Traditional Chinese Medicine
Wade James is a Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner, Acupuncturist and Chinese Herbalist with over 20 years experience.
Wade has an ongoing commitment to the development of the TCM profession in WA, Nationally and internationally.
He co-ordinated the delivery of the first professional four year program in Traditional Chinese Medicine in Perth that has over 50 graduates.
As a Director of Chinawest Pty Ltd they distribute the highest quality Chinese herbs nationally to TCM practitioners.
He is a Director of The Shanghai International TCM Seminars, a new and innovative event held in Shanghai.
Through extensive travel in China he has established training links to several leading TCM hospitals for Australian and International TCM students and practitioners.
And he has presented academic papers at National and International TCM conferences.
Wade writes a regular column for the Mind and Body section in The West Australian Newspaper.
SERVICES
A comprehensive Chinese Medicine Diagnosis and explanation for your health condition.
Traditional Chinese Acupuncture
Chinese Herbal Medicine
Chinese Massage
Health Fund Rebates
HBF, Medibank Private and most other health funds offer rebates.
Fertility Treatments using TCM
To watch the ABC1 Catalyst program on Fertiltiy treatments using Acupuncture, click on the following link.
Fertility treatments Video
Chinese Medicine practitioners available at Chinawest Clinic:
Wade James
Master of Health Science in TCM (University of Technology Sydney)
Dip. TCM (Sydney)
Cert. TCM (China)
Cert. Chinese Herbal Medicine (China)
Cert. Tui Na (China)
Member of The Australian Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine Association (AACMA)
AACMA Fellow
Marie Hopkinson
Darren Stone
Ryan Grady
Melissa Wilson
Ian Russell
To see articles from Wade James column in The West Australian Newspapers, click below.
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
Bed-wetting
Low Back Pain
PMT- Chinese Medicine’s Solution
Wind-Stroke
Click for More Articles by Wade James
Click to see practitioners we refer to in the Eastern States
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is one of the most common intestinal complaints seen by your general practitioner (GP).
It typically presents as alternating diarrhoea and constipation, intestinal pain or spasms, excessive flatulence and abdominal bloating.
If your life is ruled by this condition, then you are one of more than a million Australians suffering these repeated bouts of spasmodic pain and irregular bowel patterns.
Women are three times more likely to suffer from IBS and find it aggravated pre-period with severe abdominal bloating, to the extent that their clothes won’t fit and they often say they feel and look several months pregnant.
Emotional upsets and dietary changes can bring on a bout of pain or diarrhoea. The pain can be severe and last for several hours. Medical tests usually reveal little and patients are given antispasmodics and drugs to stop the diarrhoea.
The first mention of this type of condition in China was in the 15th century and famous Chinese herbal formulas have been used since that time to alleviate the debilitating effects of this condition.
More recently, an Australian clinical trial using Chinese herbs, published in 1998, has been widely haled as the first modern scientific evidence that IBS can be treated effectively.
A typical patient presenting at my clinic with IBS, who has been diagnosed with IBS by their GP, may have lived with the worry that intestinal pain and urgent diarrhoea could strike at any time for more then 10 years. They have usually been prescribed numerous drugs and are sometimes offered anti-depressants to help them cope.
They have often tested positive to Helicobacter pylori and been given several courses of antibiotics, but with no result.
As a last resort they may take friends or family suggestions to see what Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture can offer.
In taking these case histories, I often find that the bowel problems begin after a family tragedy or a particularly stressful time. An emotional component, perhaps not this severe, is very common with IBS patients.
And along with the pain, these patients often have nausea and acid reflux, mucous with their diarrhoea and extreme bloating, with the belly protruding uncomfortably. The appetite is usually very poor and they have reduced their variety of foods, often eating a lot of raw foods in another attempt to placate the symptoms.
Each patient with IBS will present slightly differently with their bowel patterns, the type of pain, dull or piercing, and the triggers, whether dietary, emotional or even environmental.
The Chinese Medicine practitioner’s job is to analyse these clinical features and find what are the Patterns of Disharmony that describe the individual’s condition.
