https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326786.php

​I will just say the results were positive. And that, of course, we are not in the least surprised. In fact we treat menopause with herbs all the time. The Chinese figured this out a long time ago. There are many symptoms that go along with menopause and an increase in overall inflammation can effect things that we don't usually associate with menopause, like shoulder pain, or plantar fasciiitis. So, it usually helps to keep this in mind when you are treating women in this age range.

I've blogged in the past about how acupuncture seems to be really good at helping acute injury heal much faster. My partner here, Remee, was telling me recently about a patient she treated for a broken limb, and that when she went to the doc for her follow-up he was amazed that she had healed so quickly - and asked her what she did! I hear this from my patients all the time, that an injury that should have really taken a good while to heal has taken much less time than expected. Acupuncture can certainly help accelerate the healing process. This is why we are getting more and more doctor referrals for acute injury and pain. 

.https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326517.php

​This article makes me feel really hopeful. It basically says that we in the west are finally looking to herbal remedies to treat common ailments such as hypertension. The vast cornucopia that makes up the world of Chinese herbs (and Western herbs as well) is vast and varied. There are over 3000 Chinese herbs that have been used and studied in the East for thousands of years. I think it is great that we in the West are studying them and trying to find alternatives to some of the drugs we use that may have problematic side effects. The main things I like about Chinese herbs is that there are no real side-effects and that they treat the underlying or root cause of a condition as well as the symptoms. 

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326524.php

New research shows that red meat is most likely not bad for you after all. In Chinese medicine we are all about the health of the blood. And we often will tell our patients who are what we call 'blood deficient' that maybe they could eat a bit more red meat. Nothing seems to build the blood faster. So, even though this study is likely not good news for the environment, I do agree with the findings. But, the amount of red meat that we recommend is a small amount. It doesn't take much. Women are overwhelmingly more likely to be blood deficient then men. 

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326527.ph

Interesting discussion about research trying to determine if there is any different effect of the microbiome from eating cooked versus raw food. If you are a really technical person read the actual research paper here. From a Chinese medical perspective we suggest that most of our food should be cooked. 

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326259.php

Huh? Actually, this is a pretty interesting article (linked to above) which is another example of how important healthy bacteria is to our health. Most of what we hear about is our gut bacteria which numerous studies have shown to be important. But whether we like it or not bacteria live pretty much everywhere in our bodies. And this story reports on a study that found that our mouth bacteria is also important. So mouthwash indiscriminately kills these bacteria causing things not to work quite as well. Similar to how antibiotics mess with our gut bacteria. So the takeaway is to be kind to your bacteria! 

Since we are seeing an uptick in sciatica patients lately I wanted to cover briefly how we treat it. We have developed our own method of treating sciatica by treating hundreds of patients with this issue over 15 years. We do 4 things that we feel are, together, an effective protocol. With acupuncture we treat the path of the pain, the lower back (whether it hurts or not) and use auricular (ear) acupuncture to also treat to root of the problem which is usually a disk issue in the L3 to L5 area of the spine. We then use cupping along the path of the pain and also in the low back area to release the muscles and reestablish proper blood flow. The results of doing these things are usually quick and effective. Most patients feel a good deal better after a couple of visits. In tough cases we will often add a favorite Chinese herbal formulation to speed up healing.