The first disease we will look at in this series is uterine bleeding. As we saw in the introductory class, uterine bleeding is often broken down into a variety of diseases included early periods, heavy periods, prolonged periods, Beng Lou, midcycle bleeding, bleeding in pregnancy and bleeding unrelated to the period. All of these have in common that blood is coming out that should not be.
This class will have two parts, this first part will cover the following:
· The causes of bleeding and what I have found to be the most common causes.
· Blood stasis and bleeding
· Looking at blood quality for diagnostic keys, helpful or not?
· Important herbs and treatment principles to consider in treating bleeding
In the second class we talk about the importance of staging when working with bleeding disorders.
- What type of person is bleeding?
- How serious has the bleeding been?
- How long have they been bleeding?
- Where are they in their bleeding cycle at the time of the visit?
- Just about to bleed?
- In the midst of bleeding?
- Just after bleeding?
- 2-3 weeks before bleeding again?
- Hard to tell because it is so irregular?
How do the answers to these questions influence our treatment?
About the Series
Many practitioners of East Asian medicine have made a great effort to retrain themselves away from a disease or symptom model toward a pattern model. Our cultural tendency to see through the eyes of western medicine as well as our training in modern Chinese medicine have made it a rather difficult habit to break. And yet, many of us have taken the leap into training ourselves to see through the lens of the unique patterns our patients present with and to understand our herbal formulas as treating patterns. For me, this retraining to see and treat patterns has been my life’s work both as a practitioner and a teacher.
In this series, I will be contradicting myself exploring the benefit of starting with a disease or symptom.
The first class in the series will be an introduction about the pitfalls of being disease or symptom oriented in our approach to patients as well as the benefit of looking at patterns through the lens of a disease or symptoms. We’ll define what a pattern diagnosis and treatment is and how a disease model can help determine the pattern.
In the rest of the classes in this 12 part/ 1 year series, we will look at 11 different diseases or symptoms. I will share with you some tricks of the trade and some things I’ve learned about those diseases over the course of my clinical career.
About the Instructor
Sharon Weizenbaum graduated from the New England School of Acupuncture in 1983. She has studied many times in China with a focus on gynecology, obstetrics and, in the last 15 years, Classic Formulas. Sharon teaches internationally, publishes articles, translates much of her own course material and is the director of the clinic White Pine Healing Arts and the primary instructor of the White Pine Graduate Mentorship Program.
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