If you have never had Chinese herbs or acupuncture then you may wonder what to expect from a visit with one of our practitioners…
To start off with, your practitioner will ask you to fill out a form with some basic information about yourself and your medical history. Once your practitioner has had a quick look at that, we will then sit down with you in the treatment room for a bit of a chat and then a treatment will follow. We will start by asking a number of questions about the presenting complaint and then delve a little deeper into some areas of your health that we may think are relevant to you at the time.
The main diagnostic tools used in Chinese medicine are pulse diagnosis and tongue diagnosis. So to start, we will ‘fell your pulse’ on both left and right sides and record what we feel. The pulse reflects for us the state of your health and directs us to how we might best treat that- which formulas to use and/or which acupuncture points to needle. We feel for strength, depth and then specific features- is it tight, big, thin, wiry? Is it bigger or weaker in some positions that others? This all leads us to diagnosis that we can use for treatment.
Just as we feel changes in the pulse some practitioners will also look at the tongue for changes. When we use the tongue to diagnose we look at the colour of the tongue, its shape, whether of not there is a tongue coat on it or not and any other significant changes that may give us more information about your diagnosis.
Putting these diagnostic tools together with the symptoms that are presented we can put together a treatment plan which may include herbs and/or acupuncture and may sometimes include dietary or lifestyle advice.
If we prescribe herbs for you then we make them up for you on the spot. We will tailor a formula based on classical formulas that were designed years and years ago for various illnesses and ailments. More often than not we will mix up granules for you to take home and dissolve in water to ingest.
If we prescribe and acupuncture treatment for you then we will do that then and there as well. The VERY fine needles get inserted into specific acupuncture points and stay in there for around about 30 minutes give or take depending on the case and the person. Half an hour of stillness and relaxation- who wouldn’t want that!
If you have any questions about treatments using herbs or acupuncture, please do not hesitate to use our contact us page to get in touch and we will do out best to answer them all.