The Damp-Heat of Our Midwestern Summer 🌞❣️🌦️🌈
/Summerheat and Summer Dampness...
How's your Midwestern Summer going? If you're living in Wisconsin, it is hard to miss the experience of intense heat and humidity. In this newsletter, we are going to explore the impacts of heat and humidity on our bodies through the lens of the Chinese Medicine paradigm.
Climatic Qi in Chinese Medicine
I often speak a lot about the 5 Elements of Chinese Medicine with my patients and in these newsletters: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood. The 5 Elements have associations with the Seasons more broadly and help Chinese Medicine clinicians make sense of your symptoms as they might present on, around or throughout the punctuations of the cyclical Seasons.
In Chinese Medicine we also utilize and acknowledge the clinical relevance and impact of the changes in weather and how that can produce or contribute to any number of symptoms. Perhaps you've noticed a headache or joint pains come on as a storm front approaches? Or your symptoms worsen or improve in dry or cold conditions? Or perhaps you feel amazing or you simply cannot stand the heat?
Enter the 6 Qi in the Chinese Medicine framework: Wind, Heat, Fire, Dampness, Dryness and Cold.
In Chinese Medicine, the qualities of Qi (aka Energy if this happens to be your first email!) can combine and you can have something your Acupuncturist might classify as a Wind-Heat or Wind-Cold Invasion. You may experience Damp-Heat or Damp-Cold. We refer to these as patterns of imbalance in Chinese Medicine and they help us pick our Acupuncture Points and our Chinese Herbal Formulas.
For the purposes of our exploration, we will dwell on Dampness and Heat (and Damp-Heat) as they pertain to our most recent weather patterns.
Dampness...
Chinese Medicine often relies on metaphors and imagery rooted in the natural world to illustrate concepts as they pertain to health and illness or wellness and imbalance.
So when you think of Dampness what images, qualities or feelings come to your mind?
To some degree you can intuit how you might feel (or how you are feeling given the rainfall we have had!) if you were trying to combat Dampness as a pattern of imbalance in your own body.
Among many things, Dampness encumbers. It is heavy and fatiguing. Dampness can be very physical and cause swelling of the tissues, weight gain, nasal congestion, frequent urination, diarrhea, nausea, loss of appetite, lethargy, brain fog or depression as some examples. Dampness can be Cold or Hot, depending upon the circumstances or our constitutional tendencies.
Heat...
When you think of your physical experience of Heat, many of the signs and symptoms are also intuitive. You sweat, your skin flushes, if overexposed to the sun your skin may become red and even peel.
Sign and symptoms of trapped Heat or a Heat pattern of imbalance may also include skin irritations or rashes, systemic inflammation and all manner of inflammatory responses from superficial tissues like a stye on your eyelid, acne, gut irritation with bowel irregularities, urinary tract infections, sinus infections, or fever. Heat can contribute to chronic headaches, painful menses, or frequent spotting.
So when we combine the pathologies of Damp and Heat, we call that Damp-Heat (I know you never would have guessed?! :)). Damp-Heat presentations can look like any combination of the above imbalances: redness AND swelling, fever AND diarrhea, feeling NO appetite and then feeling ravenous, having a headache AND feeling fatigue.
Supporting Vitality in Summer
Utilizing Acupuncture Points and Chinese Herbal Medicine, your Acupuncturist does things such as Clear Heat and Drain Dampness to ameliorate your symptoms, improve your access to your vital life force and to restore your whole body to a sense of relative ease and balance.
Here are some of my favorite acupuncture points to Soothe Fire, Drain Dampness and Clear Heat. You can apply acupressure all on your own for an increased sense of well-being:
Heart-8
Spleen-9
Stomach-44/Large Intestine-11
Pericardium-6 (for nausea and low appetite)
I hope everyone is staying cool, staying safe and enjoying how lush and green it is outside (a wonderful side effect of all this moisture and humidity). If you need anything or have questions please don't hesitate to reach out or book a consultation!