I had an odd experience this morning.
I was doing a set of pushups, and suddenly noticed huge drops of dark venous blood, splattering onto the cabin floor.
It was the worst nosebleed I have had in about fifty years.
As a kid I got them a lot. I knew the drill. Cold compress on the back of the neck, pinch the nostrils, lean forward. All the usual things.
But this time was different. It gave me the perfect chance to try out a strange little health hack I had learned from Chinese medicine.
The left nostril was pouring blood, so I raised my opposite arm overhead, fingers spread wide, elbow up past the shoulder. And sure enough, the bleeding slowed almost right away and then stopped completely. The idea is that the position puts a back pressure of Qi down the lung meridian.
It sounds odd, but it works. I even used it a few years ago on Remembrance Day in our little Presbyterian church. A boy of about thirteen had just played the trumpet during the service when his nose suddenly burst into a heavy bleed. Tissues were no match for it, and he was obviously frightened.
I strode over and asked if he wanted me to stop it for him. He nodded. I showed him how to lift the opposite hand and open his fingers, and I added a little hypnosis while looking him in the eyes. I said, “It’s stopping, it’s stopping, it’s stopped.”
And that was that. No more blood.
That one trick has become part of the little toolbox of hacks I share with anyone who will listen.
Here’s another.
A few years ago I developed stenosing tenosynovitis - trigger finger. If you’ve had it, you know how painful and annoying it is. The finger clicks, locks, and hurts every time it moves. My MD confirmed it and sent me to a plastic surgeon, who set up the usual outpatient surgery.
I knew exactly what was coming. I’d been through it five times before. Tourniquet around the arm, local anesthetic, scalpel opening the palm, then an incision into the pulley of the joint. Then the stitches, the swelling, the weeks of recovery, and in one case, a nasty infection.
But not this time.
The sixth trigger finger was my left little finger, and it was brutal - waking me up at night with a deep throbbing. I went to see Dr. Kesarwani, my usual plastic surgeon, and he set a date for outpatient surgery. He also agreed to remove a large sebaceous cyst from my scalp during the same appointment.
But I had another idea.
Years earlier I had trained in reflexology. I knew the hand meridians and pressure points. Since the trigger finger lined up with the little finger meridian, I started putting a small reflex clamp on the fingertip for about twenty minutes every evening. Just to see if it would help.
And the results were almost unbelievable. In two weeks the pain was gone. A few weeks later the finger was moving freely again. No more triggering. Completely healed.
I still went to my appointment. The surgeon said he’d do the finger first, then the cyst. I told him he was only doing the cyst. I showed him my hand and explained what I’d done. He examined it, frowned, then brought in the intern. Both of them shook their heads, baffled, and then he removed the cyst from my scalp.
A couple of years later I broke my wrist in a fall and developed a large ganglion in the carpal bones. It hurt constantly and stopped my wrist from moving properly. My doctor said aspirating it would be a temporary fix, and surgery would be too risky for the nerves in my wrist.
I’d have to learn to live with it.
So I went back to the reflex clamps. This time I put them on the fingers that lined up with the meridians running through the ganglion. It took about six weeks, but then it quickly shrank and then disappeared completely.
Full mobility returned.
I love these simple, non-invasive fixes for modern problems. They come from ancient wisdom, and many of them actually work.
Like the time I cured pneumonia with oil of oregano when antibiotics failed completely.
Or the time I cleared six years of painful fibromyalgia in a single session. I even put that one on YouTube, and people occasionally write and tell me that it worked for them too.
There are plenty of cool, effective hacks out there. And if you add hypnosis to the mix, they work even faster.
- Mike Mandel
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