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 have 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, book an appointment below.