Good morning readers!

In response to several requests, today I am going to write a little about a disease that scares many people: Depression.

For Western Medicine, Depression is a chronic and recurrent psychiatric illness that produces a change in mood characterized by profound and endless sadness associated with feelings of pain, bitterness, disenchantment, hopelessness, low self-esteem and guilt, as well as disorders sleep and appetite.

For Chinese Medicine, the main organ involved in Depression is the Heart.

According to orientals, the Heart is the residence of the mind, known as “Shen”, and Depression is an imbalance of Shen. Furthermore, all feelings, whether good or bad, become the Heart.

According to the theory of the 5 Elements, each organ is affected by a feeling, namely:

Heart – Joy, Happiness

Spleen- Concern

Lung – Sadness

Kidney – Fear (survival instinct)

Liver – Anger

However, it is not the organs that produce these feelings. The Eastern theory assumes that there are “emotional matrices” that are decoded in the Heart. That is, the Heart identifies sadness and sadness affects the Lung or the Heart identifies concern and concern affects the Spleen and so on.

For this reason, Depression is a mixture of emotional matrices, erroneously decoded by the Heart, generating a mix of feelings of all kinds and most of the times, very bad for the patient.

Based on this information, the first step in treating Depression according to Traditional Chinese Medicine is to harmonize the functioning of the Heart.

For this, the points HT-7, HT-5, PC-7 and PC-6 are essential, as they calm the mind and unblock its orifices. Adding these two functions together, the points will not only keep the individual calm, but will also open up the possibility of new thoughts that will help to see the problem of depression as if they were seeing outside of it.

Depressive patients find it difficult to see the problem as it actually presents, so giving the possibility of self-assessment without being in a state of mental confusion is extremely beneficial.

In addition to Systemic Acupuncture points, maintaining auriculotherapy treatment is also of paramount importance. For this, ear points: “Heart”, “Tension” and “Anxiety” have an excellent indication.

Maintaining a good diet, with foods that make the Heart maintain good energy is also part of the treatment. For that, according to the Chinese Therapeutic Food, neutral and warm foods from the Fire element table, such as chamomile, beets and egg yolk, are indicated.

The complete table of therapeutic foods you can find here on the Blog:

https://www.facilitatingacupuncture.com/therapeutic-food-tables/

There are many types of depression, which affect other organs besides the Heart, for this reason, we will approach this same subject in other opportunities, with different approaches.

A big hug to everyone.

Profa. Fernanda Mara