How Bloodletting Can Help Your Pain!

When I say "Have you had bleeding before?  I'd like to try it to help your pain," I'm met with concerned stares and nervous chuckles.  Patients are usually imagining losing copious pints of blood in a short amount of time.  I'm quick to assure them that we're not living in the 1300s and knowledge and technology has improved!

In Chinese medicine, bloodletting is purposeful bleeding from the surface of the body for therapeutic purposes.  It's approach is to let blood in a state of stagnation or heat, i.e. diseased blood.  This is unlike Western medicine's historical approach to bloodletting that lets large amounts of healthy blood from veins.  

Primary Functions of  Bloodletting
Bloodletting has two of reliable actions on the body: improving circulation and clearing heat.  When bloodletting is done over areas of visible blood stagnation, think spider veins, circulation is improved both locally as well as distally along the blood vessels.  

Bloodletting also clears heat locally and systemically.  In injuries with visible heat and swelling, bloodletting gives a place for heat to vent and swelling to decrease.  Bloodletting at specific, heat-clearing acupuncture points clears heat from the entire body.  

Secondary Functions of Bloodletting
Secondary functions of bloodletting are the effects of improving circulation and clearing heat.  They are: stops pain, detoxifies, disperses swellings, stops itching, and calms the nervous system.

• Stops pain

Fact: pain comes from stagnation.  Therefore, treatment involves moving stagnation to stop pain.  Moving stagnation means clearing out the stuck, old blood and replacing it with oxygenated blood to promote healing.  It also helps to clear out metabolic waste and bring in nutrients to help heal.

• Detoxifies

Toxins in Chinese medicine refer to the pathogens causing the cold and flu, as well as pathogens that cause redness and swelling.  Redness and swelling indicate he

• Disperses Swellings

Swellings are enlargements due to accumulated blood, fluids, or pus.  Directly opening a swelling with a lance allows fluids, blood, or pus to be expelled, therefore resolving a swelling.

• Stops itching

Most cases of itching in Chinese medicine involve blood not circulating normally and consequently failing to nourish and moisten the skin.  Itching results.  Treatment for this involves moving the blood, either with herbs or bloodletting, to move the stasis and allow the blood to come to the surface to moisten the skin.  

• Calms the heart, settles the spirit.

Heat is one cause of irritability and agitation.  Blood stasis can likewise create mental confusion and possibly agitation, as in senile dementia.  Again, since bloodletting both moves blood and clears heat, it helps calm the heart, settle the spirit, and help with mental disorders due to these patterns.

To sum up, bloodletting is a safe, effective, and excellent treatment to manage your pain and balance out your body.  Give it a try!

Want to discuss your specific condition?  Get in touch.  I'm happy to answer your questions!
-C