 The greatest forte of traditional Chinese medicine is that it is a systems biology-based approach to wellness, meaning that you may have heard this term functional medicine, but traditional Chinese medicine was the OG original functional medicine. Now one of the things and one of the conditions that this is very important in is strange or mysterious chronic symptoms. In my experience, this is one of the weakest parts of conventional medical care and one of the strongest in what I do. In this video, I thought I would share a little bit about some strange symptoms, what they mean clinically, and how you can approach them for your own healing. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hine, author of the health book Master of the Day and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. So before we jump into this video here below, there are two very important links. The first is for a free guide, which is four daily rituals that could potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And the second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, check out the link right below this video to learn more. Now I myself have experienced some of these very mysterious symptoms, but one in particular took the cake. Around the last year of my graduate program, my medical program, I was completely exhausted. I've been working over 80 hours a week for well over four years and I started beginning to get this abnormal sensation of my body tremoring. Now the first time it happened, I woke up in the middle of the night. I was on my bed and I thought the train was going by or my phone was buzzing on my bed. I thought my phone was on silent being called because my body felt like it was shaking with a visible tremor, but nothing was moving. Now this symptom went on for several years, undiagnosed. I saw many practitioners east and west, they all had opinions, but only one was able to fix that particular symptom. Now it turns out this symptom was a very specific constitutional or genetic symptom when my body was at a severe straight, basically a severely broken down state of prolonged stress, years of double the work hours I should have been. For other people, another symptom might have shown up. But for me, this tremoring or buzzing sensation is now something that I've seen in about four patients over the last two years I've had that symptom. So it is a rare symptom, but it turns out it is almost always a genetic or a constitutional symptom of that person's body under high amounts of stress over a period of time. For me, the solution ended up being very high dose Chinese herbal formulas. But why so many people misdiagnosed it, why so many people I had seen east and west couldn't get it better, was because they didn't know that it was something unique to my genetic makeup and my constitution. And how can you treat it if you don't know that's where it's coming from? Now since then, I've seen a whole host of weird and rare and odd symptoms. Actually, with long COVID, I've seen the highest percentage of unusual symptoms that I've ever seen really in my clinical practice. And almost inevitably, almost inevitably, a large percentage of the time, these rare, strange, unusual misdiagnosed symptoms are genetic in nature, which is why they are commonly misunderstood. But by treating the person, you can make these weird abnormal sensations go away. So I have seen this twitching and tremoring in people with long COVID. I've seen people who get abnormal sensations, like they push on parts of their body and it'll make a clicking or a popping sound or they'll push parts of their body and it will cause them to burp. Or I've seen a massage therapist who is very skilled and anytime his mind would concentrate too much on a patient, he would have to burp. So he's giving a seminar and as he's massaging, he's constantly burping and burping and burping. Now in reality, he was probably just concentrating and clenching his abdomen and it was probably something with a diaphragm. But inevitably, rare and unusual symptoms very often turn out to be something constitutional. Now the problem is conventional medicine has no method of treating any kind of constitutional illness in this way because it usually just gives medications, right? If you are genetically a more anxious person or someone who has issues with sleep, the only solution they have for you really is medication. If you go to someone else, maybe they'll have something else. So what can you actually do about this, right? Because if it is something constitutional, you may hear the word genetic and think that is not fixable. But inevitably, most of the time, the patients I've seen, there is a straw that broke the camel's back meaning I didn't have that tremoring sensation ever before, even once in my life. But once my body and nervous system had reached that crisis point, it's like the switch was flipped and we were in disease mode and that symptom went on for years. So what can you do? In my opinion, there's two things. First is on the treatment side, one of the absolutely most essential parts of traditional Chinese medicine medical diagnosis is the fact that we are typically treating the Constitution in every treatment. Meaning through our methods of diagnosis, the abdominal diagnosis, the pulse, your medical history, it can uncover what your genetic weaknesses are in terms of which organs. So for example, some of my patients are genetically weak in the digestive department, right? They are always having issues with digestion, whether it's bloating or gas, they've always had sluggish bowel movements in their life or they were a very thin child and had that sort of failure to thrive sort of pattern. For us, that's often called spleen sheet deficiency as one pattern, an issue with the pancreas and often the stomach. But how do you fix that if it's genetic? Through weakly acupuncture and taking these custom compounded Chinese formulas, you can to a certain degree repair the Constitution. At the very least, by treating it with these formulas, this internal medicine, you can get people back to a point where they are 90 or 95% normal and they don't functionally have those issues any more day to day. From there, it depends on their lifestyle, right? And the decisions and the choices that they make. But for sure, with Chinese medicine, not only try to diagnose what Constitution is this, but we try to patch that up in every treatment that we do. The second option is, let's say, you are that person who's having the tremoring or some other weird obscure symptom in your body that healthcare practitioners are giving you the side eye about. The main thing you can do is just focus on the pillars for health, the pillars of healing. Because if you're focusing on the pillars of healing, you are inevitably moving your body towards a healthier state, which means you're decreasing stress, you're helping your digestive system, you're sleeping better, you're working on the factors related to anxiety and depression. Inevitably, what will happen is, as you begin to heal your body's Constitution, these symptoms will begin to go away if they don't require medical intervention. And so, like me, poor little Alex five years ago, if he had just quit grad school or medical program and I went to live in the woods for a year, I probably would be fine if I was not working and had bed rest, right? That's assuming those symptoms are able to be treated just with lifestyle. But in general, revisiting those core pillars of healing, my diet, my rest, what I'm doing for work and exercise, what I'm eating, what I'm drinking, sleep, if it is something constitutional in nature, sometimes with enough time focusing on the pillars of healing, you will get better, meaning as your overall battery recharges, those constitutional symptoms will begin to go away. Because your body, once the battery drops below a certain charge, this is the straw that broke the camel's back, boom. Here's where symptoms are activated, right? These messages from your body, and this is where those constitutional triggers have been activated and they will last for a certain period of time. So my opinion is, just treat it if you're able and if not, or you don't have access, focus on the pillars of healing until your battery recharges enough that your body will not manifest those symptoms. So sometimes weird symptoms really are genetic. They are constitutional. They are the way your unique body breaks down under stress, for example. And so it's important to keep that in mind. My two cents for today, guys. Check out those links below this video and I'll see you soon.