comfrey - what to do with it...

Comfrey (Symphytum, or 'knitbone') is a traditional herbal remedy for broken bones.  So, quite a few people mentioned comfrey in the context of my broken clavicle:

1.  My friend somehow talked with a homeopath friend who recommended homeopathic comfrey – I obediently got some – but she then said it would be knocked out by drinking coffee, which worried me since I wasn’t in a stop coffee drinking space.

2.  A medical doctor/ acupuncturist also suggested it, but without specifying form or frequency.

3.  A shiatsu practitioner also suggested comfrey cream, and drinking comfrey tea.

 

Obediently, therefore I got some comfrey cream, and put it on the affected area (on top of armica cream) after my morning bath.  I also managed to buy some dried comfrey from Bumblebee in London, and drank a small pot of tea daily.

I ran out of that batch recently, and managed to get some more in London at Neal’s Yard Remedies yesterday.  Whilst there I looked at a book on herbs there, which said comfrey should not be used for internal use since there is a risk of liver cancer.  Oh dear.

I remember that there was something about comfrey not too long ago – a couple of years perhaps where I think I heard hearing it was banned by the ?MHRA – presumably for this risk.  But I also remember it as being rather controversial, and many disagreed with this ruling, presumably because the risk was arguably exaggerated or irrelevant to context used.

So now I’m not sure what to do.

One thing I may do is try to research further.

I think there is a general point that it often seems hard to get exact information, or even any information about what to do with folk remedies.  Also, I think there has been some legislation which forbids the mention of what certain remedies have been used for traditionally.  I seem to remember hearing this again at Neal’s Yard remedies – that buying a product in a bottle – eg I vaguely remember this was about the ‘woman’s herb’ Dang gui, they may not put what it’s ‘for’.  If bought loose, then I think it was considered OK.

all very confusing – just for a change.  Do post any thoughts or information you may have which may help enlighten us!

SI 11 - Our Celestial Ancestors? - need for dialogue

Small Intestine 11 (also known as The Celestial Ancestors from the Chinese) in ‘acupuncture’ language – apparently something else to physios – I discovered this in dialogue with my physio last week, and I find it really interesting.  What it is is that at least some of the special pressure points which we learn in shiatsu training are also learned by conventional medicine, as physiotherapy is now considered.

I think my physio also mentioned that GB21 (Shoulder Well) on the shoulder was the ‘trap point’.  There may well be others, and to be honest I would love to know what they are, and how they map onto each other, and how the locations are described.  For example, GB21 is halfway from C7 and the edge of the shoulder – I wonder how physios would describe this location? [go on, if you’re a physio reading this, please let me/us know!].

As I’m thinking about it the physio, who is also an acupuncture practitioner, also mentioned Large Intestine 4 (Great Eliminator) – another really important point in shiatsu practice – as being the same as one used within physiotherapy practice.

I notice that I’m both surprised and unsurprised.  I do think I was surprised when I first discovered about GB21 in an earlier physiotherapy session.  However, I also of course not surprised – if it works, it’s likely to be discovered several times within different cultures presumably – but somehow I wonder how the Chinese discovered them, presumably without the benefit of seeing dissection, which could help with muscle understanding.

mm, a puzzle – do add your two penn’orth of you have any thoughts.

Catherine.

shiatsu bodywork – like a healing balm

I went to a local shiatsu practitioner support group t’other night – the chosen theme was ‘support’ as a quality of the Earth Element which is this time of year, moving from summer to late summer and harvest time, before moving on to Metal autumn energy.

We did some gentle individual bodywork, and then two sets of paired work – all really quite gentle, and more like hands-on healing in a way to me, including the theme of support throughout.

The following day I was so happy to feel that my ‘sick’ shoulder (the one with the broken clavicle, which I had said in the session felt as if I’d been shot) felt much happier, and as if it had received a healing balm.  Really very impressive, and to be honest unexpected, even though I am a ‘shiatsu and all that’ fan.

