Mental Health Archives - Acupuncture in the Park

Ear Acupuncture Relieves Anxiety

One of the most frequent questions I get asked about acupuncture is what kinds of conditions it can treat. Most people are well-aware of the benefits of acupuncture for relieving acute and chronic pain. However, many are surprised to learn that acupuncture and Chinese medicine has a lot to offer people who are struggling with mental health conditions.

At Acupuncture in the Park, we see a great number of patients who struggle with anxiety. Many have other health conditions, but some seek out acupuncture simply to help them calm down, slow down, relieve their anxious symptoms, and even help with panic attacks.

As a new acupuncturist, I used a combination of acupuncture points that included one needle in each ear for my patients with anxiety. I got good results, but felt I could do better. Several years ago, I began using a protocol that involved inserting five needles in each ear along with appropriate points on the patient’s body. I found that including a set of needles in each ear offered more effective and incredibly calming effects that began during the treatment and lasted for days (and for some, weeks) afterward.

Why stick needles in someone’s ear? Well, in Chinese medicine, your ear is considered a microsystem, in which you use one part of the body to treat another. Another healing microsystem commonly used throughout the world is foot reflexology. Ear acupuncture works because stimulating those points trigger electrical impulses from your ear to your brain. So, for example, if you had back pain, I could insert a needle in a place in your ear that corresponds with your back to help relieve the pain.

Research studies have documented the calming effects of ear acupuncture in the treatment of anxiety. They found that ear acupuncture exerts “a specific and measurable effect” in reducing anxiety before dental appointments, surgery, and during ambulance transport.

The point prescription that I use on my patients was initially developed for the treatment of addictions, but has found to be equally effective in relieving stress and anxiety. In fact, ear acupuncture (the same protocol that I use) is currently being used to effectively treat post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in veterans returning from combat.

An additional benefit of auricular acupuncture is that I can send my patients home with small beads or seeds stuck to tiny adhesive patches placed in their ears that continue to stimulate the appropriate points for several days after their acupuncture session. The bottom line is that ear acupuncture is a safe, effective, and drug-free to decrease your anxiety.

Acupuncture for Stress?

Stress is a fact of life. It’s a survival skill that your body is hard-wired to use whenever you feel threatened. The problem with stress is that it’s meant to be a short-term thing–a way to deal with a quick threat, and then life as you know it is supposed to get back to normal.

At least that’s how stress was meant to be thousands of years ago. Our caveman ancestors used stress to outrun or fight a predator, confront an enemy, and survive on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the stresses we face in today’s world tend to stick around longer than a run-in with a threatening animal–in some cases much, much longer. Today our stress takes the form of an annoying co-worker, an aging parent, a sick kid, or whether or not we can pay our monthly bills–things that just don’t seem to go away quickly. And the unrelenting nature of our stress takes it toll on your body. Let me explain.

When a threat arises, your body goes through a number of physiological reactions to enable you to deal with it then and there. Your body mobilizes the systems you need for dealing with the threat: breathing is enhanced, more energy goes to your muscles, and your thinking is quick and clear. However, those systems that you don’t need right in the moment slow down, so things like your digestion and immunity are put on the back burner for the time being. The hormones responsible for this stress response are adrenaline, cortisol, and insulin.

Once the threat is over, all of your body systems calm down and go back to normal. However, with chronic stress, your body isn’t able to get back to normal, and as a result, those stress hormones stay in a “red light” mode all the time. What this means is that many of your body systems are disrupted and stay that way, causing a host of symptoms such as poor digestion, food cravings, insulin resistance, increased weight and belly fat, poor energy, and decreased immunity.

In Chinese medicine, chronically high levels of stress are usually considered to be a Liver and Spleen disharmony pattern. This simply means that the stress, frustration, and overwhelmed feelings of daily life begin to affect not only your emotions, but also your digestion. This pattern is characterized by funky digestion, poor energy, irritability, insomnia, a racing mind, and even a sensation of heat.

While acupuncture and Chinese medicine can’t replace your cranky boss or pay your bills, there are some very real benefits from a few sessions on the acupuncture table. Among them:

-Research shows that acupuncture increases production of endorphins and other neurotransmitters in your brain to help you relax and calm down.

-Acupuncture regulates your hormones.

