Protocol for Purpura

Are you asking for acupuncture or Chinese herbal medicine or both?

In Chinese Medicine purpura is a general sign of blood stasis, but that symptom alone is not enough to come to a proper diagnosis which is what treatment will be based on - see “What does acupuncture treat?” and “point selection guidelines” for more on those basics.

There are excess conditions that can lead to stasis, those of deficiency origins and empty heat conditions as well. Proper treatment requires proper analysis of the contributing factors in your patient.

Purpura is just a symptom with any number of western medical causes. It is helpful to know more about these even though you still don’t base your Chinese Medicine treatment plans off of the western causes. You look at all of the patients signs and symptoms from a Chinese Medicine perspective and arrive at a proper diagnosis.

One of the more important points in most cases will be UB 17 - the hui meeting point of the blood. In most cases there will be some liver system involvement as well (see “My liver is what?”).

Please read my reply and the pages that it links to. You have to figure out what the underlying diagnosis is - the symptoms (in this case purpura) in general terms are irrelevant in Chinese Medicine. We are concerned with -how- things come to be, not -that- they are a symptom.

You should really see someone locally if at all possible that does both acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine. Given your initial response to lipitor (atorvastatin), I would be inclined to stop that and use Chinese herbal medicine and/or acupuncture to keep your cholesterol under control. Generally the proper Chinese herbal formula(s) should both keep your cholesterol under control without side effects and further help your gastric issues as well as help the liver to heal.

In the absence of a practitioner in your area the safest way to try keeping the cholesterol under control besides dietary changes is Ku Ding tea. It tastes pretty bitter, but most patients don’t mind the taste and it will work well in most cases based on my clinical experience with it. But to fully address all of your issues that would only be part of the equation. The rest a practitioner would have to work out for you. At least that would minimize the possibility that your issues are from lipitor.

I also wrote an article a while back about our approaches to treating high cholesterol which includes acupuncture points and some dietary suggestions as well.

The “problem” is not “having purple colour patches below the knees” - that is one of the results of the internal imbalance (see “treating the cause and not the symptoms”). For proper treatment you need proper diagnosis and for that you need to work with someone locally in your area if at all possible.

Now in Chinese Medicine diagnostic terms the purple blotches are most often from blood stagnation. Related herbal formulas and acupuncture points are found on that diagnostic page. Some variation or combination with xue fu zhu yu wan is often the initial starting point.