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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 12 of 12. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Hombre on July 28, 2010, at 18:57:36
"The concept of an inseparable bodymind continuum is one of the main characteristics of Eastern thought. In classical Chinese medicine, therefore, mental activity has always been considered to be inseparable from bodily functions, and mental diseases were generally not treated differently from any other disorder. The Chinese term 'yuzheng' (depression), for instance, refers to stagnation on both a physical and mental plane, and is usually addressed with the same diagnostic and therapeutic means as diseases that would be considered to have entirely physical origins in the West."
Commonly Used Chinese Herb Formulas For The Treatment Of Mental Disorders
Heiner Fruehauf
http://www.classicalchinesemedicine.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/fruehauf_mentaldisordersfinal.pdf
Posted by Phillipa on July 29, 2010, at 14:06:23
In reply to Herb Formulas for the Treatment of Mental Disorder, posted by Hombre on July 28, 2010, at 18:57:36
Any ideas how to substitute as don't understand herbs at all? Phillipa
Posted by Hombre on July 29, 2010, at 19:13:56
In reply to Re: Herb Formulas for the Treatment of Mental Disorder » Hombre, posted by Phillipa on July 29, 2010, at 14:06:23
I'm not sure I understand your question. Would you like to substitute other herbs?
The main point of the article is that the main formulas were developed a long time ago to treat various forms of mental illness. Modern doctors will modify them to create variations. Only a qualified or experienced herbalist could substitute or add herbs.
In my posts to Lao Tzu, however, I list a couple books that explain how herbs work and how you can use them. It's not something you can just quickly understand by reading. You'll have to actually go out and taste herbs, try a formula or two before you can make any judgement about whether it will help you or not.
Posted by Phillipa on July 29, 2010, at 20:29:10
In reply to Re: Herb Formulas for the Treatment of Mental Disorder, posted by Hombre on July 29, 2010, at 19:13:56
I guess I had to read other threads to understand. Thanks for clarifying. Phillipa
Posted by Hombre on July 30, 2010, at 3:11:26
In reply to Re: Herb Formulas for the Treatment of Mental Disorder » Hombre, posted by Phillipa on July 29, 2010, at 20:29:10
I think the thrust of the article is that problems with the emotions are not separated from problems with the physical body -- it's the difference between a holistic view of health and a reductionist view of disease.
Emotional symptoms have equal weight with physical symptoms. One could even go so far as to say that emotions lie at the heart of all disease and eventually affect the physiological functioning of the body. An equally valid but opposite way of understanding would be that emotional symptoms are an expression of imbalance in physiological function. In either case, we see that the health of the body and the ability to maintain balanced emotions depend on each other.
If we choose to try herbs, which is more familiar to our medicine taking culture, we can choose them based on our emotional and physical symptoms. The key is to find a pattern that links all or most of the symptoms together. Herb formulas attempt to balance out or cancel out the pattern by tonifying that which is deficient, reducing that which is excessive, warming that which is too cold, and cooling that which is too hot.
This is how we experience sensation in the body, along with some more variations and subtleties, but for the most part our experience of illness is not so complicated. Nobody really "feels" like specific liver enzymes and neurotransmitters are not working, unless we are referring to the patterns that are associated with these conditions that we've picked up from studying texts. And we know that only the very talented p-docs can treat us according to this type of paradigm after years of experience. No amount of clinical training can teach a p-doc or any doc for that matter to know or even test for neurotransmitter deficiencies in any definitive way. They go by years of trial and error. That's why the traditional herb formulas, tested over many centuries, are still relevant today. There has been a lot of time for these herb formulas to be formulated and tested. And if the principle behind the formula is understood, herbs can be carefully added or subtracted to create variations that address the individuality of a person's illness.
The plus side of herbs, which are by no means a panacea, is that they work in predictable ways and in a much less scatter bomb-like fashion to alter the functioning of the body. Each herb is more like a smart bomb that homes in on a particular organ system and has a specific effect. The ratios of herbs in formulas provides synergistic effects that improve the performance of each individual herb so that the net effect is greater than the sum of the parts. Indeed the different herbs "harmonize" with each other, much as the different voices in a choir produce resonance and harmonics that cannot necessarily be predicted by listening to each individual voice.
