Acupuncture for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)

How Chinese medicine understands IBS

IBS is a label for a group of symptoms: cramping, bloating, and bowels that are too loose, too slow, or both in turns. Chinese medicine does not treat the label. It looks at the pattern behind your symptoms, and two people with IBS can have quite different patterns.

The common ones are:

• Liver overacting on the Spleen. Stress, worry or frustration go straight to the gut. Cramping and urgency come on when you are tense, and symptoms often swing between diarrhoea and constipation. This is the pattern most often linked with IBS.
• Spleen Qi deficiency. In Chinese medicine the Spleen handles digestion. When it is weak, stools are loose, you bloat after eating, and you feel tired, especially after meals.
• Spleen and Kidney Yang deficiency. A colder version: loose stools early in the morning, cold hands and feet, and symptoms that are worse with cold food.
• Damp-heat in the intestines. Urgent, burning or foul-smelling diarrhoea, often worse after greasy food or alcohol.
• Qi stagnation with dryness. Constipation with bloating and hard, small stools.

The pattern decides the treatment. Calming a stressed gut is different from warming and strengthening a weak one.

What treatment involves

Your first visit covers your bowel habits, what you eat, your sleep, your energy and your stress. I also check your tongue and pulse. From that I work out your pattern and explain it in plain terms.

For IBS, treatment combines acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine, with visits at least once a week.

Acupuncture for IBS commonly uses points on the belly, legs, arms and back, chosen for your pattern. Treatment aims to settle cramping, regulate the bowels, and ease the stress that often sets off a flare. Where the pattern is cold or weak, moxibustion can warm the belly.

Herbal medicine is the other half of IBS treatment. You take a formula written for your pattern every day between visits, and it changes as your symptoms change.

Plan on 5–10 treatments to judge progress. The clinic is in Keswick, and treatment can run alongside the care you get from your family doctor or gastroenterologist.

Between visits

• Keep a food and symptom diary for two weeks. Note meals, stress, sleep and bowel movements. Patterns show up quickly.
• Eat smaller meals at regular times, and do not eat too much at once.
• Cut back on common triggers: caffeine, alcohol, and sugar-free products sweetened with sorbitol.
• Talk to your doctor about anti-inflammatory painkillers such as ibuprofen or naproxen if you take them often. They can irritate the gut. Do not stop a prescribed medicine without advice.
• Move every day. A short walk after meals is an easy place to start, and it helps with stress too.

When to see your doctor first

IBS should be diagnosed by a doctor, because other conditions can look the same. See your doctor promptly if you have:

• Blood in your stool, or black, tarry stools.
• Weight loss you cannot explain.
• Symptoms that start after age 50, or a clear change in your usual bowel habits.
• Diarrhoea that wakes you from sleep.
• Fever, persistent vomiting, or severe pain that does not settle.
• Signs of anaemia, such as unusual tiredness, paleness or shortness of breath.
• A family history of bowel cancer, inflammatory bowel disease or celiac disease.