Question for tcm dom's...about heart diagnostic

[D_Glenn]

How much signifance to you give to the diagnostic of 45 degree creases that suddenly appear on the earlobes as a sign of heart/ cardiovascular issues?

And if you do treat that and the patient makes appropriate lifestyle changes have you seen a lessening in the creases?

TIA

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[Michael]

Just with normal observation I've seen mine vary over the past few years. Have not tried to make a correlation, but definitely not with any heart issues.

[kenneth fish]

In children, earlobe creases may be a clue to some genetic disorders. In adults, they are simply a sign of aging. The possible association with cardiac risk has been disproven.

[yeniseri]

How much signifance to you give to the diagnostic of 45 degree creases that suddenly appear on the earlobes as a sign of heart/ cardiovascular issues?

And if you do treat that and the patient makes appropriate lifestyle changes have you seen a lessening in the creases?

TIA

.

Whenever someone tells me of situations like this, I tend to be conservative in approach and charge them $50.00
1. I do a fitness and leisure assessment
2. Take basic HR, BP observe posture
3. The kicker is I document family history of cardiovascular and other family hereditary.

[D_Glenn]

In children, earlobe creases may be a clue to some genetic disorders. In adults, they are simply a sign of aging. The possible association with cardiac risk has been disproven.

I'd already read most of the studies that I could get access to, namely the ncbi, and there is indeed a link between aging and what could be dubbed natural aging of the arteries.

Weston Price had discovered what he called Activator X but is now known as vitamin K2, which was abundant in meats and dairy products until we stopped the animals from feeding on a natural diet of green grasses and started them on grain diets. Ingesting Meats and dairy products without the natural vitamin K2 that would be normally in them if pasture fed, just results in damage to arteries, calcification/ hardening of the arteries, etc.

So I could see how progressive studies done over the years would naturally be linked to the increasing amount of grain fed animal products that are being ingested.

I'm presuming that Western medicine got the idea of ELC from Chinese medicine back in the 1970s since that's when the studies started, so that's why I would like some information about TCM's view, preferably CCM (Chinese medicine without communist influence), in order to have a larger timespan or greater number of people studied.

I did come across one link that said it's caused by lack of blood flow to capillaries in the ear lobes which causes the structure of the earlobe to collapse.

So why am I asking: One week I didn't have any noticeable creases, then had a 6 hour surgery under anesthesia, which they said there was some minor cardiac problems (or maybe major- like needing a crash cart and the whole nine yards, it's not listed in my medical records, or at least the one's I can see) that they were able to handle. And then the next week I had the earlobe creases.

I had an ultrasound done on recommendation from the long-term cancer survivor program I went to and that showed a murmur, heart does a double beat about every 7 to 21 but the people there weren't worried about it.

I know that stressing about it is worse, but I can assure you that I'm not. I was just wanting to make healthier choices, and having more legitimate reasons to do so would help.
Having a history of cancer, having been given some Anthracyclines, Surgeries under anasthetics, etc. and not being taken seriously about possible cardiac problems by anyone, is the stressful part.

In TCM there's also a link between the brain and heart health. And there are some similar problems between people who have open heart surgeries and people who have a craniotomy.

***
Yeniseri, what is your occupation, if you don't mind me asking?


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[yeniseri]

I worked in clinical research until 2009 (BigPharma: Pharmacia, TAP, Pfizer (contractor) Abbott Laboratories (contractor)
Main job: Protocol development/ Data Collection Instruments Creation (CRFs), and overview, data analyses, FDA reports placement for submissions.

Some years ago, I was working on a compound where after X drug was taken, some patients were reporting a metallic taste due to ingestion and I immediately thought of Wood Metal, etc and my alleged vison of TCM began to change immediately, where although I see correspondence, it isn't necessarily a 1-1 ratio. The metallic taste could not have been Lung/Large Intestine nor Spleen Stomach but my immediate target was Liver/GB because breakdown of drug (metabolism) hence the metabolic taste but this could affect Spleen /Stomach.

[Franklin]

How much signifance to you give to the diagnostic of 45 degree creases that suddenly appear on the earlobes as a sign of heart/ cardiovascular issues?

And if you do treat that and the patient makes appropriate lifestyle changes have you seen a lessening in the creases?

TIA

.

from the traditional face reading i learned
ears are water element- kidney
not really heart

other ares of the face more specifically relate to the heart and cardiovascular issues

the idea of face reading is that our faces show our internal condition
but also our history, as well as our physiological, psychological, mental stuff...
and our face changes over time
(sometimes the change is caused by a traumatic event)
seems that you had some stuff that would qualify as trauma...

but they can change both ways..
i have seen people's spine issues show up on the nose
and when the issue is gone - it is no longer showing on the nose..

did creases appear in both ears or only one ear?

Franklin

[D_Glenn]

It's not 'face reading', I just found a link: Predictive Value of Auricular Diagnosis on Coronary Heart Disease

And it's actually a Western doctor- Sanders T. Frank who came up with the connection and the Chinese ran with it.

Just ruminating over everything these last few days and realized that during surgery my doc had to remove even more of my saggital sinus and then the other blood vessels had to compensate to provide blood to my brain until new blood flow found it's way to reroute. You should have seen some of the power yawns I was doing, they were crazy. So with all the blood flow going to my brain and my earlobes were left without.

It was both ears, and I'd just attributed it to a lot of natural and drug-induced sleeping and maybe my earlobes just got folded under but when I went back to my acupuncturist (she'd trained in China and was a Dr. of both of Western and Eastern medicine) saw them was like What The?.


