More On Treating The Flu With Chinese Medicine

With colds and flu, you often have two obstacles to overcome.

First, there's the cold or the actual flu virus. Then, there's the hyper-inflammatory reaction to them.

Some sick, unhappy patients have visited my office lately. I was glad to see how Chinese Medicine - in my first flu season as a practitioner - was able to help. The combination of acupuncture and herbs (along with some classic cupping) addressed the initial symptoms of fever, chills, sore throat, aches, fatigue, lack of appetite. And once those dissipated, they helped treat both the reduced viral symptoms and the hyper-inflammatory response to the virus characteried by lung and nasal congestion.

I relied on several classic herbal formulas: Yin Qiao San, Gan Mao Ling and Qing Qi Hua Tan Wan.

Patient names are changed to protect the innocent.

Achieving steady results was crucial because both patients work. They're school teachers. As you'll see, monitoring the patient is crucial because taking the right herbal formula for too long can make things worse.

Yin Qiao San appeared in a previous blog entry regarding flu. It's a classic sore throat formula with anti-viral and anti-bacterial qualities that make it ideal for treating the flu. Qing Qi Hua Tan Wan addresses breathing difficulties and chest oppression that come with the accumulation of thick yellow or green mucous in the lungs. Normally, it's hard to cough up.

In early September, Diana came in with cold symptoms that added up to a probable flu diagnosis. She was achy, feverish with chills, sported a headache in the back, had low energy, was making weak, little coughs and felt nauseous. You're never sure if the immunity-boosting formul I recommended two to three weeks before would have prevented the flu, but chances are her odds would have been better. But since paying for herbs is a sometime issue, I treated her with a series of classic acupuncture points (mostly located on the arms and hands) designed to clear heat from the body. We agreed to review the situation when I returned from a long seminar weekend.

As it turned out, Diana couldn't fend off the inevitable. After feeling better for a day or two, she got deathly ill over the weekend. I was left kicking myself because I didn't insist she take the Yin Qiao San. She rushed to the emergency room that Saturday night, took her Tamiflu and returned home to suffer through a bad case of the flu. In fact, she was so achy the western doctors gave her a pain killer, which didn't make me happy at all. You want to boost the body's natural immune system during colds, not suppress it!

My bad for not being there to treat her. However, once her course of Tamiflu was over, she remained far from 100 percent. But we were able to bring her around using acupuncture, along with Yin Qiao San and Gan Mao Ling.

The Yin Qiao San addressed the most acute stage. Once she began to feel better and the congestion in her body was clear - and not green in the chest - we changed to Gan Mao Ling, which is a classic early-cold stage formula. Many of the points remained the same: the lungs are considered the first line of defense against cold and environmental disease, so I treated the channel without the heat points. There are really effective points. We continued to cup the back with a combination of moving cupping, which opens the pores to release heat and achiness from the upper back, as well as stationary cupping over the back lung points for sustained relief.

I only see Diana once a week, but two weeks after her flu outbreak she felt much better. In the course of two treatments and a steady protocol of herbs, she'd overcome the worst symptoms. She was feeling more energetic, had an appetite and was sleeping better. She looked healthier in general. We began talking about other issues again.

Joe hung on longer than Diana, though both shared similar fatigue and pathogen exposure in their daily interaction with students. Much to Joe's chagrin, many students weren't staying home despite their own depleted immune symptoms! Like Diana he was loath to miss class, though that's eventually what he had to do too.

In mid-September, Joe said he felt fine, though a little bit tired. It was hard to tell where that came from because being a teacher is so demanding. But by the end of the month, just as Diane was getting over her bout of flu, Joe came down with a likely case of his own.

He didn't have all the symptoms - no achiness or nausea - but enough fever and chills, sore throat, coughing, sneezing and congestion to diagnose a serious cold with the possibility of flu. His lack of energy was not a good sign either.

This would be a challenge. After the first treatment, Joe didn't feel much better. That could have been due to continuing with the Yu Ping Feng San. While an excellent immune system builder, it also contains herbs classified as warming, which may have reinforced the heat already brewing inside his body.

We slowly got back on track during an emergency treatment two days later. In retrospect, that may have prevented him from feeling worse. Meanwhile, his chest had grown tight and his nasal passages were filled with yellow phlegm. Once again, workplace pressures hadn't helped as he's reported feeling better after the last treatment. This time, we began treating lung congestion as well.

In addition to cupping and some new acupuncture points, I prescribed Qing Qi Hua Tan Wan to loosen up the hard-to-cough-up phlegm that was causing so much discomfort in his chest. I also used a heated moxibustion stick to both loosen the dry out the phlegm.

A day later, he said he was resting and could feel the phlegm loosening in his chest.

That was good news. Serious colds - or the flu - take time to overcome. Frequent treatments is the best approach. But my patients can't always do that. Even when spaced out, success is still possible.