-Your practitioner is able to use acupuncture to clear heat and cool you off, which means it helps to decrease irritability, a racing mind, restless sleep, night sweats, and an overall sensation of feeling hot.

-Acupuncture is extremely effective in calming digestive symptoms, and as a result, less fatigue and better energy.

-Research also shows that acupuncture blocks the circulation of the chemical that transmits pain signals to your brain. The upshot is that muscle tension and aches and pains can be decreased from a few acupuncture sessions.

Acupuncture is much more than a relaxing stint in a quiet room. Research has shown it to be an effective, safe, and drug-free way to deal with stress and its accompanying symptoms. If you haven’t tried it, give us a call today to see if acupuncture can help soothe the stress beast that’s affecting your health.

Acupuncture for Seasonal Affective Disorder

Early autumn here in Minnesota is perfect. It’s still warm, but the humidity is gone, and we’re blessed with crisp, sunny days that are ideal for playing outdoors. The sky is cobalt blue and there is just a hint of the color to come on the trees lining the lakes, rivers, and streams. It’s an ideal time to live here. It’s interesting though, that during those early days of fall I begin seeing patients in my acupuncture practice who are already struggling with the coming winter. The weather is fine, and there’s plenty of light early in the morning and into the evening hours, but these people are already feeling the beginnings of seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

Seasonal affective disorder is a mood disorder that affects people most frequently in the fall and winter and lasting until spring. Symptoms include depression, fatigue, headache, irritability, food cravings, and lethargy. It affects about six percent of the US population, with another fourteen percent of people having a milder form of the “winter blues”. An estimated 60-70 percent of people who struggle with SAD are women.

While many people believe that seasonal affective disorder is related to the cold, the reality is that it’s more associated with daylight. The lack of sunlight increases your body’s production of melatonin, a hormone that is secreted during the dark which causes drowsiness and regulates sleep. Unfortunately, melatonin can also be related to depression.

From the viewpoint of Chinese medicine, we are strongly influenced by our environment, and the changing of the seasons is no exception. We become active and exuberant in the spring and summer and begin to slow down in the fall. We are meant to hunker down and stay warm during the winter. The excess production of melatonin may be nature’s way of suggesting that we, ahem…hibernate during the winter months.

So why do some people struggle with SAD and others don’t? It may be related to the dichotomy between Yin and Yang. Yang is warm, bright, and active, much like a summer’s day. In contrast, Yin is cool, quiet, dark, and nourishing–a description of what we feel like doing during the coldest days of winter. For those people who tend to have a body constitution that is more Yin in nature, the cold and darkness of the winter months can be overwhelming.

Chinese medicine has a lot to offer someone who is dealing with seasonal affective disorder. Acupuncture, combined with Chinese herbs, food therapy, balancing sleep cycles, and other lifestyle modifications is a first line of defense for many, especially those people who choose not to take medications. Good self-care can also be extremely helpful. If you suffer from SAD, some steps that could help include:

-Get as much exposure to natural daylight as you can, especially early in the day. Keep your blinds and curtains open during the daylight hours,and when you can, work near a window. And while it may feel like the last thing you want to do, get up early in the morning in order to get as much daylight as possible.

-In addition to natural daylight, some people are greatly helped by exposure to full spectrum lights, which are lights that simulate natural daylight. There are lots of full spectrum options from light boxes to light visors, and dawn simulator–lamps that come on in the early morning and gradually get lighter simulating sunrise. If you use a light box, use it daily during the winter, and be sure to use it facing the light with your eyes open to get the full benefit.

-Get enough Vitamin D. Research suggests a link between depleted Vitamin D and seasonal affective disorder. Dubbed the sunlight vitamin, D is produced in your body from exposure to sunlight directly on your skin. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to get enough D in the northern climates during the winter. So supplement with 1,000 to 2,000 units daily of Vitamin D in the form of D3.

-Take really good care of yourself. Remember, if you had a friend or loved one who was struggling with their health, you would want to take good care of them, so do the same for yourself. Get enough sleep, eat well (ditch the sugar-laden pastries and desserts and eat enough protein), and get a little exercise.

-Go outside and play. Spending time outdoors increases your exposure to natural light, and if you can combine your outdoor time with an enjoyable activity, even better. In addition, there are benefits to spending time in the woods, even in the winter. Researchers in Japan have documented that walking in the forest can decrease stress, lower blood pressure, and improve mood. So get outside, even if it means bundling up and strapping on show shoes!

