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.

Why Chronic Leakage of Breast Milk is Debilitating

I remember my midwives saying that there is no such thing as oversupply.  At the time, that made sense to me, but if I had known then what I know now, I could have saved myself years of feeling unwell and likely have prevented a few miscarriages.  Let me explain.  While the idea of milk oversupply may be debatable, from our Chinese medical lens we know that if the milk is falling out, this is leakage, and a loss of precious vitality.  Leakage looks like waking up in puddles of milk, soaking through your milk pads, or losing 4-6 ozs out of the breast your child is not feeding on while you are feeding on the other breast.  Regular loss of this amount of breast milk is extremely taxing.  Why?  

Because:  it is our bodies’ job to take in food and turn it into ourselves, which includes our blood, and eliminate the waste.  In menstruating bodies, the blood that is made goes to the uterus.  This precious substance either grows another new human body or it is shed monthly.  In a postpartum body, the blood is redirected to the breasts, where it becomes a very precious substance that grows a child.  In the same way that losing too much blood out of your uterus is taxing, even debilitating, losing too much milk out of your breasts is also very debilitating.  A body that is prone to leaking breast milk is often the same body, because of its constitution, that will take a long time to stop bleeding after birth, continuing to have a light flow 4, 6, or more weeks after childbirth.  Even if the amount of bleeding is light, this is a huge loss of qi, blood, and yang, and can cause a self-perpetuating loop.  Down the road, leakage can cause things like fatigue, weakness, dry tight muscles, scanty periods, insomnia, or poor hormonal health, even constipation.  Dry tight muscles might look like chronically aching neck and upper back, or an upper back that is especially tight before your period, or stomach muscles that are so tight that you chronically feel slightly or very queasy.  The same weakness that can cause you to leak things can become exacerbated, so that you begin to leak out of your lower orifices (pee and poop) or out of your uterus (heavy bleeding) or out of your pores (too much sweating).  

This sort of postpartum illness is insidious.  You may have had an easy time right after birth, only to look up 1 to 2 years later and realize that you really don’t feel well, and that it has been a while since you have.  I monitor for this kind of leakage in my postpartum patients in order to stop it before it becomes a problem.  When new patients come in two to three years after having a child and they tell me that their bodies are not what they used to be, often our intake reveals that they too have been leaking breast milk or other precious body fluids (sweat or blood) over a long period of time.

Traditional medicines provide excellent postpartum care because they can both identify issues before they are an issue, and more importantly, they have effective treatments that firm the edges of your body so that it can contain what should not be lost.  We also have ways of replenishing fluids and blood.  

Years after finishing breastfeeding, I slowly but very surely got better thanks to long term herbal medicine.  Had I known what to look for in the moment, and what treatment to use, I could have avoided years of feeling weak and other symptoms.  This would have meant more abundant healthier blood, and a much better chance for my later pregnancies to have taken.  It also means feeling strong and more like yourself.  If you relate to any part of what is described above, please find a skilled postpartum herbalist to help you start healing now. If you would like to schedule a free 15 minute phone consult, send me a message through the email form below.

Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine are Uniquely Suited to Treating Chronic Illness

Do you feel somehow cursed because, unlike your loved ones, you can’t eat a slice of pizza without debilitating pain or running to the toilet?  Is your internal thermostat off, to the point that you are sweating and wanting to rip your clothes off and stand in front of a fan while others seem perfectly unbothered?  Do you have to budget your energy expenditures, knowing that a normal friend outing will require half a day or more of recuperation time, or that a typical work day even at a job you love leaves you without the energy to fix and eat a meal?  Does a normal sized meal sit uncomfortably on your belly, so that you eat less than everyone else at the table, and yet mysteriously still gain weight?  Do you track public restrooms or a tried and true way to ask to use the employee restroom because you can’t run an errand or watch a movie without getting up to pee?  These are all symptoms that drive my patients to multiple doctors, where they sometimes get a diagnosis and sometimes do not, because despite something clearly being wrong, their ailment does not show up on blood work or imaging.  Or their abnormal bloodwork does not turn up a diagnosis.  Or their diagnosis in conventional medicine has no treatment.  Sometimes frustrated patients are told to lose weight or exercise more, two things that their body has long ago declined to do despite dedicated and sustained efforts.

