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How Acupuncture can Ease Your Stress Stress - this is a word we use very often in todays fast paced society. Everyone has stress, from the businessman trying to get it all done on time, to the stay at home mom, who coordinates getting children to all their activities and still setting a great dinner on the table, to the teenager threatened with MCAS to graduate and get into a good college. Stress is very much a part of all of our lives. How many of you feel you could use an extra four hours in everyday to finish what you need to get done? (show of hands?) How many of you feel you dont have control over your time? - that you dont have any free time to yourself anymore? How many feel that youre not even really living your lives? The reality is that stress accounts for half of all the sick days in any given year and costs the American industry $300 billion in absenteeism, reduced productivity, and workers compensation benefits. Sixty four percent of those stress-related absences are from white collar professionals, businessmen, retail, and management. Today we live under a constant stress. This pushes our bodies to the limits. The body reacts to stress by heightening the bodys alertness levels. This is a sympathetic reaction in our body. It directs parts of our body to be on a heightened response and shuts other not as necessary things down. So we become ready to pounce at all times, and shut down things like digestion. Our heart rates increase, we breath faster, our muscles tense, and blood pressure rises. In the short term, these things are good when we are getting ready to say give a speech, or respond to an emergency. However, when this becomes a chronic stress it becomes pathological. Over-alertness leads to mental strain, anxiety, insomnia, exhaustion, muscle tension and pain, eventually draining valuable reserves of energy. Stress often makes us feel as though something is wrong even though nothing physical can explain it. Stress is an umbrella of symptoms. For each of us it manifests differently. We also respond to it differently. Common symptoms include: migraines, headaches, anxiety, insomnia, depression, poor concentration, skin disorders, back pain, gastrointestinal problems, and loss of self-confidence. Stress decreases our immune response. This can be as simple as catching more colds every season, or not recovering as quickly as we once were able to. Long term health problems include hair loss, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome and strokes. Stress is intimately linked to the six leading causes of death; heart disease, cancer, lung disease, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide. Instead of balancing our stress, we use quick fixes to cope with all our tension including alcohol, cigarettes, sugar, and both over the counter and prescriptive drugs. People tend to also turn to food when anxious or depressed, which in the long term leads to weight gain and further loss of self-confidence. Though prescription drugs work fast, they often lead to habituation and dependence. And I dont need to tell you what alcohol and cigarettes do to you. So why should you try acupuncture for stress? How can these tiny needles help? Acupuncture is a 5,000 year old system of medicine proven over that time to restore balance in an individual. Acupuncture medical theory treats the root of the problem, not all the outward manifestations. Often in acupuncture, once the root disharmony has been treated, many other symptoms will resolve as well that may have seemed completely unrelated to your main complaint. Traditional Chinese Medicine sees the body as a whole, and when the naturally flowing energy in your body gets blocked or depleted, you get symptoms. These symptoms are your bodys warning signs. Acupuncture can release blocks in energy flow and build up energy where its needed most. There are a number of Western Medical theories to explain how acupuncture works. It has been theorized that acupuncture stimulates the release of endorphins which are our feel good hormones. Also, acupuncture has been said to affect the electromagnetic field in and around our bodies. The insertion of needles has also been thought to affect the pain gate in our bodies by hyper-stimulating the nerve pathways that receive pain signals, thus increasing the response in the brain to subdue the pain. Regardless of all these theories, we know it works and it works well with no side effects. The reason it works so well is because acupuncture has the ability to treat each person as an individual as they are meant to be seen. As I said before, one persons stress is not the same as the persons sitting next to them. So why give them the same treatment? A typical acupuncture treatment takes about an hour. Practitioners look at several things to make a complete diagnosis. We ask several questions about your health, take your radial pulse on both wrists, look at the appearance of your tongue, and palpate the abdomen for sensitive or reactive areas. These all give us clues as to how your internal organs are functioning without any invasiveness. These are all also factors that will tell us how you are improving. Your tongue will look more pink and healthy. Your abdomen will be less sensitive to pressure. Your pulse will be stronger and more moderate in pace. Patients are often most surprised at how relaxing it is to get acupuncture. My patients walk out with a glow about them. Acupuncture is a safe and effective solution for stress. I cant change the fact that you will continually have stress in your life, but by correcting the imbalances in your body, I can change how you respond to it.
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