-Finally, if your symptoms are severe, get help from a mental health professional. Talk therapy, stress management strategies, behavioral therapy, and even medications can help when necessary.

Remember it’s our natural inclination to want to slow down, stay warm, and put on a few pounds to get through the cold and dark days of winter. Some people love winter and sail through without a second thought. However, if you’re one of those people for whom winter feels like a bleak, dark, endless tunnel, take extra good care of yourself and remember spring is only a few months away.

Feeling Irritable?

It is so interesting to me what causes people to finally decide it’s time to try acupuncture. You would think that things like back pain, headaches, and maybe some digestive issues would top the list of reasons, and for the most part they do. However, there is a fair percentage of people who finally succumb to the needles because it’s messing with their golf game or ruining their tennis serve. There is also a number of people who seek out acupuncture because they’re stressed and irritable and it’s impacting their personal relationships.

Certainly there is an air of desperation with many people who come to acupuncture for the first time. However, those irritable folks are interesting because their symptoms are affecting not only them, but also their loved ones. The typical scenario is that their life is stressful; they may be in a crappy job, their kids are sick, co-workers are annoying, they’re caring for aging parents, or a similar situation. They’ve tried to cope as best they can, but somewhere along the line, the stress takes its toll, and coping becomes harder and harder to do. They’re short with their partners, snap at their kids, and are impatient even standing in line at the bank.

What’s happening here? Well, in Chinese medicine, stress ties you up in knots. You feel like you have no control over the situation, your digestion begins to suffer, good sleep gets harder to come by, and you feel…overwhelmed and on edge. A frequent by-product of stress in Chinese medicine is heat. Sometimes you actually feel hot and even thirsty, but sometimes that heat just speeds things up. You may become restless, your mind races, and you feel impatient because the world isn’t moving as fast as you are. That heat and impatience translates into irritability–the voice inside you that bites your kid’s head off and snaps at your co-workers.

And yes, acupuncture can help slow things down, clear the heat, and relive your irritability. While it may seem odd that a session on the acupuncture table could do all that, there is actually an explanation from the Western scientific world. Acupuncture changes the chemistry in your brain–in a good way. It increases the circulation of endorphins and other neurotransmitters that actually calm you down. In addition, acupuncture slows down your sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the fight or flight response that kicks in when you are stressed or feel threatened.

So, if your life is stressful to the point of making you irritable, you have some choices. You can keep it up and try to cope, you can try to change the situation, or you can do something about how you feel. The people I see in my acupuncture clinic have decided that their loved ones trump everything else, and they do something about it. What about you?

Acupuncture is an Effective Option for Treating Depression

In my acupuncture clinic I have never treated a patient for depression who was keen to take antidepressant medications over the long term for their condition. Most of the people I see either have hesitations about taking antidepressants, or take them but are trying to get off. Most are seeking out acupuncture as a way to avoid, decrease, or get off antidepressants. Simply put, they want an alternative way to treat their depression.

There is good news for these patients. According to a study published last month in PLOS Medicine, researchers found that both acupuncture and counseling significantly reduced depression scores in subjects at three and six months, when compared to usual care alone.

In this particular study, patients with moderate to severe depression were split into three groups; those that would receive counseling, those that would receive acupuncture, and those that would continue with their usual care alone (including medications with no other treatment). Outcomes were measured by Patient Health Questionnaire scores—a depression rating scale. Those patients in the counseling group and those in the acupuncture group showed significant improvements in their depression (unlikely to have occurred by chance) at both three and six months, while those who received usual care did not.

These findings are important for those patients who choose not to take antidepressants. However, it’s also good news for the more than half of patients for whom these medications simply don’t work.

It should also be noted that in this study, about 70 percent of participants had taken medications for their depression in the three months prior. In addition patients did not need to stop their medications in order to participate in the study.

As an acupuncturist, this study raises a couple of interesting points:

-First, this study documents that acupuncture can be an effective treatment option for depression.

-Antidepressants don’t work for more than half of patients. Acupuncture and counseling can be effective for those people for whom antidepressants don’t work.

-Acupuncture can be combined as an adjunct to medication therapy to achieve better results, as was the case in this study.