The medicine that originated in ancient China and spread throughout Asia, now referred to as East Asian Medicine (EAM) is uniquely suited to treat chronic illness.  When you explain your bizarre conglomeration of symptoms, we hear things that were described in ancient texts, and are excited to begin an effective treatment that will restore confidence in your own body’s ability to interact with this world and experience joy.

We ask a lot of follow up questions in order to determine whether your body has not enough or too much of certain substances and to find out where things are getting stuck or are falling out.  We then, in very basic ways, get to work.  If something is stuck, we open through; if blood or cooling fluids are missing, we help the body make more; if there is too much heat, we cool it; too much cold, we warm it.  If an organ’s function is going in the wrong direction, say stomach qi is going up when it should go down causing nausea, vomiting, or regurgitation, we help it find the right direction.  If something (like urine) is falling out too frequently, we help it to stay in.  Persistent symptoms become less frequent, and less intense.  Slowly, being chronically unwell becomes a memory, a hard thing that someone went through and came out of on the other side, stronger, more confident, and, for having suffered deeply, more compassionate.

Your mysterious illness is not mysterious to us. If you are tired of seeking a solution to feeling unwell and are ready to get off of the sick train, call (626) 817-3556 for a free consultation or book an appointment 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.

Acupuncture for Chemotherapy Side Effects

As anyone who has been through chemotherapy knows, it is a rollercoaster.  Just as the body is showing its ability to heal from the last dose, it is time for the next.  Often it is the first day or two after an infusion that the patient feels best; the body has had the longest time to heal since the last infusion and the effects of the most recent infusion have yet to kick in.

The side effects indicate that the chemotherapy is working as desired.  The rollercoaster of the symptoms are a manifestation of our bodies’ incredible capacity for resilience and repair.  Still, no one enjoys the feelings of sickness that come with treating the wayward cancer cells.  Fortunately, acupuncture works quickly and effectively to mitigate the effects.

Let’s talk about the chemo-induced symptoms that I have treated in my office.

Tongue Pain  Chemotherapy causes the epithelial cells of the body, which then regrow. This includes the epithelial cells of the tongue.  Pain is probably not the right word to describe the sensation this causes, as the feeling ranges from dry, painful, sore, to other neurological symptoms such as a strange metallic taste and tingling.  I would say for most of my patients this is one of the most difficult to tolerate symptoms, because we use our mouths to ingest everything we need as well as to speak.

Fortunately, acupuncture can provide instant relief.  By working with channels that pass through the tongue, we can mitigate the discomfort of these sensations.  Patients usually report that they notice increased salivation during the treatment.  By the end of the treatment they notice less discomfort.  The relief provided by acupuncture can go a long way in making it possible to eat the amount needed to stay strong.

Nausea  You do not have to have experienced chemotherapy to know that the sensation of even mild nausea can make it difficult to inhabit your body.  Acupuncture is well known for being able to treat this condition.  In fact, there are some health insurances that will only cover acupuncture for “chemo-induced nausea”.

Gritty eyes, styes, and other eye symptoms  Because chemo attacks the fast growing epithelial cells, the glands we all have behind our eyebrows can sometimes stop working and no longer produce enough tears to moisten the eyes.  Acupuncture helps to reduce the inflammation and to promote healing of the tear glands.  Patients often comment that their eyes feel less filmy, less gritty, or less swollen by the end of the treatment, and the improvements continue to develop over the next 24 hours.  I will also send patients home with ju hua, or chrysanthemum, a most amazing flower for any sort of eye troubles.

Anemia  Chemotherapy impairs the body’s ability to make blood and can often result in low grade to severe anemia, or, depending on the chemo, even neutropenia.  Unlike the other symptoms in this post, a patient cannot report during the course of the treatment if their body has created more red or white blood cells or more hemoglobin.  However, my patients consistently report that their bloodwork is better than average.

