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.”  —An analogy for her postpartum experience described to me by a real live patient. 

“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 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.