-For those people who are opposed to taking medications, there are other options that may as effective or more effective than antidepressant medications.

-Both acupuncture and counseling are similar to each other in that they’re slow medicine. This means that both with acupuncture and counseling, the patient is provided with a safe and non-judgmental therapy, in which the practitioner takes time to listen to the complexities of each case, and tailor it to each individual. In my opinion, the slow, deliberate, and individualized nature of both acupuncture and counseling are a factor in their effectiveness.

Acupuncture for Withdrawal from SSRI Antidepressants

Almost daily we see patients who are taking or are thinking about taking antidepressant medications. In most cases, these patients either want to lower their dose, get off these medications, or avoid taking them altogether. However, they also don’t want to feel depressed or anxious.

The most frequently prescribed antidepressants are in a class called SSRI’s, or Selective Serotonin Re uptake Inhibitors. Common SSRI’s include Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Luvox, Effexor, Cymbalta, and Lexapro, to name a few. Of the patients who are currently taking these medications, some have been taking them for a long time–years or even decades. Others have been on them for a few months, just enough to get them through a rough patch.

Unfortunately, these drugs have a powerful effect on your brain, and when you decide to stop taking them, it’s not like quitting aspirin or an antihistamine. There are some real withdrawal issues that can have serious effects both on your brain and your body.

-You can have withdrawal symptoms, which can be severe. These symptoms can include vertigo, dizziness, nausea, insomnia, sweating, restlessness, nightmares, tremors, headaches, achiness, and what patients describe as “brain zaps”, or a feeling of electrical shocks in the brain.

-You can also have what is called a rebound effect, which means that your original symptoms come back—only worse than before.

In Chinese medicine, depression is generally considered to be a pattern of constrained Liver energy. In lay terms, your Chinese Liver system is responsible for the smooth flow of everything in your body from your digestion to your emotions. Strong negative feelings and unfulfilled desires cause your emotional energy to seize up or stagnate in a way that can cause depression.

Antidepressant medications smooth Liver energy and keep it moving. That’s why some people feel “buzzy” or an internal restlessness called akathesia when they’re on them. However, when you stop taking them, your Liver stagnates again—and it can be less likely to move as smoothly as before, accounting for the rebound effect of worsening depression. In addition, your Liver energy can move erratically when these medications are stopped, causing something called Internal Wind—a sense of movement where there should be none. This internal movement is similar to akathesia, and is also considered to be a rebound reaction. This effect accounts for the symptoms of dizziness, vertigo, restlessness, tremors, and the brain zaps—all movement where there should be calm.

Acupuncture and Chinese medicine can support patients who are trying to stop their antidepressant medications or lower their dosages. It can be helpful in taming some of the withdrawal symptoms as well as minimizing any rebound effect that you may have. In terms of Chinese medicine, our role is to smooth and soothe your Chinese Liver, calm your emotions, and anchor Wind to stop erratic movements.

Needless to say, it’s important to plan any changes in your antidepressant medication with your prescribing doctor. It can be dangerous to just stop taking these medications on a whim. Ideally, you and your doctor will make a plan to wean off your antidepressants very slowly to minimize withdrawal or rebound symptoms. That said, acupuncture and Chinese medicine can be an effective part of your plan.

Depression, Lack of Motivation, and Chinese Medicine

Last week I was at a networking event of CAM healers in the Minneapolis area, where I met a number of practitioners working with really interesting therapies. During one conversation, I was asked what kinds of conditions I treated most frequently. Hmmm…good question.

Actually, my answer was pretty simple and straight forward: Lately I seem to be seeing a lot of working women (and some men) who are dealing with depression, anxiety, and stress. One of the reasons why so many people are struggling emotionally is our current economy. While things seem to be getting a little better recently , I still see many people who are stuck in jobs they dislike (okay, hate) because they feel like any job is a good one right now. Many are working in positions where their co-workers have been laid off and not replaced. As a result, they are doing more work in the same amount of time for the same amount of pay. Under those conditions, who wouldn’t be depressed?

While depression is associated with a whole host of symptoms, one of the most life-altering is the lack of motivation and fatigue that some people experience. I have worked with a number of patients who experience this kind of sluggish depression in which they struggle to do anything during the course of the day. For some, just getting out of bed each morning or going to work is a challenge.

