The Little Toe

A couple of weeks ago I was giving a treatment to a lady that was experiencing a lot of tension/tightness in her right hamstring. She has been coming in for treatment to resolve hip pain from a car accident, so hamstring pain was not completely unexpected.

My treatment and the results were unexpected, from her perspective at least.

I told her I was going to stick a needle in her little toe. She absolutely did not believe it would have any effect, I think she was just willing to humor me.

On the edge of the little toe, if you drew a line up the toe-nail edge and a cross line across the top of the toe-nail, where the two lines cross is UB-67 the end of the Urinary Bladder meridian. This point has some amazing properties; it clears heat, eliminates wind and is an empirical point for malposition of the fetus. [That is another amazing treatment, you would "burn moxa" on UB-67 for 10 minutes every other day. The little one will turn over into his or her correct position. Truly fascinating.]

The treatment I gave the other day comes from the understanding that the UB meridian follows the pathway of the 'hamstring' muscle group. By needling that point it causes the qi to move. Stagnant qi creates pain, and or disease.

SO here I was, holding a needle over the corner of her little toe. I insert the needle and stimulate it for less than 10 seconds. This is NOT a comfortable, pleasant point to get needled. I remove the needle and ask her to stand up. I see this look of "Yeah, right, that is going to change anything..."

My patient stands up and walks across the room. She says "Oh, My God!!!" The pain was gone. When I saw her yesterday she said the pain NEVER came back. It was over. Sometimes it is truly amazing what one needle in the right place, at the right time can do.

So, what do you all think of that? A little off the wall, but par for the course with me...

Something I have never seen before

This last Thursday when I was at The Asian Institute of Medical Studies ,teaching a class, I found a copy of the latest New England Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine in my 'mail box.' I did not look at it as I was teaching a class and focused on that.

Today I had some time inbetween patients so I opened up the journal, only to find an article on TONGUE ACUPUNCTURE!

Now I know you all thought I was a bit over the edge when I wrote about that one treatment I did last spring (See "You want to do What?!?!"[May]), but this takes tongue acupuncture to a completely different level. The author has located 30 points on the tongue that he needles on his patients. Trust me, I am not going down that avenue! He states that these are clinically effective points for a whole range of disease processes. I'll just have to take his word on that...

But, on a similar vein (Sorry, I could not resist that one.) I saw something during a treatment today I have not seen before.

My patient has a fairly deep red tongue, but 3/4 of the tongue surface was covered with a fairly thick black coat. The underside of the coat is a lighter brown, but the surface is black.

When she extended her tongue so I could see it, she had just said "Can you tell me what causes this? It happens every time I drink red wine." She sticks her toungue out and I did a true double-take. I said, "I have never seen anything like that before."

I drew out a diagram of the tongue and the "areas" as sen through TCM. The blackness covers the Kidney, Liver & Gallbladder areas, but does not cover the Stomach, Lungs or Heart. Read that as it covers the back(Kidneys) and sides (LR/GB), but not the center (St), in front of center (Lu) or tip (Ht). Then I said that apparently the red wine creates some heat in the Kidneys, Liver and Gallbladder. I reccomended that not drinking red wine might be a good thing. I did tell her that I was not telling her to not drink, but just to avoid the red wine.

Clinically I do not see a lot of heat signs in her. Sure there are some, but not to the degree that I would expect to in order to generate a BLACK tongue coating. I will keep my self open to seeing things that I might have missed as I work with her, but for now all I can say is "I ain't never seen anything like that before."