Your Acupuncturist Says You Have Dampness - Now What?

I'll never forget one of the first times I went to see an acupuncturist. After she had treated me for a little while she said you have something called dampness. Now I thought this was a very weird and creepy term but since then I've had to have this exact same conversation with so many of my own patients and I thought I would take some time today here to describe what exactly dampness is and how you can treat it. Hey guys I'm Dr. Alex Hein, author of the So before we jump into this video on the weird concept of dampness I've put together two important links right below the video. The first is for a free guide which is five daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine and the second is if you'd like to learn more about my private practice where I see patients in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine check out the link below to reach out to my private practice. So let's go back to that story of when I was seeing an acupuncturist for the first time. She had put some needles in me, she did a little bit of moxibustion on my low abdomen, she gave me some Chinese herbs and she said you know your diagnosis is that you have spleen qi deficiency with dampness. Now at that time my main symptoms were very low appetite, lots of food allergies, excessive bloating and getting a food baby after every single meal regardless of how healthy or unhealthy it was. So she began to explain this concept of dampness and I thought I would rehash this and explain it in a different way because this is one of the most clinically common patterns that we see and one of the most common diagnoses you may receive if you see a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. So let's zoom out for a second and look at the macro version of our universe here, our world. Ancient doctors observed that there are these external factors that are similarly mirrored in the body or these internal or endogenic factors. These external factors like external weather, for example damp weather. Let's say you're in an area like the Pacific Northwest or you're in Ireland or a tropical rainforest, there's a lot of moisture right. This moisture creates a lot of dampness which creates a tendency towards mold and fungal afflictions, issues like mildew from all of the moisture in the air, moisture in the on the trees and the moss and all of that. Now ancient doctors had observed that in ancient people that external factors, external weather can make us sick. For example, you can live in a very damp environment where there's excessive mold and people who have internal dampness have a susceptibility to those external environmental factors. Like me, I'm a lifelong asthmatic, it runs genetically in my family and I grew up in New England, in New York and Connecticut and my parents told me every fall the transition from the summer to the fall, as soon as it started getting rainy and a little cold and a little bit more moldy, you could smell it in the basement, that would be the flare for my asthma. And sure enough, the fall season of the year is the long metal season of the year. So it is common to see that clinically flare up whether it's asthma or allergies. But the dampness in particular is what we're talking about here. The external dampness can be the dampness in the environment, right. Mold is a manifestation of an excessively damp environment. So for me, my internal susceptibility to dampness, because I have it, was then exacerbated and flared up due to this environmental dampness in our basement, which was black mold. Other conditions like trench foot, right, soldiers that are in these very, very damp tropical climates, if their feet are not being cleaned and dry, will get these kind of lingering fungal or bacterial infections. And in a similar way, inside the human body, we have endogenic internally generated forms of dampness. So dampness can range from primarily the digestive system, or let's start from the top, the respiratory system. You can have a tendency towards having a phlegmy cough or being phlegmy in general, having post-nasal drip, PND, where you're constantly noticing drainage. Either you're blowing your nose or you're clearing your throat and it's drainage that that's causing. From the other perspective, it's very common to see digestive dampness, where people are having a lot of mucus in their throat. They're always clearing their throat like that. So the gut mucosa are literally having too much moisture. The mucus membranes are producing excessive mucus. And also, in the digestive system, you can have bloating and gas and food sensitivities, a lot of water retention. All of this can be dampness related. So primarily a digestive manifestation. And it can be all the way to what Chinese medicine calls the lower burner, which is even women can have excessive vaginal discharge, which is, again, another kind of pathological dampness. So often we'll even treat that with formulas that treat the digestion and rebuild the gut microbiome, which will then successfully treat Leukorrhea, for example. So this is what dampness is, and very often people susceptible to it have excessive moisture in the mucus membranes of the body. So they're having post-nasal drip, excessive phlegm in the throat like I am right now, or excessive bloating and food retention and gas, that sort of thing. So what can you actually do about dampness? Now, clinically, I treat this with Chinese formulas. So these custom compounded formulas is probably the strongest way that I've seen. But often combining it with good dietary principles can help. So I'll give you a general overview of a to-do list and a not-to-do list. In terms of the foods and the food groups not to eat, this is a very, very general list for symptoms of dampness. In terms of avoiding, avoid general flavors that are excessively sweet or fatty. Dairy, which can generate lots of mucus and lots of inflammation of the mucus membranes and gut mucosa. Excessively fatty foods like fried foods or refined oils, or even excessive oils in general, even avocado, for example, if it's excessive, will produce excessive mucus. Excessive fruit intake and raw vegetables. I get it. I live in Los Angeles. Diets like the raw vegan diet are very trendy. These are some of the worst diets for people with dampness. So let's go to what I recommend eating, because what I see clinically work to help this. I would recommend eating, in terms of spices, more pungent spices. Ginger, cardamom, cloves, garlic, and onions. I'd recommend eating meat and I'd recommend having cooked vegetables and much less raw vegetables. So people who have excessive dampness, they're prone to having a food baby and bloating. These trendy smoothies that are full of raw vegetables and coconut milk are one of the worst ideas. They're better off eating like a strict paleo or specific carbohydrate diet that's higher in animal protein and cooked vegetables and less in overall starches or disaccharides. So that is an overview of what dampness is in Chinese medicine. It doesn't cover every example, but it's a good overview. So check those suggestions out. Let me know if they help you guys. And again, before you go, check out those related links right below this video.