Why does this happen? In Chinese medicine, there are a number of answers. The simplest is that depression is considered a blockage–clearly something in the emotional realm is not moving smoothly. Over time any kind of blockage wipes you out–it literally depletes your energy–and you feel exhausted. Energetically, depression is like physical pain in that if it isn’t resolved, it takes all of your resources just to deal with it. This tires you out.

On a deeper level, depression is considered constrained Liver energy, or Qi. Your Chinese Liver is the organ system that regulates the smooth flow of all your body’s functions–physical and emotional. When the realities of your life are not what you want, it causes stagnation of your Liver Qi. Furthermore, each organ system in Chinese medicine has an emotional component, and the emotion most closely associated with your Liver is anger. It is frequently said that anger turned inward becomes depression.

So how do you explain the sluggishness sometimes associated with the depression/Liver Qi stagnation? Well, one of the first casualties of Liver constraint is that it heads right on over to your digestive system and shuts things down. Like an emotional upset that causes you to lose your appetite, depression messes with your digestion in slo mo. You will know that this is happening if you have symptoms like crazy cravings for sweets, weight gain around the middle, and absolutely no energy. The problem here is that your energy comes from eating good, healthy food, but also from digesting it well. When your digestive system is closed for business, you have no way of producing more energy, hence the feeling of exhaustion.

And there’s more. Your Chinese Liver is paired with the Gallbladder, which has a number of functions. However, it’s the emotional aspect of the Gallbladder that’s pertinent here. The emotion associated with your Gallbladder is something called courage. What we call courage may be the fearlessness that comes to mind for most. However, in this context, courage is also the ability to make a decision or a plan, move forward decisively, and follow it through to completion. Therefore, the inability to decide, act, or the lack of motivation to act is associated with a weakness of the Gallbladder system.

As an acupuncturist, the path to healing this chronic, sluggish, no-motivation depression is complicated. It involves soothing your Liver, strengthening digestion, rebuilding energy, calming your emotions, and addressing Gallbladder issues. This sounds like a lot, but through acupuncture, the use of Chinese medicinal herbs, diet, and some lifestyle modifications, many patients who are struggling with this kind of depression find relief from their symptoms.

Clutter, Chinese Medicine, and Your Digestion

In our unending drive to consume and acquire more things, clutter is becoming more and more of a problem for many people. Clutter is unsightly, messy, and it feels chaotic. It can make you feel unsettled and even anxious when you walk into an area full of…stuff.

There are a couple of reasons people over-accumulate. One is to hold onto the past. If your basement is full of old record albums, campaign buttons, and ticket stubs from past concerts, your clutter profile is about remembering the good times you’ve had. A second reason for amassing lots of stuff is about the future. If your mess consists of old radio knobs, building materials, rusty screws, and half empty bags of grout, you’re holding on because you think you must might need this junk someday. Some people belong in both camps. Either way, your accumulating habit means that on some level, you’re forgetting to live in the present.

You may be wondering what clutter has to do with Chinese medicine, and the answer is that it has everything to do with your Chinese Spleen and the process of digestion. Your Spleen, paired with your Stomach, is the organ system of digestion according to Chinese medicine. They take in food, convert it into energy and nutrients, and your body excretes what’s not needed. This is a very physical explanation, but in Chinese medicine, organ systems also have energetic and symbolic components, too.

Daverick Leggett, in his (fabulous!) book, Recipes for Self-Healing, describes the relationship between your Spleen and the process of sifting, sorting, and letting go. He says:

Digestion begins with a desire to eat which leads to the intake of food. The food is then sorted into what is usable and sent to where it can be used or stored in the body. What cannot be used is excreted. The thinking process follows a similar path: the desire for knowledge leads to the intake of information which is then sifted and sorted. Whatever can be put to immediate use is applied and the rest is stored for later. Irrelevant or unusable information is rejected and forgotten.

Leggett is referring not only to the digestive process, but the digestion of ideas. A healthy mind is able to use helpful information and let go of what is not helpful. However, when you’re unable to do this, something akin to indigestion of the mind occur–you worry, dwell on the past, become anxious, and harbor anger.

In many aspects, this is the same process by which we accumulate clutter. It begins with a desire to own, which leads to acquiring material things. Ideally, what is useful is put to good use, and what is not is recycled or thrown away over time. However, when the inability to sift, sort, and let go somehow goes awry, you begin to build up clutter. Think of clutter as indigestion of your personal space.

