Treating Women

This article is the woman's half of the therapy, and it is put together from two kinds of teaching that look different and are not. One kind is a set of withholdings and directions on the mat — what is not given during the menses, what is not given in pregnancy, what is blocked in a descended womb, and what is given instead. The other is a set of facts about a woman's health, given plainly, which run from how she should sit to what happens in a delivery room. They belong together because they answer one another. The rule tells you what not to do; the fact tells you why, and what to say.

Three things are worth fixing before we begin.

First, the tone. A woman on your mat is owed accurate information and no embarrassment. Nothing here is coy and nothing here is prurient. The words for a woman's body are the ordinary words, said in an ordinary voice, because a therapist who goes pink at the word bleeding teaches a patient that there is something here to be ashamed of, and she will then hide from him the very things he needs. A great many of the therapists who will read this are women treating women in a village, and they need the vocabulary as much as anyone. A great many others are men, who must know exactly where the limits of their practice lie — and that is taught here too, plainly, without apology on either side.

Second, the reason is the teaching. As in the two articles before this one, every rule is given with the reason that is given for it. Where no reason is given, the rule is given plainly and none is invented — and you will meet at least one important withholding in this article for which the material states the restriction and offers no reason at all. Do not supply one. See also → Between Two Sessions, "Between Two Sessions", which established that principle, along with the two working methods this article takes for granted: reconstruct a day, never audit a rule, and two rules to a visit, not eleven.

Third, this article carries one table that exists nowhere else in this wiki. The withholdings that bite on a woman — because she is menstruating, because she is pregnant, because she wants a child, because her womb has descended — are scattered across a dozen articles, one line at a time, each in its proper place beside its own point. Scattered, they are unusable. Gathered, they are a single page you can keep beside the mat. Part eight of this article is that page. It is the most useful thing here.

Everything about dress, bearing, consent, draping and the chaperone is taught in Before You Touch Anyone, "Before You Touch Anyone", and is not repeated here. What follows is what that teaching becomes when the patient is a woman and the regions are these regions.

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Hot Flashes - LMNT Neurotherapy Treatment | Natural Relief

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PROGESTERONE FORMULA - LMNT Neurotherapy

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ESTROGEN FORMULA - LMNT Neurotherapy

Given by a therapist

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The question that must be asked before she travels

Told when the appointment is made, asked sitting down, and in both halves

The chaperone, in this territory particularly

Ask, not allow — and name the regions aloud while she is still sitting up

The four days

A bar, a doorway through it, a bar inside the doorway, and what is given

Such women will benefit immediately from (4) Para. If they also get cramps, give the 1,25 DCC formula.

Four instructions, and they are not of one kind. The first is a bar. The second is the doorway through it. The third is a bar inside the doorway — a thing you must not give even to the woman you have decided to treat. The fourth names what is given instead, and what is added when there is one more finding.

The bar. No treatment at all means no treatment at all: not the knee, not the shoulder, not the digestive work she has been having for five weeks, not "just the light part of the formula". The course stops for four days and resumes. This is the rule a therapist most often bends, usually out of kindness — she has travelled, she is here, it seems a pity — and bending it is how the woman in the story at the head of this article went home weak.

The doorway. Four findings open it, and they are worth learning as four and not as a vague sense of if her period is troubling her:

the flow is excessively heavy

the flow does not stop

the flow is very scanty

there is pain, or clots, in the menses

For those, the appropriate treatment is to be given to reduce it — and the word that governs the whole doorway is appropriate. You are treating the menstrual complaint itself. You are not treating her knee under cover of her period. ▲ Take care

The reasoning underneath is the therapy's own and it is consistent. A heparin treatment is understood to do what heparin does: stop blood from clotting. In a woman already losing more blood than she should, that is exactly the wrong direction. And the same reasoning read forward explains something a student often finds puzzling — that the heparin work is elsewhere given for the woman whose menses carry clots and pain, in a different week and for a different reason.

