Fall is Here. Ain’t it Great!

If you’re like me you are enjoying the beginnings of fall.  What with a nip in the air and the leaves just starting to blush, it is just glorious outside.  Go ahead and open your windows and let the sun shine in, let the clear air clear out your house.  I am sure you can sense the change in the energy.  For one I can’t look at the left over peaches and nectarines any more.  Bring on those beautiful plums (so many colors) and crisp apples and pears – YUM!
It is time to relish autumn and its bounty from pumpkins to mums to the color of the changing leaves.  Can’t you just see the fireplace ablaze warming your home while the winds blow?
However some of us also see fall allergies and the oncoming cold and flu season and wonder what type of year it will be for that.  Well I would like to invite to finally Do Something About It!  But what can I do you ask?
Well there are preventative actions we can take as well as reactive actions.  For those of you suffering from Autumn allergies there are treatments that are very effective in either eliminating the effects all together or in lessening the effects.  All of this is done without making you sleepy (well maybe just a little, the acupuncture treatments have been known to relax a person and many people have taken naps while the needles were in).  Treatments can also be designed to help prevent colds and flus while strengthening your defenses.
Don’t you want to take out some time for yourself during the week, isn’t life hectic and stressful?  This just lowers you immune system and makes you more susceptible to getting sick.  It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again but expecting different results.  Come on, try something different and help yourself feel better.  It all starts with a simple phone call to make your appointment – (301) 495-0303.

Wholistic Family Healthcare is located in Downtown Silver Spring MD, near to Washington DC, and only blocks from the Metro’s Red Line Silver Spring Station.

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]

Top Ten List to Avoid Low Back Injury While Shoveling!

Every Winter the snow falls and most people don’t think twice about grabbing that shovel and heading out the door to shovel the walk, driveway or dig the car(s) out. Every winter I get people coming in to see me for relief from their aching back. Most of the time it is their lower back that has seized up, or as I like to say - went into spasm.

These injuries are preventable for the most part. [Read more]

What Happened? My back hurts.

A lot of people who come in to see me come for muscular tightness in their lower or upper back. Many have pain; loss of mobility and all have a sense of frustration at their plight. Would you believe that many of these patients are young people?

So many young people injure themselves by being active in sports, don’t get me wrong being active in sports is great, and I will talk about it in a future post, accidents or just by misusing their backs. Backs can’t do it all and certainly can’t take the abuse we subject them to nowadays.

The problem starts for many in school. How so? - you ask, well think about it for a minute. What do most of us do most of the day while we are getting through 12 or more years of school? Answer - we are sitting. Not only are we sitting but we are sitting in uncomfortable chairs and desks or tables in classrooms. We then go out for recess or extra-curricular activities such as sports or crafts or music. If you go for sports, you are getting some exercise but you were probably not trained by your coach to take care of yourself. How many coaches take you past rudimentary stretching, if that? How many teach you how to prevent injuries or what to do in case you are injured? Have they taken their young charges and taught the warming-up and cooling down techniques? From what I see it is doubtful.

What continues the problem is that your working now and your job has you sitting at your desk, in your car, or wherever and you just bent over to do something or you did some yard work, snow shoveling and now you are in pain. What are you to do now? Another important question is what can you do to prevent this from reoccurring in the future?

Well I can help answer those questions. After doing a thorough intake and exam I will devise a treatment strategy just for you. I will use my knowledge and experience and ability to combine acupuncture and massage therapy to get you out of pain and moving again. I will then devise a course of care so that you maintain your pain-free status. Of course as with any treatment a lot of the prevention of future problems will depend on you! You will be the one who will have to follow through on my recommendations and you will have to be the one responsible for taking care of yourself.

So if you are tired of being in pain, check out the video testimonials by people just like you, Elliot, Emily and Sara and then call my office to schedule your appointment. Let’s get you better.

Are you an allergy sufferer? Why?

Right now is the beginning of allergy season here in the Washington, DC area. In fact many people to whom I have spoken tell me that they experience allergies for the first time in their lives after moving to the climes.

So give me your tired, your red and runny of eye, your sneezing ones, your miserable ones.

[Read more]

Long Term Benefits of Acupuncture Testimonial

Amy from Washington, DC talks about the long term benefits of acupuncture and Chinese Medicine.

What the Heck is Gua Sha?

I would like to introduce you to a term that many people have never heard of Gua Sha.

What is Gua Sha (pronounced Gua sa)? Well Arya Neilson the premier practitioner of Gua Sha in the U.S. explains it thusly:

Gua Sha is an East Asian healing technique. Gua means to scrape or rub. Sha is a ‘reddish, elevated, millet-like skin rash’ (aka petechiae). Sha is the term used to describe Blood stasis in the subcutaneous tissue before and after it is raised as petechiae. Gua Sha is one technique that intentionally raises Sha rash or petechiae. In Vietnam the technique is called Cao Yio, in Indonesia: Kerik, in Laos: Khoud Lam.

She goes on to say:

Gua Sha is used whenever a patient has pain whether associated with an acute or chronic disorder. There may be aching, tenderness and/or a knotty feeling in the muscles. Palpation reveals Sha when normal finger pressure on a patient’s skin causes blanching that is slow to fade. In addition to resolving musculo skeletal pain, Gua Sha is used to treat as well as prevent common cold, flu, bronchitis, asthma, as well as any chronic disorder involving pain, congestion of Qi and Blood.

All this and more can be found on her website at: http://www.guasha.com

I have personally used Gua Sha on patients who have had stubborn coughs or tight muscles that have not responded to other modalities for one reason or another. My patients are usually flabbergasted at how fast they see results.

I do warn my patients that Gua Sha should not be done if they are planning to go to the beach in the days following treatment, and that they should forewarn their special someone before showing them what the area that was worked on looks like. Although it does not hurt to get Gua Sha (it can be uncomfortable) or to touch the treated area afterwards, it can look quite shocking.

I have also used this technique quite successfully on children. They are usually more amenable to this technique and it can and has produced dramatic and positive results.

Recently, I was talking to a member of my BNI group (http://www.bnibethesda.com), who happens to hail from China. Well she got so excited to find someone who knows what Gua Sha is that we talked about it for 15 minutes or so. She then called over her husband, who is not from China, and told him excitedly what we were just talking about. It made her happy and I think, connected to China on some level.

It is feeling that my practice is unique in this way. I am able to and do incorporate different modalities into my treatments. I feel this greatly enhances the treatments that I offer my patients. I customize each treatment for my patients each time they visit with me.