So where to you start if clutter is bogging you down? One way to begin is by strengthening your Chinese Spleen through good digestion.

However, cleaning up your personal space would serve you well, too. It will alleviate the stress of living and working in a mess, and will symbolically begin the process of better digestion. Here are some simple tips to get the process rolling:

Start small. Begin with one corner of one room, a two foot perimeter around the couch, or the kitchen table. Once that area is clean, keep it that way and move onto the next spot as time allows.
Set aside 10 or 15 minutes each day for cleaning up clutter. You’ll be surprised how much you can get done without feeling overwhelmed.
Create storage systems. For those things that you really want to keep, find a place where they belong and put them there. This is more than picking something up and shoving it into a drawer. Put similar things in the same place. For example, put all your art supplies into a bin in the basement, all the books you intend to read into a basket, and all your office supplies into an organizer on your desk.
Give it away. Some of the stuff cluttering up your home can be used by someone else. Whether you give books to your friends or take a box of gently used clothing to Goodwill, you’ll be giving your stuff a new life and getting it out of your space.
Throw it away. Okay, nobody really wants those sparkly socks with the holes in each heel or the cute little whatsit with the top missing. Not even you. Throw that stuff out. Take a deep breath, let go, take that junk to the trash, and drag the bin to the curb.
Incoming! Find a spot for incoming papers. Mail and papers tend to be one of the worst sources of clutter. Set up an in box or a basket for all of your mail and papers until you have the time to go through and pay bills, recycle, etc.
Get some help. If you have a packrat personality, enlist the help of a trusted and gentle friend who can help you go through some of your stuff. Their job is to ask whether you really need to keep that pink boa you wore for Halloween in 1997.
Follow the two year rule. Get rid of anything you haven’t used in the past two years. If you haven’t touched in in two years, you don’t need it.

With a little time, some creativity, and commitment, you can make the clutter go away. By doing so, you’ll be creating phycial and emotional space for yourself that feels peaceful.

Teenage Mental Health

At Acupuncture in the Park, we have found that treating pre-teens, teens, and young adults to be some of the most satisfying work that we do, primarily because they respond so quickly to the acupuncture, and the results can be life-changing. Not only have we treated our share of young patients with aches, pains, and soccer injuries, but also we have worked with kids who were struggling with depression, anxiety, anger, insomnia, and stress.

Not long ago, this letter to the editor about teen mental health appeared in our local newspaper:

Many parents may relate to the July 5 article “Worried about a moody teen?” An acquaintance told me recently that the severe anger of her middle son had caused problems in the family. She decided to try alternative medicine and took him to an acupuncturist. After one visit, the change in the 11-year-old was amazing. A local acupuncturist told me that acupuncture in pre-adolescents and adolescents can be extremely effective. It could be worth a try. (Minneapolis Star Tribune, Monday, July 12, 2010)

As the letter states, acupuncture can be incredibly effective for adolescents. This is true for a number of reasons. First, for the most part, they are young and healthy. Acupuncture tends to be far more effective for someone who is healthy and able to heal quickly, as opposed to someone in their seventies or eighties who has been ill for a long time.

The second reason that acupuncture works so well for adolescents goes back to Chinese medical theory. The Chinese say that children are considered to be pure Yang. Compared to the nourishing, cooling, substance of Yin, Yang is warm, active, and transformative. And that’s what kids do—they transform. They are growing and changing almost daily, and it seems that as soon as you have one stage figured out, they have moved onto the next. This is a good thing on the healing front. Because kids are growing so quickly, they also heal quickly. This is both good news and bad news, especially when we’re talking about adolescents.

The pure Yang thing can also work against kids, especially during the pre-teen and teen years. Good health, or balance, in Chinese medicine is all about smooth flow, and for the most part, our kids grow and flow smoothly. Unfortunately, as kids go through adolescence, they begin changing even more quickly. On top of the physical growth, kids are faced with increasing stress of school and peer relationships. Then Mother Nature throws in a dark cocktail of hormones to make that transformation even more…uh, interesting. For some kids, this sudden growth, plus hormones, plus stress creates a perfect storm that can block the smooth flow of energy and emotions, causing a wide variety of mental health symptoms.

