42 year old Jeny has had body aches for 9 years. Her neck, arms, and feet hurt most of the time. She felt numb and pain most of the day. Recently it extends to fingers: she notices finger pains when she picks up things. Her doctor diagnosed as arthritis and suspected fibromyalgia . It is aggravated by stress which causes muscle tension. She has tried Aleve, which hass been helpful with body aches. The situation is worse in the morning when she is waking up and getting up, as she "felt like 90"; especially in her feet. She tried physical therapy. Jeny's secondary complaint with a low sex drive.
Her current medications include Prion (digestion prescription); Flovent (asthma inhaler); singular (asthma pill); Sudafed (OTC sinus drug, when needed); asteline & nasonex are inhaler of different types. She used to take clortrimitron (antihistamin), but currently was off it. Beside prescription drugs, she also takes multivitamin, calcium, flaxseed oil, aleve (pain), docicyclin (laxative).
Her skin is very sensitive to stuff she puts on. So she wears soft & mostly cotton clothes. Her ears get clogged easily due to sinusus issues and she uses saline solution to clear it. Her sinus problems causes her poor hearing. She sometimes grinds her teeth during sleep. Jeny is wearing glasses.
Jeny's asthma started in 1980's. She has pneumonia every year in 1985 & 1986; after that she eveloped asthma and since then it stayed with her. She recently got over her cold so she still has clear mucus came out of her nose. Jeny is allergic to dust and cats. In August of 2004 she had a bad cold, she had palpitation then. Taking Saraven took care of it. She doesn't have it now. Sometimes she experiences cold limbs.
Jeny has good appetite but takes protonix to prevent acid reflex. She takes laxative every day to prevent constipation. She usually has stools 6 times a week. Stools are soft and formed. It may be 2 times per day because being a teacher she doesn't have time to go to bathroom. Sometimes she has trouble to hold her urine. She gets up to go pee during the night 1 to 2 times. She dreams all the time resulting in poor sleeping. Her energy is good and rates it 8 out of a scale of 10 but her energy usually drops in the afternoon when she feels fatigued.
She experiences pain in her neck, hand & wrist, and foot & ankle. One of her arms feels numb most of the time.
Jeny's menstrual period is regular with 28-30 cycle days and 5-7 day per period. Menstrual blood colors red, 1st day heavy, and no clots. Her PMS exhibits cramps on her legs but never in her abdomen.
Upon observation, lots of blood spider veins centers around both of Jeny's popliteal (around back of knee) areas. She said she is easily bruised . There are a lot of bruises in her calf. Sensitive yang responses in her scaphod area when detecting with electrode prob. Similar reaction shows at shoulder points to thoracic vertebral points in her ears.
Her tongue is purple with thin white tongue coat, dry. Her pulse is slight wiry and soft. Her Qi is deficient and stagnant. Need to strengthen her lung qi, move qi & blood.
She went through six weeks of acupuncture treatments with herbal remedies including:
Jie Geng 6g, Ze Bei Mu 6g, Mai Men Dong 6g, Chai Hu 5g, Mi Huang Qi 8g, Dang Shen 6g, Cao Bai Zhu 6g, Fu Ling 6g, Gan Cao 4g, Sheng Ma 4g, Chen Pi 7g, Zhi Ke 7g, Xiang Fu 7g, Chuang Xiong 4g, Dang Gui 4g, Cao Bai Shao 6g, Shu Di Huang 4g.
From week to week, the formula stayed with the same principle and varied slightly. She felt much relief then.
Forty two years female, Lan, came to our clinic for chronic fatigue issues. She had a very low energy of a 4-5 out of the scale of 1- 10; whereas a 1 in the scale indicates a situation that one stays in bed and can not get out of bed and a ten indicates superb energy that one can run, swim, and do anything one wants. Lan felt that she was stuck with psychological issues which had been going on for 15 yrs. She was on Zoloft and Bupropion, both are anti-depression drugs.
She complained that her skin was breaking out like teenagers; they were dry & flaky and her hair were falling out. Her San Dieago acupuncturist (before she moved to Boston areas) said she had adrenal tireness & low kidney yin. She had stabbing pains on her right eye brow, head aches on her sides only. She did not have dry throat but dry eyes only. If she stood up too quickly, her head felt moderate foggy. It's an effort for her to work around it. She had foggyness problem all her life. There was no ear blockage. She could not tolerate noisiness. When very stressed, she did not feel the noise; if moderate stress, she could feel a slightest of noise.
Lan's sinus was clear. There was no post nasal drip, no coughing but she felt pressure on her chest, back, and below lips (CV23 area). She had poor appetite. She did not know what to eat. The first day she came to the clinic she felt only slightly hungry. Her intestinal below navel felt gassy, full & distended. It's moderate. This was a norm for her for the last year or so. Her stool's loose, not hard, but she felt complete after she's done. SHe had pale urine. Her back & shoulder were stiff. Her menstrual period had 21 day cycle. Each perios averaged 5 days. It was moderate flow and it cut right off after 3rd day. It was generally dark red 1st, then red, then brownish. Cramps were mild. She used to have more severe cramps. There were large clots at the beginning. She generally felt hot. Her hands and feet tended to be hot. It usually took her one hour to fall asleep. She usually woke up after 3-4 hours. Sometimes she woke up at 1am and then dosed off. Sometimes she woke up and stayed one hour awake before falling back to sleep . She was not refreshed in the morning when she woke up. She generally felt sad and had been on counseling to work it through. Normally she didn't feel anything. She used to have severe anxiety, now just moderate anxiety. Meditation seemed to calm her. She used to easily over-react and triggered reactions quickly. She was perceived to be moderately anxious.
Her tongue was swollen and purplish. The diagnosis and treatment was directed to heavily Moving blood, tonifty qi & blood, clear head, and revive energy.
Her issues included: 1) Tension HA; 2) appetite/GI; 3) body achiness; 4) sleep/rest; 5) making her energy better.
The herbal prescription included:
Mi Huang Qi 5g, Dang Gui 5g, Chao Bai Shao 5g, Dang Shen 5g, Dang Shen 5g,Shi Chang PU 5g, Yuan Zhi 5g, Yu Jin 5g, Chuan Xiong 5g, Hong Hua 5g, Dan Shen 5g, Chuan Niu Xi 5g, Jie Geng 4g, Rou Gui 4g, Zhi Shi 4g, Xiang Fu 4g, Qing Pi 4g, Hou Po 4g, Mang Jing Zi 4g, Shen Qu 4g, Jiao Shan Zha 4g, C Mai Ya 4g, and C Bai Zhu 4g.Her subsequent visits on a twice-monthly bases helped her resolve her chronic fatigue issues to a manageable level while improving the quality of her daily life.
She was also treated with acupuncture on her front and back. This was done on a monthly basis.It helped her resolve her achy muscles and back pains.