I think it's just a sign of blood capillary flow and the structure of the ear can grow too large over the course of time.

Several researchers believed that creasing is related to earlobe shape, variation in age of creasing onset according to race, and the variation in the frequencies of occurrence of different earlobe shapes by race [29]. The prevalence of ELC in Japanese adults is low compared with those in Europe and America [20]. The subjects in the present study were limited to Asian Chinese, which limit the generalizability of the findings to other populations. In view of the possible cultural differences on the presentation of ELC, further studies on earlobe creases should therefore take into consideration the impact of age, race, and earlobe shape on ELC prevalence.

Although retrospectively examining the auricles from the time of birth of these subjects is not possible, we believe that the crease is not present at birth and develops later in life. However, whether the crease is a genetic predisposition that takes years to appear or whether it is a result of localized vascular disease and skin atrophy remains to be determined [21]. Shoenfeld et al. [33] speculated that a diminished blood supply to the earlobe might contribute to the elastic fiber tears that result in creases and folding.

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[Michael]

D., there are, I think, five arteries to the ears. I experienced my first lobe creases coincident to kidney weakness ,don't know if any actual correlation, but since then no significant variability.

You're grasping a bit, but that's okay.

[D_Glenn]

You're grasping a bit, but that's okay.

Maybe.

But if you use the Frank scale of severity I went from a Grade zero to a deep full crease across both earlobes - Grade 3, in a week's time period.


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[Michael]

I'm sure it's an indicator of something real that coincided with your treatment, I just mean you're grasping by trying to piece together the significance and reverse engineer how to treat it. Or maybe you're just curious. Cool either way, but you'll never make a correlation or cause-effect doing this. You would have already had to have been knowledgeable before all that and been able to track the signs, IMO.

All I'm saying is don't stress over the ear thing at this point.

[D_Glenn]

^^^
Aha it also says, in that link, that it's a sign of Cerebral_infarction which if you consider what he had to do during the craniotomy - cauterize or suture the saggital sinus, and all the blood, fluids, air, left out of place afterward, that makes sense.

.

[Franklin]

It's not 'face reading', I just found a link: Predictive Value of Auricular Diagnosis on Coronary Heart Disease

And it's actually a Western doctor- Sanders T. Frank who came up with the connection and the Chinese ran with it.

Just ruminating over everything these last few days and realized that during surgery my doc had to remove even more of my saggital sinus and then the other blood vessels had to compensate to provide blood to my brain until new blood flow found it's way to reroute. You should have seen some of the power yawns I was doing, they were crazy. So with all the blood flow going to my brain and my earlobes were left without.

It was both ears, and I'd just attributed it to a lot of natural and drug-induced sleeping and maybe my earlobes just got folded under but when I went back to my acupuncturist (she'd trained in China and was a Dr. of both of Western and Eastern medicine) saw them was like What The?.


I think it's just a sign of blood capillary flow and the structure of the ear can grow too large over the course of time.

Several researchers believed that creasing is related to earlobe shape, variation in age of creasing onset according to race, and the variation in the frequencies of occurrence of different earlobe shapes by race [29]. The prevalence of ELC in Japanese adults is low compared with those in Europe and America [20]. The subjects in the present study were limited to Asian Chinese, which limit the generalizability of the findings to other populations. In view of the possible cultural differences on the presentation of ELC, further studies on earlobe creases should therefore take into consideration the impact of age, race, and earlobe shape on ELC prevalence.

Although retrospectively examining the auricles from the time of birth of these subjects is not possible, we believe that the crease is not present at birth and develops later in life. However, whether the crease is a genetic predisposition that takes years to appear or whether it is a result of localized vascular disease and skin atrophy remains to be determined [21]. Shoenfeld et al. [33] speculated that a diminished blood supply to the earlobe might contribute to the elastic fiber tears that result in creases and folding.

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ok- your talking about auricular diagnosis and treatment

like they said in the article you linked
the auricular diagnosis is based on the three things
visual inspection
electrical resistance testing
and tenderness

so its more then just the visual crease

The results showed that the presence of an ear lobe crease (ELC) was significantly associated with coronary heart disease. The “heart” zone of the CHD+ve group significantly exhibited higher conductivity on both ears than that of the controls. The CHD+ve group experienced significant tenderness in the “heart” region compared with those in the CHD−ve group in both acute and chronic conditions.

the auricular stuff is a bit different from TCM
but you may be able to find someone that specializes in it

i think this is the textbook that I had
(if it is- its pretty comprehensive)
http://www.amazon.com/Auriculotherapy-Manual-Chinese-Western-Acupuncture/dp/0702035726/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410278695&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=auriclar+acupuncture

[D_Glenn]

Thanks for the link but I just found the answer I needed. And I remembered that my neurosurgeon had casually mentioned that it was a sign of what he did- essentially caused a kind of stroke.

So thanks to everyone who replied. This short thread has been a tremendous help!

I'm going to go run a 10k marathon now.


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[Franklin]

Thanks for the link but I just found the answer I needed. And I remembered that my neurosurgeon had casually mentioned that it was a sign of what he did- essentially caused a kind of stroke.

So thanks to everyone who replied. This short thread has been a tremendous help!

I'm going to go run a 10k marathon now.


.

interesting

in the traditional face reading i learned-
the crease in the earlobe means a propensity for stroke....
so if your dr had caused a kind of stroke- it makes sense for the crease to show up...


glad you are feeling better



franklin