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The Chinese New Year is an opportunity to honor family and friends and enjoy some of China’s traditions. Lucky colors for the year are brown, red, and purple, and lucky numbers are two and seven. Some foods are considered lucky because of the similarity of their names to other words in the language, such as the fact that the Chinese word for “orange”, 橙 chéng, sounds like the world for gold, 金 jīn, or that the word for “tangerine”, 柑橘 gānjú, sounds like the word for “luck”, 运气 yùnqì. The bright orange color of the fruits also represents the metallic sheen of gold. Find out what other lucky foods to eat and display to ensure a prosperous and happy new year!

Traditional Chinese Medicine can provide an alternative treatment for seasonal allergies and sinus problems. Most medical practitioners will recommend using decongestants, non-steroidal nasal sprays, allergy shots, antihistamines, or nasal corticosteroids to combat these sinus problems. While these options have been successful for many patients afflicted with burning throats, itchy eyes, inflamed eyes, and stuffy nose, there are many individuals that do not respond well to these treatment plans, or who would like to go a more natural route.

Pediatrics as a specialty is one of the oldest topics discovered in the Chinese medical literature. Sabine Wilms discusses that as early as the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), there is mention of pediatric treatments in at least 19 volumes within the Imperial Library, (Venerating the Root, Part 1, 2013). Sun Simiao was a notable author in the early Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) who emphasized the treatment of children and women above any other medical issue.

Katy visited our center with a seemingly disparate collection of symptoms that were causing her distress. She described a pattern that was episodic in nature and involved abdominal bloating, belching, acid reflux, loose stools, shallow breathing, and palpitations. A cardiologist had ruled out serious heart disease and she’d been offered beta-blockers for what had been diagnosed as pre-ventricular contractions (PVCs) and occasional tachycardia.

We are presently experiencing a quantum evolution in our perceptions of the aging process, which involves the elimination of outmoded ideas about what it means to be elderly. This paradigm shift has been facilitated by half a billion Baby Boomers1 worldwide who have provided a powerful stimulus for a collective change to the ‘face of aging’. This is not the previous silent generation, but an outspoken, entitled demographic, which, by force of their sheer numbers, is amending existing conscious and unconscious social contracts.

Acupuncture and aromatherapy are two individual modalities that have been used for thousands of years to successfully treat a gamut of conditions and diseases. But what happens when they are combined together in one treatment? Is the treatment session more effective? Is there no difference at all? Does it increase patient satisfaction and comfort? I set out to answer these questions in 2011 while obtaining a doctoral degree in acupuncture and Oriental medicine. Here I will share with you what I discovered and suggest that yes, combining aromatherapy with acupuncture can make a treatment more effective.

One of the four categories of examination in Chinese medicine is the “looking diagnosis”. Observing the patient’s skin tone, the Shen in the eyes, and checking the tongue are all elements of creating a clear, effective diagnosis. Observing posture can add a layer to the examination that is insightful, especially given the frequent occurrence of postural distortion in modern times. We can start looking at our patients as soon as we greet them in the waiting room. How do they sit, stand, and walk? What kind of posture do they have? Instinctively, many of us sense that a slouching or hunching patient has a qi deficiency.

The classical Chinese medical system views health and disease through the “eight-principle and six-syndrome” differentiation methods. In ancient times, Chinese medical experts identified groups of symptoms as patterns, and associated them with specific formulas. Eventually, with repeated clinical success they recorded these patterns as “formula patterns”. Later, during the Eastern Han Dynasty between 40 to 200 AD, Zhang Zhongjing recorded all of this clinical experience handed down from generations in theShang Han Za Bing Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases), which was later edited and separated into the Shang Han Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage) and the Jin Gui Yao Lüe (Essentials from the Golden Cabinet).

Tendonitis is the single most diagnosed chronic connective tissue disease in Western medicine. It affects every major joint within the body and can make the most well conditioned athlete limp to the sidelines, as the pain can be overwhelming. Whether it afflicts a professional golfer or weekend tennis player, tendon pain is a huge problem affecting all sports. In our everyday lives, tendon pain also creates major problems. According to statistics of Workers Compensation injuries in California, repetitive motion disease (aka tendonitis) is the leading diagnosis for claims and disability in the state.

I would describe Five Element or Five Phases theory as both a context and a lens, applied with intent to diagnose and treat a patient. “Five elements” and “five phases” are terms that have been used interchangeably, with slightly different meanings. “Five elements” describes five compository forces occurring in Nature, namely, earth, wood, metal, water and fire. Some scholars prefer to use the term “phases” rather than “elements,” in order to convey the morphing and co-affecting properties of the elements, and avoid portraying them as being static.