by Shawn Kirby L.Ac.

Eric recently posted a blog on dairy. Judging from the number of responses (14 comments at last count) I’d say Dr. Brand touched a nerve. I find it amazing that something so wholesome, so innocuous as milk, could cause such an emotionally charged uproar. I’d like to offer a little of my own perspective on this subject by recounting a case study from my personal practice – a case that was a total success, for all the “wrong” reasons.

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My patient (we’ll call her Beth) was in her fifties and had suffered a stroke two years previously. She had regained most of her motor control, but still suffered from mild dysphasia for which she came to see me, hoping acupuncture would help. I used several post-stroke acupuncture protocols, which unfortunately had minimal effect due to the length of time that had passed since her stroke first occurred. She also suffered from a degree of emotional frustration, which we both felt stemmed from an inability to fully express herself, and a mild case of GERD. She had come to me on the advice of her daughter, who was an acupuncture student studying in another state. Initially Beth seemed to be coming in primarily to make her daughter happy, but as we made some progress with her emotional frustration she began to thaw some, and took more of an active interest in her treatment. As time went by, Beth and I actually had a few laughs in the treatment room.

After a few weeks, Beth came in for an appointment very frustrated – angry in fact. It took some time and acupuncture needles to get her calmed down enough so that she could speak clearly enough to express what was bothering her. She told me that she was at her wits end. Sometimes, she almost felt that her life just wasn’t worth living anymore. Her husband was dead, her only child was away at school, and most of her friends had abandoned her after her stroke out of embarrassment.

“But that’s… not what I’m… mad about,” she said. “What I’m… really mad about… is that I just want… to have… a cup of coffee.”

The highlight of her week, she told me, had been going down to the Whole Foods and enjoying a Mocha Latte in the outside café area. She would sit and drink her coffee, just the one small cup, while she gazed at the Flatirons in the summer sun. It was her favorite thing to do, a small touch of balm in a life too often touched by sadness.

She told me that her daughter had expressed to her, months ago and long before she had come to see me, that she needed to stop drinking coffee because of her GERD. Her daughter felt that the coffee, the sugar and the dairy in her favorite Mocha Latte all combined to make a toxic brew that was the sole cause of Beth’s GERD. Beth had grudgingly obliged her daughter, but her GERD hadn’t improved at all. In point of fact, it had gotten worse.

It was obvious to me that her daughter had meant well and, being a good acupuncture student had done what most alternative health care practitioners do and blamed her mother’s GERD on the dirty, awful, sinful evils of dairy, sugar and coffee. It was also perfectly obvious to me that, GERD or no, it was ridiculous to deny Beth the one thing in her life that gave her any happiness. In fact, I quite suspected that she was doing herself more harm than good with following her daughter’s advice.

“Beth,” I said. “You know what? I am a firm believer that sometimes it’s good to be bad. When you leave here today, I want you to go over the Whole Foods and grab yourself a Latte.”

At first Beth looked at me with perfect incredulity, and then she burst out laughing. “Really?” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, “really.”

“But won’t… that make my GERD… worse?”

I shrugged. “Quitting coffee obviously hasn’t cured your GERD. I don’t see any point in continuing to eliminate it. I mean, what’s the worst thing that could happen? They can’t take away your birthday for having a cup of coffee.” Beth burst into another fit of the giggles, and was still chuckling as she left my office.

Beth came back the next week with a spring in her step. “I only had GERD once this week,” she burst out. “And I had four Lattes!” She was grinning from ear to ear.

I looked at her in amazement. “You know what else Beth?” I said. You just finished telling me that without pausing once.”

A growing look of recognition dawned on her face. She had been so excited to tell me the good news that she hadn’t even noticed the momentary cessation of her speech disorder. Her mischievous grin was replaced by a look of disbelief which then transformed into bewildered awe.

Beth came in for a few more weeks. She still suffered from her dysphasia, but it had lessened somewhat. Her GERD and frustration were now completely gone. Sometimes I see her at Whole Foods, and say hello. She has coffee there a few times a week.

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Traditional Chinese Medicine is a form of medicine. Medicine is the art and science of alleviating human suffering. It is not concerned with attaining physical immortality or becoming superhuman through the application of special dietary restrictions or the use of expensive supplements. Such pursuits are the pastime of fools.

One day, you will die. Your heart will stop beating, your breath will cease, your body will grow cold and begin to rot. Between then and now, there is at best uncertainty and a virtual guarantee of pain and suffering. The best any of us can hope to do is to make the most of the gift of time that has been given to us. We should laugh whenever we can. We should take time to stop and watch the sunset. We should roll about on the ground and play with children. We should love with abandon and do our best to live without regret. And, if we are so inclined, we should enjoy a Mocha Latte on a sunny afternoon, and gaze upon the mountain tops. No matter how long or how short this life may be for you, it is such things as these that make a life worth living.