And just as it takes a while for an orchestra to get tuned up under the watchful ears of the conductor, one cannot expect the body to suddenly achieve perfect balance in a short amount of time whether affected by herbs or psyche drugs. That would defy physics, chemistry and any of our other forms of understanding the natural universe.
Drugs don't always work the same way over time. If remission is attained quickly, sustained remission is still an art. The miraculous stories of instant remission are the exception, not the rule, yet it seems like the longer we suffer the more we count on that happening to us. We start to ignore the basic and mundane work of exercise, diet and realistic optimism, or our illness has gone on long enough to have undermined our will to function at even a basic level and it becomes harder and harder to think outside the illness. Our emotional energy drains the physical and we cannot increase our physical capacity to fuel more positive emotions.
Posted by Lao Tzu on July 30, 2010, at 15:02:36
In reply to Re: Herb Formulas for the Treatment of Mental Disorder, posted by Hombre on July 30, 2010, at 3:11:26
I like what you had to say here, and it may be true about people who have been ill for so long that all they know is the illness and perhaps, they have forgotten how to function outside of it. I think that is what has happened to me, regardless of being on medication. Yes, the meds help physically, but if you are not prepared emotionally to start living again, you'll probably stay trapped within the dynamics of the illness itself.
Posted by Lao Tzu on July 30, 2010, at 15:23:43
In reply to Herb Formulas for the Treatment of Mental Disorder, posted by Hombre on July 28, 2010, at 18:57:36
What I really mean to say is that you can find yourself trapped in the MEMORY of the illness, despite being physically okay. So will herbs help soothe an anxious memory, so to speak? I know this may sound a little strange, but I always believed your memories have a significant effect on your behavior, including your behavior to explore life. An uneasy mind of painful memories will not be easily persuaded to explore. I can say all of this because of my experience with Ativan. It has an impact on memory, and when you dumb these painful memories down, your potential to explore may improve.
Posted by sigismund on July 30, 2010, at 16:26:42
In reply to Re: Herb Formulas for the Treatment of Mental Disorder, posted by Lao Tzu on July 30, 2010, at 15:02:36
This has been such a good conversation. Wonderful to see all this stuff on TCM.
Thanks
I think it's the most promising thing around.
Posted by morgan miller on July 30, 2010, at 17:39:35
In reply to Re: Herb Formulas for the Treatment of Mental Disorder, posted by sigismund on July 30, 2010, at 16:26:42
Sismund, have you tried TCM? I'm interested in it as well. I will still take my meds, but hope to find more relief using TCM as an adjunct therapy.
Posted by sigismund on July 30, 2010, at 21:22:09
In reply to Re: Herb Formulas for the Treatment of Mental Disorder » sigismund, posted by morgan miller on July 30, 2010, at 17:39:35
Yes, over the years I've had acupuncture and Chinese herbs, in the special way they do it all.
Getting the right TCM herbalist is the thing. The main Dx I've been given are spleen deficiency, low kidney energy and yin deficiency. Almost everyone in the west seems to be spleen deficient, I've been told.
Some of that has been from westerners somewhat trained, and some from more experienced practitioners properly trained.
One proper TCM person told me 'Be happy!'
A good book on the Chinese herbs, albeit from a western herbalist perspective, is
"Clinical Applications of Ayurvedic and Chinese Herbs. Monographs for the Western Herbal Practitioner" by Kerry Bone.Kerry Bone is an Australian herbalist who set up Mediherb, one of the herbal medicine companies here.
Posted by Hombre on July 31, 2010, at 6:59:48
In reply to Re: Like your thoughts Hombre, posted by Lao Tzu on July 30, 2010, at 15:23:43
I don't really spend too much time dwelling on the past, although there are still some painful memories. If anything, I've been depressed so long that my memory is kind of poor in certain ways. I did spend a lot of my younger years stuck on past pain and anger. I made very little progress in terms of depression during this period.
