Author: blue-dragon-acupuncture.com
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Gout in Chinese Medicine: Dampness, Heat and the Weather
I have been reading a biography of Wilkie Collins, the Victorian novelist who was a close friend of Charles Dickens and who was best known for The Woman in White and The Moonstone, suffered from gout for much of his adult life. When Collins travelled to America in 1873–74 however, hoping to experience the same success there that…
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Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine for Low Libido
Low libido is extremely common, but it can be surprisingly difficult to talk about. A reduced interest in sex may appear gradually, sometimes so gradually that it is difficult to say exactly when things changed. For some people, sexual desire disappears during a period of stress or exhaustion. For others, it may accompany menopause, hormonal…
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Psoriasis and Chinese Medicine Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin condition that can be difficult to live with. It may appear as dry, scaly patches on the elbows or knees, affect the scalp, hands or feet, or occur in other parts of the body. For some people it is relatively mild; for others, the itching,…
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Appetite Control in Chinese Medicine: Cooling Foods, Yin and the Stomach
I find— as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten fatter, and I find it’s a struggle to control my weight, far the opposite situation to when I was younger, when it was a struggle to gain a healthy amount of weight, and to borrow a phrase from a friend of mine, there was more fat on…
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Artemisinin and the Ancient Chinese Medicine Text That Helped Change Modern Medicine
In 2015, the Chinese scientist Tu Youyou was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Her discovery was not an acupuncture treatment, nor was it a traditional Chinese herbal remedy in the form in which it had been used for centuries. It was something rather more interesting. Tu Youyou and her colleagues had taken…
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Tai Chi: What Does the Scientific Evidence Actually Show?
The health benefits of Tai Chi have been studied for decades. A remarkable new umbrella review brings together evidence from 1,744 randomised controlled trials. As a long-time Tai Chi practitioner and acupuncturist, I take a look at what the research actually tells us. I have practised Tai Chi for many years. Like many people who…
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Cosmetic Acupuncture: What Is It and Does It Work?
Cosmetic acupuncture is a form of acupuncture that aims to improve the appearance and condition of the skin while taking a broader approach to health and wellbeing. Sometimes called facial acupuncture or facial rejuvenation acupuncture, it involves the insertion of very fine acupuncture needles into selected areas of the face, and sometimes elsewhere on the body. The treatment…
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Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine for Insomnia
Insomnia is more than simply having a bad night’s sleep. For some people it means lying awake for hours before falling asleep. For others, it means waking repeatedly during the night, waking very early in the morning, or sleeping for what seems like a reasonable amount of time but still feeling unrefreshed the following day.…
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TCM Treatment of Eczema: How Chinese Medicine Approaches Eczema and Itchy Skin
Eczema is one of the most common skin conditions seen in clinical practice. It can cause dryness, redness, inflammation, itching, oozing and scaling, and for some people it can become a persistent or recurring problem. From the perspective of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), however, eczema is not simply a disease of the skin. The appearance…
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Does Gua Sha Facial Massage Really Work?
What is Gua Sha? The Chinese characters for Gua Sha are Gua 刮, which literally means to shave (the lines on the right side of the character are a picture of a blade) or to scrape, and Sha 痧, which contains the character for “sand”, and is the name of the characteristic small sand-like marks…