Sleep issues are not only frustrating, they are disruptive to one’s daily activities and state of well-being. Luckily, traditional Chinese medicine can provide guidance in unravelling the mystery of sleep problems, whether it has to do with insomnia, waking up several times in the night, or waking up feeling fatigued. Difficulty sleeping can sometimes be linked to different specific organs in the body, depending on the time of day the person is having trouble sleeping. TCM makes use of an organ clock to help diagnose which of these organs in your body may causing the problem.
To explain this, I’m going to discuss a concept from Traditional Chinese Medicine known as yin and yang:
Yin and yang cycle consistently each day as the yang of daytime gradually converts into the yin of night time, and then repeats. Sometimes when the body’s own cyclical energies are interrupted, it reflects in these yin and yang cycles through sleep.
An acupuncturist classifies sleep issues into several categories by looking for imbalances with the heart, kidneys, spleen, gallbladder, yin, and blood. Information that is helpful in making these distinctions includes figuring out exactly what kind of sleep issue a person is having. This can range from trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep, waking early in the morning and being unable to fall back asleep, vivid dreaming that is not allowing one to awake rested, and the inability to shut one’s mind off at night.
Traditional Chinese Medicine also takes into account qi flow of the organ clock when energies of certain organs are at their highest. For example, if someone is consistently waking up at 3am, then an acupuncturist will consider a correlation with the liver as a possible root cause of one’s sleeping problem. Depending on the diagnosis, dietary recommendations and herbal formulas can may be suggested to help correct imbalances.
I hope this short post has been helpful. If you have any questions about treatment options for sleep dysfunction or how acupuncture / Traditional Chinese Medicine may be able to help you rest better at night, contact us at info@healthybynaturecalgary.ca or consider booking a free meet-and-greet with one of our Chinese medicine doctors here.