Variocose veins and allopathic weaknesses - a personal account

I'm about to describe an experience that evidence-based medicine will hate because it does not grind down the treatment to single influences . The idea that there is a single originating cause for a condition and that there is a single treatment for this cause is allopathic medicine's first great weakness, even though it's driving the genetic research that thinks of fixing a single gene for a single malady.  Its second weakness is the disallowing of patient testimony about their own conditions. Double-blind science experimentation about me would regard my opinions as to what works as tainted.  I cannot be a witness to my own body's recoveries.

Many years ago, at the age of 37,  I smashed my knee on rocks skiing.  In spite of the opinion of the consultant at Charing Cross Hospital, London, who told me that's end of sport for me, I re-habilitated myself and went on to play some more 'old man's' rugby and continued to mountain walk. Thanks to strenuous working summers on a hill farm  the deformed knee still works very well, and thanks to shiatsu I have increased the suppleness of the joint. There was a growing problem  however, with the veins in my leg.  Varicose veins in the operated leg began to appear. I had further accidents to shin and ankle that damaged capillaries, and the lower leg began to retain fluid.  The threaded knots and meanders of vein in the calf stood out like a 3-D map, and the veins over the ankle and foot were often similarly and disturbingly swollen.  Cycling occasionally seemed to reduce the prominence of the veins during the day but was clearly no remedy, and the condition was getting worse. Always susceptible to cramps, I would get really vicious cramps in the damaged leg almost every night. An allopathic doctor shrugged and said it was likely as not a hereditary weakness.  When I pointed out to him that the other leg had no hint of varicose veins, he shrugged and said I could have the vein taken out.  This solution seems like curing traffic congestion by removing a road.

So, two months ago, I took matters into my own hands. I went to my favourite acupuncturist and took two sessions with him.  He gave pretty much the standard treatment, mostly spleen-channel points, to which he added L8, and the divergent point E34 for the knee. It is my own feeling that the classic varicose vein in the calf is more associated with the liver channel  and with repressed energies of action and command, so I treated my liver to a new diet.  As a family, we eat modestly and well, but I decided to do what I have been meaning to do and finally eliminate all bread, dairy, sugary treats, all meat and eggs but free range chicken, drink only green tea and eliminate black tea.( I think tannins may have a negative influence on the liver and inhibit the return of fluids to the centre.)  I take 120 mg standardised extract of ginko biloba every morning and I take the occasional N-acetyl cysteine with 500mg of Vitamin C (that protects the liver from NAC's action) before bed to keep the lungs working well as I sleep.  It has the added bonus of preventing apnea.  For the cramps, my acupuncturist suggested the homeopathic remedy cuprum metallicum 5ch. I took two granules at bed whenever a hard working day would suggest the onset of cramps later.  I do T'ai Chi and Qi Gong exercises almost every day

Then, ten days ago, my wife persuaded me to enter the traditional 10.5 kilometre night race (carrera nocturna)  (about 6 1/2 miles) along the city's river.  Even when I was in training, I hated running.  I can rugged-mountain walk for hours but running dispirits me in ways I cannot explain.  I probably hadn't run a similar distance since my school days 40 years ago.  But, what the heck.  Let's do it, I said. So we did.  We ran together and, with a little walking towards the end, made the finish in the Olympic Stadium.  It took me two days to realise that my varicose vein had disappeared.  Well, it has not disappeared - that would be too magical.  It has lost its prominence.  It no longer breaks through the skin like an eerie inverse of a Martian valley.  The skin of the leg is smooth.  You can still feel the vein under the skin with your finger tip but its 'anger' has calmed completely.  The other veins of the foot and ankle have similarly returned to normality. I still have a little puffiness around the ankle but that, too will go with time. I don't get cramp.  I took the homeopathic granules after the race.  No cramp.  Neat, huh?

Allopathic medicine still has not yet got to grips with this sort of story.  Since the actual cause of the improvement cannot be traced, it may as well not have happened. All of the things I did are part of the solution. Your allopathic practitioner fails to take this synergistic environment into account.  By environment, I mean not simply the spaces, materials and events of where we live but also the psychic actions of what we know that also surrounds us and communicates to us and with us.  It's an environment that is not susceptible to scientific reductionism because it is, by definition, everything else that matters.