What is given. For heavy flow: (4) Para, of which it is said that such women benefit immediately. And if there are cramps as well: the 1,25 DCC formula. Both belong to the calcium work, and the connection is stated plainly elsewhere — women who bleed very heavily in their menses because of calcium deficiency: giving this treatment reduces or stops their bleeding. (Figure 40.1)

Reading the cycle as a finding

Too much and too little on one balance, and the treatments opposite too

A woman's cycle is one of the plainest readings available to a therapist, and it is read in this therapy the way everything else is read — as a report on a balance. The material sets the pattern out in two places and the two agree.

Table 1 — What the flow is taken to mean

Two things about that table are worth saying out loud to a student.

It is a reading, not a verdict. Heavy flow is a sign of acidosis is how this therapy classifies a finding so that a formula can be chosen. It is not a statement about what is wrong inside that particular woman's womb, and it is not a substitute for the examination that would find out. A woman whose flow has changed recently, at any age, has a question to be answered by somebody who can look. (Figure 40.2)

It is symmetrical, and the symmetry is the useful part. Too much and too little sit on opposite sides of the same balance, and the treatments sit opposite too — which is why one and the same manual gives you (2) S4, S5 to increase a scanty flow and Triangle for piles to control an excessive one, from two treatments given at almost the same place on the sacrum, in opposite directions.

The milk for heavy bleeding

Three-quarters of a litre, lukewarm, and the khārak boiled in the morning

Here is the household half of the heavy-flow rule, and it is the one instruction in this article that a patient can begin this evening without you.

If there is greater bleeding during the menses, then so that a deficiency of calcium does not come in the body, the woman should drink at least three-quarters of a litre of lukewarm milk.

But the milk should not be more hot, because from that the bleeding can increase further.

At night, put one khārak — a dried date — into a cup of milk and keep it in the fridge. In the morning boil that milk together with the khārak, and eating the khārak, drink the milk as well.

Four separate things are asked for, and a student who gives only the first has given about a quarter of the rule.

The quantity: at least three-quarters of a litre. Not a cup. Three-quarters of a litre is about three ordinary tumblers, and it is a quantity a household has to plan for, which is why you say the number out loud and let her do the arithmetic in front of you.

The stated purpose: so that a deficiency of calcium does not come in the body. That is the reason given, and it is the reason you give her. Note that it sits in the same country as the treatment you are giving on the mat — (4) Para and the 1,25 DCC formula are the calcium work, and the material says of 1,25 DCC that women who bleed very heavily in their menses because of calcium deficiency have their bleeding reduced or stopped by it. The rule at home and the rule on the mat are pointing the same way.

The temperature, and the reason it is a rule and not a preference. Lukewarm. Not more hot — because from that the bleeding can increase further. This is the sentence students drop, and it is the one with a consequence attached. Say it to her in her own kitchen's terms: warm enough to drink comfortably, not hot enough to make you blow on it. A mother-in-law who believes that hotter is better for a woman who is bleeding will need to hear the reason, not the rule.

The khārak. A procedure, performed the night before and finished in the morning.

From the moment pregnancy is a possibility, an entire group of treatments closes. Learn the closed list first, because it is short and because the cost of forgetting it is not borne by your patient.

The caution about pills

Say the whole rule — and the sentence that must always travel with it

That is the rule, complete, with every consequence it names: the mother's liver and kidney first; then the child; jaundice after birth; the brain, the kidney, the thyroid gland; and mand buddhi children. It is stated with more force than almost anything else in this material, and the force comes from the thing it is protecting.

And the thing it is protecting is the reason a therapist must handle it with more care than any other rule in this article, not less. So say the whole of it, and then say the second half of your own duty, which is not a softening of the rule but the same rule applied honestly.

Before she is a mother — the years that carry their own bars

The epiphyseal line, and a bar reasoned from mumps in boys

One group of withholdings in this wiki falls on girls and young women for reasons that belong to this article, and they are set out where the teenage years are discussed rather than where women are.

