Savor the best of China with Your China Travel Expert
No other destination on earth is quite like China. The combination of cultural uniqueness, ancient glory, natural wonders and stunning modernization make China travel an exciting and rewarding adventure. A journey that was once considered challenging and expensive is now not only comfortable but very affordable. China Delight Tour offers you both the cultural enlightening journey and the travel bargains of a lifetime!

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Shop around. You will be convinced our China Tour programs reflect not only some of the lowest prices on the market but are packed with the most included features. Our mission is to offer the most affordable quality China Travel vacations. We truly pride ourselves in the remarkable value that we provide to our clients.

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Unlike “volume tour operators”, we distinguish ourselves with our uncompromised dedication to small group travel. To give you full individual attention and maximize your exposure to the local culture we limit our China Tour group size. You deserve and have our respect. You will never feel ignored or lost in the crowd. Smaller group sizes also allow unique access to many special events that are not available to larger groups.

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One of the greatest advantages of traveling with China Delight Tour is the quality of service provided by our China Tour guides. We all know what a crucial role the guides play in our dream vacations. That’s why our China Tour directors and local guides are carefully selected and constantly evaluated. They are caring, knowledgeable, conscientious, bilingual speaking professionals.

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A memorable journey to China is beyond just sightseeing. Our unique programs are particularly focused on cultural exposure and people-to-people interactions. The depth of your experience is greatly enhanced through our exclusive cultural enriching programs, offering you an up-close, in-depth contact with local traditions and customs, and giving you an insider’s perspective into the hidden treasures of the Middle Kingdom.

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There is no substitute for the depth of experience and first-hand knowledge when customizing a personal itinerary. Our team of China travel planners knows your destination inside out. Their expertise and knowledge is the guarantee of your perfect tailor-made programs crafted to suit your needs and attentive to every single detail.

Details and the complete China Tour  itinerary.

By Adrienne Dellwo

We all deal with stress to one degree or another, but when you have fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome, you’ve got to do your best to manage stress — it’s one of our wost symptom triggers.

Many of us have our own stress-management strategies.  For instance, I left a stressful job to help manage my illness, and I use supplements (theanine and DHEA) and deep breathing to deal with stressful situations.  But what about when your entire life is a stressful situation?  What can you do then?

I recently got an email from a woman who’s the sole caretaker to her mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease.  As happens so often with Alzheimer’s, her mom has become especially argumentative and abrasive.  She was wondering what she can do to ease the stress in her life, because it’s making her own symptoms much worse.

It’s a tough situation with no easy answers.  I have a lot of ideas about how someone can ease the tension in their body and mind: yoga, Tai Chi, meditation, supplements, massage, acupuncture, a relaxing hobby.  Medication may be right for some people.  However, whether you can utilize any of those depends to a degree on time and/or money.  Each one of us has to decide which ones are realistic in our own lives.

I know some of you have been in a similar situation, caring for a family member whose health is deteriorating. People wonder how I take care of my children, but I know what I do is a cake walk compared to what you’re doing.

This information is brought to you by Dr. XiPing Zhou, M.D.O.M., L.Ac.Dr. Zhou is founder & president of East West Healing Arts Institute Massage School, Dr. Zhou’s Acupuncture & Pain Management Clinic,Madison Family Wellness Community Clinic,  The Herbal Palace, &China Delight Tours. Visit anyone of these websites to learn about Chinese medicine and culture

May 2, 2010

The knee is a complex joint that works much like the hinge of a door, allowing the joint to move backward and forward, but also has the ability to twist and rotate. This makes the knee joints especially vulnerable to damage, which is why they typically sustain more injuries than do other joints.

The knee joint is made up of the thighbone (femur), the two lower leg bones (the tibia and the fibula), and the patella, a bone that slides in a groove on the end of the femur. These bones are held together by four main ligaments, large bands of tissue that connect the bones together and help stabilize the knee joint during motion. Other structures in the knee include tendons (fibrous bands of tissue that connect muscles to bones and allow you to straighten or extend your leg), the meniscus (a C-shaped cartilage that cushions the knee joint), and bursae, (fluid-filled sacs that cushion the knee joint, allowing the ligaments and tendons to slide across it smoothly).

Normally, all of these structures work together smoothly. But injury and disease can disrupt this interplay, resulting in pain, muscle weakness and decreased function. A knee injury can affect any of the bones, cartilage and ligaments that make up the knee joint, as well as the ligaments, tendons, or fluid-filled sacs (bursae) that surround your knee joint.

The symptoms of knee problems can vary widely because of the number of structures involved and the range of injuries and diseases that can cause knee pain. Knee pain can be caused by an injury due to sports or a car accident, an awkward landing from a jump or fall, repetitive stress or overuse of the knee joint, sudden stopping or turning (such as in sports), hyperextension of the knee joint, degeneration of the knee joint from aging, and diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, and gout.

