Treatment Cave

The following is a case history sent by Jason Smith in Madrid Symptoms A woman aged 43 seeks treatment for painful periods. The periods last three days and are extremely painful.  She feels cold in general, but the cold is more intense at period time.  The period is regular (30 days), lasts 3 days, with little bleeding, and the color is dark red with small clots. The pain is very intense, and is felt around the area of Ren-4/Ren-3. A warm bottle alleviates the pain along with analgesics.  The period has always been very painful, especially after the age of 18. The tongue has a normal color with a thin coating with root. However, the sublingual veins appeared very dark.  This patient was a semi professional swimmer, practicing intensely around the age of 13-18. Diagnosis The main pattern is a very obvious case of Cold in the Uterus (nature of pain, feeling of cold and alleviation of the pain by a warm bottle). The Cold in the Uterus led to Blood Stasis, as evidenced b...

“ Men ” is a common symptom in Chinese medicine.  The Chinese character shows a door and a heart inside it .  Thus, it would seem to indicate a heart constricted by a door closing on it.  I translate this  symptom as “a feeling of oppression of the chest”.  Men is very difficult to translate and my translation is an attempt to convey the meaning of this symptom: it certainly does not claim to be the “correct” translation of men as most Chinese medicine terms have multiple, simultaneous meanings. Chinese patients will actually use the term men : they might say, for example, “ I sleep badly, I have a bitter taste and feel men .” In my experience, when a Chinese patients says that it means they are depressed.  A feeling of oppression of the chest is purely subjective: there is nothing to be observed or palpated  (as there is in feeling of fullness or distension).  Some patients would describe it as a “feeling of weight” on the chest.  Other pa...