Menopause is like a car engine? What can this possibly mean? In Chinese Medicine, menopause is commonly thought of as a natural progression of life. A woman goes from child-bearing into more of a state of inner wisdom. Our metabolism controls yang (warming) and yin (cooling) aspects throughout our whole life. In menopause, there are more warming aspects that are unchecked by the cooling aspects, so symptoms of heat, and dryness occur. This is like a car engine in many ways. Think of a car engine (warm) and the radiator fluid (cooling).
In a woman’s life, once she begins her menstrual cycle, she loses a small bit of blood every month. Blood is a yin, cooling substance. On a car, this can be likened to a small leak in the radiator hose. Over a lifetime, this small leak depletes the reservoir of antifreeze, thus there is less cooling liquid to control the engine heat. The result is that your engine runs hot. The heat from the engine is not properly cooled.
This is the same thing with our bodies. How we handle this in Chinese Medicine is to provide herbs and acupuncture to help the body stimulate the production of more cooling within the body. The result is the reduction or elimination of most of the symptoms associated with menopause. We help make a woman’s transition through this stage as easy as possible.