Typically these patients have a disharmony involving their Energy (Qi) being constrained and the ensuing lack of free flow through the intestines results in their pain and bloating. The diarrhoea comes about when this constraint inhibits the body’s ability to transform food. The outcome is urgent diarrhoea with undigested food particles.
The treatment strategy is to free up this Energy constraint. Acupuncture is very effective, with patients often feeling an immediate easing in the bloating and pain. Regular treatments will ease the Pattern of Disharmony and results in longer periods without the urgency to run to the toilet.
Chinese herbal treatment, as mentioned above, has been shown to be effective, and with an individualised prescription, the beneficial results can be long term.
Chinese Medicine places great importance on lifestyle with any condition. For IBS, the best diet is mostly cooked foods, stews and soups. These are easy to digest and make it easier for the treatments to be effective.
Relaxation and moderate exercise are another essential component in a comprehensive treatment plan.
Memories of emotional and stressful events will not disappear, but Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine in helping to relieve the pain and bowel problems, enable the body and Mind to find a renewed sense of harmony.
Wade James
Chinawest Clinic
Fremantle
wadejames@chinawest.com.au
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Acupuncture for Children
From a few days old, children can benefit greatly from acupuncture treatment. Paediatrics is one of the oldest specialties in Chinese Medicine, with a history of more than a thousand years.
The World Health Organization recommends acupuncture for many common conditions including common colds, sinusitis, bronchitis, tonsillitis, asthma and for generally improving wellbeing.
The most common conditions seen in our clinic are digestive disorders and reoccurring colds with a cough and phlegm. The children have often had repeated courses of antibiotics but the conditions return.
According to Chinese Medicine, the digestive system is central to the cause of most common illness in children. Irregular feeding, feeding too little or too much or too often are the usual culprits.
For babies more than a few weeks old, Chinese Medicine recommends regular feeds, not feeding on demand.
This regularity allows the stomach and intestines to fill and empty.
When overfed, babies’ digestive systems can’t cope and before long you will see regurgitation of milk. The accumulation of undigested food will further obstruct the digestive processes and eventually a phlegm condition will result.
Further on, diarrhoea or constipation can develop.
Acupuncture, even in young babies can result in rapid changes in the child’s wellbeing. Parents are usually warned that after acupuncture, be prepared for a rather large poo, as the accumulated food and heat is purged, then a big sleep as the baby recovers without the distress of a bloated belly.
Acupuncture for babies and young children is quick and relatively painless.
Once familiar with the treatment, children will often hold out an arm or leg and watch to see the whole event. They feel justifiably proud of their bravery and highly expectant that the results will see them able to attend the upcoming birthday party or outing that they looked likely to miss out on.
It is not uncommon for us to see a child with a persistent feverish condition, a hacking cough with stuffed up nose, crying and clinging to their mother, and within a few minutes of having acupuncture, for the child to be playing on their own with toys in the clinic.
The heat, has dissipated and with it the disturbed emotions and irritability. The cough and phlegm will take a little longer to resolve.
Acupuncture for babies and young children is a quick in and out process, with the needles not retained for 20 minutes as in adult treatments.
There are some tears occasionally, but these quickly disappear when the child realizes that it was nothing more than a mosquito bite sensation.
Apart from the thousands of hospitals in China with Chinese Medicine paediatric departments offering acupuncture, Chinese herbs, Chinese paediatric massage and preventative allergy treatments, there are many recent studies in the West attesting to the value of acupuncture for children’s illnesses.
For qualified practitioners, the Australian Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine Association has a website to locate local practitioners.
www.acupuncture.org.au
Wade James
Chinawest Clinic
Fremantle
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Low Back Pain
Over 20 percent of Australians have some form of ongoing back pain and over 50 percent of Australians will have a period of debilitating back pain in their lifetimes.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) may have an answer for many sufferers of acute and chronic pain in the lower lumbar region.
The causes of low back pain, according to TCM, are excessive physical work, overwork, or an attack of external climatic factors.
Excessive physical exertion at work or on the sporting field can lead to a straining of the muscles in the low back.
