Last Saturdy, one patient came to our office for treating her stress and low back pain, she is in 38 weeks pregancy.
She reported to us, she got nature pregant in second month after our 8 sessions’ acupuncture last year.
This is our 29 pregant reports in 35 months, we don’t know exactly how many women actually got prognant because some of patients forgot to report, and they moved.
I had my second appointment with Pascal the acupuncturist on Tuesday night and boy did I learn a lot!
Before I tell you all about it, I think he looks a little like the Scottish actor Gray O’Brien )
Handsome or what?
It’s no real hardship!! )
Anyhooo….
Apparently in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) everyone has a constitution; metal, wood, water, fire or earth. Pascal thinks I’m a wood person and having read more about it I tend to agree. I found this site quite good.
He also says my Liver Qi is stagnant/flat. He found this by only taking my pulse too! He said that at CD16 (which I was on Tues) it shouldn’t have been for that stage of my cycle. I’ve found this website which says the Liver Qi plays an important role in a womans menstrual cycle.
He also reckons my fertility problems are emotional ones. He couldn’t find anything that would suggest it’s an anatomical issue. Again I agree, that’s why I listened to hypnosis CD’s and under took EFT classes (which I’m thinking I’ll need to start doing again).
He said that if there are things that bother me or if someone annoys me I should let them know (in a non-confrontational way) as this will help me. He reckons me bottling things up are affecting my health.
When I came out I felt like a weight had been lifted, he seemed to know me. And best of all… he can FIX me (fingers crossed)!!
When I asked him how long I should see him, he said that he’d seen good results after 2 months. I thought asking him to sign a contract saying I’d be pregnant in 2 months might be going too far… tempting though!! )
Looking forward to my next appointment on the 18th.
PS I haven’t told DH any of this as he thinks I’m crazy as it is for even going to see an acupuncturist, so it’s our secret! ;o)
John Wayne - The Great American Cowboy
It seems that lately I’ve been encountering more people that suffer from what I call “JWS” or “John Wayne Syndrome.” For those of you not familiar with the term, I’d like to just take a moment an expound on this phenomenon.
Although I did not have a name for it early on, I most certainly grew up in a culture plagued by it. In rural Wyoming, the Code of the West and a cowboy mentality rule. Now please do not misunderstand me, I am not bashing the Code of the West here. There is much to be said about the honesty and integrity that comes from living by the Code of the West. However, JWS stems from the cowboy mentality of toughness.
When a cowboy suffers an injury, he does not go see a doctor. He walks it off and continues doing what he’s doing. This is where we get the old adage “Cowboy Up!” This is a gritting of the teeth and toughing it out. No complaining. It is exemplary in many of the characters that John Wayne played. And this is why I have dubbed the behavior “John Wayne Syndrome.” This sort of mentality by no means affects just those that live in rural areas. John Wayne is an American icon. His influence has spread throughout our country. There are just as many people that live in urban settings who suffer from JWS as opposed to their rural cohorts. It also effects both men and women, though I believe men exhibit the lion’s share of JWS.
The sheer tenacity of this cowboy mentality is undeniably admirable. However, there is a special kind of lunacy that accompanies it. When one is injured, one should do their best to take care of themselves so that they can continue to maintain living and working with certain youthful exuberance. This is the logical thing to do. Instead, those that suffer from JWS do just the opposite and create for themselves a life of constant and continual pain.
Take for example the man who accidentally bashes his finger while hammering. Instead of receiving proper medical care for it, he slowly nurses the injury by himself over a period of several weeks. The finger does not receive correct or effective treatment, and the joints freeze up and become arthritic. Now for the rest of his life, he can only bend his finger a fraction of what it used to. It hampers his work and causes him pain each time the weather changes, but he continues to “cowboy up.” If, after the accident ocurred, this poor fellow with JWS had gone to see his health care professionals, the finger would have been given proper treatment. He would have gained the majority, if not all, of his range of motion back, and arthritis would not have set in until much later in his life.
I do have to admit that I am a little ambivalent in my feelings toward JWS. For one, having grown up in the heart of cowboy culture, I do recognize that I have acquired some of this mentality. I struggle against it in order to keep myself healthy. This is my own personal battle, and it is one of the reasons why I have decided to blog about this specific subject.
Second, I must also admit that folks with JWS help keep me in business. Not when they’re young, of course, but once they have gotten older and their doctors tell them that surgery or drugs is the only answer to their various problems. Then Traditional Chinese Medicine becomes their last bastion of hope that will not be forever tied to the doctors that they despise. I love treating these folks because they generally become my staunchest advocates. They find that TCM works and they express regret in not knowing about it earlier in their lives.