Acupuncture can be an effective way to treat knee pain. First we must find out the quality of the pain we are dealing with in order to understand the cause. For example, if we have a feeling of heavy pain we will know that a damp pattern is involved. A damp pattern occurs when the body’s internal functions are disrupted, causing the body to retain excess moisture, kind of like a basement. People with this pattern will notice more predominant pain in damp weather. If the pain is heavy and burning then we have damp-heat, or if it is heavy and cold, we have damp-cold. Sharp pain would mean blood stasis. A common pain for older people is weak, achy knees, which would mean a kidney deficiency.

It is also very important to understand where the pain is located around the knee. There are 6 energetic meridians that travel through the knee. When we understand which meridian is being affected, it can help us to understand which organs are being affected to determine the most important and effective acupuncture points to use.

By understanding what lies behind the pain, we are able to go deeper into the problem to resolve the contributing causes. Acupuncture can be very effective to give the body the stimulation that it needs to resolve these internal imbalances so that healing can occur. It can help to relieve pain, as well as to promote healing and strengthen internal weakness that makes the knee joint vulnerable, making acupuncture a treatment option that is safe, effective, and free from negative side-effects.

This information is brought to you by Dr. XiPing Zhou, M.D.O.M., L.Ac.Dr. Zhou is founder & president of East West Healing Arts Institute Massage School, Dr. Zhou’s Acupuncture & Pain Management Clinic,Madison Family Wellness Community Clinic,  The Herbal Palace, &China Delight Tours. Visit anyone of these websites to learn about Chinese medicine and culture.

Asthma, a chronic disease of the lungs, affects an estimated 300 million people around the world. Although it is considered a treatable disease with proper medication, it still claims over 3,000 deaths each year in the U.S. alone. It is also one of the most common diseases for which patients turn to alternative therapies, such as acupuncture, for treatment and relief. Like all methods in Oriental medicine, acupuncture utilizes a holistic approach wherein treatment is focused on achieving overall health and well-being in order to remove the troublesome symptoms associated with asthma.

In traditional Chinese medicine, asthma is considered not just a disorder of the lungs but also of the kidneys and the stomach. This explains why the acupoints that correspond to the treatment of asthma are located along the lung, kidney, and stomach meridians. Acupoints along the bladder meridian are also treated since bladder function is considered important for the overall health of the body’s organs.

Acupuncture is widely used as a preventative medicine technique, and as such, is most effective when used to treat initial attacks or mild bouts of asthma. The disease is one of 40 considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) that may benefit from acupuncture. One study conducted by the University of Vienna Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care showed that at least 70% of the patients suffering from asthma reported improvement after undergoing regular acupuncture treatment for a span of 10 weeks.

Another study, conducted in Kaifeng City’s Department of Acupuncture in the Second Municipal People’s Hospital in Henan, China, involved 192 patients with bronchial asthma. All patients were treated with acupuncture and results showed significant improvement in over 75% of patients. Clinical remission also reduced and the majority of patients reported immediate relief post-treatment.

While asthma symptoms can range from very slight to severe depending on the individual, there are several medical treatment options available for patients suffering from asthma. In addition to conventional medical modalities, acupuncture and other alternative therapies are becoming increasingly popular today as effective means for treating chronic conditions including asthma.

This information is brought to you by Dr. XiPing Zhou, M.D.O.M., L.Ac.Dr. Zhou is founder & president of East West Healing Arts Institute Massage School, Dr. Zhou’s Acupuncture & Pain Management Clinic,Madison Family Wellness Community Clinic,  The Herbal Palace, &China Delight Tours. Visit anyone of these websites to learn about Chinese medicine and culture

Patients included in this study were suffering from dysmenorrhea of a moderate to severe nature for 1 year or longer and had not responded well to NSAID use. They had also refused oral contraceptive therapy, which is currently administered as a first line of treatment in dysmenorrhea cases. The participants were given 8 weekly acupuncture treatments over a period of 2 months, with needles inserted in applicable point locations for 30 minutes.

13 of the 15 participants in the study experienced substantial reduction of pain and of NSAID consumption following the acupuncture treatments. Greater pain reduction was observed in patients experiencing primary, rather than secondary dysmenorrhea. 7 of the 15 participants ceased NSAID use completely and remained asymptomatic when questioned 6 months after treatments ended.

Acupuncture has been recognized by the National Institutes of Health as a scientific therapeutic modality with an effective pain-relieving ability, and it has been recommended by the NIH for the treatment of several diseases, including dysmenorrhea. The beauty of acupuncture treatments is that they are virtually devoid of side effects, non-invasive and extremely safe. It is postulated that the insertion of acupuncture needles causes enhanced blood flow to the affected area.

