Dr.Jason Wang Surrey Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine in Surrey

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Prostate Enlargement and Infertility

It's been a while since I posted. Clinical practice has been busy and there wasn't time to really sit down and write something, until now. I'll share 2 cases of note that I found really interesting.

1st case is a prostate enlargement patient. This has been talked about in previous posts, but I'll be adding some new perspectives here again. The patient is one of my long term ones, who has been having regular visits for many months. I admire his diligence in cooperating with me. He started off in the beginning with severe symptoms of prostatitis, such as burning and uncomfortable urination and frequency and urgency, all hallmarks of active inflammation in that lower area. Through months of treatment the inflammation was pretty much completely wiped out. The only thing that remained and was an on-going challenge was the 'tightness' of the bladder neck area or that area where patients feel the urine initially comes out of the bladder. This happens to be the exact area where the prostate wraps around the urethra. There was some initial success, but following a lapse in his diet eating too much meat and the like the inflammatory symptoms came back. From there on almost all the progress was nearly undone. Slowly it took another while to get it all back down again and reach back to the stage of the 'tightness' feeling. Unfortunately the same methods that worked previously no longer were effective. At this point it seems we hit a road-block. At around this time recently I have been reexamining and using different acupuncture techniques. These techniques proved to be the answer for him. After one fruitful visit, his bladder neck tightness somehow opened, and has remained so for a while since then. It's good to say that we've moved to a longer term interval in between visits now.

From the perspective of Chinese Medicine, there are at least 4 'channels' that go through the prostate area. The pathology of the prostate is probably one of the most complex ones that I encounter in clinical practice and is something I currently focus on. It is not as simple as what mainstream medicine says it is. For one thing many prostate patients also have hemorrhoid problems. Also many patients who have gone through surgery to burn away excess prostate tissue still complain of the same problems. My patient was put on 2 drugs ready to move to 3 until our treatment intervened and as of current he only takes 1, with the longer term goal to reducing it to half a tablet.

The 2nd case is an infertility case. In my clinic infertility patients are divided into 2 types. The first type is what is medically termed 'primary infertility', referring to people who never had any pregnancies. The 2nd type is likewise 'secondary' infertility, referring to people who had prior pregnancies but could not become pregnant the 2nd time or who became pregnant the 2nd time but failed to fully give birth. The 2nd type is much easier to treat and faster to respond. This case I am talking about here is of the 2nd type and became pregnant after about 1 month of treatment of weekly acupuncture visits. Why is the 1st type harder to treat? There isn't a straight answer. It is just something that I observed. From experience it likely has to do with the fact that many of these patients have existing issues with their period and basal body temperature. This is not including the age factor although many who never have been pregnant before tend to be over 35 and in their 40s when they consider treatment. My patient did not have any overt issues plaguing her other than trying to conceive for long time with no success. In Chinese Medicine's point of view there was a weakness of the hormone system and lack of circulation in the reproductive organs. It was not really as simple as "stress" as most people think this is related to. Gradual tweaking of her systems with Acupuncture was enough.