Category Archives: Seasonal

Keeping Cool in the Summer Heat

Acupuncture Lifestyle Nutrition Seasonal No Comments

The Summer season filled with abundant energy, long days and sunshine. This is the most yang time of year. Summer is about expansion, growth, activity and creativity. According to Chinese medicine, Summer is associated with the element of Fire. In human anatomy, the heart, mind, and spirit are ruled by the fire element. Top priority should be given to the heart, mind, and spirit for staying healthy in summer.

Keeping Balanced during Summer

The heart’s main function is to pump oxygen-rich blood through the body. In Chinese medicine, mental activity is also associated with the heart including our memory, thought processes, emotional well-being, and consciousness. This is a time to use our energy to realize our life’s greatest potential as we find joy in our hot summer days and warm summer nights. When the fire element is in balance, the heart is strong and healthy, the mind is calm and sleep is sound. When the Fire element is out of balance, we may see depression (too little fire), or chaos/mania (too much fire). Agitation, nervousness, heartburn, and insomnia are symptoms that there is an imbalance. Taken to the extreme, summer heat can cause you to suffer from heat exhaustion or heat stroke with symptoms such as fainting, dark-colored urine, rapid heart rate, confusion, throbbing headache, red and dry skin. Seek immediate medical attention if these occur.

To prevent these problems, I recommend that we take full advantage of the long summer days. Some suggestions include:

  • Awakening earlier in the morning and going to bed later in the evening.
  • Resting at midday when heat is at its highest.
  • Drinking plenty of fluids. This is key to balance the heat of fire and eliminating any toxins.
  • Adding pungent flavors like spicy foods, garlic and ginger to your diet. These cause you to sweat, which actually functions to cool the body
  • Keeping your diet light and avoid heavy, greasy or sugary foods. Eat in moderation.
  • Refrain from anger; keep calm and even-tempered.
  • Seek Chinese Medicine when you feel out of balance.

Diet – Keep it cool

In summer, indigestion can easily occur, so a light and less-greasy diet is recommended. This is the perfect season to introduce some cool foods into your diet. Cooling foods can clear heat, reduce toxins, and generate body fluids. Cooling foods are those you typically find during this time of year – lettuce and other greens, cucumbers, and watercress are some of the coolest. Fish and seafood are also cooling, while most meats are warming.
Continue reading →

Nurses Rock!

Acupuncture Clinic News Seasonal No Comments

May 6 is National Nurses Day.   All month for the month of May, I’ll be offering reduced price treatments for nurses. For new patients who are nurses, I will waive the consultation fee. To schedule a new patient appointment, go online here and select New Patient – Nurse. For my existing patients who are nurses, I am offering $15 off the regular treatment fee. Select Existing Patient when you schedule your appointment. Appointments are subject to availability, so please book now to get the time you need.

Show your appreciation to a nurse by sharing this with a nurse you know and love.

Little Tick, Big Problem – Learn About Lyme

Acupuncture Herbal Medicine Lifestyle Seasonal No Comments

You’ve probably heard all about the wild deer around our area, and if you have a garden like I do, you’ve seen the evidence that they are all around. Did you know that our area is also a hotbed for ticks – particularly those that carry Lyme Disease? There are many different kinds of ticks throughout the world and the one that carries Lyme disease is the Ixodes tick, also called the blacklegged tick or deer tick (hence my referral to the deer in our area).

Ticks are related to spiders and mites. They are arachnids, not insects. Ticks are parasites that feed on the blood of humans and animals in order to survive. They are called vectors (carriers) because they can feed on a Lyme disease-infected animal (such as a mouse), then carry and transmit the Lyme bacterium (Borrelia burgdorferi) to the next animal or person they bite. It’s estimated that about 50% of deer ticks carry Lyme.

If it wasn’t bad enough that these these ticks carry Lyme, they can also carry bacterial co-infections in addition to Lyme, such as Babesiosis, Ehrlichiosis, and Anaplasmosis. These co-infections can complicate one’s Lyme disease diagnosis and treatment. Lyme and it’s co-infections can be really nasty if not caught early. Prevention, early diagnosis and treatment are key to reducing the chances of becoming infected and having to live with what can many times be debilitating symptoms.

