June 8, 2022

Are hernias treatable? I've heard and learnt from conventional medicine they are not treatable. You need to have surgeries to have meshes put in to secure them in place. I have run into quite a few people who told me they had such things put into them. But I've read also that Chinese MEdicine can treat it yet was not too convinced. After all, the thing has popped out, so how can you put it back in, non-physically. However, from many historical TCM texts, it has been recorded that they are treatable, not with acupuncture but with herbs(even more amazing). Again, good to have this knowledge, but unsure if it is true, or if true, to what extent.

Later someone from a city roughly 50 minutes drive away in the west called to see if I can deal with this. I said, ok I'll try. At around this time, I was dealing with a number of digestive patients, and was coming to some sort of revelation that hernias are probably just digestive issues developed to the extreme. The patient told me, she got this many many years ago at a younger age, at which time it went away on its own. This time, it lingered, and her GP told her 'you need surgery'. She told me she's too young to get surgery. I said, 'I would agree, let's see what we can do'. I didn't treat this like a 'hernia' though. Because a 'hernia' in TCM is actually something quite different and is treated in another way. (TCM has many different schools of thought, but can be generally lumped into two camps. Despite whatever name they give themselves, one adopts more of a Western medicine mindset when understanding and treating problems, while the other a more traditional way of viewing issues. The 'traditional' way is essentially non-comprehensible to modern people unless you actually immerse yourself in it for many years. I have, through the years, transitioned gradually from the former to the latter, as I've realized if you want to do TCM justice, you need to go old-school, even if sometimes it makes no sense, or even seemingly, goes against common belief/knowledge.)

So for this issue I treated it as a digestive problem only as that was how it would be viewed if you put it under the lense of traditional TCM(in terms of this patient specifically; other 'hernia' patients if they came, may not be treated this way however.) I told the patient, if it's going to improve or not, you'll know in 3 visits.(I say this to all new patients; I used to say 4 but have improved to 3 now).

2nd visit she came back couple weeks later, and honestly the hernia literally shrank. I had done detailed 3D measurements by hand before and after and literally it shrank roughly 50%. Really, I was more surprised than the patient. Initially, patient came in to get acupuncture and herbs. Later, as she was too busy, she just got the herbs. I didn't hear back from her since for many months. I only recently followed up with her a few days prior to writing this when sifting through my old files and was told, the hernia was gone. She also lost 10 pounds.(if you ask me if I treat weight issues my answer is NO(currently) because old-school TCM does not view weight gain negatively but rather positively; again, something that makes no sense to modern people)

To this day, I'm still delving into what TCM can do.