Author’s notes:
This is part of a series of pieces on epilepsy. It is best read in sequence from oldest blog posted date to earliest. The easiest way to find these entries is to select “epilepsy” from the categories on the sidebar. Each entry in the series will come up. I suggest you start reading from the bottom blog entry, the earliest posted, and read up to the most recent one.
In this epilepsy series, there is an overlap of a number of Chinese Medicine theories among them. The detailed Chinese Medicine theory will be covered in depth the first time it is presented, and after that, it will be covered at a higher level. This will reduce the redundancy to – hopefully -- facilitate an easier read of the pieces.
Also, it will reduce the mistaken impression that all these epilepsy pieces are the same, when there are big differences among them. Again, I urge you to read from oldest to newest in order to build up your Chinese Medicine knowledge along the way.
Introduction:
I love music. Actually, since I am trapped in a time warp, I only love certain music. I love Prince’s music. I also love the Allman Brothers, Fleetwood Mac, Elton John and the like. I believe Chinese Medicine can help people live up to their potential. I use it to keep my life in balance, so I can do the best work I am capable of doing. When I’m off, I try to figure out why -- using Chinese Medicine, yoga and dream analysis -- to get back on track. (Which seems to suggest that I have ever been on track.)
I’ve often wondered over the years why great musicians like Prince haven’t created much great music for over the last twenty years. Ditto for the Allman Brothers and others of a certain age. I greatly appreciate the music they created and would like to help them create more. Most of these musicians are around my age or a little older. If Chinese Medicine masters can keep on creating great work even in their 80’s, why not these guys too?
Given this background information, I was told about Prince appearing on Travis Smiley’s PBS show, where Prince talks about having epilepsy in his childhood.
I loved the movie Purple Rain, which somewhat autobiographical about Prince and growing up with an abusive alcoholic father. I thought how being abused could be a trigger for an epileptic episode, providing another valuable perspective on epilepsy.
During working on these epilepsy pieces, I ran across at a coffeehouse an issue of Spin Magazine that featured Prince and the movie Purple Rain, because it was the 25th Anniversary of the movie. Between the Travis Smiley interview of Prince and the Spin piece on Prince, I the found the following information that was useful for researching and writing this piece on epilepsy.
Prince’s Dad named him Prince to be like him. Prince’s Dad physically, verbally and emotionally abused Prince when he was young. The relationship never appeared to be mended, even later in life.
It appears that Prince’s dad separated from his mom and moved out of the house, when Prince was 10 years old. Later in life, Prince was intensely angry with his father for abusing him and neglecting him when he was a kid.
Prince loved music at an early age, but his father, who was musician, wouldn’t teach his him. Not only that, but his father forbid Prince to play music in the house, when he was around because Prince was incapable of measuring up to his Dad’s high musical expectations. (Note: Dad sounds like a real charmer.)
Prince was intensely driven to succeed as a musician to prove his father wrong about being worthless musically. Later in life, Prince became very competitive with other musicians including Morris Day, in the group The Time as depicted in the movie.
Prince is a physically small person, although scrappy looking. Prince diminutive size would make him even more vulnerable to being attacked by his abusive father who would be even that much bigger than he is. Later in life, others reported Prince being leery about being in public places with all eyes on him as he figured he’d get shot like John Lennon. In the movie, Prince is shown abusing his girlfriends like his father abused him.
Prince says he was born with epilepsy. I think it is more likely that being subjected to abuse from his Dad from the get-go resulted in Prince having epileptic seizures. One day in Prince’s youth, Prince says he was visited by an angel who told him he’d never have another (epileptic) seizure. He tells his Mom about this event and never did he have a seizure after that. I tried to determine the year in his childhood, when the angel told him this, but I was unable to determine this time. If I were a betting man, I’d bet it was around the time Prince’s dad moved out of the house, greatly reducing his ability to directly abuse Prince.
I obviously have limited access to Prince’s medical history, so I started to research the best herbal formula for a person under extreme stress being the trigger for an epileptic seizure. I found the formula called in Chinese, “Si Ni San”. In English, the formula is called “Frigid Extremities Powder.”
