Why Chronic Leakage of Breast Milk is Debilitating

I remember my midwives saying that there is no such thing as oversupply.  At the time, that made sense to me, but if I had known then what I know now, I could have saved myself years of feeling unwell and likely have prevented a few miscarriages.  Let me explain.  While the idea of milk oversupply may be debatable, from our Chinese medical lens we know that if the milk is falling out, this is leakage, and a loss of precious vitality.  Leakage looks like waking up in puddles of milk, soaking through your milk pads, or losing 4-6 ozs out of the breast your child is not feeding on while you are feeding on the other breast.  Regular loss of this amount of breast milk is extremely taxing.  Why?  

Because:  it is our bodies’ job to take in food and turn it into ourselves, which includes our blood, and eliminate the waste.  In menstruating bodies, the blood that is made goes to the uterus.  This precious substance either grows another new human body or it is shed monthly.  In a postpartum body, the blood is redirected to the breasts, where it becomes a very precious substance that grows a child.  In the same way that losing too much blood out of your uterus is taxing, even debilitating, losing too much milk out of your breasts is also very debilitating.  A body that is prone to leaking breast milk is often the same body, because of its constitution, that will take a long time to stop bleeding after birth, continuing to have a light flow 4, 6, or more weeks after childbirth.  Even if the amount of bleeding is light, this is a huge loss of qi, blood, and yang, and can cause a self-perpetuating loop.  Down the road, leakage can cause things like fatigue, weakness, dry tight muscles, scanty periods, insomnia, or poor hormonal health, even constipation.  Dry tight muscles might look like chronically aching neck and upper back, or an upper back that is especially tight before your period, or stomach muscles that are so tight that you chronically feel slightly or very queasy.  The same weakness that can cause you to leak things can become exacerbated, so that you begin to leak out of your lower orifices (pee and poop) or out of your uterus (heavy bleeding) or out of your pores (too much sweating).  

This sort of postpartum illness is insidious.  You may have had an easy time right after birth, only to look up 1 to 2 years later and realize that you really don’t feel well, and that it has been a while since you have.  I monitor for this kind of leakage in my postpartum patients in order to stop it before it becomes a problem.  When new patients come in two to three years after having a child and they tell me that their bodies are not what they used to be, often our intake reveals that they too have been leaking breast milk or other precious body fluids (sweat or blood) over a long period of time.

Traditional medicines provide excellent postpartum care because they can both identify issues before they are an issue, and more importantly, they have effective treatments that firm the edges of your body so that it can contain what should not be lost.  We also have ways of replenishing fluids and blood.  

Years after finishing breastfeeding, I slowly but very surely got better thanks to long term herbal medicine.  Had I known what to look for in the moment, and what treatment to use, I could have avoided years of feeling weak and other symptoms.  This would have meant more abundant healthier blood, and a much better chance for my later pregnancies to have taken.  It also means feeling strong and more like yourself.  If you relate to any part of what is described above, please find a skilled postpartum herbalist to help you start healing now. If you would like to schedule a free 15 minute phone consult, send me a message through the email form below.

Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine are Uniquely Suited to Treating Chronic Illness

Do you feel somehow cursed because, unlike your loved ones, you can’t eat a slice of pizza without debilitating pain or running to the toilet?  Is your internal thermostat off, to the point that you are sweating and wanting to rip your clothes off and stand in front of a fan while others seem perfectly unbothered?  Do you have to budget your energy expenditures, knowing that a normal friend outing will require half a day or more of recuperation time, or that a typical work day even at a job you love leaves you without the energy to fix and eat a meal?  Does a normal sized meal sit uncomfortably on your belly, so that you eat less than everyone else at the table, and yet mysteriously still gain weight?  Do you track public restrooms or have a tried and true way to ask to use the employee restroom because you can’t run an errand or watch a movie without getting up to pee? 

These are all symptoms that drive my patients to multiple doctors, where they sometimes get a diagnosis and sometimes do not, because despite something clearly being wrong, their ailment does not show up on blood work or imaging.  Or their abnormal bloodwork does not turn up a diagnosis.  Or their diagnosis in conventional medicine has no treatment.  Sometimes frustrated patients are told to lose weight or exercise more, two things that their body has long ago declined to do despite dedicated and sustained efforts.

The medicine that originated in ancient China and spread throughout Asia, now referred to as East Asian Medicine (EAM) is uniquely suited to treat chronic illness.  When you explain your bizarre conglomeration of symptoms, we hear things that were described in ancient texts, and are excited to begin an effective treatment that will restore confidence in your own body’s ability to interact with this world and experience joy.

We ask a lot of follow up questions in order to determine whether your body has not enough or too much of certain substances and to find out where things are getting stuck or are falling out.  We then, in very basic ways, get to work.  If something is stuck, we open through; if blood or cooling fluids are missing, we help the body make more; if there is too much heat, we cool it; too much cold, we warm it.  If an organ’s function is going in the wrong direction, say stomach qi is going up when it should go down causing nausea, vomiting, or regurgitation, we help it find the right direction.  If something (like urine) is falling out too frequently, we help it to stay in.  Persistent symptoms become less frequent, and less intense.  Slowly, being chronically unwell becomes a memory, a hard thing that someone went through and came out of on the other side, stronger, more confident, and, for having suffered deeply, more compassionate.

Your mysterious illness is not mysterious to us. If you are tired of seeking a solution to feeling unwell and are ready to get off of the sick train, book an appointment below.