Table Of Content

Treating Insomnia with Chinese Medicine of related interest Acupuncture for Headaches, Eyes and ENT Pathologies Hamid Montakab ISBN 978 0 85701 404 7 eISBN 978 0 85701 405 4 Treating Emotional Trauma with Chinese Medicine Integrated Diagnostic and Treatment Strategies CT Holman, M.S., L.Ac. ISBN 978 1 84819 318 5 eISBN 978 0 85701 271 5 Treating Psoriasis with Chinese Herbal Medicine (Revised Edition) A Practical Handbook Sabine Schmitz Foreword by Steve Clavey ISBN 978 1 78775 349 5 eISBN 978 1 78775 350 1 Treating Acne and Rosacea with Chinese Herbal Medicine Sabine Schmitz Foreword by Dan Bensky ISBN 978 1 78775 227 6 eISBN 978 1 78775 228 3 TREATING INSOMNIA with CHINESE MEDICINE A Synthesis of Clinical Experience YOANN BIRLING Foreword by Jane Lyttleton First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Singing Dragon An imprint of Jessica Kingsley Publishers An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd An Hachette Company 1 Copyright © Yoann Birling 2022 Foreword Copyright © Jane Lyttleton 2022 The right of Yoann Birling to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Front cover image source: Shutterstock® and Deposit Photos. The cover image is for illustrative purposes only, and any person featuring is a model. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress ISBN 978 1 83997 230 0 eISBN 978 1 83997 231 7 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group Jessica Kingsley Publishers’ policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sus- tainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. Jessica Kingsley Publishers Carmelite House 50 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DZ www.singingdragon.com Contents Foreword by Jane Lyttleton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Part A: Integrative Knowledge on Insomnia 1. Sleep and Its Mechanism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2. The Characteristics of Insomnia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 3. The Pathology of Insomnia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 4. The Treatment of Insomnia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Part B: Clinical Experience Synthesis 5. General Considerations in the Treatment of Insomnia with Chinese Medicine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 6. Pattern-Based Treatment of Insomnia with Chinese Herbal Medicine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 7. Atypical Patterns of Insomnia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 8. Classical Formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 9. Disease-Based Treatment with Chinese Herbal Medicine . . . 142 10. Treatment Adaptation According to the Person, the Season and the Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 11. Treatment According to Insomnia Subtype. . . . . . . . . . . . 163 12. Managing Comorbidities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 13. Cooking, Intake Methods and Treatment Duration. . . . . . . 183 14. Shen-Calming Herbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 15. Herb Combinations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 16. Clinical Tips on the Use of Herbs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 17. Other Herbal Treatments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 18. Body Acupuncture Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 19. Scalp Acupuncture and Ear Acupuncture . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 20. Other Acupuncture-Related Therapies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 21. Tuina Massage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 22. Psychology and Music Therapy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 23. Integrative Chinese Medicine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 24. Yangsheng and Self-Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 25. Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 Foreword When Yoann asked me to write the foreword to this book he could not have known that sleep is one of my favourite topics (and a favourite pastime). Sleep is also an intriguing mystery of human behaviour, that peculiar state akin to coma, death or anaesthesia about which we still know so little. So needless to say, I was delighted by the request. I, like so many parents of babies who don’t sleep, developed an enduring obsession with sleep some decades ago. We, the legion of exhausted parents kept awake during the wee hours of the night, have insight into the effects of sleep deprivation. It is a kind of torture not confined to the pages of spy novels. Sleep deprivation however is not the same as insomnia. But after month or years of interrupted sleep many parents do lose the capacity to sleep well. As do people who work shift work for an extended period of time. The same can apply to people who experience damaging stress, illness, mood disorders or hormone disruptions. In fact, we might think that modern city life is creating for all of us a nightmare scenario when it comes to healthy sleep conditions (even without a baby). We are seem- ingly always switched on, constantly bathed in the blue light from the screens of displays and devices, and have artificial lighting illuminating the city and the sky all night. But sleep historian Professor Roger Ekirch claims that at ‘no time in history have conditions from human slum- ber been better than today. Compared with 99 percent of our ancient ancestors, we have better beds, better blankets, better houses, and fewer late-night pests.’1 So I wonder, as did Yoann, what is it that brings so many patients to a Chinese medicine clinic seeking help for insomnia? Humankind has long been intrigued by the phenomenon of sleep. 1 R. Ekirch in Thompson, D. (2022) Can Medieval Sleeping Habits Fix America’s Insom- nia? Accessed on 14/04/2022 at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/ medieval-sleeping-habits-insomnia-segmented-biphasic/621372 7 TreaTing insomnia wiTh Chinese mediCine There have been many books written about sleep – from popular ones like Ariana Huffington’s (of the famous eponymous Posts), and best- selling ones like Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep, to historical treatises and scientific books covering sleep medicine reviews. A quick internet search for books on sleep gives more than 50 current titles – I have read quite a few of them. But this book on sleep may well turn out to be my best pick due to a number of reasons: • it looks at sleep from a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) perspective (another favourite subject) • it explores some of the mysteries of why we sleep, and what is going on when we can’t • it tells stories about real people and real sleep problems as described by hundreds of TCM doctors in China • it creates an easy to understand synthesis that analyses and sum- marizes what our TCM forbears have thought important when treating insomnia • it explores solutions to various pathologies that cause debilitating chronic insomnia. Most TCM doctors will read this book to learn more about techniques they can use to make them more effective in the clinic. But what makes this book different is the author’s interest in finding and creating clinical guidelines by searching through literally hundreds of case histories. Yoann analyses 560 clinical experience reports that he found in the Chinese academic literature to generate a clinical experience synthesis (CES), the result of which is a large part of the book you hold in your hands (or see on your screen). He claims (and no one can argue his point) that the strength of this book is in the pooling of clinical experience from many different sources. Yoann’s academic training gives him the tools to analyse this large pool of clinical experience in such a way as to create useful hierarchies that can guide clinicians to make the best treatment decisions. At the outset this book offers a physiological description of the parts of the nervous system responsible for sleep and wakefulness – located in the back of the neck, base of the head and top of the spine – the dumai of course. And just so you get the point of CES straight away, we are told that dumai is the most commonly used meridian for insomnia treatment. That may be news to a number of acupuncturists I know. 8