It doesn’t deal with all frigid extremities, but only hands and feet that are cold due to intense liver qi constraint often caused by intense stress. It is not limited to treating just cold hand and feet, but with modifications to the formula, also epileptic seizures. The pathomechanism behind this formula is explained in the Diagnosis section below along the related symptoms for using this formula.
The symptoms Prince might experience are: seizures, cold fingers and toes, warm trunk and difficulty urinating.
CMG Diagnosis:
Severe Liver qi constraint especially in the trunk leading to flaring up of liver qi as mild liver wind.
That’s it.
Let me future explain liver qi constraint, as it relates to Prince, before moving onto Prince’s symptoms.
Prince had a number of factors that could cause liver qi constraint. Anger causes liver qi constraint. Intense anger causes severe liver qi constraint. Prince was intensely angry at his father for abusing him and neglecting him when he was a kid.
Liver qi constraint also occurs when one is overly driven toward a goal. Prince, loved music, but he was also intensely driven to succeed as a musician to prove his father wrong about being worthless musically.
Liver qi also becomes constrained when one feels vulnerable to being attacked. The Liver qi bottles up to defend oneself from assault -- be it verbal, emotional or physical abuse. Prince is a small person, so he was that much vulnerable as a kid for being abused by his much bigger father.
Later in life, Prince also had signs of someone with severe liver qi constraint. They are prone to vent and lash out at others in a subconscious attempt to release this pent up energy. Much like Prince, in the movie, was prone to abusing his girlfriend.
(Comparisons: No other cases had liver qi constraint as a factor. All cases had wind.)
Symptoms:
Seizures. The pathogenic liver wind results in uncontrollable movement of tendons causing seizures. The liver wind would be very mild. Therefore, the seizures would be very mild, possibly as little as a stiffness of the body.
Cold Fingers and Toes. Liver qi constraint prevents the qi from naturally flowing out to the extremities preventing then from being naturally warmed by the qi resulting in cold hands and feet.
The cold hands and feet would be temporarily reduced with activity, as activity makes the qi flow throughout the body. Conversely, the cold hands and feet would worsen with being physically inactivity, as it makes the liver qi further stagnate.
(Comparison: No other cases had cold hands and feet as a symptom and none of them had liver qi constraint as part of their diagnosis.)
Warm Trunk. Liver qi constraint bottles up the qi in the trunk that creates a warm trunk. As qi’s nature is warm and excessively bottled up qi in one place will make it excessively warm.
(Comparison: No other case had this symptom, as no other case had liver qi constraint in the entire trunk.
While not mentioned as part of the other case write-ups, as being too much detailed information to present, it is possible for an experienced Chinese Medicine practitioner to feel the excessive heat over the pericardium in those cases having excessive heat there.)
Difficulty Urinating. The liver channel runs through the trunk and specifically through the genitals. Liver qi constraint prevents a smooth flow of urine through the urinary system and out through the genitals. (As flowing qi making things flow in the body like urine naturally out of the body.) Therefore, with liver qi constraint the urine flow might take time to actually start or the urine flow will start and stop.
(Comparison: No other case had this symptom, as no other case had liver qi constraint in the entire trunk.)
CMG Treatment (Chinese Herbal Formula):
The formula chosen for Prince is called in Chinese, “Si Ni San”. In English, the formula is called “Frigid Extremities Powder”. It doesn’t deal with all frigid extremities, but only hands and feet that are cold due to intense liver qi constraint in the trunk. The formula is on page 116 of the Chinese Herbal Formulas book. {link again v2} The formula contains 4 herbs.
The formula’s primary purpose is to move liver qi. Additional herbs need to be added to this base formula to address the wind by adding herbs to extinguish wind. Again, I won’t go into detail how each herb in the formula plays its important role in achieving the formula’s overall purposes. This is way too detailed, but years from now I’d love to teach it to interested students.
(Note: However, I created another blog entry called “Ivory Tower: Cold Hands & Feet DX1”, that is more detailed explanation of the formula used in this case. {link cmg blog} It was one of the first CMG blog entries, as I struggled with how much detail to present and how to do it. It took many weeks to create this Youtube slide show. I learned that I was going to lose the audience, if I went into this much detail. Also, I realized I was spending too much time on frying little fish, like Cold Hands and Feet, while bigger fish, like epilepsy, were left un-fried.
