Complex case - digestion, mood

Hi all, I’m a 27 year old female with a history of asthma and eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia). Ive had asthma since I was a kid, I developed anorexia in college for about 3 years and was bulimic for about another 3 years and am now fully recovered from the disordered eating aspect of it.

However, I still have a lot of very frustrating digestive problems, fatigue, and anxiety and sometimes prevents me from going to work. I’ve been to several acupuncturists and herbalists and nothing has seemed to stick. I’m hoping to get some additional perspectives that I can ask my acupuncturists about and any insights you can provide are really helpful. Here’s some more info:

My most common state of being is cramping in my intestines, loose stool, but difficult to pass, and difficulty urinating. The difficulty urinating is the worst symptom, because it happens whenever I’m stressed out and my entire middle section gets bloated and I start feeling really tired, I hear a rushing in my ears, and I have to go lie down. I get cramping and clotting during my periods, and after my periods, my legs feel really weak and restless and I have difficulty sleeping. Recently I’ve started having the same feeling in my chest as well. I’ve also started having really really bad headaches that feel like a tight band around my entire head and stuffiness. I also wake up feeling very very sad, which manifests as a heaviness around my diaphragm.

One of my first acupuncturists, quite a talented one but very scatterbrained and had way too many patients, said that I had a liver blood deficiency issue. I moved away before she could do much about it.

More recent acupuncturists have given GUI pi tang and at first it felt too sweet in my stomach. Also, sometimes when I get acupuncture, my intestines start hurting and cramping up immediately after I eat something.

I met an herbalist who prescribed ban Xia xie Xiang tang and xiao yao San it seemed to help a lot. And then my period started getting darker and shorter (it’s only about 1-2 days long now, which scares me a bit). To treat that, he added in wen Jing tang, but it didn’t seem to help. When I told him I was a bit worried it wasn’t working, he gave me wu Ling San, and by that point, I started feeling very terrible. Really stuffy head, extreme depression and fatigue but unable to sleep, no appetite whatsoever, nausea, etc. could barely keep any food down and not urinating. Anxiety to the max. Stool pebbly and dry. Not sleeping.

I took some GUI pi tang and tian wang Bu Xin wan that I had already from previous doctors and it calmed things down so that I felt sleepy again and could regain a bit of normalcy. But I think I’m more or less back to where I started, cramping, sadness, weakness in legs, etc.

My tongue changes depending…but most commonly it’s a bit swollen on the sides, with a red tip , horizontal cracks mid way through the tongue and little bumps mostly clustered at the back of the tongue. Sometimes the body will be a bit purple. When I was feeling really bad a few days ago, the tongue was almost completely red with a thick coating in the back, my tongue was very thin and shaky when I stuck it out.

Thanks for reading this very long post. I’m hoping to get to the bottom of this, since it’s preventing me from living my life (in my 20s!). Any insights that I can take to my doctor are much much appreciated. Any questions you might have, I am happy to answer as well.

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