 2.1.3 Yin and Yang (color) Let’s think about the Yin and Yang of colors. Colors like blue and violet have Yin energy, and colors like yellow and red have Yang energy. Blue and violet feel cold, and yellow and red feel warm, don’t they? When you have a fever, your face is red. When you feel very cold, your face is bluish pale and your lips can be violet. You can say the same thing about what you eat. For example, eggplant and strawberries grow above ground so they have more Yin type energy. The color of eggplant is violet, so the Yin energy of eggplants is very strong. On the contrary, the color of strawberries is red so strawberries have more Yang energy than eggplant. Potato, sweet potato, taro, etc. grow underground so they have more Yang energy, but they don’t go into the ground. Instead, they expand. It means they have more centrifugal energy, which is Yin energy. When you look at their sprouts, their color is close to violet. Therefore, they are Yang type vegetables, but they have more Yin energy than carrots, burdock, etc which grow into the ground.
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 It was known that there were three types of dementia:
(1) Alzheimer's disease caused by the deposition of amyloid-Beta. (2) Vascular dementia caused by the blockage of brain blood vessels. (3) Dementia with Lewy Bodies by the deposition of lewy bodies. But there is another type of dementia, which is Dementia caused by low blood sugar. Our brain works mainly using sugar as a source of energy, so decreasing the supply of sugar to the brain causes a dramatic fall in cognitive recognition. As a result of that, symptoms of dementia like forgetfulness, difficulty to control emotion appear. The symptoms tend to appear before meals that are the time of low blood sugar. This low blood sugar is caused by the abnormality of the hormone which controls blood sugar so that this type of dementia can be cured by elevating blood sugar by taking medication to elevate blood sugar.  If you have low back pain or knee pain for years and nothing have helped, the cause of the pain is possibly not from your low back or knees. Check if the lower back or knee pain is caused by the new cause When one of the knees is lifted up and the posture is checked from the back, if the buttock that the knee is lifted up is higher than the other side, that is normal. But if the buttock that the knee is lifted up is level with the other side or lower than the other side, that can be caused by the new cause (Fig. 1 & 2). This condition is caused by the abnormality of the hip joint. The normal hip joint has a gap in the joint, but the gap in the abnormal hip joint is narrow (Fig. 3). The narrowing of the gap causes inflammation, and the pain in the hip joint can be mistakenly felt at the low back or knee where is connected to the hip joint through the muscles and nerves (Fig. 4). Why does the abnormality of the hip joint occur? There is cartridge that plays a role of cushion between the femur and the pelvis. The abnormality of the hip joint is caused by placing a huge load on the cartridge. Since the load is placed to the pelvis diagonally due to the structure, more load is placed than placing a load vertically like the knee joint. The cartridge gradually wears due to aging or other reasons. The method to regenerate the worn cartridge of the hip joint The method is called Jiggling that is the movement of shaking the leg lightly up and down or from side to side. When you move the hip joint by shaking the leg, nutrition flows into the joint from synovial fluid and the growth of the cartridge is promoted, regenerating the cartridge. How to do the Jiggling (1) Sit on a chair bending your knees at 90 degree and move your heels up and down. (2) You can do it for both legs at the same time or for each leg alternately. (3) Doing it more than 2 hours a day is effective. Regeneration of the cartridge takes more than a few years, but the pain can be relieved much sooner (Fig. 5). Experient A 53 years old woman who had low back pain for years and whose cartridge of the hip joints were worn out tried the jiggling 2-3 hours a day. 10 days later she started to feel lighter in her low back and when she lifted up a box, she didn’t feel pain, though she was feeling pain before. The most difficult movement was bending her back backward, but she didn’t feel pain with this movement.      Do you sleep well?
