Guest guest Posted May 19, 2004 Report Share Posted May 19, 2004 Bob, I wrote an article (about 40 pp.) on the subject that I now include with my course materials and which is on our CD-ROM. I'd be happy to send you a copy for your review. Essentially I gleaned information from other practitioners and from the Internet on use of herbs and foods like seaweeds (must be from clean areas - most Chinese seaweeds are heavily contamined), chlorella, cilantro, mung beans, turmeric, Rx Ledebouriellae (fang feng), and garlic, then adapted them to a TCM framework with the added twist of including the heavy metal aspect in the assessment. The problem is that a single paradigm does not seem to work that well. Applying a cookbook procedure to heavy metal contamination, like a lot of allopathic people tend to do, is not optimal and can result in severe side effects, like sometimes happen with IV chelation therapy. On the other hand, after years of trying my very best with a straight TCM assessment and herbal formula approach just did not work for a certain percentage of my clients, until I combined them. For example, there is what might be called a Kidney-Yang-Deficiency + Yin-Deficiency + Deficiency-Fire complex type mercury toxicity. Er-Xian-Tang might be useful in combination with cilantro, a useful mercury chelator, plus seaweeds and other foods to help chelate the mercury during its transit through the digestive tract. (The garlic and turmeric are most problematic for Yin-Deficiency, so these are either avoided, or combined with appropriate balancing herbs to counteract undesirable actions.) One phenomena that I noticed repeatedly is that for some clients with Blood Stasis that I gave the usual Blood-invigorating formulas to, sometimes had noticeable flareups of all types of unpleasant symptoms, sometimes even aggravating the symptoms of Blood Stasis - localized pains and inflammation. On stopping the formula, symptoms would return to baseline. Later, I realized that probably what had been happening is that the heavy metals were being released from connective tissues into circulation, but with nothing to " catch " them. When I added the various chelating foods, according to both TCM pattern type and specific suspected heavy metal toxicity, the entire combination acted like one would normally expect a Blood-invigorating formula to react - gradual relief of localized pain and stagnation without side effects. The heavy metals problem is aggravated by the fact that the TCM pattern combinations that can result can be quite complex - not necessarily, but often enough. I've noticed that for a very large percentage of clients who have such complex patterns that almost every single TCM aspect is present, heavy metal toxicity is very likely. For example, a common one is: Deficiency of Yang, Yin, Blood and Qi, plus Interior Dampness + Damp Heat + Blood Stasis. And if there are significant CNS signs: mental disturbances, memory problems, sleep disturbances, there is a very high probability of some type of heavy metal problem. So with these people I do only diet simplification and cleanup first, just to make sure there is not some food or food additive responsible, then if symptoms still remain I proceed with the protocol I describe in the article. ---Roger Wicke, PhD, TCM Clinical Herbalist contact: www.rmhiherbal.org/contact/ Rocky Mountain Herbal Institute, Hot Springs, Montana USA Clinical herbology training programs - www.rmhiherbal.org > " Bob Flaws " <pemachophel2001 >Re: Development of new software for TCM Dx and Tx, esp in CHM > >Roger, > >I don't doubt that your patient population in the boonies of Montana >is quite different from mine. Makes sense. > >Unfortunately, I don;t know how to process your info about heavy metal >contamination. Seems like you've switched paradigms. Any way to make >sense of this strictly within Chinese medical pattern discrimination? > >Bob ---Roger Wicke, PhD, TCM Clinical Herbalist contact: www.rmhiherbal.org/contact/ Rocky Mountain Herbal Institute, Hot Springs, Montana USA Clinical herbology training programs - www.rmhiherbal.org Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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