Acupuncture Can Help Relieve Springtime Allergies

Nature features prominently in acupuncture. For example, when someone is healthy, her blood and Qi, or energy-life force, flow throughout the body like a river. When energy and blood get stuck, one side of the body dams up and stagnates while the other withers and becomes deficient. Our bodies behave in much the same way as a beaver dam.

We start to hurt when our Qi energy gets stuck in our bodies. This often occurs during the spring and in the fall for people who have allergies. For these individuals, their Qi energy becomes stuck in certain body systems; it won’t flow as it should. Possible symptoms may include congestion, a runny nose and itchy eyes.

In acupuncture we look at where the symptoms arise to determine which system is out of balance. We also look at the time of day and the time of year (or season) in which these problems occur; this information provides additional clues about what is not working well.

People tend to blame their springtime allergies on blooming plants, but in acupuncture we look at what’s out of balance in the individual that makes it difficult for him to adapt to these environmental changes.

Allergies also tend to manifest in certain parts of the body. Besides having trouble with their eyes, nose and ears, some people have troubling with their lungs and with breathing.

An acupuncturist looks at these physical manifestations of a person’s condition and we check her tongue and take several pulses, all of which tells us more about what’s going on. After finding which systems are most out of balance, we choose acupuncture points — and sometimes we use herbs – to help balance those systems to help an individual feel better.  We’re not treating only the symptoms of the itchy eyes or stuffy nose, we’re treating the underlying, root imbalances in the body to help a person feel better longer.

Here’s an example of how it works: Last January I had a patient who had tendonitis in his ankle. In acupuncture we generally support the liver system when someone has tendon, ligament, sinews or joint problems. I had been working on his liver system and alleviating his tendonitis for almost three months when he returned to ask if I had done anything that might affect his allergies. He said he usually had awful springtime allergies, but at that point they weren’t too bad. We’d never discussed his allergies. Spring is the “liver season,” so I’d unintentionally also been working on his allergies. His allergies had been another sign that his liver system was out of balance, and when that part of his body  was supported during acupuncture treatments, his allergies were relieved, too.