There was a young boy who was about 10-11 years old. He has had nighttime bladder control issue since potty trained as a child. He also experienced leakage while doing team sports. The bladder leakage was most severe when the games were intense. He has seen doctors and specialists, taken prescription medications, tried emptying bladder and reduce water intake before bed, tried waking up in the middle of the night to urinate, but these didn’t help very much. You can imagine this is a huge inconvenience and embarrassment for boy at this age.
The secondary issue he has is an allergic reaction to mosquito bite. He said every time he got bitten by mosquitos, the site would swell up like a ball and he would feel nauseous and vomit.
To be honest, I haven’t had any experience treating his second issue with mosquito bites. So I told his mother, let’s treat the primary issue and if his health improves, the secondary issue might resolve by itself.
After the initial assessment, I concluded that this issue could come from two problematic areas. One was the Kidneys and the other was the lymphatic system (San Jiao). In Chinese medicine, Kidneys control the bladder and is also the primary organs for storing energy that our bodies need. And lymphatic system is the water passage in our bodies.
He was very brave and not afraid of getting acupuncture. I tried to minimize the number of needles to avoid putting him through too much discomfort. So, I picked only 1 point on his ankle (Kd3) and one 1 on his hand (SJ3), 4 points total on both sides with the smallest needles that I had.
The result wasn’t very obvious from the first two or three sessions, but this young patient noticed he’s had been feeling sleepier and also slept a lot more. I knew that the treatments were working because his body was catching up with the sleep that it needed. Once he caught up with the rest he needed, he no longer needed the naps or long sleep. He has even more energy than before. And he started to notice the leakage during sports and night had reduced to about 50%. During this period, he was bitten by mosquitos while camping, but it didn’t swell very much. The allergic reaction was almost non-existent after 9 sessions of acupuncture
This type of issue isn’t commonly talked about among parents or friends because of embarrassment. However, they are not uncommon and is very treatable.