I think it is important to tell yourself that you are willing to feel a little uncomfortable and that you will try things that you could not do before. But you don't want to put too much pressure on yourself or self-criticize if you aren't up to it. It's that balance between self-acceptance and challenging yourself. Brutal honesty, but boundless compassion. Something I'm trying to work on; perhaps my Achilles heel.
It is necessary for someone like me, who was not able to function fully for so long, to challenge the assumptions that "I can't" do something. Hell, I started swimming recently after a childhood of swimming lessons that I hated and I never really learned to swim. Well, that's not true anymore. After just a couple of weeks I'd improved my physical capacity (adapted to the new movements) so that I was able to do the length of the pool without stopping. Maybe that's easy for most people, but it's huge for me. I enjoy it. I never enjoyed it before, but I told myself to give it another chance. I'm glad I did.
I'm finding out that a large part of my opinion of myself was based on a false premise; I judged myself based on many of the limitations that the illness placed on me. My inability to follow through on plans and desires being a large part of that. Now that I can do things that I thought I couldn't, I have to throw out my view of myself and craft a new one. This can be very difficult or very easy depending on how flexible we can be with our thinking.
The ability to control thoughts is a skill to some extent. Assuming you have reached some degree of stability on meds, supplements and/or herbs or whatever, you can start to meditate a little and become aware of how the mind constantly churns out thoughts, seemingly of its own accord. And you start to realize that you are not your thoughts, since you are able to step back and observe them. And when you can become aware of your thoughts you can start to cut them off soon after they start to form, or transpose a more positive thought on top of the negative thought. This has to be done with patience and compassion for yourself. But once you have some practice it is like anything else that improves with repeated exposure and practice.
The same process can be done to become aware of your breathing and the physical sensations created by emotions like fear, anxiety, worry, anger, etc. A lot of what we think, feel, do and say are habits. Reflexive re-actions that have become our automatic routines. The thing is, we can re-program ourselves with better routines. Upgrade our OS, so to speak. It just takes the humility to admit that we may not be thinking/feeling/doing what is best for us, and that it may be in our best interest to change.
The desire and willingness to change is key. I believe that this is one of the few things we can control even in the grips of crippling anxiety and debilitating depression. To say that we will not stand for this and that we think we deserve better. When this desire is allowed to mature and starts to saturate your unconscious and conscious mind, change will eventually manifest in due time. It could take a while, but it will eventually happen. You gotta believe. To quote Shephard Book from Serenity, "I don't care what you believe--just believe!"
Like you say, I think one needs to be ready to feel better, because having more energy or less anxiety but the same negative thought patterns and psycho-physiological reactions to stress will only amplify things. Herbs are a tool for balancing out the energy of a person. People have physical energy, emotional energy, mental energy, and spiritual energy. These are merely ways to classify a person's energy on a continuum between matter and energy, physical energy/matter being the foundation and spiritual energy being the most refined and least condensed form. It's the sparkle in a person's eye, no need to get into mysterious or fantastical explanations.
Herbs help balance out and heal the physical body. As the body becomes stronger, the emotions and thoughts will become less diseased. As your body is less taxed by the stress caused by negative thoughts and emotions, more energy can go towards the higher functions. We are more able to articulate and try to live by our deepest values and dreams. We can then reverse the process and turn thoughts back into concrete reality.
As we become more aware of our personal energy, we start to respect it more and do what we can to minimize wasted energy and maximize the generation of high, positive energy. We may try to eat better, exercise, think positively, get enough sleep. We may try to improve our relationships, a great source of energy. We may take up hobbies to exercise our creativity and participate in activities with no other purpose than to feel joy. We become more engaged in life and derive satisfaction from working towards our dreams and enjoying the ride. We give and take, spend and save, move and rest. Is this not what life is?
I hope that wasn't too long winded. I have been trying to tie together a lot of ideas and they are still in a rough format.
Posted by Lao Tzu on July 31, 2010, at 14:45:03
In reply to Re: Like your thoughts Hombre » Lao Tzu, posted by Hombre on July 31, 2010, at 6:59:48
Bravo! I like how you think. Well put.
This is the end of the thread.
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