Patient Examples
Let’s run through a couple of examples. We have a patient, female, age 22. She’s had acne since the age of 16—not severe, but persistent with background erythema (redness) and pustules and papules (whiteheads and pimples) mostly on her cheeks. Her general health is good aside from frequent acid reflux after big meals. Bowels are normal. Her skin worsens premenstrually. Her tongue is slightly redder than normal. (If you’ve been to an acupuncturist or Chinese herbalist you know how much we like to look at your tongue. Believe it or not, it’s another window into what’s going on inside your body and it gives us important information.) So what to do? We know we’ll be clearing heat as acne is inherently inflammatory—this is true for many common skin diseases. The relatively mild presentation and accumulation of lesions mostly on her cheeks leads us toward a pattern of Lung heat. The acid regurgitation indicates Stomach heat. Acne in general tends to benefit from toxic heat clearing medicines (medicines which, not surprisingly to Chinese herbalists, mod- ern research has shown to have anti-bacterial properties) so we know those will be included in the formula, and the level of background erythema indicates qi (pronounced “chee”) level heat. From there, we put together an individualized formula containing 10-15 herbs to address the pattern(s) we see. Let’s take another example of a 17-year-old male. He’s suf- fered with acne since the age of 13. Four months of treatment with oxytetracycline (an antibiotic often prescribed to treat the bacterial aspect of acne) has shown very little benefit. His skin is prone to feeling greasy at the end of the day, and his face is often itchy. He frequently feels hot, his mouth and lips are dry, he’s thirsty, and he has bad breath. His bowels are sluggish and dry, opening only every other day. His appetite is large, with a strong desire for sweet foods. He has difficulty falling asleep. His tongue is red with a greasy white coating, and his pulse is slippery. (Yes, we take your pulse in all kinds of “cuckoo” ways, too, and it’s extraordinarily helpful!) We can see immediately that this case is appreciably differ- ent from the first. The greasiness and itchiness of his face reveals that there is more dampness in his system than we saw in the first case. There are also more symptoms of heat, as seen in his tongue, his restless sleep, his slow bowels, his bad breath, his thirst, and his large appetite. A photo would reveal that this pa- tient’s acne looks more “severe” than the first. While her lesions sat upon the surface of the skin, his are more entrenched, with more redness, more swelling, more pustules, and more cysts. As such, our treatment approach will be different. We’ll
have stronger and more toxic heat clearing medicinals in this formulation. We’ll address the symptoms of damp heat with herbs that drain damp heat from the skin. We’ll be sure to include herbs to open his bowel—it’s of the utmost importance that the bowels move at least once daily to empty the body of its accumulated waste products. A backed up bowel is likely contributing to the accumulation of damp and heat in his system that’s being expressed through his skin. So, can you start to see how this “cuckoo” language actu-
ally serves a very useful purpose? Not only are practitioners of Chinese medicine able to access a unique physiological under- standing of the human body, we’re also able to obtain results
that last. Chinese medicine is much less interested in treating symptoms than it is in addressing the root cause of those symp- toms. The herbal formulations prescribed in the cases above are not masking the acne or suppressing it. On the contrary, they’re addressing the fundamental imbalances in the body that are generating the acne in the first place. This means the whole body benefits from the treatment of the skin. It’s a win-win! Skin disease is notoriously difficult to treat—this is true in
Western as well as Chinese medicine, and acne is no exception. We don’t often see changes overnight—treatment of chronic skin disease can take anywhere from 3-8 months, and some- times longer. That said, most patients do see improvement, often very significant improvement or complete resolution. For those of you suffering from disfiguring lesions on the most public part of your body—your beautiful face—consider Chinese medicine. It may offer you some hope where other methods have failed.
Alexa Gilmore is a board-certified acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist practicing Chinese Medicine at ATX Acupuncture in Portland, Maine. She takes a no-nonsense approach to the heal- ing arts and expects positive outcomes. In addition to providing high quality treatments, she works in partnership with her pa- tients, empowering them to make lasting changes in their health profile by implementing simple, effective principles of Chinese Medicine into their daily lives. Learn more about Alexa and ATX Acupuncture at
www.atxacu.com. See ad on page 13.
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