Severe Insomnia and Neurosis
Dear readers and regular visitors of my website, first of all I'd like to say Happy New Year to all of you. I'm going to start off the new year with a case of severe insomnia.
In the last month of 2014 a female patient in her 60s visited my clinic to tell me of her dire sleep troubles. As she puts it, she's been having sleeping issues for her whole life, but I wager never like now. In the recent years as far as I garner, due to certain surrounding issues, her sleep has simply deteriorated. Her medical doctor prescribed a strong type of drug.
It worked initially, but quickly waned off. The fact of the matter is that her sleep has become even worse after taking this. She then did research on the drug that she was prescribed and learned that it carried many side-effects (of course I told her this is not surprising because if there were no side-effects, then these things wouldn't be called "drugs").
In fear, and also the fact that the medication doesn't work anyway, she decided to completely go off it(I presume without the agreement of the MD). She regret that she didn't gradually taper off instead, but this is too late since going back to the medication in any amount doesn't help any further.
Unfortunately ever since she got off the drug, sleeping has gone even more south, and she subsequently soon developed what I like to call "neurosis", a condition in which her body enters into a hyperactive state, unable to calm down, together with heightened sensitivity to surrounding stimuli. No, this is not talking about superhero-esque heightened senses; this is a very uncomfortable and suffering condition where a person simply cannot rest.
I believe only a person in this state can understand the extent of the agony. Along with this, the patient manifested other troubles, such as a constant alternation between feverishness and coldness, zero appetite, prone to crying and mental breakdown, hearing her own heart beating almost constantly, among others.
In Chinese Medicine this is viewed as the "qi" not being able to stay put. I suppose if she decided to go back to the MD, tranquilizers of sort would be prescribed. In Chinese Medicine however, we treat it not by tranquilizing but by bringing the qi back to where it should be.
In the classics of Chinese Medicine, it is said that a person is able to sleep because their qi(energy) is able to return into the body, and they wake up because their energy comes out of the body. I used acupuncture and almost immediately the patient felt much more calmed down. I also prescribed some herbal medicine for her to take in the next week.
About 10 days go by and the patient came back to report her good progress. According to her, from just slightly over a week ago in which she couldn't sleep at all to now being to able to sleep a few hours at a stretch, seems almost like a dream. The patient is continuing receiving treatment and her sleep together with everything else are continuing to improve.
The patient expressed to me the utter dissatisfaction with her current MD, telling me the doctor is a "pill-pusher". I told her, "well this is the way system is built." It is a tax-paid system that almost 99% of the population believe is actually "free", when it is not.
Unfortunately the health-care system even with all its flaws still has so many "supporters". I reckon this is because the "supporters" have no idea of how incompetent and irresponsible it has now become, because to this day I have not hear one good news from anyone using it. The only reason of course why people continue to use it, is well of course it is "free". It is an outdated model that seriously needs to be modified for today's changing health-care climate.
It is also important to note that the patient took melatonin and other natural "remedies" which didn't work. The reason is because while insomnia is a common problem, but it is more complicated than meets the eye.