A patient (male, 45-year old) diagnosed with narcolepsy
by the specialist about a year ago. Recently, he came to me for acupuncture
treatment due to the worsen conditions. His narcolepsy was presented with poor
interrupted night sleep and excessive daytime tiredness with at least 2 uncontrollable
sleep attacks a day which lasted from a few seconds to a few minutes. His day
time sleepiness has been for a couple of years. His cataplexy occurred when he
was laughing or angry with someone and was presented as sudden head slump down
or the jaw dropping for a few seconds and even fell down on the ground. The
patient has had bad sleep for decades. He hasn’t taken any medication.
The patient was treated with manual acupuncture on many
acupoints including BL62, KI6; GV20, EX-HN1, HT7, PC6, ST36, SP6, SP9 for 30
min twice a week for two weeks. After two sessions of acupuncture the patient
had good sleep for a consecutive three-night and felt energetic. His daytime
sleep attack reduced. After six-session treatment, the severity of cataplexy
episode attack was markedly reduced. He could avoid fell down and held himself
up when episode was occurring. When he was laughing, the anticipated episode
didn’t happen. Then acupuncture was applied on above acupoints once a week. It
was shown that the consecutive good sleep could last up to 4 or 5 nights after
one session of acupuncture treatment. Daytime sleep attack was no longer an
issue and cataplexy episode occurred in a minor level even with laughing or big
mood swing during this time period. Now therapeutic effect of one session of
acupuncture could last up to 6-7 days. The patient is very pleased.
Traditional Chinese medicine believes that ying-qi and
wei-qi disharmony and imbalance of yin and yang may be the cause of narcolepsy.
Ying-qi is running though Yin Qiao vessel and wei-qi is running though Yang
Qiao vessel. Both Yin Qiao vessel and Yang Qiao vessel are believed to be part
of body defence system, equalling to immune system in convention medicine.
Modulation the activity of both vessels by stimulating corresponding acupoints
on the vessels leads to rebalance body’s ying-qi and wei-qi and yin and yang. This
may result in the improved immune system and rebalanced the levels of
neurotransmitters or neuromodulators, in particular orexin (or hypocretin) in
the brain leading to improvement of narcoleptic symptoms.
No comments:
Post a Comment