Relieving Stress Boosts Your Profits!

Everyone experiences stress as it is a natural part of life. A recent report in the San Francisco Chronicle said that according to the American Psychological Association one third of Americans are living with extreme stress. The most cited source of that stress was the workplace.

This is very costly to employers as it affects the bottom line. [Read more]

Acupuncture and Fatigue

“I thought acupuncture was only good for pain, that’s what I’ve been told.”Well I am here to tell you that acupuncture can also help a person beat fatigue and the devastating effects that fatigue can have on a person.

As with anything, when working with any issue we at Wholistic Family Healthcare, in Silver Spring, MD look at the whole person. This is why we spell wholistic with a “W”. That said when you come in for treatment of fatigue you will be asked a lot of questions about you and your lifestyle. From a Chinese medicine point of view there are many reasons for fatigue and the answer is not always – sleep more. Sleeping more can surely help – sometimes - and may even be a component of the treatment plan but it won’t be the only thing you can do.

Once your Chinese medical diagnosis is made a treatment plan will be created expressly for you. A typical plan will include acupuncture, Chinese herbs and perhaps dietary and lifestyle changes. This plan will be jointly executed by you and us. Your active participation and compliance is a vital component to insuring your success.

Some examples of what, we like to call pathogens in Chinese medical parlance can be damp, qi deficiency, blood deficiency, qi and blood deficiency, Spleen qi deficiency, or a combination of any and all of the above. If these terms sound weird or strange to you, rest assured that is fine. They were strange and weird to me too when I first heard of them. Today they make so much sense to me as they truly help explain why one feels the way one does. They also give us a plan on how to resolve the issues at the core of your problem – fatigue.

Here is the catch, it takes time to resolve these issues and hard work on both our parts. If you are willing to put in the effort (come in for treatments take the herbs, make changes in diet and or lifestyle) and be patient, allowing your body to heal and change (how long exactly is a little like trying to predict the weather) you should see results.

I would encourage you to watch Amy’s testimonial, below and you will get a sense of what can be accomplished if you stick to the program.

Fatigue? Don’t Allow It To Get You Down!

Recently I have been seeing patients complaining of feeling tired all the time, not being able to focus on tasks and having a hard time getting up in the morning.

Perhaps something is in the air lately; I don’t know the reason for this spate.
I do know that they don’t all suffer from fatigue for the same reasons. [Read more]

Stress in Your Workplace?

In an article published in the Business section of the Washington Post on February 19, 2008, author Vickie Elmer discussed the effects of stress in the workplace.

In her article, Ms. Elmer that if you are “angry and overloaded because your hours keep growing as the staff gradually shrinks, don’t expect much help from management.” [Read more]

Stress and You II

A colleague of mine just told me about a wonderful thing she did for herself. She went on a spiritual retreat. It was not with a revival group or anything like that. It was just her and some things she does to revive her spirit.

What she did was so simple, yet so powerful. [Read more]

Oprah’s Acupuncture Experience

I don’t know how many of you saw today’s Oprah show, and if you missed it, you missed a good one. By the way I don’t usually watch Oprah, but I saw a promo on the local ABC station this morning. It had Oprah talking about her getting her first acupuncture treatment on her show. Well I had to see this and I even taped it. I know that when Oprah talks America listens and I just had to hear what she would say. Would she be enthusiastic or would she blow my profession, my love out of the water, here in America.

Well on her show she had about two needles inserted and remarked that she felt it but that it did not hurt. She then had a person from her audience get treated for chronic shoulder pain while the rest of the show was taped. She also had a Dr. Mehmet Oz, M.D. on who tried to explain how acupuncture works and I was gratified to see that he was positive about it.

The woman who was treated announced at the end of the show that her shoulder pain was gone.

For anyone who is interested here is a link to Oprah’s web site where it talks about the acupuncture segment.
http://www2.oprah.com/tows/slide/200702/20070213/slide_20070213_350_201.jhtml

(If this is not highlighted, just copy & paste into your web browser or click on it in my links section).

Stress and You

Let me ask you something; what is the one thing in your life you could have less of and be a much happier person? If you said stress, you were right. I’ll have you know, stress in and of itself is not a bad thing. It is our body’s natural early warning system. It is the system that makes your hair stand on end when your gut tells you something is wrong. It initiates what is called the fight or flight response in your body.The problem with stress is when we have too much of it, when we have it all the time. It is like I tell my patients; you can’t always have the army out looking for a perceived enemy. The soldiers get burned out and tired. It is the same thing with stress. Having constant stress is like always having your army on high alert. The system that governs it the autonomic nervous system - gets burned out, so to speak.

So what to do? what to do? Well let me suggest a few ideas. First, take a walk and think about something pleasant. Second, pick up the phone and schedule a massage for yourself. Massage of any type is very calming. According to the Touch Research Institute in Florida, touch has unique ability to reduce stress hormones and improve immune system function. According to one study they did, it was found that massage therapy reduced anxiety, depressed mood, salivary cortisol (stress hormone) levels and body dissatisfaction.

Massage increases endorphin levels in the body. Endorphins are the body’s natural feel good hormone that helps with pain relief. Endorphins (or more correctly Endomorphines) are inherent opioid biochemical compounds. They are peptides produced by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus in animals with spines, and they resemble opiates in their abilities to produce pain relief and a sense of well-being. In other words, they might work as “natural pain killers”. In fact the receptors in the brain that endorphins attach to are the same receptors that morphine would attach to.

In1999 clinical researchers reported that inserting acupuncture needles into specific body points triggers the production of endorphins [1]. In another study, higher levels of endorphins were found in cerebrospinal fluid after patients underwent acupuncture.

In my clinic I use a combination of massage, acupuncture and aroma therapy to induce a state of relaxation. This powerful treatment which I have used on many patients in combination with required “homework” has been a boon for my patients. Many have related being a “different person” at home and not being so quick to anger at other times. Don’t you owe it to yourself as well as your loved ones to be the best person that you can be? Wouldn’t you love to be more relaxed and calmer? It is possible, you can do it! Calm happy people are productive people. Who today would not want to be more productive? So take some time each week to focus for an hour on yourself. Invest in yourself, the dividends could be enormous.