Treament... and Dragons.

Real people with real health concerns. That is what this year is all about.  We are given cases in almost all of our classes. It is then up to us to come up with a diagnosis and a treatment plan (amongst other things, like what lab tests we should order, what next steps to take (future plan), etc).

For instance, today we talked about treating schizophrenia and anorexia nervosa using nutritional supplements. Yesterday, we talked about rhinitis (common cold) and influenza (flu) and how to treat these conditions using botanicals/herbs. Earlier in the week we talked about depression cases and using counseling/psychology as treatment. Lastly, we learned about muscle knots/trigger points and how to treat with either massage and acupuncture. It’s been quite the week of learning how to treat… and this is only the beginning.  I also love how naturopathic doctors have such big tool boxes; there are so many different ways (i.e. modalities) to treat one condition. 

Gone are the days of finding out what is wrong (diagnosis/pathology) and how it happened (pathophysiology). Here are the days of treating the root cause. I’ve officially reached the ‘treatment’ aspect of the curriculum. Yippee! 

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Image source here.

In other news, today I got to try some special acupuncture needling techniques today. For instance, we learned different ways to manipulate the needle while being inserted and removed in order to achieve different effects. I naively thought that there was only one way to 'jab a needle' into a body, but boy am I wrong.  There are tons of different techniques with funny names like 'building the mountain' and 'capture the dragon'.  Ha ha! Oh, TCM, you cease to amuse me.