Lyme is the fastest growing vector-borne, infectious disease in the US.  Annual reported cases have increased 25-fold since 1982. Lyme infects 300,000 around people a year in the US. That’s 25,000 new cases a month, 5,700 a week, 822 a day, or 34 per hour!! And the CDC estimates that these numbers are actually much higher due to misdiagnosis, under reporting and poor testing. Continue reading →

Happy Chinese New Year!

Seasonal No Comments

Today is the first day of the Chinese lunar calendar, also known as Chinese New Year or Spring Festival. The year 2019 is represented by the Yin Earth Brown Pig. Pigs are considered a symbol of wealth and their cute chubby faces and big ears denote good fortune. This is a time for new beginnings and for improving your health for the long term. Here’s wishing you a great 2019 filled with good health and good fortune!

Living a Healthy New Year

Lifestyle Movement Nutrition Seasonal No Comments

Ancient advice for health during Winter says “Desires and mental activity should be kept quiet and subdued, as if keeping a happy secret. Stay warm, avoid the cold, and keep the skin covered.” With the cold weather, hibernation of animals, decrease in plant life, and few daylight hours, winter was the toughest season to maintain health in the ancient world.

Even though the #1 New Year Resolution is weight loss, the winter months really aren’t ideal to try and lose weight. Make Health a PriorityWhy? Because human health has long been considered to be closely tied to nature. As organic creatures, it stands to reason that we humans are affected, directly and indirectly, by the natural environment including weather, climate, or duration of daylight.

These factors, particularly less daylight and our natural instinct to hibernate, make losing weight more difficult and frustrating which leads us to give up on that goal altogether. Less sunlight means we aren’t getting as much vitamin D. It appears that lack of vitamin D reduces fat breakdown and triggers fat storage—so calories you consume are stored in fat cells rather than being used for energy. A second factor is an increase in melatonin, the hormone that signals your body that it is time to sleep, and is triggered by darkness. Since winter means less hours of daylight, melatonin levels tend to increase and increased melatonin is associated with increased appetite. It can feel like a losing battle. Continue reading →

Gifts for Everyone on Your List

Clinic News Lifestyle Seasonal No Comments

Whether it’s Grandma Jones who has arthritis, or your sister who is always stressed out,  we’ve got just what you need to give them a gift of wellness.   Tis the Season for Giving! 

Gift Baskets

The Weight Loss Gift Basket includes Microgard +,  a wonderful herbal formula that not only helps with digestive problems, but regulates the gut microbiota, stimulates an increase in digestive enzymes and helps break down proteins, fats and sugars, affecting the whole metabolism and helping to reduce body weight.  I’m combining that with Sweet Change to help get that sweet tooth under control. It’s a mouth spray that eliminates sugar and food cravings and supports healthy blood sugar levels. Additionally my Tibetan Herbal Footsoaks will increase your blood circulation as if you have been exercising, will reduce pain and give you more energy. This combo will give you a great start toward meeting your body weight goals in the New Year.

For those who need to reduce stress and improve sleep, I’m offering a Stress Relief Gift Basket that includes my Stress Free Tea, an herbal formula in tea form that calms irritability and moodiness, and regulates sleep, and Rescue Formula, a formula that settles the mind, and eases depression, anxiety, insomnia and that feeling of being “out of sorts”.  I’m also including an Organic Neck Wrap that can be heated in the microwave or crock pot and placed around the neck and shoulders to relax the tension than many of us carry in that area. Continue reading →

Prepare to Take Back Your Health

Lifestyle Movement Nutrition Seasonal Wellness@Home No Comments

Did you know that nearly 80% of New Year’s resolutions have been abandoned by February?  December is the perfect time to reflect on the goals you set in 2018 and think about where you’d like to see yourself in 2019.

