Dale!

[JamesC]

I've been taking the fish oil and warming my hands after work. So far, everything I good. No swelling or pain.

[Dale Dugas]

Excellent!

Let me know how I can be of service.

[JamesC]

Thanks dale. Actually, as soon as I'm able to start up the iron palm again I'll need some of your jow. Not gonna rush back into it though. Although it seems counter intuitive, I've been using regular iron palm practice for tendinitis in my thumbs. No idea why, but it helps tremendously. Hoping it will have the same affect on my hands now.

[Dale Dugas]

The tapping on the bag can help heal many issues as the medicine and the small amount of stress added to the hands helps stimulate circulation and it also helps release a lot of tension so you see some issues resolve. Also the medicine involved creates better circulation so the two together create a healing response for many.

I needle patients all day and my hands do not get tired nor do they get sore.

Glad to hear your hands are better.

Thanks again for letting me know what was going on.

[Bacon]

You know all arguments aside as long as his hands are feeling better I'm glad.

[Fa Xing]

Dale,

I've got a quick question for you, my hands take a beating from both MA training and from doing Chiropractic stuff (palpating, adjusting, etc.); do you have any recommendations (herbs, etc) on keeping them healthy, so I can have a long career?

[Dale Dugas]

Hand health is important as you do not want to lose but gain strength and longevity of the hands.

I use a strong Dit Da Jow daily combined with stretching and liberal use of exercises that open and close my hands/fingers to help keep them limber.

With all the muscles attached to the lower arm and hands, up your protein as you are putting all those muscles under serious stress loads and you want to feed the muscles.

Fish oil is a good anti inflammatory that helps keep inflammation down.

Good dit da jow has anti inflammatory herbs as well as pain killers to help deal with minor injuries and aches.

I massage liniment into my hands in the morning after lunch and when I get home to ensure my hands are healthy and strong for all the things I do.

Let me know how I can be of service, brother.

[Fa Xing]

Is there a particular dit da jow formula you recommend?

[Dale Dugas]

Any decent Iron Palm or Injury formula can help.

I have many formulations that can help.

[Fa Xing]

Thanks, I will peruse your site!

[Lee Chiang Po]

What you need is a different job.

[Fa Xing]

Me? I'm not officially practicing yet, but I wouldn't give helping those heal their bodies for anything in the world. It's the best thing I could think of doing.

[SoCo KungFu]

As Crushing Step pointed out.

Advice from a licensed health care provider or some gobblygook from a netghost.

Western medicine really has no clue when it comes to traumatic injuries compared to Chinese medicine.

Let me know how I can be of service.

This has to be one of the most BS statements I've seen on here in a while, one that I wouldn't expect from you. And frankly, my experience as a western medically trained and certified medic with a specialization in Aeromedical Evac and actual trauma experience in the military would seem to trump your TCM experience (which in the US with regards to trauma, is to say relatively none, at least not legally) by a large margin. Unless you're trying to argue that TCM is better at treating stubbed toes and achy feet...come back when you can needle someone out of shock....

And what Bacon said was right, in general you do not want to apply heat to fresh injuries because you will only exacerbate the symptoms. So your attitude really isn't appropriate. And by your logic, thousands of doctors trained in modern physiology aided with state of the art technology or a practitioner of a medical practice that espouses invisible energy, whose advice should be sought? TCM has some gems, but its not the be all and in many ways its flat our wrong. And frankly, I find the majority of alt med these days predatory.

OP, glad your hands are better. However, neither of these two are completely correct. RICE is the typical treatment for this type of thing, but there really isn't a lot of uniform evidence for compression. Its not to say that compression doesn't help, but the studies haven't been consistent with duration and treatment protocols to get a scientifically defensible conclusion. But you may want to try compression gloves and see if they help. Applying ice will help prevent further swelling, however, it won't help with any that is already present. In general, ice is better for acute trauma and heat better for chronic issues unless there's swelling present. Physical trauma is going to produce ruptures in the blood vessels, mainly capillaries. The capillary walls are only 1 cell in thickness (because this is where gas exchange occurs) and thus easily traumatized. This causes leakage of fluid into the tissue, producing localized edema. Ice will help constrict these vessels and stop that leakage. It won't correct any swelling already present, because lowering the temperature decreases tissue permeability and lowers the osmotic pressure that would drive fluid to leave the cells.

Benefits Of Cold Application On
Inflammatory Response
Historically, five cardinal signs of inflammation
were identified: pain, swelling, heat, redness and
loss of function. However, signs of
inflammation are not inflammatory response.
The inflammatory reaction consists of
overlapping stages that can impair tissue
function or structure [8]. The r reason for
applying cold therapy (e.g., ice) after an injury is
to cool tissues to accomplish the following
physiological objectives: decrease inflammation,
inhibit swelling (edema), diminish blood supply
(vasoconstriction), decrease hemorrhage, inhibit
temperature elevation, reduce metabolic
alterations (cold decreases the metabolic rate,
thereby lessening secondary injuries due to lack
of oxygen), assuage pain (cold decreases nerve
conduction speed), and, ultimately, speed up the
recovery of the patient to resume normal
functions

Heat will help get things moving because it helps relax muscles and opens up the lymph vessels (which are what actually drain most of that fluid). But, that does open up blood vessels as well, which will bring more fluid to the sight. This is why heat is best used later, after those vessels have had a chance to heal.

For immediate treatment, now that the swelling is down, typically you want to use ice. If heat is working, I'd keep doing it as well after icing (hot/cold immersion therapy). The heat worked because your injury was old. After a day or so, ice becomes ineffective and you should use heat at that point to move the fluids out. By then, the vessels should be healed anyways (assuming you aren't continually damaging them). Contrast baths are a little controversial in their actual effect. From what I've read, which probably isn't as much as say, TGY, it seems that just cold has more beneficial effect in trial studies. There is some evidence that it has an enhanced effect on clearance of plasma lactate following exercise, which could aid in recovery by allowing the tissue to recover proper pH more readily. But I'm not sure if that will mean much for your type of issue.

[JamesC]

Most of that is over my head, honestly. What I do know is I haven't had any problems with swelling since. I'll leave the reasons to you guys

[taai gihk yahn]

Western medicine really has no clue when it comes to traumatic injuries compared to Chinese medicine.

srsly? or just feeling a bit heady with the "healer's high" u've been getting regularly now?

c'mon Dale, that's just silly, and as SoCo pointed out, yu should know better; I mean, it's like me coming on here and talking about how osteopathic manual work (western) makes tuina (Chinese) look like something a kindergartner thot up - that wud b awfully uncouth...