WD is not given because it provokes the genital organs, so from that too perhaps oestrogen will be made.

The parotid glands at the side of the cheek have some kind of relation with the testes. Because when in the disease called mumps the parotid glands swell, during that disease in some boys the testes disappear, after which they are not able to become fathers. Therefore it is thought that Ton (P) and Ton (T) have some relation with infertility. So to those young people — especially to women, up to the age of bearing children — Ton (P) and Ton (T) are not given.

Two things to hold on to. The epiphyseal line is the growing edge at the end of a long bone; once it seals, the bone has finished lengthening, and no treatment reopens it. That is why the bar is worded around the purpose of the course — those whose height is low, children who are being treated to increase height — rather than around an age.

And the Ton reasoning is worth teaching in full because of its shape: an observation about a different disease in a different sex — mumps, boys, the testes — extended, cautiously and with the word thought, to a treatment that provokes the same glands. That is how this restriction was arrived at, and the material says so.

At the point's own entry the restriction stands alone, with no reason attached to it:

What follows is a set of statements about childbirth. Some of them will surprise you. They are given here as they stand, in their own order, with the reason attached to each — and one of them ends with an instruction to spread it as widely as possible, which is a thing this material asks for nowhere else.

Before any of them, one sentence that governs the whole part, and that must be said to every family who asks you about a delivery: a labouring woman belongs with somebody skilled in delivering babies. That is not a retreat from what follows. It is the ground on which what follows stands.

The room

Dark and warm so that the sweat comes — and not an air-conditioned room

The pain

Prostaglandins, a mother's fright, and a claim with no formula attached

The smell

Nature's own arrangement: the husband kept away, the mother attending

The cord

Not until it has cried; not until the blood stops moving; then squeeze

Then squeeze what blood is left in the cord into the child, and only then cut.

And the reasoning behind the whole of it is set apart, in its own bordered panel at the foot of the page, as the thing this material most wants carried out of the room.

That instruction is about the mother as much as about the child, which is why it stands here and not in the next article. Everything that follows it on that page — the antiseptic fluid the child has lain in, the wrinkles, the wrapping, why the first bath is delayed and the washing done slowly over seven days, the child lifted with both hands, what is given when the teeth are coming — belongs to The Child, the Elder and the Frail, "The Child, the Elder and the Frail", and is taught there whole. The mother is this article's; the baby is the next article's.

Round Normal and Round Arrow — see also → Water and Salt, "Water and Salt", which owns Round Normal, and How a Formula Is Built, "How a Formula Is Built", for the Ch. Only / Round arrow pairing and the notation.

Ton 'P', of which it is said that in prolapse of the uterus this treatment is unmatched for setting it back in its place — and which is refused, without exception, to a woman who still wishes to bear children.

The symptoms named for prolapse of the uterus are: severe pain below the navel and in the back, white discharge, irregular menstruation, and infertility because of the low temperature of the body. Learn those four as a set, because they arrive together and because three of them will otherwise be treated as three separate complaints.

Two further treatments bear on this territory and belong to their own articles. Triangle for piles strengthens the muscles of the pelvis and tightens the sphincters of the bladder, the uterus and the anal opening, and is named for prolapse of the uterus and for controlling excessive bleeding in menstruation — with its own bar, not to those who pass little urine. And where an older woman loses a few drops of urine on laughing or sneezing, because the muscles below the navel have become loose, see also → Cranial Nerve and Brain Formulas, "The Twelve Messengers", which carries the treatment built for it, and Face Down, "Face Down", for Triangle for piles and (2) S4, S5 taught side by side.

And the posture rule that stands behind the whole family — women and girls not sitting or sleeping with one leg placed up over the other, because of the one-sided pull on the muscles of the organs below the navel — is taught whole in Between Two Sessions, "Between Two Sessions", with its own fallback for a woman who cannot break the habit at once. It is not repeated here. What belongs here is the warning that goes with it, in one line, because it is this article's patient who is at risk from it: do not let a woman walk out of your room believing that the way she sat caused the prolapse she already has — because a woman who believes that stops looking for any other cause, and the examination that would find one is postponed.

One statement about fever was begun in Food as Medicine and deliberately left half-taught, because its second half is a rule of conduct and belongs here.

This is the page this article exists for.

Each of these bars is taught in its own article, beside its own point, where it belongs. Gathered here, they become usable: before you write a card for a woman, run your eye down the first column and see whether any of it applies today. (Figure 40.7)

Table 2 — Withheld because of the state she is in

Table 3 — Bars that ride on the treatments used for women's complaints

These do not turn on her being a woman. They turn on the treatment you have reached for — and because these are the treatments this article keeps sending you to, they are gathered here too.

What follows is the woman's half of the patient's day and month, laid out in the order in which things happen, with the reason beside every line — written to be read aloud across the mat, and handed over afterwards, not instead.

Two rules a visit.

Table 4 — What to tell a woman, and why

Questions students ask

1. I am twenty-two and just beginning. How do I ask a woman about her periods without both of us dying of embarrassment? Ask it in a list. "How is your sleep? How are the bowels? Appetite? And when did your last period begin — how many days did it run?" Four questions in one breath, in the same voice, and the fourth arrives as an ordinary item and not as a special topic. Sitting down, door shut, in the history — never at the door and never in front of a queue. If you flinch, she will decide there is something here to be ashamed of, and the next thing she needs to tell you will go unsaid. It gets easier after about the fifth patient, and you will use the answer every single week.

2. I am a man and I run a centre alone in a small town. How much of this article can I actually do? Nearly all of it, if you arrange the room properly, and none of it if you do not. Say when the appointment is made that a relative should come with her. Name the regions aloud while she is sitting up. Draw the cloth back one region at a time. Write consent, chaperone and draping on the card in twelve words. Work with the door open where there is no chaperone, keep strictly to the regions you named, and note on the card that it was discussed. See also → Before You Touch Anyone, "Before You Touch Anyone". What you cannot do is make a woman comfortable by being sincere about it; comfort here is made of arrangements.

3. A patient of mine is in the middle of a good course for her shoulder and her period has begun. She has come anyway and she has travelled an hour. Really nothing? Really nothing. For four days of the menses, no treatment at all is to be given. The temptation is entirely about your discomfort at her wasted journey, and it is solved the week before, not today — by telling her the rule when the appointment is made and marking the likely dates on the card. Today, sit her down, give her the ten minutes properly, ask about the flow, and if it is heavy or scanty or painful, treat that, which is permitted and is in her own interest. She will not have come for nothing.

4. I am a doctor. "For four days, no treatment at all" — what is that based on? Nothing is offered, and you should teach it as it stands rather than replacing it with a reason of your own or discarding it. Notice two things, though. It is one of a family of instructions in this material that give a woman room during those days rather than treatment, which is also what the older household order gave her. And notice the shape of the rule — a general bar with four named exceptions, and the exceptions are exactly the menstrual complaints. That is not a taboo; it is a scope statement. On the medical side, your own obligations are undisturbed: heavy bleeding gets a haemoglobin, bleeding after the menopause gets looked at, and a recently changed cycle gets investigated, and nothing in this article asks you to defer any of that.

5. I am a housewife learning this for my family. My daughter-in-law is expecting. What may I actually do for her? Less than you would like, and it is worth being precise about it. Nothing that comes under Thymus, Th + Ch, Ton 'P' or Ton 'T', and nothing at all from which the child may have trouble — which means, for somebody learning at home, that you leave pregnancy alone unless you have been taught this part properly by your centre. What you can do costs nothing: see that she is not standing all day, that the night meal finishes two hours before she lies down, that she never crosses her legs and sleeps with them straight, that she drinks through the day and not in gulps — and that she takes every tablet her doctor has given her and stops none of them because somebody in the lane said so.

6. Why is Ku singled out for menstruation when no reason is given? It seems arbitrary. It is unexplained, which is not the same as arbitrary. This wiki is careful about the difference: where a mechanism exists it is stated, where the rule rests on observation it is labelled a matter of experience, and where there is neither, the rule stands bare. Ku stands bare, and the honest thing is to say so — to a student and to a patient. What you may not do is invent a reason, because the day a patient catches you inventing one is the day she stops believing the fifteen reasons you gave her that were real. See also → Face Down, "Face Down".

7. I practise in a village. A family has asked me to come at the time of a delivery. Should I? Go if you are wanted, and be clear with yourself and with them about what you are there to do. You are not there to deliver a baby, and a labouring woman belongs with somebody skilled in delivering babies — that is the first thing you say and it is not negotiable. You may be useful for the room being warm and not cold, for the three cord instructions being said out loud to whoever will cut it, for the baby going to its mother at once, and for a frightened young woman having somebody calm beside her. Those are real contributions. What you never do is press on a pregnant abdomen, and what you never say is that an operation will be avoided.

8. The material says the pain of delivery is felt more because of mental causes. Do I tell a woman in labour that? No. Two reasons. It is not a useful thing to say to somebody in pain about their pain, at any time, about anything — the effect is that she stops telling you what she feels. And if this labour is one of the ones that is going wrong, she is frightened is the explanation that delays the people who could tell the difference. What the passage is genuinely good for is the months before: a girl who has been told since childhood that childbirth is an agony arrives braced, and a woman who has been prepared calmly arrives differently. That is where you spend it — in the antenatal months, with her mother in the room.

9. I am sixty and learning this for myself. My periods stopped eight years ago and I have started spotting a little. Is that a "heavy bleeding" question? It is a question for a doctor, this week, and it does not matter that it is only a little. Any bleeding at all after the periods have stopped for good is looked at, and the reason to say that plainly rather than gently is that most causes are harmless and the ones that are not are far better found early. Nothing in this article is a substitute for that examination, and nothing in it is affected by your going — treatment continues either way.

10. A woman's uric acid and her haemoglobin are both normal, and she still bleeds heavily. What do I tell her about her reports? That they are normal, and that you are not going to hint otherwise. That is the whole answer and it is not a weak one. What you can add is what this therapy is actually saying, which is a different kind of statement: that a heavy or long flow is read here as a sign of the acid direction, and that the treatment is aimed at that. The sentence your blood test says normal but your blood is really acid is a claim about a specific result in a specific woman, it is not true, and it costs you everything the first time she catches you in it. See also → Reading the Reports, "Reading the Reports".

11. Ton 'P' is called unmatched for prolapse, and I have a patient with a bad prolapse who is thirty-eight and says she does not want more children. May I give it? The restriction is worded around what she wants, not around her age, so the answer turns entirely on her answer — and on your having asked the question properly, once, plainly, and recorded it. Ask it as "do you want a child, now or later?", not as "you are not planning more children, are you?", which is a question that supplies its own answer. If she says no, Ton 'P' is open to her. If she says probably not, that is not a no. And whatever she says, she gets all three parts of the instruction: it is withheld from women who want children · it is not proven to prevent conception and is not to be called a contraceptive treatment · research is to be done.

12. Half of this article is a list of things not to give. What am I actually doing for a woman, then? A great deal, and it is worth listing so that you do not lose heart. You are treating heavy flow, scanty flow, pain and clots in the menses, PMS, the giddiness that follows a heavy period, the absence of menses, a womb that has descended, incontinence, infertility where the body's temperature is low, and the whole digestive and acid work that sits underneath most of it. You are giving a nursing mother back her milk. You are setting a child's head. The bars are short and the work is long — but the bars are written down first, because they are the part that cannot be recovered from.

Questions patients ask

1. "Why can't I have my treatment during my period? I have come all this way." Because for those four days we do not give any other treatment, and that is the rule everywhere in this therapy. But listen to the other half, because it is the half that matters to you: if your bleeding is very heavy, or it will not stop, or it is very scanty, or it hurts — you come for that, and we treat that, and it is in your own interest to come. Tell me about this period and we will see which of those applies today. And from now on I will tell you your dates in advance so that you never make this journey for nothing again.

2. "You say I must drink so much milk. My doctor has told me I am short of blood and given me iron tablets. Which do I do?" Both, and there is no quarrel between them. The milk is asked for here so that calcium does not run short while you are bleeding heavily, and it is to be lukewarm, not hot — if it is hotter, the bleeding can increase. Your iron tablets are for something else entirely, and they are your doctor's instruction, and you take them exactly as he said. One small thing worth knowing: iron is taken up better when you have it a little apart from a big glass of milk, so keep the milk to its own time of day. And do not let anyone take away your lemon and your tomato while you are short of blood.

3. "I am three months pregnant. Someone told me that in this treatment you say no medicines at all. Should I stop my tablets?" No — and I am very glad you asked me instead of just stopping. What is taught here is about not taking new pills in pregnancy without your doctor's advice, because what you swallow reaches the child. It is not about stopping something a doctor has already given you. Some of those tablets are there precisely to protect the child, and stopping them can do the harm we are all trying to prevent. So: nothing new without asking the doctor who is looking after you; and nothing stopped without asking the same person. Bring me the strip and let us look at it together, and if you like I will write a line for you to take to him.

4. "Is this treatment safe for my baby?" Some of it is and some of it is not, and I will tell you which as we go. There are two treatments I will not give you at all while you are pregnant, because after them babies begin to move about hard, and it is judged that the baby is uncomfortable. There is a third I will not give because it is thought to have some connection with a woman's ability to conceive. And there is a standing rule above all of them that I keep: nothing at all from which the child may have trouble — which means that where I am not sure, I do not give it. For the sickness, I will use something that helps quickly, and because your back hurts I will use my hands for it and not my feet.

5. "My mother-in-law says I should give the baby water in this heat. And she says I should drink less water so the milk is not thin." On the second, she has it the wrong way round, and there is a rule here that says so with a reason: drink your water little by little, many times in the day, rather than a great deal at one time — otherwise the child gets loose motions or a pain in its stomach. So: a glass beside you every time you sit down to feed him. Not less water — better spread. On the first question, what is taught here is that your milk is the best food for him and should be fed until it stops of itself, and the rest of that question belongs with whoever is looking after the baby, so ask them and follow what they say. I am looking after you.

6. "The doctor says I need an operation for my womb. Can you fix it instead?" I can treat it and I am going to. What I am not going to do is tell you to cancel anything. There are treatments here for a womb that has come down from its place, one of them is spoken of very highly, and I have seen women improve a great deal. I will need your sonography, because the treatment I want to use is written to be given to women in whom the sonography has shown it. And I have one question I must ask before I choose between two of them, and it is not an idle question: do you want another child, now or later? Whatever you answer, I will tell you exactly what I am giving you and what I am leaving out, and you will keep your appointment with the doctor.

7. "My periods have stopped since the treatment started. Is that a good sign?" No — it is a thing to look into, not a result to be pleased about. A period that does not come is a finding, exactly like one that goes on too long, and in this therapy a late or scanty cycle is read as its own kind of imbalance rather than as an improvement. First, is there any chance you are pregnant? Then let us look at the rest of the picture. And if it happens again next month, I will want you to be seen, and I will keep treating you while you go.

8. "Why does it matter what the room is like when I deliver? The hospital keeps everything cold." What is taught here is that the birth should take place in a dark and warm room, so that a good deal of sweat comes out of you — that is held to be beneficial for you and for the baby — and that an air-conditioned room is bad for both. You will not get to choose the hospital's setting. What you can do is ask them to keep the baby warm and dry it at once, which every good delivery room already does, and ask for the baby to be put against your skin straight away. And there is one thing worth saying out loud to the nurse before the delivery, which I will write on a slip for you: do not cut the cord until the baby has cried properly by itself for some minutes, and then not until the blood in the cord has stopped moving.

Words used here