Last month my wife Monique caught a virus. She did the normally recommended things to try to heal her body quickly, including resting, fluids, gentle yoga and stretching. She also used a host of over the counter homeopathic formulas attempting to bolster her immune system. 

As time went on and she wasn’t feeling better she scheduled an acupuncture appointment at our office hoping it would help. The Dr. of Chinese medicine, Mashil Cheung, took her pulse, looked at her tongue and said “you’ve locked the burglar in the house and now you’re making it dinner!”

As it was explained to Monique, the concept of ‘kicking the burglar out of the house before locking the door’ is at the basis of Traditional Chinese Medicine when dealing with externally contracted diseases.  

Our natural inclination is to immediately start feeding ourselves herbs and supplements to strengthen the body as it starts to succumb to the viral attack so that it might quickly fight off the ‘invader’. 

However, this may have the unwanted effect of trapping the external pathogen in the body by strengthening the wall of immunity and ‘locking the burglar in the house,’ in turn prolonging the recovery process.

Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine delineate the various stages of immune response to a viral attack and treat the body accordingly as it progresses through each unique stage. The pathogen must be kicked out of the house first before locking the door!

There are various methods to ‘kick the burglar out of the house’ including:

– Cupping to pull toxins out of the body.  

– Acupuncture to reduce fever, rush white blood cells to the site of infection and inflammation and assist the lymphatic system to drain the waste that the body produces when fighting off the attack.  

– Moxibustion to warm the body, improve blood circulation and help guide the pathogen out.  

– Specifically prescribed herbal medicine to do all of the above with its antiviral, antibacterial, anti-fungal, anti-parasitic properties.

Once the burglar has been successfully ejected from the house of the body, then immune building strategies are employed to ‘lock the door behind it’ nourishing and rebuilding the body’s defenses.  

Revivorship Holistic Cancer Wellness offers all these interventions to help you detoxify and rebuild and revive, from Chinese Medicine to Yoga. We specialize in holistic cancer care, but our expert practitioners can support your body against any burglar!