Expert: R. Scott Malone L.Ac. - 7/14/2008

Question
Dear, R. Scott Malone,
Could acupuncture help somebody who is diagnosed with brachycardia and wouldn't you suggest any herbs, that could help treating disease?

Answer
Hello Jasmine,

First I'd like to apologize for taking so long to reply to your question. I went out of town for a week and forgot to notify All Experts, so again, my apologies.

Brachycardia or slow pulse is a western symptom.
In proper TCM or traditional Chinese medicine, we never treat a symptom, we make a diagnosis, and treat according to the diagnosis.

So, we would take slow pulse as one of the symptoms and correlate them with a list of other symptoms and then form a diagnosis.
Treatment in the form of point and herbal prescriptions would then follow according to the diagnosis.

In TCM we never give herbs or acupuncture symptomatically.
There are many causes for any given symptom.
A full intake MUST be filled out before acupuncture is performed or herbs are prescribed.

There is a saying in TCM, and I'm paraphrasing horribly,
different problems same formula, same problem different formula.

This saying illustrates that there can be different problems that have the same root cause, and you would use a variation of the same formula for each of these. By the same token 3 people can have the same problem, say headache for example and there can be totally different root causes for the headaches, and so different formulas would be prescribed.

So if you ask that question of someone, and they give you an actual answer without knowing your full health history, you put your health at risk by following their advice.

All of that being said, since I can't keep everything in my head, I will quote Giovanni Maciocia's list of conditions commonly manifesting with a slow pulse from his book
Diagnosis in Chinese Medicine a Comprehensive Guide, pg 471 :

stomach qi deficiency
spleen yang deficiency
heart yang def.
kidney yang def.
def, of gathering qi
lung yang def.
cold in the stomach
cold in the uterus
abdominal masses
cold phlegm
damp cold

Brachycardia can be treated with acupuncture and herbs, my advice would be to find someone qualified to do so.
Trying to treat oneself without proper eduacation and training is like trying to fix your own car without being a mechanic.
Hope this helps, feel free to contact me in the future and let me know how things turn out, or if you have another question.

Once again, sorry for the late reply,

R. Scott Malone L.Ac.