Acupuncture for Perimenopause in Portland: A Chinese Medicine Perspective

Please note that I use the word "women" in this post for simplicity. When speaking about perimenopause and menopause, I mean anyone living this experience, regardless of gender or identity.

What is missing from the perimenopause conversation is a real understanding of how our core physiology is changing as women as we enter into perimenopause and menopause. "Declining hormones" is an unsatisfying explanation when the symptoms women are experiencing feel disruptive, disorienting, and even life-altering. Chinese medicine offers a framework that actually makes sense of this transition—and to understand it, we return to the essential foundation of Chinese medicine philosophy: yin and yang.

Yin and Yang

In Chinese medicine, living beings are comprised of yin and yang. Yin is everything that you can weigh: the body itself, blood, fluids, bones. Yang is what gives that body life—it is warmth, movement, metabolism, the mysterious capacities that hold body parts in their proper places, the animating force that makes us alive. Yin is substance and yang is function. As acupuncturists and Chinese medicine practitioners, we are always trying to assess the state of yin and yang in our patients’ bodies and to bring them back into balance. Yin and yang in balance is health.

When yin and yang come out of balance, yin becomes heavy, cold, sinking, leaking, while yang becomes unruly, flares, rises, burns. It is helpful to imagine a pot of soup cooking over a fire. We want to keep the fire (yang) underneath the pot so that it warms the ingredients (yin), breaks them down and transforms them. This process in the soup pot is cooking and transformation; in the body it is is metabolism, digestion, and ultimately the basis for life. When yin and yang separate and they stop working together, things become chaotic and less functional. Yin sinks and is inert, and yang flares out of control, often causing destruction. When yin and yang separate in the body, this is said to be death.

Perimenopause Through a Chinese Medicine Lens

Perimenopause is an important and often intense transition in which yin and yang naturally start to come out of balance. Hormones don't exist as a true concept in classical Chinese medicine, but the substances they're made of and swim in—fats, thick fluids, blood, and essence—are fundamentally yin in nature. When they decline, we see the classic signs of yin deficiency. Yin deficiency is synonymous with the classic signs of dryness that show up in perimenopause and menopause—dry skin, loss of collagen, vaginal dryness, dry eyes and lips, brittle bones, tight and dried-out muscles, and eventually the drying up of menstruation. The change can feel abrupt and strange and foreign.

This is where Chinese medicine provides a real explanation for something Western medicine skips over: when we have less yin, yang flares and becomes chaotic. In the body, this shows up as an inability to anchor the spirit—the feeling of being untethered, restless, not quite yourself. We see insomnia, anxiety, intense mood shifts, and hot flashes that at their worst, combined, can feel like a forest fire raging through a dried out landscape in late summer.

A Crucial Threshold

This transition is necessary and important for women to go through. As we get closer to menopause, the blood that spent so many decades directed outward toward fertility, childbearing, and caring for others gets redirected toward the heart. This is a massive energetic shift, as periods cease and a woman's energy becomes more fully her own and for herself. Many women report experiencing great clarity about who they really are, what they truly need, and what they are here for. This can be profoundly uncomfortable—but it is a crucial threshold, not a malfunction.

How We Can Help

This framework of yin and yang balance, and the redistribution of blood and life force positions acupuncturists and Chinese medicine practitioners well to help you make this transition easier. We are here to help you not only feel better, but to help you to make sense of what is happening in your body. It is our belief that when patients are informed about why their bodies are acting (or acting up) the way they are, health is more attainable and accessible. During the perimenopause and menopause transition, we can utilize acupuncture, customized herbal formulas, and foundational lifestyle and diet adjustments to nourish yin and address any other imbalances that may be presenting so that symptoms become manageable. Once we move out of the mindset of trying to simply survive this time, we can create space for this deeper evolution of self. Tune in for specific advice you can start implementing immediately, and come see us at our SE Portland clinic for acupuncture and Chinese medicine customized to your specific needs.