Poor sleep has 2.4 times higher risk of death due to heart diseases or others, and 2 times higher increase ratio of cancer cells, compared to good sleep. According to a research performed in Oxford University in England, 14 poor sleepers chosen randomly wrote about stressful events and emotional experience at that time for 3 nights. Before the experiment, the average of their sleeping onset latency was 40 minutes, but after the experiment, it became 14 minutes. Writing about stressful events and the emotional experience at that time leads to looking at the stressful events objectively. That reduces stress, stabilizes the condition of autonomic nervous system and leads to the improvement of sleep. This method is used as a treatment method for insomnia in England and some other countries. Experiment A 64 year-old woman who had been suffering from insomnia tried the experiment for 5 days. She has difficulty to fall asleep and wakes up 3 times at the middle of night. The method is writing about stressful events and the emotional experience at that time before going to bed for about 15minutes. It is important to take about 15 minutes to process the stressful events. The paper can be torn up and thrown after writing. She didn’t think of any stressful events in her daily life before the experiment, but she recognized that she had complaints about her husband by writing. After 5th night, she only woke up once for urination, but after that, she didn’t wake up until the alarm set off. She reported she could sleep well the first time in 2 years. If you feel like you haven’t gotten rid of the fatigue accumulated lately, you tend to get sick when the seasons change, or my appetite is less than before, you may have a weakened immune system. Immune strength is an indicator of the activity that immune cells defeat the enemies invading our body. So if your immune system is strong, you can maintain your health forever. But immune strength lowers with age. The immune strength at the age of 70s reduces by half the strength of 20s. That makes you not able to defeat the enemies occurring in the body. As a result, you tend to have cancer or you may have serious pneumonia only by food entering the air tube. An organ important to strengthen immune system That is intestines. Half of the immune cells are created in the intestines. There are the large intestine and the small intestine, but the organ more important for the immune system is the small intestine. The key of immune strength is small intestinal villi which are small, finger-like projections that extend into the lumen of the small intestine. If you have long and busy intestinal villi, your immune system is strong, but if you have short and scattered intestinal villi, your immune system is weak (Fig. 1) (Fig. 2). In an experiment, people who were diagnosed as having long and busy intestinal villi by a blood test had more active NK cells than the referenced value, which indicate the activity of immune system. On the other hand, people who were diagnosed as having short and scattered intestinal villi had less active NK cells than the referenced value. The major role of the small intestine is absorbing nutrition from what you eat, but another important role is the function as immune system. When you eat something, toxins and germs with food get into the small intestine. The immune system of the small intestine prevents them from invading the body. Fig. 3 shows immune cells in villi. These immune cells kill the things trying to invade the body such as germs, pathogenic bacteria. The area of the inside of the small intestine is about 200 square meter (2153 square feet), which is equal to a tennis court. All this area contains immune cells. In the small intestine, there are about 60 % of immune cells in the body, which are more than a few hundred billion. How to make intestinal villi long and busy Intestinal villi are lost or shortened due to aging, but they can be busy by taking a specific nutrition. The nutrition making intestinal villi busy and immune system strengthened is protein. Glutamine acid contained in protein is effective to activate the small intestine. Glutamine acid is considered as extending the shortened intestinal villi and increasing the decreased intestinal villi. Experiment A 70 years old woman whose intestinal villi’s condition was 43.9 (Referenced value: 45) and NK activation representing immune strength was 3.3 (Referenced value: 8.9) tried to eat more protein by adding some protein-contained food such as cheese, eggs, fishes, meats, Tofu to her usual meals for 5 days. After the experiment, her intestinal villi’s condition was improved to 61 (Before: 43.9) and NK activation was improved to 3.6 (Before: 3.3).     Overview The patient is a 36 year-old male presented with mild alcohol addiction. He can’t help but drink at least 3 bottles of beer a day. He also has depression, low energy, poor concentration in the afternoon and seasonal allergy. The acupuncture treatment included Individual Acupuncture Treatment for Adult to strengthen his Liver energy, treatment for addiction, and symptomatic treatment for seasonal allergy when the symptom showed up. His desire to drink gradually decreased and from around 10th treatment, he didn’t need to drink even in social settings. His emotion became stable and happy, energy became higher and his concentration in the afternoon was back. When he was suffering from seasonal allergy symptoms such as sneezing, runny nose, the treatment to control the symptoms were added. At the 14th treatment, the course of treatments for alcohol addiction was finished. Discussion He didn’t have any pressure-pain points on his body when I checked his body, so I didn’t address removing the painful points. Instead, I tried to improve the flow of his energy. I used ear acupuncture points for addiction. I left needles on those points for about 30 minutes, so while I was treating his back, the needles were retained on his ears. I also used one or two press-balls on his ear. There was up and down about the amount of alcohol, but it gradually decreased and his urge to drink was gradually lost as well. His mood became stable and he seldom felt depressed. The symptoms of addiction like smoking, alcohol or other mental problems like anxiety, light depression seem like decreasing and being controlled after 10 treatments or 3 months of treatments. If you want to stop or reduce cigarettes or alcohol, we’re here to help!
Call today to set up your appointment: 617-584-8703 Book now Online  According to a newest research published on New England Journal of Medicine, a specific substance prevented the aging of the heart and decreased the risk of death caused by heart failure.