Herbal medicine can also be used together with the above acupuncture protocol to enhance the effect. Although the proper Chinese Herbal Formula must be selected for each individual patient’s exact signs and symptoms, one of the most commonly prescribed formulas for primary dysmenorrhea patients is known as gui zhi fu ling wan. This combination of 5 Chinese herbs includes cinnamon twig (Cinnamomi Ramulus), hoelen (Poria), peony root (Paeoniae Radix), moutan root bark (Moutan Cortex), and peach kernel (Persicae Semen). These herbs are considered in the Traditional Chinese Medicine theory to have a strong invigorating or circulating quality of the blood, and they serve the role of alleviating pain by eliminating blockages or stagnations in the body. This same formula is also appropriate in certain cases of uterine fibroids and ovarian cysts.

The study mentioned above concludes that acupuncture treatment may be indicated to treat dysmenorrhea related pain, especially for patients in whom oral contraceptives or NSAID are refused or contraindicated. This agrees with clinical results that many acupuncture clinics have been reporting. However, it should be noted that this particular study had a relatively small group of participants, and it did not employ a randomized, double-blind format. It will be useful to seek further scientific validation of the effect of acupuncture in dysmenorrhea treatment.

Sources for this article:

http://ecam.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/…

Chinese Herbal Medicine Materia Medica, 3rd edition, by Dan Bensky, et al.

Handbook of Oriental Medicine, 3rd edition, by Hyunbae Kim.

This information is brought to you by Dr. XiPing Zhou, M.D.O.M., L.Ac.Dr. Zhou is founder & president of East West Healing Arts Institute Massage School, Dr. Zhou’s Acupuncture & Pain Management Clinic,Madison Family Wellness Community Clinic,  The Herbal Palace, &China Delight Tours. Visit anyone of these websites to learn about Chinese medicine and culture

Joint pain is a common side effect for women being treated with aromatase inhibitors for breast cancer. The treatment halts estrogen production in post-menopausal women, which means less of the hormone can fuel certain breast cancer cell growth.

While women often remedy the discomfort with painkillers, researchers wondered if acupuncture might also help. In a paper published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, researchers enrolled 43 women in a randomized, blind study. The women were being treated with aromatase inhibitors for breast cancer and were also experiencing musculoskeletal pain.

Some were assigned to a true acupuncture group, in which joints were specifically targeted, and others were assigned to a sham acupuncture group, in which needles were inserted superficially into the skin in locations that were not real acupuncture points (this group served as a control for a potential placebo effect). Treatment went on for 12 sessions over six weeks.

Women were asked to rate the severity of their pain and its effect on daily functions, on a scale of 0 to 10. At the beginning of the study, the true acupuncture group’s average pain rating was 6.7, and the sham group’s was 5.6. After six weeks, the true acupuncture group rated their pain on average 3.0, and the sham group rated theirs 5.5.

In addition to seeing a significant decrease in the severity of their pain, the true acupuncture group also noticed improvement in their overall physical well-being.

“Since aromatase inhibitors have become an increasingly popular treatment option for some breast cancer patients, we aimed to find a non-drug option to manage the joint issues they often create, thereby improving quality of life and reducing the likelihood that patients would discontinue this potentially lifesaving treatment,” said Dr. Dawn Hershman, senior author of the study, in a news release.

Hershman is the co-director of the breast cancer program at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, and an assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center.

This information is brought to you by Dr. XiPing Zhou, M.D.O.M., L.Ac.Dr. Zhou is founder & president of East West Healing Arts Institute Massage School, Dr. Zhou’s Acupuncture & Pain Management Clinic,Madison Family Wellness Community Clinic,  The Herbal Palace, &China Delight Tours. Visit anyone of these websites to learn about Chinese medicine and culture

The underlying theory is that there is an invisible force or energy, called qi in Chinese, which has healing power. There are many points, called acupoints or meridians, which connect to the glands of the body. In therapy, pressure is applied at specific points to increase the flow of the qi, in and around the body through the point network. Pressuring acupoints ensures normal qi circulation.

Once a therapist diagnoses a particular ailment by acupressure, he or she provides some acupoints to the patient. Self-applied acupressure is a free treatment which is quick and effective in providing relief from many disorders, a unique advantage. Its effectiveness increases with regular treatment, including self-treatment.

The wellness benefits of acupressure are many. Creating a sense of well-being, it helps provide relief from problems due to stress and tiredness. It helps the body heal its injuries, increases blood circulation, releases muscle tension and reduces back pain. Some of the diseases or disorders that have been mitigated by acupressure include diabetes, epilepsy, bronchitis, heart problems, digestive problems and many allergies. Relief of eye strain, sinus problems, arthritis, muscle aches, ulcer pain, menstrual cramps, nausea, constipation and indigestion have been reported. Acupressure can help in inducing pain-free labor during pregnancy and has been used in lieu of pain killers for minor surgery.

