Low energy/fatigue is not an illness in the true sense of the word; instead it is a profound exhaustion that impacts our daily joy and our capacity to achieve the purpose and goals we have set in life. When you feel temporary fatigue, this is usually a sign from your body telling you to take heed and to implement certain healthy lifestyle changes to improve your overall health. Fatigue that persists is your body telling you that your energy system requires treatment.

Signs and Symptoms

In Chinese Medicine, a set of signs and symptoms are diagnosed together. A practitioner would never place a label on or refer to an illness as a “syndrome” that becomes something that the patient is suffering from and has a complicated name. Instead, the practitioner is all the time mindful that the condition is a dynamic process, viewing it in the whole person as a pattern of disharmony and not merely as an illness affecting a system or an organ. A healing effect that’s natural and more balanced will take place when one treats all the signs and symptoms and not just one. Basically speaking, in Western medicine, the doctor addresses the manifesting symptoms, and very rarely considers the underlying cause of the symptoms. An allopathic doctor will strive to give a ‘disease name’ to a set of symptoms and signs. If the signs and symptoms are not obvious or if the doctor has difficulty giving a name to these signs and symptoms, one or more medical tests will normally be carried out. The patient is deemed free of any medically perceived illness if the tests come out negative, even if the patient still insists he is unwell. When this happens, some doctors will tell the patient that it is all in the patient’s head. But with a practitioner of Chinese medicine, all patterns are considered as probable indications of an imbalance that need attention, absent or not a Western diagnosis. This is the reason why traditional Chinese medicine or TCM is especially useful for people who have symptoms defined as long-term lack of energy, fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or other issues that western medicine has no answers to.

Patterns of Disharmony

According to TCM, there are a couple of distinct patterns of disharmony that tend to appear in people suffering from chronic fatigue: Lack of energy due to deficiency of energy (Qi) or stagnation of Qi. Deficiency of Qi occurs when the energy of a person has become run down and the person simply does not have enough energy to accomplish his normal daily activities. On the other hand, stagnation of Qi develops when the energy or Qi of a person becomes stuck and cannot freely move through the body’s meridians. In Western medicine this is analogous to nerve impedance and/or sluggish circulation through the body that transports energy to a limb or an organ system. Those two Chinese medicine patterns of disharmony are addressed by means of an entirely different combination of herbs and acupuncture points. Some acupuncturists tend to see both these patterns on a regular basis, and it is important that both patterns be treated with different treatment standard procedures in order to generate a long lasting and effective cure. Herbal medicine and acupuncture in Bellmore are artistic forms of medicine in the sense that the practitioner needs to be extremely creative in selecting the proper prescription of herbs and acupuncture points that are in accordance with the patient’s specific needs. That is the only way to bring about a long and lasting cure to low energy.