Have you been to multiple doctors and still don’t know what’s wrong with you?

In East Asian Medicine, we often talk about treating the root and the branch of disease. But what in the world does root and branch mean?? This means that we need to treat both the cause of disease AND the symptoms of the disease to achieve the results we want. Many new patients that come in for acupuncture have seen numerous other holistic practitioners and medical doctors.  Most patients are on at least a few medications that are helping, but they aren’t getting the full relief they’re trying to find. Often patients have had multiple tests done, including labs and scans, to try to find the source of their ailment.

They go on a hunt with western medicine trying to figure out why this is all happening.

Why do I have headaches like this?

Why is my knee swollen when I haven’t injured it?

Why does my stomach burn every time I’m hungry?

As a TCM practitioner, I LOVE getting to the bottom of these questions.  But sometimes I must submit to the fact that we might not have an “ah, ha” moment where we know exactly what is going on inside the body. We won’t find the exact reason for the pain, the constipation, the burning stomach pain.  After thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of testing its common to not find a reason at all and for it to be labeled ‘idiopathic.’

This isn’t always a bad thing! 

It means there isn’t a terrible underlying cause that could be life threatening, but for a patient that is battling chronic illness not finding the source of their discomfort can be devastating.  We often think that if nothing shows up in the labs or the scans we can’t fix the problem.  I’m here to tell you that with Traditional Chinese Medicine we CAN FIX THE PROBLEM even if your labs are perfect.

I like to say that as an acupuncturist I take the clues your body is giving you and find a way to make you feel better.  Every time you have a headache, numbness or tingling, burning in the stomach, or twitching in the eye, the body is trying to tell you what is going on.  It might not show up on a lab test, but you, the patient, know something isn’t right.  Acupuncturists take all the little tiny symptoms and fit them into a TCM diagnosis.  I love reading lab reports, but I don’t need them to help my patients get relief.  All I need is a patient that is willing to go through their symptoms and tell me all the details they can remember since things started feeling off.   A lot of the times an intake can take 45-60 minutes.  But don’t worry, if you’re not a talker you can just put it all in your forms and I’ll read it ahead of time!

Once we take all the symptoms (branch) we can find the cause (root).  The root cause of disease almost always goes back to stress, overwork, and lifestyle choices. I understand that you can’t just uproot your life and change everything!  Acupuncture treatments are about helping you find balance so you can heal and continue your life.  A few small changes may need to be made, but most of the time they are welcomed once people are feeling 10x better!

If you’ve been hunting for answers, come in and try acupuncture.  It might be just what you’ve been looking for.

Schedule an appointment with Dr. Lexi here!