You’d be surprised how often your spine affects your wellness. Spine problems may be the underlying cause for your liver disease, back problems, headaches, eye problems, sinus issues or heart problems, but it could take ages for your doctor to pinpoint this. However, according to Dr. Lijuan Sun, a complementary wellness expert and practitioner, all of your nerves pass through your spine, which can affect your wellbeing with anything from asthma to arthritis.
‘I’ve had patients who have asked me why I knew so much about a particular area of the body even though it’s not my specialization,’ says Dr Sun, who is a licensed acupuncturist at Cupertino Centre Acupuncture. ‘In Chinese medicine you don’t study the body part by part. Everything is related.’ Dr Sun notes a recent case in which a patient had inflamed joints due to arthritis. Instead of following her doctor’s advice to take painkillers and go for a run every day – which was near-impossible as her knees were swollen to the point where she was unable to walk – the patient went to see Dr Sun and her knees were completely healed after six sessions of acupuncture.
Dr Sun explains that not knowing the origin of your pain can be detrimental to your wellbeing. According to Dr Sun, she recently advised a man with numbness in his hands against hand surgery. The man’s doctor had recommended surgery even though he didn’t know what was causing the numbness in his hand, and Dr Sun said she knew which places in the spine were related to the nerves of the man’s hand, and she thought hand surgery would not be the way to cure it. However, the man went ahead with the surgery anyway, which ended up causing further damage to his hand, and now it is paralysed.
However, it’s not just acupuncture that Dr Sun knows so much about – she also creates her own herbal medicine. She commented, ‘I never buy even pre-made Chinese medicine,’ as this way she ensures that everything is natural. However, even though she makes it herself, Dr Sun uses Chinese herbs that have been used to promote health and balance for thousands of years. She says, ‘I really like Chinese medicine, it’s so efficient. I’ve always liked Chinese medicine. I walk around with a needle in my pocket and if I have a problem—it’s taken care of. What’s better than that?’