1. One gentleman who lives in LA visited me in last week. He has mouth and tongue (etc.) dystonia for many years. He has Botox injections, which helped to diminish the symptoms in some extents. The patients had one month herbal tea (we mailed herbs to him) and two months’ capsule, as well as 20 sessions’ acupuncture (in LA).
His personal experience is acupuncture (did in LA by a local acupuncturist) did not help him very much, the herbal tea seems help his more. During the herbal tea treatment (with acupuncture), he had more relieve in dystonia. He had acupuncture in our office once a day for three days, during that short period, we did not find a significant improvement.
He decide to use herbal tea and acupuncture for a few months and see if Chinese medicine could help him to overcome his dystonia.
Dr.Fan notes: Some of patients may respond the herbal tea better than that in acupuncture.However, some patients have better response in acupuncture. Basically, I recommend acupuncture plus herbal tea. Some time the capsule LIU JUN SAN also plays a good rule.
2. One middle age woman who has neck dystonia, or we call it Crooked, Twisted Neck Cervical Dystonia, or Spasmodic Torticollis (ST). She had to use muscle relaxant and 4 or more tablets of Ibuprofen everyday. After our acupuncture (with LIU JUN SAN capsule) for about 8 sessions, she could have 4 to 5 days pain relief (still use muscle relaxant) per week, and dystonia very less (self report “50% improvement”). She still uses Ibuprofen in 2-3 days/week, but the amount drops to 2 tablets a day. She is still in treatment–acupuncture, twice a week. Due to some reasons, she does not use herbal tea.
3. One young man with Spasmodic Torticollis who lives in Columbia, had Botox injection which leads a partial symptom relief. Using herbal tea and LIU JUN SAN one treatment course(one month), he feels better. So we decide to start the second course herbal tea plus LIU JUN SAN capsule today.
4.One young woman with both hands/fingers dystonia(right hand worse). She has used Botox injection for long time. She has seen me for three years and has used LIU JUN SAN capsule in some times. Yesterday, she came again and still just for LIU JUN SAN. Her experience is LIU JUN SAN capsule helps in eliminating the partial dystonia which Botox injection does not work, i.e. She feels Botox injection plus LIU JUN SAN capsule help more than Botox alone.
5. Three women with Spasmodic Torticollis who had acupuncture here for many years and recovered very well, still come for “tun up” acupuncture, i.e. once 2 weeks or one month. Still using LIU JUN SAN sometime as maintaining treatments.
Dr.Fan notes: Acupuncture at least could work on relaxation, adjusting the neurological function(such as work on Dopamine system,etc), as well as treating the pain and spasm from dystonia. Herbology is more complicated, according to our data, our special herbal formula for dystonia (“tea” and capsule) could diminish the dystonia and very stable.
Virginia Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine 