Chinese Medicine seeks to find the underlying cause of disease
What is Chinese Medicine?
Traditional Chinese Medicine has a rich history that spans over 2000 years. It incorporates: Acupuncture, Cupping, Herbal Medicine and diet therapy.
It is a very sophisticated way of forming a diagnosis, as it takes into consideration how factors such as our environment, our emotional expression, sleeping patterns and dietary and lifestyle choices can all determine our state of wellbeing.
Your practitioner will ask you a range of questions, take your pulse and use tongue diagnosis, in order to devise a treatment protocol and suggest any changes you could make to see long-term and lasting changes to your overall health.
Dr Emily Hodges may apply a range of treatment methods in your consultation, including acupuncture, cupping, remedial massage and a herbal medicine or nutritional supplement prescription to take home with you on the day.
What is Acupuncture?
Acupuncture is the insertion of fine needles into the skin at carefully selected points. Acupuncture works by moving blockages within these channels. There is an old Chinese saying – ‘When there is blockage there is pain’.
What is Cupping?
Cupping is a therapy in which heated glass cups are applied to the skin along the meridians of the body, creating suction to stimulate the flow of energy.
What is Herbal Medicine?
Herbal medicine is one of the fastest and most effective methods of treatment. There are over 450 herbs, animal and mineral extracts which can be used in combination. Some herbs are as simple as ginger, rose, fennel and chrysanthemums.
A doctor who treats a disease after it has happened is a mediocre doctor..a doctor who treats a disease before it happens is a superior doctor.
~Yellow Emperor
At Imprint Chinese Medicine, conditions that we regularly see respond to our treatment include:
Acute conditions
Chinese medicine is extremely effective in treating acute pain and injury, speeding up recovery time and may potentially avoid the need for pain relieving medication. It is a great way to nip that cold you can feel coming on in the bud, or treat your seasonal hay fever before it even has a chance to arrive for spring.
Anxiety and Depression
These are the two most common mental health disorders in Australia today. Chinese medicine appreciates that our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health are inseparable, so treating it effectively has to approach all of these facets equally. Chinese medicine also knew how important gut and digestive function was to an individual's emotional and spiritual health, long before Western medicine valued the gut/brain connection.
Skin conditions
Western medicine often has very little to offer in terms of treating skin conditions effectively, including eczema, dermatitis, psoriasis and acne. Topical creams such as cortisone are only temporary solutions, and the underlying cause is often left unchecked.
Chinese medicine has a different approach to skin conditions, viewing them as a manifestation of our internal environment. It can therefore offer both temporary local relief, as well determining the factors that may be causing it at a deeper level.
Women's Health
There has been an incredible rise in reproductive conditions such as uterine fibroids, endometriosis and PCOS in women in modern times. This could be explained by a number of factors, including a rise in environmental estrogens (xenoestrogens) , stress and lifestyle factors, poor diet choices and a lack of key minerals and nutrients. Women need to know that the oral contraceptive pill is not the only form of treatment available for these hormone imbalances. Synthetic hormones are not the same as natural hormones, and come with both short and long term potential side effects. Chinese medicine may offer an effective alternative to addressing these hormonal imbalances, supporting healthy menstrual cycles that are pain and symptom free.
Chronic conditions
It is well documented that acupuncture and herbal medicine can provide significant improvement to a wide variety of chronic pain conditions, including migraines, headaches, sciatica, back and neck pain, frozen shoulder and fibromyalgia.
It provides another lens to view and treat complex autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, ulcerative colitis and MS. These are diseases that are often given poor prognosis by conventional medicine and rely heavily on medications that can have some serious side effects.
It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions, but hard to get one single remedy.
~Chinese Proverb
We can incorporate one or a combination of tools during your treatment
Treatments can include acupuncture, cupping, remedial massage therapy, Chinese herbal medicine and dietary and lifestyle advice. Reviews will be done and the beginning of each session, so that you can keep track of your progress and address any questions that you may have come up along the way.
Initial Consultation: 1.5 hours $165
Return Consultation: 1 hour $110
HICAPS services are provided, in order to claim your private health insurance rebate.
Dr Emily Hodges is an experienced and passionate practitioner who loves educating and encouraging her patients to strive for better health
Dr Emily is registered as an acupuncturist and herbalist with the Chinese Medicine Board of Australia (CMBA) and the Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Agency (AHPRA). After a life-changing experience with Chinese medicine, she made the decision to study it and become a practitioner in order to change her patient’s lives in the way that it changed hers. Emily goes above and beyond her role as your practitioner, in order to see profound and life changing results in her patients. She has a passion for acupuncture and classical Chinese herbal medicine, and has a sound knowledge of nutrition, tailored supplementation and also provides practical lifestyle advice.
Over the years, Emily has had great success treating a wide range of health conditions. They may be acute conditions such as hay fever, colds and flus, or more chronic or complex conditions such as auto immune disease, digestive disorders, anxiety and depression, fertility and pregnancy support, women’s and men’s reproductive health, sleep problems, sports injury and chronic pain.
Emily will use the initial consultation to take a comprehensive case history, in order to try and uncover some of the causes of your health imbalances. She works in consultation with your GP or other health care providers, to ensure the most comprehensive and holistic care is taken. If she believes you would benefit from any blood or functional testing, the appropriate referrals will be provided. She strives to provide her patients with realistic time frames and to best determine treatment outcomes.
The physician should not treat the disease but the patient
who is suffering from it.
~Chinese Proverb
Please note: Dr Emily Hodges is returning with limited availability from Friday 5 May 2023.
To book in with Dr Emily, please click the book now button below.
IMPRINT CHINESE MEDICINE IS LOCATED AT
305 Johnston Street, Abbotsford VIC
