Self-diagnosis help please

[Elizabeth Ross]

Hi Friends!

I’ve been having a few strange symptoms I’d like to clear up asap with your help. I’ll try and make this as concise as possible.

My teeth are alternating between buzzing and sensitive/painful since last night. This is the second time in the past week this has happened following a long walk out in the cold and wind (22 deg wind chill yesterday). I come home and have something warming because I know I’m susceptible to cold – last night was left over Thai food I’d made, last week was fresh ginger tea. Yesterday I also took a dose of guizhi tang before the walk to see if that would help. I have no symptoms other than being cold before eating/drinking, and then part way through my teeth become intensely painful, with the pain moving out into my face, jaw, and chin. The pain is sharp, achey, intense, intermittent, and both feels like burning and cold and effects my upper teeth more than my lower teeth – only my front 2-4 lower teeth are sensitive.

Last week when this happened I brushed my teeth and went to bed because it made me feel very tired, and the pain was gone in the morning. Today has not been the same. The pain persists in my upper teeth except for the most rear molar, and the same bottom teeth are still sensitive. Cold is the most uncomfortable – even room temp water is painful and I’m nervous to try anything too hot because that has seemed to trigger the pain intensifying. I feel cold internally, and my right side seems to feel colder faster.

I found a reference in the red book to tooth pain being connected to the LI transverse luo and tried treating that last night. It did not change anything but maybe I did it wrongly.

Thanks for any insight or advice!

[Elizabeth Ross]

I got some herbal advice from a friend and took XCHU + GZT which helped greatly; my symptoms are mostly gone. Which means I probably should have looked at sinews. I would love it if someone could help me to understand this presentation – would the teeth correspond to Stomach Sinew?

[Armin]

Hi Liz,

Hope the tooth has been behaving since your last post.

Yes, it does appear that you were fighting off an exterior wind-cold type situation given your symptoms and the fact that the herbal formula did a great job. It does make sense to use the sinews channels for sure given the acute exterior nature of the condition. The trajectory would correspond to both bladder and stomach sinew, though we would normally think of stomach given the primary channel trajectory of stomach. However, I am not sure on how to account for the fact that it was only your front teeth. It seems that both the stomach and the bladder trajectories go over the jaws on the sides!!! It’s possible that they are still covering all the teeth not just the molars!!???

Anyway, it’s possible that you would have had a superficial sinew channel pulse at the time which likely would have been on the tai yang or shao yang positions (cun & guan, especially on right). Not sure if you took your pulse at the time. In this case, there was no pain with movement, only sensitivity to temperature, so we can only diagnose based on pulse and trajectory. I think you would be looking at mostly Tai yang bladder channel, possibly with some Moxa work on the local area or Du 14 & Kd 3 when doing the prep work. If by chance, it was hurting with the movement of chewing, then I think that would be a shao yang movement diagnosis (gall bladder). Also, I am thinking there might some neck, shoulder blockage going on too; like cold trapped there!

I hope this gives you some leads.

Armin

[Elizabeth Ross]

Hi Armin,

Thank you so much for your thoughts on this! The tooth pain/sensitivity went on for 2-3 weeks. It’s really been very strange. The last I felt it was this past Saturday while jogging – I noticed a buzzing sensation in my front upper teeth, but it didn’t progress beyond that. It was mildly chilly outside (high 50s) but I felt like it was a reaction to the exertion more than the temperature.

I did try taking my pulses during the big flare, but it felt like all the sinews were showing and I wasn’t sure what to do with that, which is why I tried the Luo.

I’ve really been having some random stuff since the shut down – this thing with the teeth, I had a couple weird moles randomly erupt, and last night I started having a crazy itchy skin reaction on my arms and legs when I tried to go to sleep. I checked my pulses and again, wasn’t sure about the presentation – it seemed like taiyang and yangming pulses, skin was super red along UB, KI, SP, SI, HT, LR, LI so I tried just needling the confluent and well points for UB and LI so I could get the arms and legs together and I liked the connection to the skin through the LI and the super acuteness of UB. I didn’t want to do too much because anything I touched became super itchy. The only thing that worked has been to elevate my legs and taking benadryl (yuck). It seems to flare every 90 mins or so, last one being about an hour ago.

[Armin]

Hi Liz,

Seems like they all have wind in common: sudden flare ups or symptoms coming out of no where, and the skin itching for sure. It is spring after all, so that might have something to do with it too. Self diagnosing and treating can be challenging for sure. I think this might be a sort of ying/wei disharmony and so keeping up with either GuiZhi tang or Chai hu gui zhi tang, which is what you took earlier is not a bad idea. For 2-3 weeks as long as things are improving, and then reassess!

Also, if sinew treatments don’t seem to take care of it, you could try divergents to boost mediumship. In this case, st/sp might be good fit or gb/lv.

Just brainstorming. Hope things settle down soon.

[Author]

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