Acupressure has also been used to decrease swelling in the lower body caused by water retention. Massaging certain acupoints on the legs, feet and ankles helps to relieve such swelling by eliminating dampness; it can also help to strengthen the spleen and kidneys. This is important because these are the organs responsible for ensuring the right body fluid balance.

There is some anecdotal evidence that the swelling may be lessened by utilizing a “porcupine ball”, an exercise ball covered with spiked bumps. These bumps provide pressure to the body part massaged by the ball. In addition, there are abundant wood and plastic hand and foot massagers and other devices with pointed nubs to help a person treat himself. More study of the efficacy of such tools is needed, however.

Several techniques, or types of pressure, are used depending on the particular needs of a patient`s disorder. These vary from firm pressure to the more aggressive kneading of the muscles. Keep in mind that acupressure, like other Chinese medicine protocols, does not cure disease, but it works by bringing the body`s qi into a better flow, thus enabling the body to heal itself. It is also thought that a disruption in the qi flow can actually cause the problem, so restoring the flow ends the discomfort.

Several precautions must be taken before stimulating any point. Acupressure should be avoided after heavy exercise, meals and bathing, and if pregnant. Prescription drugs might interfere with the treatment. Also, if under treatment for cancer or high blood pressure, the doctor`s supervision is necessary.

If care is taken to follow the precautions, acupressure can be an adjunct to treatment or a self- administered help for many common complaints. Its non-invasive quality allows people to use it for free, anywhere, anytime. Even though its more illustrious relative, acupuncture, has been more fully researched and implemented, acupressure offers one alternative to try before opting for acupuncture. Depending on the complaint, it may be all that is needed.

A baby boy who suffered from a condition known as spermatic cord hydrocele has had to live with abnormal swellings around his testicles since he was three months old.

But just before the boy was wheeled into the operation theatre, his mother took the advice of traditional Chinese medicine physician Tan Kiat Hwee and sent him for Chinese paediatric massage sessions

The boy was eventually spared the knife as he recovered fully after five months of massage.

The healing touch of Chinese paediatric massage has also helped children who suffer from other symptoms including fever, persistent cough, constipation, wry neck and many others.

Parents like Madam Eileen Yap also believe that Chinese paediatric massage has given her 11-year-old daughter a head start academically.

This information is brought to you by Dr. XiPing Zhou, M.D.O.M., L.Ac.Dr. Zhou is founder & president of East West Healing Arts Institute Massage School, Dr. Zhou’s Acupuncture & Pain Management Clinic,Madison Family Wellness Community Clinic,  The Herbal Palace, &China Delight Tours. Visit anyone of these websites to learn about Chinese medicine and culture

On tour with Dr. Zhou at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing

Savor the best of China with Your China Travel Expert
No other destination on earth is quite like China. The combination of cultural uniqueness, ancient glory, natural wonders and stunning modernization make China travel an exciting and rewarding adventure. A journey that was once considered challenging and expensive is now not only comfortable but very affordable. China Delight Tour offers you both the cultural enlightening journey and the travel bargains of a lifetime!

Itinerary & tour details

According to a recent study published in the April issue of the journal Otolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery, Chinese acupuncture may be a safe and effective treatment option for those afflicted with persistent post-viral olfactory dysfunction (PVOD), a condition commonly linked to an upper respiratory tract infection.

Currently, there is no validated pharmacotherapy option for PVOD, which affects approximately 2 million Americans each year and often leads to a temporary loss of the sense of smell and permanent damage to the olfactory system.

In the study, the research team recruited 15 patients with PVOD and treated them with 10 weekly 30-minute sessions of acupuncture. Following the therapy the participants had their sense of smell analyzed with the Sniffin’ Sticks test set, and their data was compared to a group of control patients also suffering from PVOD who did not undergo acupuncture.

The investigators found that eight patients in the acupuncture group significantly improved their sense of smell, while only two participants in the control group achieved the same result.

The study’s authors concluded that “the observed high response rate of about 50 percent under [acupuncture] was superior to that of spontaneous remission, and offers a possible new therapeutic regimen in postviral dysosmia.”

This information is brought to you by Dr. XiPing Zhou, M.D.O.M., L.Ac.Dr. Zhou is founder & president of East West Healing Arts Institute Massage School, Dr. Zhou’s Acupuncture & Pain Management Clinic,Madison Family Wellness Community Clinic,  The Herbal Palace, &China Delight Tours. Visit anyone of these websites to learn about Chinese medicine and culture.