Skin Problems and Chinese Medicine

Your skin is more than just the outer layer of the body. From a Chinese medical perspective, it provides a critical measure of your body's health, even informing us on what is happening at a deep level, and provides the acupuncturist with much information about how well balanced the client is.

In addition to being a diagnostic tool, acupuncturists treat a wide variety of specific dermatological complaints running the gamut from acne and wrinkles, to severe psoriasis and eczema.

A brief overview of Chinese medicine and the sorts of dermatological problems we treat on a regular basis can be read here.

Here is a reprint of that article here:

Treatment of Skin Conditions with Acupuncture
By: Diane Joswick L.Ac.

Acupuncture and Oriental medicine can be very effective at treating skin conditions. Treatments can provide quick relief for acute symptoms and significant and lasting relief from recurrent or chronic skin conditions.

The skin reflects and reacts to imbalances within the body's internal landscape and the effects of the environment. Internal disharmonies caused by strong emotions, diet, and your constitution, as well as environmental influences such as wind, dryness, dampness, and heat, can all contribute to the development of a skin disorder. To keep your skin healthy and beautiful on the outside, you must work on the inside of your body as well. Increasing the flow of energy, blood and lymph circulation improves the skin's natural healthy color.

Promotion of collagen production increases muscle tone and elasticity, helping to firm the skin. Stimulating the formation of body fluids nourishes the skin and encourages it to be moister, softer, smoother and more lustrous.

General skin conditions that can be treated with acupuncture and Oriental medicine include acne, dermatitis, eczema, pruritus, psoriasis, rosacea, shingles and urticaria (hives). Oriental medicine does not recognize skin problems as one particular syndrome. Instead, it aims to treat the specific symptoms that are unique to each individual using a variety of techniques with acupuncture, such as herbal medicine, bodywork, lifestyle/dietary recommendations and energetic exercises to restore imbalances found in the body. Therefore, if 10 patients are treated with Oriental medicine for eczema, each patient will receive a unique, customized treatment with different lifestyle and dietary recommendations.

Acupuncture Indicated for Painful Skin Conditions:

From the Dermatology Times comes an article geared towards physicians which outlines certain painful dermatological skin conditions which respond well to acupuncture. In my practice this is certainly true, though we treat the root cause of the pain as well as the discomfort associated with it. In that way we can often get rid of the urticaria (hives), psoriasis, eczema, post-herpetic pain and shingles.

"The American Academy of Medical Acupuncture has outlined certain conditions for which acupuncture is indicated, some of which include both acute and chronic dermatologic diseases/conditions such as herpes zoster and post-herpetic pain, pruritis, eczema, urticaria and psoriasis. Severe pruritus can be disfiguring and painful and a source of great frustration and anxiety to the affected patient. Mr. Bennett says he has used acupuncture in some of these cases, and has achieved meaningful results in his patients."