In the acute phase, this causes an obstruction to the flow of Energy (Qi) and Blood (Xue) through the acupuncture channels in the area affected. The result is stabbing pain, stiffness or rigid muscles and an inability to turn the body easily.
As the condition becomes chronic, this lack of flow of Qi and Xue through the area creates weakness in the muscles leading to deep dull achy pain.
Common external climatic factors that can affect the low back area are cold and damp.
Exposure to excessive cold or damp weather could be outside while working or gardening, or inside in air-conditioning.
As Spring arrives and we wear fewer clothes, our bodies become vulnerable to unseasonable weather changes. In the Chinese medical classics, wind is said to carry 100 diseases. Perth is known as the windy city, and so we need to be wary of cold and damp wind that causes a shiver. This can be the first sign of problems caused by external climatic factors.
The exposure to cold and damp can cause muscle spasms and tightness. Cold will cause severe pain while damp will cause heavy dull pain. Generally the cold type will feel better with hot water bottles or heat packs.
Any of these causes can lead to a chronic condition of low back pain and with it a loss of general wellbeing.
Overwork and exhaustion will also lead to a loss of wellbeing and one of the features of this run down state is chronic dull pain in the low back.
TCM treatment is based on whether your condition is acute or chronic and what climatic or causative factors are still present.
Acupuncture points are chosen to treat the local area or adjacent to the affected area, or distal to the site of the pain, on acupuncture channels running over the site of the pain.
If climatic factors are involved, then specific acupuncture points are chosen to help resolve those factors. For cold, heat is also usually applied to the local area.
For chronic conditions, acupuncture points are also chosen to boost the body’s general wellbeing. Only by treating the root of the problem will a resolution to the whole problem be achieved.
Traditional Chinese herbal medicine can also be used to invigorate the flow of Qi and Xue through the areas of pain to relax muscles and relieve strains. Chinese herbal tonics are commonly used to treat chronic low back conditions.
Acute low back pain can respond well after 2 or 3 treatments. For more chronic conditions, a course of 10 or 12 treatments may be needed to gain relief.
Always seek a professional diagnosis and treatment from a qualified TCM practitioner.
Wade James
Chinawest Clinic
Fremantle
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PMT- Chinese Medicine’s Solution
Many women accept the monthly agony of pre-menstrual tension (PMT) as normal. Chinese Medicine has a different view.
Outbursts of anger directed at loved ones, grumpy or moody feelings and tears for no reason are some of the emotions commonly experienced. Then there is the breast tenderness, abdominal bloating, pain below the ribs, fluid retention, tiredness, headaches and insomnia that accompany the disturbed emotions.
These symptoms can start two weeks before the period and are only relieved once the period starts.
The menstrual cycle, according to Chinese Medicine, has four distinct phases. The post menstrual phase is when the body is depleted of Energy (Qi) and Blood (Xue). The mid-cycle phase when the body fills up with Blood (Xue). The pre-menstrual phase when the body’s Qi moves in readiness for the period. And the menstrual phase when the Blood (Xue) is moving.
If the free flow of Qi and Blood (Xue) is not maintained in the pre-menstrual and menstrual phase, any of the PMT symptoms can occur.
The causative factors of these PMT symptoms, according to Chinese Medicine, are emotional, dietary and lifestyle.
Stress from family or work can lead to frustration and anger. These constrained emotions will affect how the body regulates the flow of energy (Qi) through the acupuncture channels and internal organs.
Free flow of Qi is essential to normal functioning of the body and Mind. As the flow of Qi becomes irregular or stagnant, due to the constrained emotions, physical and further mental and emotional symptoms appear.
Pain, bloating, fluid retention and headaches along with a grumpy disposition are typical of this stagnation in the flow of Qi.
Excessive amounts of fast foods containing lots of fat and oil can accumulate in the body to form Phlegm and Damp. These obstruct the digestive functioning and lead to weight gain or indigestion.
Again, the free flow of Qi is obstructed and PMT symptoms will appear.
Finally, lifestyle factors play a significant role in our wellbeing. Overwork and an irregular lifestyle with a lack of rest or exercise will lead to a decline in general wellbeing. This together with irregular eating patterns will eventually deplete the body’s Qi.