A couple of days later, it still feels rather good, though to be honest I haven’t been challenging it too much with exercises which might cause the overlapping bones to rub against each other potentially in a tissue irritating way.  Not sure what’s for best, since other practitioners are also concerned that I must use the muscles to maintain and regain range of movement.

something to ponder on – but, really, just wanted to share with you (whoever ‘you’ are) the potential balminess of shiatsu.

cherish your clavicle(s)

before I broke my clavicle recently, I hadn’t realised it was so important.  I had heard of people breaking a clavicle – often as a riding (bike or horse) accident, but that it was a relatively minor accident, such that people often didn’t even realise it had been broken.  Generally, it heals up by itself (apparently) and there may be a bony knob sticking up where the bone joint is.

Perhaps I make a lot of things, but it has felt like a really serious injury – not so much initially when I thought I’d be better and back to normal within 10 weeks.  But when it was still hurting, and wriggling my shoulders still felt like a bad plan, followed by a visit to the consultant who figured out it hadn’t made any attempt to join up, I was particularly perturbed.

One medic explained to me that the clavicle was in a way the most important bone in the body, because it supported everything else – not quite sure if I’ve summarised what he said quite right – but it was something along those lines.  Bottom line – clavicles are IMPORTANT.

so, my message is, appreciate your intact clavicles (while they are) – so very many things to be thankful for that perhaps one doesn’t realise is working in one’s life until it goes wrong in some way.

I love my clavicles – both of ‘em, I love the one on the left which is intact, and the one on the right to encourage it to get back to the best possible place it can to support me.

 

On natural healing?

I tutored for an Open University course about perspectives on complementary medicine for many years.  I always found it interesting what polarised responses it could receive.  On the one hand, there were orthodox folk (eg Ernst in newspaper, Colquohoun) who thought it was over-embracing the positives of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), and on the other there were more radical folk who thought it was over-critical of CAM.  I had a tutor colleague with a nursing background, who lay in the former camp, and I remember she cited some fractures as an example of where orthodox medicine worked ‘naturally’ by just putting the injured limb, for example, in a sling to heal up on its own.

Round about that time I fractured my wrist, and experienced this form of health care – I went to A&E, where I was X-rayed and given a wrist support to help give it support in healing.  At the end of the ?six weeks, I returned to the hospital to the OT section, where they told me to do some very uncomfortable exercises, bending my hand at the wrist in different directions.  These exercises somehow felt inappropriate to me so I didn’t do them.  By a happy chance, I had met and been impressed by a chiropractor at a conference on CAM, and ended up consulting him.  He reckoned that the scaphoid bone had got stuck, and over several sessions unjammed it, with the result that my hand would flex another 45 degrees to the approximately 80-90 degrees that the other one did naturally.

So, in this case, I reflect that ‘natural’ in the sense of ‘not doing anything’ was insufficient.  I also happened to chat to various people such as participants in my Japanese Yoga class who said they’d fractured a wrist in the past, and it had set in the wrong place, so they had ended up having an operation where it was re-broken and set in the right place.  I’m not sure if they lost any mobility or sensation long-term as a result of this, but no doubt it was painful going through the operation and post-operative healing again.

Recently, I broke another bone! – I did at one point have a check a few years ago for osteoporosis, since a herbalist colleague had wondered if my bones might be getting brittle with my age.  It was in fact low-ish, and perhaps I should do more to build that bit up, I don’t know.  Again, it being the clavicle I was essentially given a sling and told to go home and get better.  There was in fact talk of putting a pin in to the clavicle to ? hold it together.  Consultation at the local fracture clinic didn’t show up any further problem, though to my eyes the two ends of the broken clavicle looked ‘miles apart’.  However, I was told they would seek each other out and all would be well.  My physio told me I would regain full movement so I would be as good as pre fracture.

Imagine my concern when I returned for my discharge appointment at 10 weeks to be told no re-join had occurred.  There was talk of having the pin/plate process at this stage – which would now include a bone graft, since the bone doesn’t heal so well so long after injury.  Thankfully, I happened to consult a physio who suggested more of a wait and see approach, and in that time I re-connected with an osteopath-trained practitioner who seems to have readjusted the two ends of the clavicle back into place – still not quite sure exactly what he did, but there was a definite alarming clicky/crunch which seeme d to please him, and seemed to end up with my clavicle in a much better place, and me able to move it much better.