Finally, acupuncture works for emotional health issues because it affects brain chemistry. Researchers studying the effects of acupuncture have determined that acupuncture causes an increase in production of endorphins and other feel-good chemicals in the brain, causing a calming effect. For this reason, acupuncture can effectively treat emotional conditions including stress, anxiety, depression, and panic attacks.

Many parents don’t know where to turn when their adolescent is struggling with anger or depression. Understandably, they’re hesitant to medicate their teen, but they also know that their child needs help.

The good news is that in these healthy, ever changing adolescents, acupuncture can be a life saver, which is so aptly expressed in the letter above. If your teen is struggling, consider giving acupuncture a try.

Acupuncture for Panic Attacks

If you have ever had a panic attack you know how scary it can be. First, your attack seem to come out of nowhere—unexpected and unprovoked. Second, the mere idea of having another one in the future is enough to produce disabling anxiety.

In the throes of your first panic attack, you’re sure you’re dying right here and now, and for good reason. The symptoms of a panic attack can include a rapid or pounding heart, chest tightness, shortness of breath, dizziness, paralyzing anxiety, sweating, shaking, and hot flashes. If you’ve ever had a panic attack, it’s clear—you don’t want to experience another.

So what’s happening during a panic attack? Your body is experiencing the fight or flight response, but on steroids. Your adrenal glands are pumping out hormones, including adrenaline, and the physical sensation of overwhelming fear is similar to being in sudden and immediate danger.

There are a number of theories as to why people suffer from panic attacks. There may be a hereditary component, and triggers may include a major life transition, illness, stress, and medications that increase activity in the brain related to fear reactions.

In Chinese medicine, there are three organ systems that are related to panic attacks; the Heart, Spleen, and Kidneys. The Heart is home to the Shen, or the spirit, according to Chinese theory. Its function is similar to the brain in Western thinking. As such, the Heart is the home to consciousness, memory, emotions, and thinking. Whenever someone suffers from any kind of emotional upset or condition, the Heart is always involved.

The Chinese Spleen is an organ system of digestion. It sifts and sorts what has been ingested, takes what is useful and turns it into nutrients, and gets rid of what is not needed. While the Spleen primarily digests foods, it also plays a role in the sifting and sorting of ideas. The emotion associated with the Spleen is worry—essentially, not being able to sort through and let go of unnecessary ideas. Worry is a kind of unhealthy rumination. When it gets out of control, worry can produce anxiety and fear—the foundation of panic attacks.

Finally, the Chinese Kidney also plays a role in panic attacks in two ways. First, the emotion related to the Kidney is fear, which is the underlying component of panic. Secondly, the Kidney is the deepest and most nourishing of our organs. It’s responsible for how well you age, your underlying body constitution, and is the source of all the fundamental substances in your body. Your Kidney is the organ system most damaged by stress and anxiety. The Western condition of adrenal fatigue (from stress, anxiety, overwork, etc.) correlates to a severe Kidney depletion in Chinese medicine.

Chinese medicine and acupuncture can offer a number of strategies to help someone suffering from panic attacks. An acupuncturist would work by first calming your Shen, relieving anxiety, and minimizing stress. This is an effective first line of defense, as research has documented the positive effects acupuncture has on brain chemistry. This effect accounts for the relaxing and calming sensation patients feel both during and after their treatments.

A practitioner of Chinese medicine might also address your panic attacks by nourishing your Spleen and restoring your Kidney health. Beyond acupuncture, you may be prescribed an herbal formula, some dietary suggestions, and strategies for stress relief.

Finally, some practical advice if you suffer from panic attacks:

Realize that your body cannot sustain this mega-fight or flight response for more than a few minutes. It will pass.
When you’re having a panic attack, you might think the best thing to do is sit down, relax, and let it pass. However, if you get up and move around, go for a walk, do some jumping jacks, your body will metabolize the adrenaline faster.
Avoid caffeinated drinks and any other foods that you think might trigger an attack.
In almost every instance, stressful situations or circumstances are at the core of anxiety and panic conditions. Do what it takes to get your stress under control. Take regular walks, meditate, go fishing, take a Yoga class, play video games, change your circumstances, or whatever else it takes for you to eliminate stress.
Seriously consider acupuncture. It can be a very safe, effective, drug-free way to eliminate anxiety and panic attacks.

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !

Share and Enjoy !