Acupuncture for Chronic Diarrhoea

How Chinese medicine understands chronic diarrhoea

In Chinese medicine, the Spleen is the organ of digestion. It separates what the body can use from what it cannot, and it “holds” fluids in their place. When the Spleen is weak, or is being disturbed, fluids are not held and the stools run loose.

The common patterns are:

• Spleen Qi deficiency. Loose stools after meals, sometimes with undigested food, poor appetite, tiredness and a pale tongue. This is the most common pattern behind long-standing diarrhoea.
• Spleen and Kidney Yang deficiency. A colder version: urgent loose stools early in the morning, cold hands and feet, and symptoms worse with cold food or cold weather.
• Liver overacting on the Spleen. Diarrhoea that comes on with stress or nerves, often with some cramping. This overlaps with IBS.
• Damp-Heat in the intestines. Urgent, foul-smelling or burning stools, often after greasy food or alcohol, sometimes lingering after a stomach bug.

Long-standing diarrhoea is usually a weak or cold pattern, sometimes with some Damp. That is why the focus is often on strengthening digestion rather than just stopping the stools.

What treatment involves

Your first visit includes a lot of questions: how often you go, what the stools look like, when it is worse, what you eat, and your energy and stress. I also look at your tongue and take your pulse. From that comes a pattern diagnosis, explained in plain terms.

Acupuncture commonly uses points on the belly, lower back and legs, chosen for your pattern. The aim is to steady the bowels and support digestion. For cold and weak patterns, moxibustion is often used to warm the belly and lower back.

Chinese herbal medicine is an important part of treatment for chronic diarrhoea. You take a formula written for your pattern every day between visits. It is dispensed at the clinic and changed as your symptoms change.

Treatment at the clinic in Keswick runs alongside your family doctor’s care, and it starts once your doctor has checked for a cause. Plan on 5–10 treatments to judge progress.

Between visits

• Drink enough fluids. Water, broths and oral rehydration solutions replace what you lose.
• Eat warm, cooked, simple meals. Rice, oats, cooked vegetables and soups are easier on the gut than raw salads, iced drinks and greasy food.
• Keep a food and symptom diary for two weeks, noting meals, medicines and stress.
• Cut back on caffeine, alcohol and sugar-free sweeteners such as sorbitol, which loosen stools.
• Ask your pharmacist whether any of your medicines or supplements could be causing it. Do not stop a prescribed medicine without advice.

When to see your doctor first

Diarrhoea that lasts more than four weeks needs a medical assessment before other treatment. See your doctor promptly if you have:

• Blood or mucus in your stool, or black, tarry stools.
• Weight loss you cannot explain.
• Diarrhoea that wakes you from sleep.
• Fever, severe belly pain, or vomiting.
• Signs of dehydration: dizziness, very little urine, or a dry mouth.
• Symptoms that start after age 50, or a family history of bowel cancer, inflammatory bowel disease or celiac disease.
• Recent antibiotics, hospital stay or travel before it started.