A combination of acupuncture and herbal medicine is especially beneficial in the area of women's health, where Western interventions often rely on surgery or administration of hormones, with their attendant side-effects.
Typical health issues for women include:
Painful periods (dysmenorrhea)
Heavy periods (menorrhagia)
PMS
Endometriosis
Ovarian Cysts
Fertility
Many women who suffer from painful periods and/or PMS have been on the pill for years, despite problems with weight gain, depression, or spotting. In Western medicine, ovarian cysts and endometriosis may be treated with a hormone shot such as Depo-Provera, which suppresses ovulation and eventually causes cessation of periods (amenorrhea) in more than half the women taking it. Although these medications do help suppress the primary gynecological complaint, they can cause further hormonal imbalances, from irritability and bloating to problems with fertility in the year following cessation. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) offers a gentle, effective alternative to these approaches, as well as an alternative to conventional treatment of other types of gynecological problems.
Endocrinology is a complex field, because of the intricacy of the feedback mechanisms. As one hormone rises, another one will fall in response, which will cause a third one to change. This means that altering the level of one hormone can cause a cascading effect, influencing other hormone levels in the system. In contrast to the Western system of treating individual symptoms with a prescription of one or two hormones, acupoints in TCM bring the system back into balance. Similarly, herbal therapy is based on your presentation rather than biochemical analysis of individual hormone levels. Information from previous laboratory and imaging tests can be helpful, but in the final analysis, treatment will be determined according to the way the complaint manifests in you.
