Treating Hot Flashes With Acupuncture

Traditional Chinese Medicine Vs True Acupuncture

During my education in Traditional Chinese Medicine I was taught that hot flashes were due to a "yin deficiency." For those of you who don't know what a yin deficiency is, it's essentially saying it is a deficiency of the energy of "inactivity" and/or of structure, such as blood, thereby yang becomes over active and you have signs of heat.

This deficiency doesn't mean there isn't enough, rather it means it's more of a functional deficiency. Nonetheless, it was common to see patients with hot flashes instantly labeled as “yin deficient.” This felt very much like Western Medicine, label the patient with some diagnosis regardless of the true root or underlying cause.

The Flashes - What causes them?

Once I started studying Morant's work on acupuncture the ideas and diagnosis that Traditional Chinese Medicine had taught me seemed rather contrary to True Acupuncture. They just didn't make sense most of the time. The diagnosis for hot flashes was one of those examples that just made no sense. I was seeing patients going through menopause and, according to the radial pulse diagnosis, their “yin” was intact but they generally had little or no yang pulses.

This is actually a very simple diagnosis when you follow True Acupuncture pulse diagnosis; however, TCM goes by qualities of the pulses and symptomatology, a more herbalized approach. Fortunately for me, I had clinic instructors who were very intelligent and allowed me to apply Morant's theories to see how well it would work.

What I learned was that often it is the case that someone has signs of "heat" that are due to a deficiency of yang. In other words, certain "yang" systems are not stable and therefore result in sudden "burst" of excessive yang symptoms, such as hot flashes.

Treating the symptoms of menopause

Did True Acupuncture have any effect on hot flashes and other symptoms of menopause? Not only did it have an effect, but it produced an amazing change. Patients would come back after one treatment and say their hot flashes were completely gone. That's amazing because in Traditional Chinese Medicine we are told that treating menopausal symptoms takes a long time (a year or more), requires the use of herbs, and that acupuncture would have little to no effect. Well, I didn't use herbs and only a few gold and silver plated needles, and the symptoms greatly decreased or vanished completely. Certainly, these patients needed follow up treatments to “correct” underlying dysfunctions, but they felt a lot better quickly.

Acupuncture is more effective than herbs

In the treatment of hot flashes as well as other menopausal symptoms True Acupuncture is significantly more effective than herbs for menopuase. It isn't even a close comparison. This is interesting because most Traditional Chinese Medical practitioners insist it is just the opposite, and there is good reason for that. The reason is simple, TCM no longer understands True Acupuncture. Modern Chinese Medicine has herbalized acupuncture and that, unfortunately, just isn't how acupuncture works. You cannot make the needle behave like an herb and you cannot use the same diagnostic system for both. They are two completely different modalities and need to be utilized as such.

Herbs for menopause can work very well with acupuncture, but you must have a clear energetic diagnosis via acupuncture in order to utilize them together effectively. If you start with a herbal diagnosis then your acupuncture will be flawed.

Get help for menopause

If you have tried Traditional Chinese Medicine and/or acupuncture with little results for symptoms of menopause, then please come in and see what Classical True Acupuncture can do for you. Certainly, you may think that this is all talk, but we can back it up and we will guarantee that. If we can't help you feel better while going through menopause then we will admit our defeat and not charge for the treatment. Can you ask for better than that?

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