Neuropathy  Some of the strongest chemotherapies, such as oxaliplatin (often used to treat pancreatic cancer), cause neuropathy.  This side effect sometimes becomes so severe that the course of treatment has to be discontinued, and the effects are sometimes permanent.  What I have found is that patients respond immediately to acupuncture in the first several rounds.  After that, while it continues to help, there is more variability between patients and the results are less complete and may not last as long.  

Painful nailbeds  Tender to painful nailbeds are due to visible damage to the blood vessels in the nail bed.  At its worst, the nails can fall out (but they grow back).  It has been described to me as a feeling of someone squeezing your finger tips.  Acupuncture also provides much welcome relief to this sensation.

Having born witness to this process, I am always so happy to be able to provide some relief during an emotionally and physically trying time. . If you or a loved one are facing the prospect of chemotherapy treatment, please consult with an East Asian medical physician like myself so that you can have the most support during the process.

Why Did My Acupuncture Treatment Make Me Cry?

You may just as easily be asking: make me laugh, make me feel antsy, make my limbs move involuntarily, make me burp, or make my abdominal muscles move in a comfortable, wave-like fashion?  OR, make me remember something unexpected from a long time ago, significant or insignificant?  These are all common responses to a treatment, and all are signs that the needles are working.

Everything that has ever happened to us is stored in our soma (body).  This is not a metaphor, but, as body-workers, Vipassana meditators, yoga teachers, somatic therapists and trauma therapists can tell you, quite literal.  Not only can muscle tissue and fascia contain memories, but even hormones and even gasses that you have become sequestered safely away.  When releasing large muscle groups, it is not uncommon for the room to smell like chemicals that the patient has been exposed to earlier in her lifetime.  When a patient comes in, their symptoms and life history suggest areas to work in, and when these areas are released, emotions, memories, and sensations can come to the surface.  The body’s memory is fascinating and precise.  If you have ever experienced a big shock, or lost an important person in your life, you may notice that your body remembers the event on its anniversary even when your conscious mind does not.  Some examples are a 9/11 first responder who experiences a severe chest cold every year around early to mid September.  (The lungs are associated with grief in East Asian Medicine.)  Or someone who was assaulted unexpectedly by a stranger, only to feel pain at the same time of year the following years in the same areas of her body where she hit the ground.  When someone has a seemingly unrelated symptom out of the blue, I make sure to ask, what happened in this month in other years of your life. If the symptom is related to a somatic memory, that question will prompt an answer.  

This is especially true with scar work.  Scars are a rich area to work in, as they invariably block the fascial planes and tissue beds that make up the meridians.  Over time this can cause an imbalance.  Sometimes when taking a life history I will notice that an injury to a channel is followed one or more years later with problems in the associated organ.  This is an example of how constricted tissue in one part of the body can affect another area.  I continue to be surprised by the responses elicited by scar work.  I have seen several instances where releasing scar tissue prompted the patient to have a pre-lingual memory.  That is a very, very early memory, yet the body knows.  (This is especially interesting, as scientists theorize that it is the syntax of language that allows us to form memories.  These clinical experiences, however, suggest that the body’s memory functions differently.)  I have had patients feel very specific phantom sensations; after working around a decades old C-section scar, one patient had to check her lower belly repeatedly because she kept feeling the same sensation of leaking fluid that had alerted her many, many years ago that some stitches had ruptured.  Of course, there was no leaking fluid, but this sensation persisted on and off for a week. 

And so it is with emotions.  Whether or not we are working on a visible scar, there are sections of our bodies that become stuck by strong emotion.  Acupuncture works to course the qi through all the riverbeds of the body.  As stuck areas begin to flow again, whatever was in the stagnant areas comes to the surface to be experienced and pass away.  The emotional release that happens on the table helps your body to work more completely, which means symptoms will resolve and you will feel lighter.  

If you suspect you have some stuck emotions or stuck tissues, book a session with me and we’ll do a complete life history to see how I can best go about unsticking your tissue planes.

Photo by Amanda Flavell