Q. Dear Sir, would you please be so kind to help me.
My mum has problems with her feet. She had oedema around ankle joint and around feet, which become more and more painful when she walks but also when she rests. She has a bad circulation with cold toes. All lab results are within normal ranges. Doctors excluded any cardiological cause. She was exemined by rheumatologists, but no conclusion.Would she benefit with acupuncture?
Many thanks
A. This is not an uncommon situation for an acupuncturist, where someone comes to them who has exhausted all of the usual tests with nothing unusual found and yet the pains and discomfort from which they suffer continuing to blight their lives.
Traditional Chinese acupuncture is based on an entirely different way of looking at the body and its workings. The symptoms which people have are understood within a different framework and often make sense from an oriental medicine perspective where in the western view they are simply a number of different items. The underlying theory of Chinese medicine is also based on very simple premises of balance and good flow of qi, the word used to described the body's energy. Even where a practitioner does not go directly after a symptom, there are strategies involving the whole system which are none the less effective in restoring good overall function and having an effect on symptoms wherever they appear.
The problems which your mother is experiencing - cold extremities, poor circulation, swelling - are all commonly found in specific syndromes described in Chinese medicine, and the skill of the practitioner is mainly deployed in making sense of these in conjunction with diagnostic signs unique to Chinese medicine - looking at the tongue and taking the pulse at the wrist. Your best course of action is to see if a BAcC member local to you is prepared to have a brief chat with you and your mother to assess whether treatment would be beneficial for your mother, and if so, what kind of timescale and frequency of treatment might be involved.
As a footnote, it is always good, when people have had a great many tests, to know that some of the problems which cause a great deal of worry have been ruled out. It may be cold comfort to someone still in pain, but ruling out heart disease and other blood-testable conditions is extremely reassuring.