So, what is my point?  My concern is that orthodox medicine is missing important possibilities for facilitating healing in a more natural way with regard to fractures by supporting healers who know what to do to (? in this case, certain osteopaths? - ? traditional bonesetters? – as an aside, I think osteopathy did stem from an American bone-setting tradition) to get fractured bones into place so they can heal up most effectively.  I know my experience is over just a couple of breaks, but I was struck by the comments of people I knew who had sustained wrist fractures, and when I googled about clavicle fractures, there seems a lot of problems there too.

Anyone else any perceptions or thoughts?

 

 

References (still need a bit of working up)

 

Colquohoun, D (c2005)

 

Ernst, E (c2005)

 

Heller et al (2005) Perspectives in Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

in search of a bone-setter

Immediately following the break of my clavicle, I had a sense that a Chinese bone-setter type person would be useful to get the bones in place.  (I spent early years in south-east Asia, and my parents have stories of such).  However, I thought perhaps the orthopaedic people were the orthodox version of this, and so it was in the best place possible.  I googled a bit and found articles where traditional bone-setters had made things worse, so didn’t follow this up.

By happy chance, I reconnected with pain/injury consultant, John Perrott, last week, and he wondered if he could help.  I had my second treatment yesterday, and he managed to get my clavicle back into place – perhaps in the shoulder joint – I can’t quite visualise it – no doubt he’d express it officially – but he worked, it clicked oddly, I felt strange, and wondered if this was a good thing or not, but he seemed very pleased with the result. 

I can now feel my clavicle doesn’t seem to be trying to escape from the top of my shoulder – I hope it stays in place – I’m not quite sure if this is likely.  Buuut, it is such a relief to feel my shoulder back in the apparently correct, or at least better, place.

My general point and concern here is that there seems no general knowledge of this kind of event.  I’m not quite sure if John is just an unbelievably talented bone-setter bringing together various trainings and intuition, or whether this is generalisable to particular profession eg osteopathic training.

No-one gave me to believe that my situation was anything other than good in my recovery.  So, it was a shock to discover it was not good after all, and the long-term implications of further surgery sound serious to me – eg numbness beneath the shoulder, and possibly into thumb and first finger – particularly? serious for a shiatsu practitioner – but presumably everyone is keen on having sensitive fingers!

So, do post any thoughts or comments here, and any ideas on how this kind of positive outcome can be spread so others may receive better support when injured like this.

old chestnut - private cf public; options

Feel a bit silly writing this blog, but I guess it logs my thoughts for myself – though the reason I make it publicly available is I hope it will help others in various areas of health learn something – other people with broken clavicles, or more general principles on health; and health practitioners who may forget or not know about the service user/ client/ patient experience.

1.  private cf public medicine.

so, a first thing I asked the consultant when he told me my clavicle had not joined up after 10 weeks was whether it would be any advantage to go privately – absolutely none, he said.

However, now a few weeks on I don’t think I agree with him.  Potential advantages of ‘going private’ I realise include:

1.  choosing a specialist for ones problem – in my case, a ‘shoulder guy’ rather than a ‘hand guy’.  In the NHS, my issue comes under general surgery, so I may have lucky if you like to get someone in the right general physical area!

2.  if surgery is indicated, a more choicey process – seemingly more choice of date, a private room, staying overnight afterwards; from my point of view, not feeling useless if I don’t have someone immediately obvious to look after me in the initial post-surgery time.

and, of course, on the down side:

1.  considerable amounts of money...

2.  possibly time spent trying to figure out the process, and who to visit.

 

2.  options:

Last week I found myself moving toward immediate surgery (that is to say a plate – meaning eek my shoulder opened up, and bone graft meaning taking something out of my pelvis – very scary – and presumably painful).  I felt very uncomfortable with this – and although it sounded like the most sensible option, I was really stressed at the thought of having to be ready for surgery any of the next four Wednesdays to include rearranging commitment on and after that day, and managing the painful process of surgery and post-surgery.

now, having visited another practitioner, I find myself more drawn to a slower approach.  He didn’t seem to think that if I had the surgery in a few months time that would make that much difference.  There seems a possibility that actually finding a way to live with a broken clavicle may be the better option for me, and this gives time to explore that.  It also means I can explore some private options so if I have the surgery I can feel I have the person with the best experience for the job, and to allow myself the most comfortable experience (private room, overnight stay post-op) – if I feel I can afford it – which I may feel able to, and to prioritise this.

allfornow – any thoughts yourself, anyone out there?

c