Newsletter Volume 01

Issue 03

Happy Days Mitesh,

Thank you for reading these newsletters. It’s been a labor of love and I hope that you are enjoying it.

As we near the solstice, from the East Asian perspective, summer has already started. We use this understanding of nature to help guide our understanding of the body and how to best treat people and their health conditions.

As an aside, the picture below is from the Paris Review where Nina MacLaughlin had a four-piece installment from the 2019 summer solstice. Here is the beginning of the last installment:

New season. New you. We began in the sky, in the stardust, we moved wombward into the water, out into the earthly world, and we arrive, now, in fire. Happy first day of summer.

Newsletter Contents

Clinic Update: Fullscript Spring Wellness Sale
Seasonal Insights: Summer Starts Now?
Health Tips: Treating Seasonally
Educational Opportunities: End of the Month Lecture

Clinic Update

Fullscript Spring Wellness Sale

We partner with Fullscript to provide you with supplements. If you have a Fullscript account and need supplements, consider ordering during their Spring Wellness Sale. The Spring Wellness Sale will begin May 13th, 2024 at 9:00 PM and run until May 15th, 2024 at 11:59 PM. During this time, you’ll get an additional 10% savings off all supplements and natural home care products.

Order supplements through my Fullscript store

Seasonal Insights

Summer Starts Now?

Seasonal changes in the sky happen before we feel the effects on Earth. There’s a temporal delay to these shifts. That’s why, in the East Asian system, summer starts in May and not at the summer solstice.

Let’s take a closer look. On the equinox, the length of the day and night are the same; twelve hours each. On the summer solstice, the day is the longest it will be all year. This is thought to be the middle of summer. We see a similar conceptualization of this connotation in the European idea of ‘midsummer’ at the solstice. The influence of the sun is at its greatest at this time, and its effects will take some additional time to be felt. This means that even though the solstice is the longest day of the year, the heat and the energy of the sun will continue to build on Earth through the rest of the summer.

From the solstice, if we calculate backwards, the start of summer is 45 days before. That’s how we get early May as the start of summer.

Let’s visualize this transition from the perspective of the Earth. These pictures are a two-dimensional representation of the Earth with the yellow lines representing the length of the day at that location Earth. Now, for an interpretative shift. The yellow lines correspond to the length of time that this part of the Earth is exposed to sunlight. On the Equinox, the whole earth is exposed to sunlight for 12 hours each day.

Spring Equinox representation of daylight

During the June solstice, or summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, we see far more solar energy contacting the northern hemisphere.

The transition from equinox to solstice isn’t linear or even. The evenness and balance of the equinox is fleeting. Heck, the picture I grabbed doesn’t even show yellow lines evenly around the earth even though it should. In a day, there are parts of the word already diminishing in light. Forty-five days later, we have a different picture.

Start of Summer Depiction of sunlight hours

Most of the sun’s intensity has already shifted. Let’s do a side-by-side comparison.

Side-by-side comparison of three images above

Even though the middle image is 45 days from each of its neighbors, the Equinox and Solstice, the amount of solar exposure far closer to the summer solstice image. Because of this stabilization, we have a constant warming of the earth. And this constant warming represents summer.

These images come from a video. If you want to watch the video, it’s found on Visual Capitalist. Click the button below.

Watch Here

But what about the weather? Oh, that’s another story. Let’s say you preheat an oven to 350⁰F and you stick your pie in the oven. It’ll take some time for the pie to come to temperature. Weather on the Earth is also delayed like the pie coming to temperature. So even though the amount of solar rays has intensified in the time between the equinox and today, we have only started to feel that change recently.

During this time of accelerating change on Earth, maintaining an even temperature that slowly rises is particularly difficult at certain latitudes. Because of the intense changes, we expect to see increases in storms and winds with the intensity being different from week to week. With this back and forth between hot and sunny weather one day and rainy weather the next, it can be taxing on person’s body. With this back and forth, our bodies must buffer the instability of the environment to maintain their own internal stability and balance. But what happens when the body can’t absorb the fluctuations of the environment?

Well, you get sick.

And how you get sick tells us how to get you better. Keep reading to understand why.

Healthy Tip

Treating Seasonally

In Chinese Medical thinking, we often look at the body as if it were a unique environment. Some bodies tend to be hot and dry like a desert and disease will often manifest in the areas of this proclivity such as feeling thirsty, dry skin, hair or eyes or easily getting overheated. Or the body will be stormy at the surface, hot one day and cold the next and we see symptoms mirroring this picture throughout the body. Based upon the specific constitution and how symptoms are currently appearing, we construct formulas to deal with the current manifestation and how it relates to the underlying tendencies of the patient. We do this to predict, protect, and utilize those tendencies.

If we notice a body having difficulty maintaining a consistent temperature at the surface, we will stimulate the warmth in the body and direct it to the surface. We will be careful not to use an herb that is too hot, and will focus on circulating the warmth. As we bring that warmth and circulation from the surface, we want to bring the water that will even out the warmth and be the medium by which we distribute the warmth.

All of the above is accomplished by one of our most iconic formulas, Cinnamon Twig Decoction (Guizhi Tang). What if the waters are frozen in your body? You are cold all the time! We have a formula Blue-green Dragon Decoction (Qinglong Tang) that addresses this. If you missed the last newsletter, I discussed how the Blue-green Dragon signals spring and brings the rains. You can read that by clicking the green envelope below.

When we look at a body, we try to understand what balance is for “this body”. How is it currently out of balance, and how can we use both the resources of the body and external resources like herbs, exercise, acupuncture, and other treatment modalities to bring the body back into dynamic balance.

Educational Opportunities

Quarterly Lecture

Keep an eye out for the upcoming Quarterly Lecture on “Healthy Vagus Nerve 101: Optimizing the Neurobiology of Relaxation”. This lecture will be the evening of Thursday May 30th, 2024.

As always, it’s a pleasure to write and connect with you. Thank you for reading.

~Mitesh Master, LAc