The substance is a ketone body, which everybody can produce in the body. How can a ketone body prevent the aging of the heart? The number of heart beat in its lifetime is determined by a kind of animal. The number is about 700 million times. For example, the heart beat of a mouse is 600 times per minutes so that it reaches 70 million times in 2 years. That is why their lifespan is about 2 years. The heart beat of a horse is about 45 times per minutes so that it reaches 70 million times in 25 years. The less the number of heart beat is, the longer the lifespan is. So it is important to decrease useless heart beat in order to prevent the aging of the heart, and the key factor is a ketone body. But the amount of ketone bodies depends on a person. Healthy person’s heart beat is about 100 thousand times per day. If it is less than 100 thousand times, their heart can keep healthy longer. The more the heart beat is exceeding 100 thousand times, the easier the heart is aging by the useless heart beat. The more ketone bodies are, the faster the elevated heart beat comes back to the original state, reducing the burden on the heart and preventing the aging of the heart. The more ketone bodies are, the more sufficiently heart beat goes down while sleeping, preventing the aging of the heart. How to secrete more ketone bodies Ketone bodies are produced in the liver and work as energy source to move the body instead of sugar and fat. When you have shortness of breath after climbing up stairs, the heart starts to pump out blood to all the body to deliver oxygen in order to relieve shortness of breath. When ketone bodies are used to pump out blood, the amount of blood pumped out at once increases because of the better energy efficiency, compared to normal energy sources such as carbohydrate or fat. That means heart can work easily and suppresses heart beat, leading to long life of the heart. How can we secrete more ketone bodies? The most effective method is fasting. A 46 years old male whose ketone bodies were 51 (μ mol/L) tried 2 days fasting with drinking a glass of vegetable juice for every meal. After 2 days fasting, his ketone bodies became 4665 (μ mol/L) which was more than 90 times. The amount of ketone bodies produced in the body depends on the amount of sugar in the body. Sugar is used as the source of energy to move the body, but if the amount of sugar decreases due to fasting or other reasons, ketone bodies are produced in the liver as substitute energy of sugar. But it is impossible to continue fasting long time. So how can we secrete more ketone bodies without trying too hard? The important thing is making fasting time longer. The recommended method is mini-fasting which keeps the interval between dinner and breakfast long. A 50 year old woman whose ketone bodies were 19 (μ mol/L) (Reference value: 85 μ mol/L) attended an experiment. She was eating some snack after dinner so that the interval between the snack and breakfast was only 7 hours. She stopped eating snack and made the interval between dinner and breakfast 11 hours for 5 days. After the 5 days experiment, her ketone bodies were 497 (μ mol/L).  Overview Neck pain is a common symptom in acupuncture clinic, but in the case that there is radiation to other parts of the body, the condition is sometimes complicated. In this case, because of the recent onset, it took a relatively short time to heal. The patient is a 36 year-old woman presented with 3 weeks of pain and tingling sensation from her neck to her right arm, fingers, chest and upper back. She wakes up every 2 hours due to burning pain. She had 3 acupuncture treatments within 11 days, and pain and tingling sensation in her neck, arm, fingers, chest and upper back disappeared. Acupuncture Treatment Detail The acupuncture treatment is based on Acupuncture Treatment for Adult. [Treatment 1] When I asked her to move her neck, she felt pain inside her shoulder blade when she bent her neck backward and also felt pain in her right shoulder when she bent her neck forward. Fig. 1 shows the painful points with pressure on her body when I checked her body during diagnosis. The treatment included strengthening Liver energy, leaving 3 needles on her head for 10 minutes and touching some points with a round-tip needle to remove the painful points with pressure. After the treatment, her painful points disappeared. [Treatment 2] She reported that the next day of the first treatment she felt pain, but since then there was neither pain or tingling sensation. There was no pain in her back and right shoulder when she bent her neck forward and backward. The treatment was similar to the first treatment, but much fewer acupuncture points were used to remove the painful points. [Treatment 3] She reported that she felt tingling sensation once, but other than that, there was no pain. On this day, she had headache on her right temple and back of her head. She said that she maybe drank too much wine last night and she had had migraine headache occasionally. Fig. 2 shows the painful points with pressure on her body before Treatment 3. The number of painful points decreased considerably, compared to Treatment 1 (Fig. 1). Maybe because of headache, I strengthened Spleen energy instead of Liver energy. The treatment for the pain was similar to the previous treatment. After the treatment, there was no abnormality in her neck and headache also disappeared, so the course of acupuncture treatments for pain and tingling sensation from her right neck to arm, fingers, chest and upper back was finished.
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