It’s a good example of the next level of Chinese Medicine detail and another way of presenting it. Believe it or not -- there are even deeper levels of detail than presented in this slide show. It’s an example why Chinese Medicine masters are often depicted as being so old. As one of my revered Chinese Medicine teachers once told our class -- “Art is Long and Life is Short”.
He was referring to Chinese Medicine being an art form, which it is, along with being a science. He was saying how long it takes to master Chinese Medicine and unfortunately only having a short amount of time, one’s entire life, to master it.
I regret I was 36 years old when I first started learning Chinese Medicine. I didn’t really know it existed until then. I’m now 52 years old. I wish I was 8 years old when I started learning it, which probably is a big motivator for me to get Chinese Medicine to be taught starting in grammar school.)
Let’s take each of the symptoms Prince had and show in detail how the formula gets rid of them.
Seizures. Wind is causing the seizures. Herbs are added to the base formula of Si Ni San to address the liver wind by using herbs that are heavy and enter the liver channel to anchor down the wind, just like in Lauren and AJ’s cases.
(Comparison: The liver wind would most likely be mild, so fewer and/or less strong herbs to extinguish wind would be used than in Lauren’s case.)
Cold Fingers and Toes. Liver qi constraint prevents the qi from naturally flowing out to the extremities preventing them from being naturally warmed by the qi, resulting in cold hands and feet. Therefore, herbs are used to move the liver qi stagnation allowing the liver qi to naturally flow out to the extremities, resulting in elimination of the cold hands and feet.
Warm Trunk. The liver qi constraint bottles up the qi in the trunk created a warm trunk. Therefore, herbs are used to move the liver qi stagnation allowing the liver qi to naturally flow out to the extremities resulting in the elimination of the warm trunk.
Difficulty Urinating. The liver qi constraint running through the genitals and urinary system was creating difficulty urinating. Therefore, herbs are used to move the liver qi stagnation allowing the liver qi to naturally flow again. The liver qi can then naturally propel the urine in a steady urine flow eliminating the difficulty in urinating.
Wrap Up:
These cases illustrate how epilepsy and its cause vary from a Chinese Medicine perspective – it’s important to look at the root causes of the symptoms and create a Chinese medicine treatment based on the symptoms and their severity.
A more detailed comparison of all these epilepsy cases will be presented in the final pieces in this series.
CMG Related Blog Entries:
Ivory Tower: Cold Hands & Feet. {link blog entry} The Cold Hand & Feet blog entry was one of the earliest and most time-consuming blog entries. It contained a slide show with voiceover from yours truly. The voiceover explained among other things, how each of the herbs in the formula achieved it’s overall purpose within the herbal formula.
The herbal formula used in the Cold Hands and Feet blog entry is the same as used here for Prince. The formula would need to be modified for Prince, because herbs are needed to be added to extinguish the wind, which is not part of the original formula.
It is very common, when studying with Chinese Medicine herbal masters for them to take a formula as a base starting point. Then modified it by adding or subtracting herbs as needed to precisely address that patient at that point in time. It’s an example of personalized medicine and Chinese Medicine as an art form. I have been in awe many times watching a herbal master craft a formula for a patient. I bet it’s like a painter would be in awe standing in front of a Van Gogh painting at the Chicago Art Institute.
Movie People: Eminem’s 8 Mile Stage Fright. {link cmg entry} Both cases have a great musician under a great deal of stress that is creating the liver qi to bottle up inside. The Chinese Medicine diagnosis is the same. However, every person is different, so the liver qi constraint can manifest in a different symptoms in each person.
Prince had mild liver wind that also needed addressing, by adding herbs to the base herbal formula to address this wind. Eminem didn’t have any seizures or convulsions. He had no symptoms that would indicate the liver qi constraint was leading to liv wind. Therefore, no liver wind herbs would be added to the same base formula, as used by Prince, of Si Ni San.
However, Eminem did have the symptom of vomiting that might require a couple of other herbs added to the base formula to bring down the Stomach contents that was rising up with the flaring up of liver qi. In Prince’s case, he didn’t having vomiting, so these added anti-vomiting herbs used by Eminem would not be added to Prince’s base formula.
