Digest Number 1471/Gall Bladder

[Guest guest]

>>>Joseph wrote "If yin organs control only

yin and yang organs only yin,

as Nan Lu teaches, this would explain why liver blood xu

headaches travel along the liver channel to the vertex of

the head and

"liver qi" ascending problems travel up the GB channel.

Joseph Garner

 

I always wondered about that. I have had a few patients,

all female, with headaches that are behind one eye, throb,

and are treated like a migraine. The pain travels from the

eye down the back of the neck to GB 21.

 

Some people call those liver-yang headaches. However, this

isn't strictly accurate. The patient does not necessarily

have a wiry pulse, and there is not necessarily problems

with dizziness, a bursting sensation, or irritability, or

red eyes.

 

Therefore, would the anchoring herbs like shi jue ming, mu

li, or long gu still be indicated?

 

Yet, the headache does seem to involve the liver. Often,

the patients have blood deficiency underlying, tense

muscles, a stressful lifestyle and of course, the HA

involves the eyes. However, the herbs that treat liver

headaches like wu yao wouldn't be appropriate. I have not

yet met anyone with a "vertex" headache.

 

The best dx seems to be liver qi stagnation creating

obstruction in the GB channel. I've never seen this listed

as a dx.  I like to use herbs like ju hua and huang qin

though, maybe along with some xiao yao san and chuan xiong,

so even though I don't write down this dx it is still

inferrable from the herbs I use.

 

G<<<

 

G

Please forgive my error; of course I meant to say if yin organs control only yin and yang organs only yang, (or at least mainly so). I think it is instructive here that you report the patients having what appears to be, to me, liver blood xu and GB qi ascending, which makes perfect sense. It's another case of a yin-yang organ/channel system separation, or partial separation, destabilizing its paired functions. I do not think we need to necessarily change the herbs that are indicated. I think it might be more accurate to change or add to the channel affinities these herbs are said to have, and this will be part of making our diagnoses more precise. I believe the "liver qi" herbs have, to some extent, more of a GB channel qi action than a liver qi action, or at least more than they're credited with, particularly chai hu, though it certainly seems to have liver channel actions, too, as well as, as was said at the conference, action at the blood level. Perhaps chai hu works so well because it affects both liver blood and qi and GB qi. So the picture you paint is, to me, one of a yin organ expressing vacuity in its yin function and a yang organ expressing repletion in its yang function.

 

And I for one have seen patients with vertex headaches who had other symptoms and signs of blood xu. And I believe shi jue ming, long gu and mu li anchor the yang, whichever channel it rises upon. So this diagnostic shift might or might not make much difference in one's herbal prescriptions, but it well might alter one's acupuncture/tui na/cupping/moxa approach. I remember one of my Chinese teachers saying that he was trying to find herbs which were said to go to the GB, but he could hardly find any. Perhaps they've been under our collective nose all along.

 

Ken said "yin is yang and yang is yin." Well, that's true, but, with all due respect, yin is yang and yang is yin and I am you and you are me and we are all together now what?

Joseph