A study published in the July, 2008 issue of BMC Complementary Alternative Medicine found that the acupuncture point, Large Intestine 2 (LI 2), increased saliva production as well as brain ...
Acupuncture for Dry Mouth: Point Increases Saliva Production and Brain Activity
K-3 for excessive saliva
On September 30th, 2008 L Brown says:
I wanted to share a case study.
I am treating a woman 10 weeks pregnant. I am not going to go into detail about her case except that she has terrible nausea and vomiting and constant saliva in her moth that makes her NVP worse. I added K-3 bilaterally to my treatment last week and today. She said last week after the treatment she noticed her excessive saliva production stopped for about 5 days. Today she was in again and the saliva was just accumulating in mouth faster than she can swallow. I started with K-3 and waited a minute and to both our surprise her mouth dried up instantly.
So thanks for sharing the use of K-3 for excessive saliva. This has been the first chance I have had to try it out in clinic.
Kidney 3 - Saliva
On September 30th, 2008 Schulman says:
Thats a great account Lorne. Thanks for sharing. I have been recounting this experience for a few years and never had anyone get back to me with clinical reinforcement of what I had experienced. I did include one of those cases in an article I wrote a few years back if anyone has access the the JACM journal . . . .
Schulman D. The Unexpected Outcomes of Acupuncture. Case Reports in Support of Refocused Research
Designs. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine; November, 2004: Volume 10 (5); Pages 785-789.
Daniel Schulman
Charlottetown, PEI, Canada
So Interesting
This is really very fascinating to me. A number of years ago, I found myself treating a subset of pregnant women suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum who always complained of getting a really really thick saliva production under their tongues as a precursor to a bad nausea and vomiting episode. (I have since expanded this 'cluster' of patients into a pattern I clearly see from time to time of Kidney deficiency and many many manifestations of phlegm) - but to get back to the story - through a number of explorations, both palpatory and intellectual, I came to discover that Kidney 3 was a pivotal point in bringing about clinical resolution of the problem - and interestingly if you consult all the major acupuncture texts, you will find under 'Actions and Effects' for Kidney 3, an association of a thick salivary feeling under the tongue (and Steve Clavey's book on fluids has a lot to say about Kidneys and Saliva) - but why I find this sooooo fascinating is that the Large Intestine Meridian is opposite the Kidney meridian on the ZiWu (midnight, noon chinese clock) schematic and while the dynamics of this framework are not featured all that much in modern day TCM, if you read Soulie de Morant's pre-TCM Acupuncture text, just about every single acupuncture point description draws upon the ZiWu dynamic to offer Actions and Effects commentaries - and so, within that context, it just fascinates me that Kidney 3 would calm down excess saliva production and , according to this posting, LI 2 (not only a Ziwu oppositional point to the Kidney meridian, but also the water point on the LI meridian) would crank up saliva production - that kind of dynamic is very central to much of what Soulie de Morant describes in his book. Does the person who posted this have the full reference? Daniel Schulman
Charlottetown, PEI, Canada