Diseases of the immune system can involve allergic conditions like seasonal allergies, asthma, or eczema. Or gut issues like food allergies or food sensitivities. Or autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, ulcerative colitis. As diverse as they are, there’s one thing in common: the immune system is responding to dysregulated signals from acute and chronic inflammation.

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Autoimmune

Autoimmune diseases happen when a patient’s immune system has antibodies that target the destruction of their own tissues—such as their joints, skin, connective tissue, or gut. They can be mildly annoying or severe and debilitating. Acupuncture treatments help manage the symptoms associated with the condition no matter what system they’re occurring in the body. The treatments focus on regulating your immune system and decreasing the inflammatory response. Acupuncture also helps regulate the stress response, which is often a huge contributor to autoimmune flareups. Supporting the nervous system decreases the severity and duration of flareups, keeping you in remission, longer.

We also work extensively with your diet to help you find a way of eating that is supportive of your whole system. Figuring out which foods trigger inflammation in your body and helping you learn which foods support healthy gut-barrier function to prevent the inflammatory cascade. We can recommend custom-tailored herbs and supplements based on your individual symptoms and the way the autoimmune condition presents in your body. By doing this, we help your gut heal, your immune system settle down, and your whole body be less reactive and thereby, less symptomatic.

Immune system dysregulation

Immune system dysregulation can be caused anything that creates a maladaptive change in the mechanisms of immune function. Examples of such symptoms include: catching frequent colds or getting sick easily; inability to completely get over cold symptoms; post-viral symptoms like lingering fatigue, cough, weakness, or shortness of breath; experiencing a weird smoke smell (we’ve seen it!); onset of hives for the first time in your life; elevated heart rate, or palpitations. But the list goes on and on. Traditional Asian Medicine has many ways of treating them and restoring balance to immune function.

Food allergies

Food allergies are an immunoglobulin-mediated immune response that can be as extreme as anaphylaxis. Food sensitivities point to milder reactions, generally mediated by different immunoglobulins. Both happen when the immune system registers a particular food as a threat, creating symptoms in pretty much any system in the body, from the gut to skin to brain. This “losing tolerance” shows up as having increasing number of foods that can’t be tolerated. It’s important to address because the less variety you have in your diet, the weaker your gut becomes.

We offer testing, if necessary, to help determine which foods your body is reacting to. But oftentimes your practitioner can figure out which foods to avoid just by hearing what your symptoms are.

While dietary counselling is a huge part of treating food allergies and sensitivities, acupuncture is also extremely helpful. Since inflammation is key, we use treatments to calm systemic inflammation, restore healthy circulation to all the areas that are symptomatic, and support healthy recognition in the immune system, so it stops over-reacting to what you eat. Nutritional supplements and herbs help support the health and strength of the gut on a daily basis. We’ll often prescribe things like digestive enzymes, specific strains of probiotics geared toward your individual symptoms, and nutrients that support healthy gut-immune function, to heal and soothe an inflamed gut barrier. All these tactics, over time, allow you to be less symptomatic and re-introduce healthy foods back into your diet.

Environmental allergies

Environmental Allergies result from a hypersensitivity of the immune system reacting to particulates or allergens like pollen, dust, molds, dander, or environmental toxins. An inflammatory response occurs releasing histamines and leukotrienes which cause the familiar sneezing, itchy and watery eyes, nasal congestion, headache, runny nose, or even asthma attacks and skin rashes.

We see people who are on one, if not more, daily allergy medication who still experience symptoms. Supplements can work wonders to address over- reactivity of the immune system and calm inflammation. Chinese herbs can be extremely helpful for treating symptoms, helping the congestion, itchiness, and general misery of environmental allergies. And acupuncture treats it all—working on the systemic patterns that create the inflammation and hyperactive immune response, often immediately alleviating many of the annoying symptoms.

The practitioners at MHS have extensive training and experience in the management of autoimmune disorders, food allergies and sensitivities, and allergies. We help patients significantly improve to their health. We empower patients in understanding how to care for themselves, how to avoid the triggers of their flare-ups, what tools help them feel better, so they can enjoy a more healthy and balanced life.

Cancer

We do not offer acupuncture and Traditional East Asian Medicine (TEAM) treatments for cancer. But we work with many patients undergoing cancer therapy to improve their quality of life. Both the NIH and the American Cancer Society recognize acupuncture and TEAM as therapies that can decrease nausea/vomiting during chemotherapy, alleviate side effects of surgical anesthesia, and relieve pain (1,2,3,4,5). Acupuncture has also improved dyspnea (difficulty breathing) in advanced breast and lung cancer patients (6).

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