Oct 14th Newsletter

October 2026

Nervous System & Inflammation

Joint pain that's really a fluid problem

Your rings are stuck. You feel like a marshmallow.

Stiff for the first twenty minutes of the day, better once you move.

Puffy hands and feet, worse in the morning, worse after a day at a desk. Heavy limbs. Ankle

marks from your socks.

Your lymphatic system has no pump. It moves on muscle contraction, on breath, on the rhythm of your day.

When you're sitting more than you're moving, when your breathing is shallow, when digestion has gone sluggish — fluid pools. And it pools around joints. The joint gets compressed, circulation drops, and the tissue turns stiff and sore without anything being structurally wrong with it.

Chinese medicine has described this for a very long time as a dampness problem. And

dampness is a spleen and lung problem. These are the systems that govern fluid

transformation and the downward, outward movement of breath.

It's also exactly why this shows up right now. Late summer turning into fall is precisely when that handoff strains, and puffy achy joints are one of the most common things walking through our door in September/October.

It responds well, and it responds reasonably fast. Acupuncture moves the fluid and restores the mechanics that are supposed to be doing it for you, so joint pain stops being the first thing you feel every morning.

If your hands and feet are puffy and your joints ache in a way that eases once you get going. Give us a call at 443-219-1220!

Butternut Squash Soup

2 lb. cubed butternut squash
1 medium onion, halved and sliced into wedges
4 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tsp. sea salt
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbsp. avocado oil, or another heat-safe oil
2 cups chicken broth or more, as needed
1 can (about 13 1/2 oz. size) coconut milk, or 1 c. heavy cream
Diced apple and crumbled, cooked bacon (optional)

Preheat oven to 425ºF.
Put squash cubes, onion, and garlic cloves on a large rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and drizzle oil over top. Use your hands to toss everything around so it’s evenly coated.
Roast for 35 to 40 minutes on a lower oven rack, tossing things around with a spatula a couple of times during cooking.
Transfer roasted items to a medium to large soup pot. Add chicken broth and heat to a simmer. Let it simmer for about 5 minutes and then blend it with an immersion blender (or in batches with a countertop blender) until smooth.
Stir in the coconut milk or cream. Add a little more salt, if needed, before serving. Top with diced apple and crumbled, cooked bacon, if desired.

"Nobody Has Been Able
to Figure This Out"

We hear a version of this in most first visits: "I know these are probably unrelated, but—"

And then out it all comes. The bloating. The dry skin patch on one elbow. The sinus thing that

never fully clears. Waking at three am every night. The headaches. The shoulder.

Six separate problems. Each one examined carefully by someone competent, and each one

came back mostly normal, or mostly manageable. And you walked out of every appointment

with the same feeling — that somebody should be looking at all of it at once, and nobody is.

That's why we do what I do. Chinese Medicine is a complete system that sees you as a whole

person. Not a collection of symptoms in isolation.

Chinese medicine isn't organized around body parts. It's organized around patterns — how a

whole system behaves under a particular kind of strain. So the fact that your gut, your skin, your

sinuses, and your immune barrier are all struggling in the same season isn't a coincidence to be

explained away. It's the diagnosis. Those are one system in this medicine. They fail together, in

a recognizable order, for recognizable reasons.

When we take your history, we're not collecting complaints. We're looking for the shape they make. The shape tells us where to treat, and treating the shape is why six things improve when you come

in about one.

It's also why we'll ask about your sleep when you come in for your knee.

Bring us the whole list. Including the parts you've stopped mentioning because nobody had

anywhere to put them.

Call us at 443-219-1220!

GLP-1s & Constipation

You have not had a normal bowel movement since you started the GLP-1.

Nobody warned you about this part. Or it got mentioned once, in a list, and you assumed it

would settle.

It didn't settle. Here's why.

GLP-1 medications work by slowing how fast your stomach empties. That's not a side effect that

went wrong — that's the mechanism. It's the entire reason you're not hungry. Slower stomach,

slower everything downstream.

Which is why the standard advice isn't working for you. More fiber into a system that isn't

moving usually makes it worse.

More bulk, same stalled transit. Water helps a little. Magnesium helps some people. None of it

touches the actual issue, which is that the motor driving things forward has been deliberately

turned down.

You should not have to choose between the medication and having a gut that works.

Acupuncture treats motility directly — the muscular wave that moves things through. We are not

fighting your medication. We're restoring the movement it slowed down, so the drug can do the

job you're taking it for without your digestion paying the bill.

In Chinese Medicine, Fall is the season of the Lung and Large Intestine. These are the systems

that govern letting go, physically. This is exactly the right time of year to address it.

If you're on a GLP-1 and your bowels have stopped cooperating, we can help. Give is a call today! 443-219-1220!

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Call us today 443-219-1220 or visit us at www.acupuncturewellnessbaltimore.com