When 42-year-old Michelle came to see me in 2010, she hadn't been feeling well for 6 weeks. She had to urinate frequently and had a burning sensation in the urethra. Her back was aching a lot, and she was feeling tired. Some days when it got worse, she was feverish and headachy. In the last few days she noticed some blood in her urine. To me it sounded like a problem of kidney stones. So I decided to use acupuncture to alleviate the symptoms, and also asked her to go to see her GP for an exam...
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When Sonya came to see me in 2006, she was a mother of two children. She and her husband then wanted to have a third child, but this time it wasn't easy. In the last one and a half years, she'd had three miscarriages, which all happened in about week 11, and the last one just happened 2 months ago. Sonya also had type I diabetes and had been on insulin for many years. According to her history and clinical manifestations, I believed her problem was deficiency of Qi and blood, and the princip...

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My friend Colin is 82 years old and lives on his own. He had a heart attack during Christmas in 2010 and was kept in hospital for a week, diagnosed with myocardial infarction. Since then he sometimes had short breath and mostly it could ease off itself. But one night in October, he had a more severe one which made him very panicky, so he phoned me to ask for help. When I got to his house, he had just called the ambulance. He was sitting on the bed side panting. His chest was full of bubbling ...

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Many studies in recent years have shown that acupuncture is more effective than conventional treatments for lower back pain, though some researchers concluded that it's just a placebo effect - no more effective than sham acupuncture which doesn't penetrate the skin or places the needles in random points. I admit the existence of placebo effect, but the question is, to what extent it works? Can it work as well as real acupuncture does? In some studies, acupuncture was delivered for quite a lon...
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When Keith first came to see me, he was asking for herbal medicine for his prostate problem. He was diagnosed with an enlarged prostate two years ago. He kept frequently and urgently passing water, but couldn’t pass it out completely. He always felt some discomfort in the lower abdomen. Apart from this, he also had aches in the sole of his feet, and none of the various treatments he’d tried could help. Regarding the prostate condition, I said to him that acupuncture should work more qu...

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59 year-old Mrs Jackson came from Scotland. Her complaint was a stomach pain for 15 years. She often felt bloated in the stomach and belched a lot. The symptoms seemed had started after she took a lot of antibiotics for an infection many years ago. Her doctor said it was gastritis and prescribed various medications, but none of them could get rid of the symptoms completely. I gave her an electro-acupuncture treatment. The points I used were Zhong Wan in the abdomen, Liang Qiu in the legs, Ge ...

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When Adina and her husband had their first child, everything went smoothly. But a few years later when they wanted a second one, it wasn't that easy this time. They tried for over a year but nothing happened. As she was 39 years old now, Adina reckoned that her reproductive ability was getting weak, so she and her husband decided to try IVF. But unfortunately, two consecutive IVF both failed soon after the embryos were put in. While waiting for the third IVF, Adina came to see me to look for ...
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43-year-old Rudy is a paramedic. He was limping when he walked into my clinic. A few weeks ago he started having a back pain after lifting patients. It was so bad that he couldn’t walk properly. As a medical professional, he had tried everything he could get - taking pain killers, having physiotherapy and even injections, but none of them worked. Feeling sick of it, he decided to come to the Lake District for a holiday. Wandering in the town centre of Penrith, he noticed my clinic and promp...

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A few years ago, after trying to conceive for 13 months, Kerry finally was pregnant. But unfortunately, a miscarriage happened in week thirteen of her pregnancy. From then on, she couldn’t conceive again. Both she and her husband went for thorough examinations and nothing was found abnormal. As Kerry was nearly 40 years old, she thought there was not much chance left, so they tried IVF, but it failed. Finally Kerry decided to try acupuncture. When she first came to see me, I was told that a...

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Bryan had suffered from ear infection for 3 years. When had a flare-up, both of his ears would be very painful and soon blocked by ear wax, some fluid might come out. Since he was allergic to antibiotics, he could only use ear drops. Every time he had to use them for at least 2 weeks before feeling better then a relapse would come soon. The recurrent ear infection made this 33 year-old man feel generally unwell. His hearing started to deteriorate and his energy was so low that he felt like an...

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