to drift into sleep and easily rattled by the new child’s cries and communications.

The best news is that these way too common ailments are treatable, even avoidable, and the treatment is soothing and nourishing.  As you consider carefully the support networks you want after your baby has arrived, please look in your area to find a qualified obstetrics and gynecological East Asian medical physician to be on your team.  If you are in Los Angeles and want to see how I can help you, whether it is months before your baby arrives or years after, please reach out or schedule below.

Recurring or Persistent Urinary Tract Infections

Most people with a vagina have experienced a urinary tract infection at some point in their lives.  But some of us have had wayyyy more than our fair share, and fall into a very frustrating cycle of UTI followed by antibiotics (possibly followed by yeast infection) followed by UTI followed by antibiotics, etc., etc.  If a person’s trigger is sex, this become an even bigger quality of life issue.  Many, many women struggle with this, and all the wiping from front to back and urinating immediately after sex is not enough to prevent some of these chronic cases.  This is on my list of things that should be shouted from the rooftop about East Asian medicine:  Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture can put chronic UTIs into remission.  Please spread the word.

There are many ways that bladder infections can manifest.  In the same way that Western medicine chooses the appropriate antibiotic for the appropriate bacteria, we choose our formulas based on exactly what your particular body is doing.  Do you get your UTI at a particular time in your menstrual cycle?  Do you get strong burning pain and discomfort, or are you more the type to just go more frequently even though nothing comes out and have a bloated sensation at the pubic bone?  Or maybe you go straight to blood in the urine, which can look pretty scary but the herbal solution to this problem, like the others above, was described thousands of years ago and is effective.

Some women, after a spate of infections, will have all the sensations of UTI, yet their urine shows no bacteria.  This may be due to previous infections creating irritating scar tissue in the wall of the bladder, or due to biofilms that shelter the bacteria as it makes its life within little biofilm apartments, inside of you but separate.  People in this category usually receive the diagnosis of interstitial cystitis, which is considered a bladder pain syndrome.  In these cases, antibiotics are no longer appropriate or effective.  Fortunately, this does not matter for Chinese medicine.  There were no labs to culture your urine when our treatment principles were developed, so we are always treating “difficult urination”.  And we can treat difficult urination whether or not it is interstitial cystitis or an actual UTI.

Antibiotics are an incredible, life saving medicine, and will treat an acute UTI effectively and prevent you from dying a very ugly death due to a simple bladder infection traveling to your kidneys.  It is my personal experience that antibiotics are far superior in treating one-off, acute infections than our herbs.  But if you or someone you love fall into this other category of frequent, chronic, or resistant urinary tract infections, please get in touch.  There is so much we can do to return your body to full health.