A lack of Qi manifests as tiredness and poor concentration.
To alleviate the symptoms of PMT, the three causative factors of emotions, diet and lifestyle must be addressed.
For stubborn and long-term cases, Chinese Medicine has a long history of successfully treating these symptoms. Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine are used routinely throughout China in most hospitals for menstrual irregularities. In Australia, the benefits of these treatments are becoming more widely available from qualified practitioners and recognised by governments and health funds.
Wade James
Chinawest Clinic
Fremantle
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Wind-Stroke
Stroke or “cerebro-vascular accident” (CVA) now affects over 48,000 people in Australia every year. The debilitating after effects of stroke, like hemiplegia (paralysis), aphasia (slurred speech) and numbness of the limbs, can last for many months or years and recovery depends on the type of stroke and treatments available. One third of people having a stroke will die within 12 months, one third will suffer some permanent disability and one third will make a complete recovery.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the name for a CVA is “Wind-Stroke” (Zhong Feng). And lifestyle factors are seen as the major causative factors. These include overwork and stress, irregular and excessive diets (to much sugar, fats, dairy and fried food), and a general lack of rest.
Treatment in China consists first in stabilising the patient using modern medicine. But for the sequela to stroke, the after effects, TCM is used extensively in all hospitals throughout China.
In the initial stages, a number of TCM treatments are used concurrently. Acupuncture, Chinese Massage (Tui Na), Chinese herbs taken orally and herbal hot packs. The combination of therapies improves the recovery time.
Acupuncture treatments must be started within the first 3 weeks to gain the maximum chances of a full recovery. These treatments begin in the hospital ward and are continued later in the acupuncture outpatient department. Treatments are given daily and include traditional acupuncture points on the body and newly developed scalp acupuncture based on neurological studies.
Chinese massage is not like the oil based Swedish style massage. It is much more like a sports massage with brisk repetitive movements designed to stimulate the blood flow in the affected areas. For physically strong patients, striking techniques are used on acupuncture points.
Chinese herbal medicine is the biggest speciality of TCM in China today. It is used for most common and chronic health problems. Each patient will receive an individually prescribed herbal decoction to be taken twice a day. These prescriptions target both the underlying causative factors and the specific after effects of the stroke. With the extensive research that has been made into Chinese herbs over the last 50 years, new intravenous drips of Chinese herbal extracts are now also administered.
The herbal hot packs used on the stroke ward are wrapped on the affected limbs of patients by specialist TCM nurses wearing arm length rubber gloves, to prevent from being scalded by the boiling herbal liquid.
The aim of TCM treatments for Stroke is to clear the obstructions to the free flow of blood in the affected areas by resolving the causative factors of “Wind”, “Phlegm”, “Fire” and “Stasis”. Stimulating the appropriate acupuncture points or taking specific herbs for these factors will speed up the recovery process.
All the treatments are given on a daily basis, and as patients recover, they are discharged from hospital and continue to see specialist TCM practitioners as outpatients. The daily treatment regime can be overwhelming for new patients, but their Spirits are lifted when old patients, who have recovered, return to encourage them and their families to persist with their treatments.
In Australia, a growing number of families are requesting Acupuncture and other TCM treatments in hospitals. With the approval of Doctors, Nurses and hospital administration, this is possible. Remember, acupuncture in the first 3 weeks will significantly improve recovery. And even those who have suffered for longer with the after effects of stroke, acupuncture, Chinese herbs and Chinese massage can make a difference.
Wade James
Chinawest Clinic
Fremantle
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Health rebates available from major health funds including HBF and Medibank Private.
QUALIFICATION DETAILS
Wade James
Master of Health Science in TCM (University of Technology Sydney)
Dip. TCM (Sydney)
Cert. TCM (China)
Cert. Chinese Herbal Medicine (China)
Cert. Tui Na (China)
Member of The Australian Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine Association (AACMA)
Service Categories
Acupuncture, Chinese Massage, Herbalists, Natural Fertility Management, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Womens Health
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