It is quite likely that you or someone you know has John Wayne Syndrome. If so, I would love to hear from you about your trials and tribulations concerning JWS. Please feel free to leave a comment here on the blog or send me an email. In return, it would be my pleasure to personally educate you on how Traditional Chinese Medicine can be a great benefit in regard to this often debilitating condition.
As you may or may not know, I did acupuncture every other week for a year. I stopped back in April of this year and have only been back once. Now that I’m about to embark on IVF, I did a little research on the effectiveness of IVF success rates when combined with acupuncture. The studies are pretty mixed. Some doctors say it helps, but that it might only be the placebo effect. Women are more positive about the IVF cycle when they think they’re doing something that will improve the success rate. Some doctors don’t think it helps at all.
When the nurse called with my beta results on Friday, I asked her what the doctor’s perspective was on acupuncture. She told me he doesn’t believe it in, but if you ask her she’d say she does. Case in point: there’s not a right answer.
I was considering going to one of those infertility-focused acupuncture places but honestly since we’re paying for all of this out-of-pocket (including IVF), I feel like those specialists totally rip you off. My acupuncturist is still expensive ($90/visit) but that’s significantly cheaper than the IF acupuncture specialists in my area.
If the research isn’t there to back it up (if you know of any, please send it my way!), I think I’ll stick with the acupuncturist that I know and trust. She might not be a specialist, but if the “improved” success rates are rooted in feeling positive with less anxiety and stress, then I’m in great hands. The plan is to go every other week until we start stims, and then go every week.
I’ve always wanted to do one of those poll things … So, what do you think? Does acupuncture help?
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What Is a ‘Crick in the Neck? What if it last longer than a week? How long do I need to wait to see someone before I seek help.
We have all been here waking up with a painful “crick in my neck”, perhaps after a sleepless night? Is it anything to worry about?
A “crick in the neck” is not an official medical diagnosis, and therefore the term means different things to different people. For many, a “crick in my neck” is something they wake up with after a night of lillow tossing or sleeping the wrong way. But what ever the case having a “crick” in your neck is no fun. Or as Hispanics would say, NO BUENO! So what if you do wake up with a “Crick”? What do I do? How long will it last? What if it wont go away? Am I being to impatient if I wanna go see a doctor when I wake up, or do I need to wait a certain amount of time?
As many questions there are even more answers to all these questions. First and foremost it all depends on the person. Pain is a subjective thing. What is a “bad crick” may not be for another person. One pain that should not be ignored and all people should take to a health professional as soon as possible is radiating and or burning pain. Anything that tingles or does the former should be taken with great seriousness. Although these are very rare and uncommon occurrences while sleeping we know nothing is impossible these days. Well maybe passing a CA State Budget may fall into that category but that’s a different blog all together.
So lets break it down from a conservative chiropractors point of view. My rule of thumb for my patients is, “If it last more than a week” then you should have it checked out.
Checklist of what to do if you wake up with a “Crick” in your neck.
I asked two different physiatrists, doctors who specialize in physical rehabilitation, what a crick in the neck is in medical terms. Both of them said about 75% of “cricks in the neck” are due to a muscle spasm. Other causes cited were:
Two Views on a Diagnosis for ‘Crick in the Neck’
The one thing that is certain when it comes to understanding a crick in your neck is that health professionals from different fields (and also lay people) don’t agree on what it is.
For example at Virginia Commonwealth University, says that while consensus is lacking, many times it can be attributed to a problem in the facet joint. But Dr. Santhos Thomas, physiatrist and medical director at the Westlake Spine Center at the Cleveland Clinic says “the only way to really tell if the ‘crick in your neck’ is due to a facet joint problem is to perform a diagnostic injection into the area to confirm or rule out the facet joint as the origination of the pain.”
Dr. Thomas says that in general, “cricks in the necks” of younger patients tend to be muscle spasms. Riddle agrees that muscle spasm is often present in “cases” of “crick in the neck”, but that they may be a result of a problem in the facet joint.
Older patients, Dr. Thomas says, tend to describe the problem as a creak in the neck, and it is usually due to arthritis (another joint problem), not muscle spasm. In older people, he adds, a decreased range of motion that may also contribute to the pain.
If you go to Midus you’ll get a muffler” That’s what my dad used to always say and its not till being an adult i realized what that obscure and weird comment meant. If you have a crick in the neck and go to a pain doctor, he is going to want to inject you. If you go got a Chiropractor he is going to want to adjust you. If you got to an Acupuncturist he is going to want to still needles in you. So take control of you’re own health and make the proper choice. Never hurts to get a second opinion as well. Maybe not for something as simple as a crick in the neck but certainly for other serious conditions.
