Menopause symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats, irritability, brain fog, fatigue, musculoskeletal pain and other symptoms are most common in women of 40-60 years of age. Around 80% of women are experiencing menopausal symptoms during this period. There are studies shown that British women suffer the most and Americans are somewhere in between whilst Japanese and Chinese women suffer the least amount of menopause symptoms. We could look into the perspectives of philosophy of Chinese medicine and how acupuncture and acupressure would help to ease the symptoms, even better to prevent the symptoms as intelligent women.
Chinese medicine and acupuncture perspectives
From a Chinese medicine and acupuncture theory, the root cause of menopausal symptoms is the kidney, which subsequently impacts the heart, liver and spleen. Emotional lesions are considered a common symptoms as well which Liver Qi depression causes falling in regulating emotions. Kidney here is conceptualized as a system rather than an organ that is responsible for temperature, fertility and fluid balance regulation. Liver is a conceptualized system to regulate emotions, hormone and women’s health.
During the menopausal period, women exhibit kidney deficiency and liver depression, leading to autonomic nervous system dysfunction, including hot flushes and sweats, emotional disorders, insomnia, fatigue, headache, dizziness, palpitations, musculoskeletal pain and genitourinary symptoms etc.
Acupuncture helps balancing Qi
Approximately 60–80% of menopausal women experience hot flushes and sweating and the peak stage of onset occurs during the late menopausal transition and early menopause. Acupuncture treatment would help to nourishing the deficiency and get the Qi flow. Acupuncture regulates neuroendocrine functions and uplift the mood by needling different acu-points. Therefore the duration of deep sleep would increase after treatment. Acupuncturist would also suggest lifestyle changes to help the transition of life, such as sleep early, exercises regularly, avoid cold drink etc.
There are also specific women’s health related acupressure points for strengthening Qi flow. Sanyinjiao 三陰交 (SP6), Fengchi 風池 (GB20), Hegu 合谷 (LI4) and Quchi 曲池 (LI11) . Regular self-massage everyday (20 mins each points ) would be a self-care routine to take care of your health.
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