Sleep and Insomnia by Orange Acupuncture in Orange County (3)
How TCM describe sleep?
Like I said in How Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) look at Menstruation : Traditional Chinese Medicine uses the natural world as a metaphor for the human body.
Qi (the energy) is like the water, when the sun (active energy) rise, it gets heated and evaporate to become cloud that flows in the sky. When the sun sets, it become cold, and fall down to the earth like the rain or the fog. It seeps into the earth, and hydrate everything that’s growing in it.
So the distribution of Qi controls the biological clock in our body:
When we wake up from the sleep, the Qi must be activated and start to spread out under our skin, and supply our eyes, ears and nose. If it isn’t activated enough, it’ll be like a raining day: we’ll feel tired and cold.
When we want to fall asleep, the Qi needs to be deactivated, start to seep into our body and hydrate everything within. If it isn’t deactivated enough, it’ll be like perpetual day: we won’t be able to sleep.
If there’s any reason cause the Qi hard to seep into our body, it well become a light sleep, and make us wake up tired.
How can acupuncture and herb help insomnia
Acupuncture and herb is able to adjust the biological clock by stimulating acu-points and adjust the activating and deactivating of the energy. In the clinical practice of acupuncture, we found that stomach meridian and spleen meridian are in charge of activating and deactivating the energy. Those people who’s having sleeping disorder related to this set of meridian are having hard time to fall asleep. They tend to be more hyper or emotional. They might be easy to feel hot, or having cold feet because the energy doesn’t goes down. It might cause high blood pressure too. They might be thin, because the metabolism is working faster, unless they’re lack of sleep for too long and become weak.
Gallbladder meridian and liver meridian controls the switch of day and night. Those people who’s having sleeping disorder related to this set of meridian often wake up for no reason at the same time period at night, it’s usually around 3 o’clock or 5 o’clock. They might have more emotional pressure, or just been through some bad event in life. Some of them feels hard to fall asleep because their brain is still running a lot of things from the day.
Bladder meridian and kidney meridian keeps the energy in side of the body. Those people who’s having sleeping disorder related to this set of meridian might keep struggling between very light sleep and wake up feeling that they didn’t sleep at all. They might feel thirst during the day, or having oral ulcer for no reason. They might feel weak, and easy to be cold. Some of them might have chronic diarrhea, and sore back.
ORANGE ACUPUNCTURE, WINSTON WANG