Edema BOdy Swelling

Comment by Chad J. Dupuis, L.Ac.

You should start with obtaining western blood tests to check hormone and thyroid balances. While these issues are technically treatable within Chinese Medicine, it is helpful to know what is happening on that level.

Generally speaking edema is from a “kidney system” imbalance - either kd yang deficiency or kd yin deficiency, but there are other possibilities (our “edema treatment” page has some of the more common patterns).

Proper treatment requires proper diagnosis of the underlying causes. For more on that generally, see “treating the cause and not the symptoms” and for a discussion of what we mean by the “kidney” see “my kidneys are what?”. Further, our kidney meridian disharmonies page has a basic discussion of imbalances and acupuncture treatment options.