Clive Witham - The Book of Oriental Medicine: A Complete Self-Treatment Guide

Clive Witham LicAc. MBAcC, 2012

The right of Clive Witham to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

Published in 2012 by Findhorn Press, Scotland

ISBN 978-1-84409-604-6

All rights reserved.

The contents of this book may not be reproduced in any form, except for short extracts for quotation or review, without the written permission of the publisher.

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

Illustrations Clive Witham

except for pp. 6/7 Martimaniac

Photographs: Sweet Oasis

Edited by Nicky Leach

Cover design by Richard Crookes

Designed in Shaker by Geoff Green Book Design, CB34 4RA

Printed and bound in the EU

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 17 16 15 14 13 12

Published by

Findhorn Press

117-121 High Street

Forres IV36 1AB

Scotland, UK

t +44 (0)1309 690582

f +44 (0)131 777 2711

e

www.findhornpress.com

Disclaimer

The information in this book is given in good faith and is neither intended to diagnose any physical or mental condition nor to serve as a substitute for informed medical advice or care.

Please contact your health professional for medical advice and treatment. Neither author nor publisher can be held liable by any person for any loss or damage whatsoever which may arise from the use of this book or any of the information therein.

Contents

Introduction

The idea for this book stems from the sense of helplessness that some of us feel when things start going wrong with our bodies.

I could have done with a book like this when I was around eight years old and developed small blue bruises all over my arms and legs. I remember counting them on just one arm, and the number reached to well over 40. With the other limbs covered in even more bruises, it was quite clear to me and my parents that I was sick.

I was admitted as a patient at Great Ormond Street Hospital (formerly the Hospital for Sick Children) in London, and while I did bumper word searches, read Dandy comics, and listened to my mono radio through a mushroom-shaped earpiece, the cream of Britains paediatricians spent the best part of a week doing a series of inconclusive tests on what was going on inside my body.

In the absence of any better solution (I think they needed the hospital bed for someone really sick), it was decided that since I had had an aspirin a few days before the appearance of the bruises, it was very probably an allergic reaction to this. As with most families at the time, aspirin was always the first port of call when any member showed the slightest sign of sickness, and we had all grown up with the familiar foil packets and the fizzy sound as the flat white pills dissolved in water.

It was, therefore, a surprise that one of us was allergic, but when a man with lots of letters after his name, wearing a white coat, and grasping a clipboard with scribbled numbers, tells you you are allergic to aspirin - well, you are allergic to aspirin. And with that, I was promptly discharged and sent home.

The bruises gradually disappeared, and as flared trousers and polo neck sweaters changed to skin-tight jeans and leg warmers, they ceased to appear. I grew up and continued proclaiming to any nurse with a sharp needle that I had an allergy to aspirin. Other than that, the whole bruising incident was forgotten for many years.

That is, until I began studying to be an acupuncturist and one day, after reading a section on nutrition, the bruise penny dropped.

How a little knowledge could have saved a lot of worry and wasted time.

This is what I now think happened.

I was part of Britains school milk generation. Because my birthday hit during the summer holidays and I was at the little runt end of my academic year group, I was obliged, along with the other late birthday people, to pop a mini plastic straw through the foil top and sip a bottle of milk a day. Either that or I could not go to playtime and waste a quarter of an hour trying to play football with a tennis ball.

My dairy consumption then continued at home with a glass of fresh pasteurized milk and a pile of ginger snaps and this, added to the milk-soaked Frosties for breakfast and milky hot chocolate later on, meant that with just milk alone I was drinking like a newborn calf. Add to this my daily buttery sandwiches, my liking for potato chips, bananas, peanuts, large glasses of fresh orange juice, chocolate, and all things sweet, and it was no wonder I had developed into a barrel with chubby cheeks.

What I know now but what my mother (who like any mother had only the best intentions) did not know then was that the food I was eating was proving too much for me to digest. It was getting stuck and being processed very slowly through my steadily expanding body. This was quite literal, as I had chronic constipation and was subjected to the torture of sennacot suppositories, which meant that the other functions of the digestive organs (actually the Spleen, but that will be explained later) stopped working well.

According to Oriental medicine, one of these functions involves keeping the blood in the blood vessels. If digestion gets too weak, the Spleen does not send out enough holding energy to stop the blood from spilling out from veins and capillaries, many of which are almost too small to see, thereby causing bruises.

This is what was happening to me. I had bruises all over my arms and legs because my Spleen could not send enough energy around my body to control my blood. According to Oriental medicine, the Spleen specifically affects the four limbs. This was why the bruises appeared only on my arms and legs and not on my body.

If we had had this information back in the hot summer of 1977, the solution would have been simple. Stop the milk. And stop the orange juice, the bananas, the potato chips, the peanuts, and all of the other food that was grinding my digestion to a halt.

If we had had this book back then, my mother could have dug her thumb into some key points on my body to help strengthen my Spleen. I could also have done some stretches to help harmonize the balance of my organs. We could have borrowed a soup spoon from the local Chinese takeaway restaurant, spread vapour rub on my back, and Scraped just below the shoulder blades to help digestion. We also could have Tapped my muscles and released the tension that had manifested from my body imbalance. I would also have been forced to stop playing war with mini toy soldiers and to get outside in the fresh air for some exercise.

But, alas, we did not have this book. Instead, we had panic, powerlessness, and confusion, and we were forced to rely on a form of allopathic medicine that, despite the shiny scalpels and the long Latin names, is ultimately flawed.

Far too much of the medicine we see and experience, whether at the local doctors office or clinic or in a hospital bed, is antithetical to how we would want it to be if we were the people in charge.

If I designed a system of health care, I would not entrust my well-being to an overworked practitioner who is running late with a waiting room full of people and has barely five minutes to scribble an unpronounceable drug on a stamped piece of paper and send me off to the pharmacy.