Whether you have some health condition that you want to resolve, or if you simply want to remain well, here are three healthy living resolutions to try in the new year to “take back your health”. The key is to set goals that are small enough to be doable, but big enough to still give you that feeling of satisfaction when you realize it’s March (or even November!) and you’re still going strong.

1. Weight Loss – This is probably the #1 New Year’s Resolution.  Unless you have a critical health condition that demands you shed some pounds, a better idea may be to simply resolve to make healthier food choices.  One of the key ways to do this is to surround yourself and your family with healthy options to expose them to nutritious foods. The more involved your family is in planning and cooking healthy meals, the more likely they are to eat them, so try planning a weekly family menu together.  When shopping, stick to the outside aisles at the grocery store where you find fresh fruits and veggies, and stay out of the center aisles where all of the processed foods live. Try to resist the temptation to buy Johnny’s favorite cookies, or Dad’s diet soda and opt for healthier options instead.  You can make these changes incrementally so that it doesn’t feel so much like an exercise in deprivation.

If your current health situation (or someone you care about) requires shedding some pounds in the new year, then check out my Weight Loss Gift Basket that you can give to someone or to yourself.   Continue reading →

No Stress November – 5 Things to Manage Stress

Lifestyle Seasonal Wellness@Home No Comments

It seems everyone is stressed these days. It’s enough that every day life events are stressful, but when there are disturbing events happening all around us like natural disasters, politics around the elections, and hate crimes, our emotions can simply overwhelm us. And guess what, it’s November already, and for some the anticipation of stress during the holiday season can easily send us over the tipping point to a feeling of being out of control. I am seeing more and more people at the clinic for stress related concerns like anxiety, depression, insomnia, digestive issues and a number of other symptoms.  You may need time out!

The sympathetic nervous system, which activates the “fight or flight” response, is there to help us defend ourselves and keep ourselves safe. However, our nervous system does not know the difference between hearing about a natural disaster or other news event in another state from one that is happening directly to us. Our nervous systems tend to react the same. And it seems like every day there is something else coming at us that triggers our fight or flight response, so we are on high alert most of the time. Our parasympathetic nervous system – the “rest and relax” part of our nervous system – doesn’t get engaged enough to balance it out. As a result, our body produces too much cortisol over a long period of time and that can cause a host of issues from digestive problems, weight gain and increased blood sugar to pain, depression, and insomnia. Some research even shows that constant stress ages us more quickly.

Acupuncture regulates the nervous system and also regulates the hormones to lessen those “fight or flight” hormones and to release the “feel good” hormones. The use of acupuncture has been scientifically proven to reduce anxiety levels and stress in individuals. Studies have found that acupuncture relieved symptoms such as migraines, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and pain resulting from post traumatic stress. The improvements due to acupuncture were also found to be very rapid, significant, and long lasting. I’ve had patients tell me they are better able to handle stressful situations after having acupuncture treatments.  

Finding ways to manage stress so that you are better able to cope when something triggers your fight or flight response is key.   I know it’s not always feasible to get to the clinic when this happens, so here are some ways you can manage the stress yourself. Continue reading →

Boost Your Immunity Now for Winter

Acupuncture Herbal Medicine Seasonal Wellness@Home No Comments

I’m always being asked at my clinic if Acupuncture can boost the Immune System. The answer is yes, and it is amazing at doing this!

If you tend to get sick during the winter months, making you feel lousy and causing you to miss work or school, cold and fluthen listen up.  Having acupuncture treatments and taking Chinese herbs before the cold weather hits can change this.  Traditional Chinese Medicine theory claims that colds and flu happen when our protective surface energy is weak,  allowing pathogens (bacteria and viruses) to enter our body.

A healthy balanced body has a strong and effective immune system.  If you’ve had long term stress, recurring infections, excessive use of medications like antibiotics or chemotherapy, surgical operations or traumatic life events, your immune system may already be very low.  All the things that leave us feeling run down, tired lethargic or depressed will lower immunity and compromise how our bodies respond to pathogens.  The time to boost your immune system is now, before the cold winter months arrive. Continue reading →