Let's Talk about Glucose Issues
Glucose issues...what an interesting subject. For one thing, diabetes is a multibillion dollar business, nationally speaking that is, and worldwide of course "multitrillion" likely isn't far off either... To most people the word glucose rings bells for diabetes, and diabetes rings bells for high glucose in the blood, when the body has trouble using this essential sugar compound. But people are generally less familiar with "low" glucose, because it often gets mixed into other conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome, hypothyroidism, adrenal insufficiency, etc. Of course none of this really matters in Chinese Medicine.
Recently I've had a patient who came in to see me about her glucose issues. She has what she calls "hypoglycemic" attacks, which happens many times throughout the day and night, causing her to experience symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, pain and other accompanying discomforts which lead to much agony and dread. As a result of this, patient has sought measures to alleviate this by increasing meal intake frequency throughout the day. Despite this however the trouble remains about the same. To most people, a glucose problem such as this is always only a glucose problem, and nothing else. To me as a Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, I do not see the glucose problem. I see the problem as a digestive and nervous imbalance issue which leads to compromises in the metabolism of glucose. Thankfully though, the patient hasn't resorted to taking medications for these problems. I say thankfully because my experience tells me medications not only do absolutely very little in helping patients, they usually become something difficult to get off of once a person starts taking them, because trying to break away leads to a score of withdrawal side-effects, sometimes worse than before taking the drug.
I decided to perform a session of acupuncture for the patient. There was much tension and nervousness so my diagnosis was right. 2 weeks worth of Chinese Herbal Medicine was prescribed together with some dietary suggestions and the patient left the office.
I followed up on the patient after about 1 week and was told the herbs are helping. The patient also responded that after the acupuncture session, there was some strong responses that evening, as if the hypoglycemic attacks became more severe, but later went away. I thought to myself, the body has likely been "kick-started" as I usually say.
When the patient came back for the 2nd visit, I asked how things were. I asked, if the patient could give a score out of 10 for before and after the treatment, how would she rate it? She said things are much more stable now, both intensity and frequency. As a result she hasn't had to eat as much which is always a good thing. The patient is always recently under a lot of stress and diet hasn't been very proper, but the problem didn't get worse as it usually does. She rated 8-9/10 for before the treatment, and about 4/10 for right now.
Another interesting thing is, she used to get allergies starting about now(spring time), but as of currently it hasn't been obvious. When I told her that as she continues treatment this would improve as well. She seemed surprised to hear this. Chinese Medicine is systemic medicine I told her.