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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.

Acupuncture Doesn’t Work for Chronic Knee Pain?

There was lots of chatter this past week about a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association about acupuncture not working for chronic knee pain. I find the noise about it and the report itself very interesting for a couple of reasons.

The short version on the story is this: In a study of 282 adults age 50 and older with chronic knee pain from osteoarthritis were randomly assigned to needle or laser acupuncture treatments or a sham laser acupuncture treatment. After 12 weeks, participants who had the acupuncture treatments reported modest improvements in pain. Nine months later, the participants reported that their pain had returned, leading the researchers to conclude that acupuncture doesn’t offer relief from chronic knee pain caused by osteoarthritis.

I found all the attention about this study interesting first, because it was about acupuncture not working for a pain condition. Why is this big news? Is it because much of the research we see about acupuncture is positive? In fact, a 2013 meta analysis (a study of research studies already done) involving 9,700 patients concluded that acupuncture can be considered as one of the more effective physical treatments for alleviating osteoarthritis knee pain in the short-term helpful in relieving pain associated with osteoarthritis.’

Secondly, short of replacing the knee what practitioner believes that they can make a patient with bone-on-bone degeneration permanently pain free? This is a condition in which the cartilage in the knee has degenerated and bone spurs have caused permanent structural changes within the knee that can be only be “fixed” by replacing the joint.

I understand the limitations of my treatments, as do most acupuncture practitioners. However, this study could be compared to giving patients pain relief medications for three months only and checking back in nine months to see how they’re doing. How would you guess they’re doing?

I don’t find this study a great “aha” moment in the world of acupuncture, as many news outlets seemed to do. I also don’t see that these findings negate the effects of acupuncture for the several patients I see who have knee (and hip) osteoarthritis who need a little pain relief to get them through until they’re willing, ready, and have the time to replace the joint. These patients wouldn’t come back if the acupuncture didn’t work. It just won’t work nine months from now any more than that ibuprofen you took today will.

Orthorexia: The Curse of Righteous Eating

It’s a good thing to want to eat healthfully. With the rising incidence of diabetes, obesity, and other food-related diseases, making good food choices is an obvious step toward better health. However, what if that desire to eat healthfully gets out of control? It happens, and there’s a name for it—orthorexia.

Most people who struggle with orthorexia begin by simply wanting to eat well or improve their health through good dietary choices. However, at some point the desire for healthy food gets derailed and becomes a compulsion. Good food choices move into the realm of a fixation of what to eat, how much to eat, the quality, purity, and nutrients in each morsel of food that is ingested. While not included in the DSM (The diagnostic bible of emotional disorders), orthorexia is recognized by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, as well as the National Eating Disorders Association.

Orthorexia is characterized by rigid and restrictive food choices, often with entire food groups being eliminated from the diet. Sufferers need to control what they’re eating at all times, and frequently have a hard time eating meals or need to modify meals prepared by others. And while it seems counter intuitive that healthy eating could ever be a bad thing, the results of orthorexia can be life-altering.

The problem with orthorexia is that those who have it don’t get all the nutrients they need because they severely restrict their food choices. Much-needed healthy fats, whole grain carbohydrates, and other entire food groups are eliminated completely. Their life is dominated by an incredibly rigid diet that makes it hard to eat with others, and can be socially isolating. In addition, the constant obsession about eating only good, pure foods tends to blunt a sufferer’s natural intuition to feel hungry or full.

From the standpoint of Chinese medicine, food is meant to be a way to feed not only your body, but also your heart, the organ system associated with joy. Eating delicious food with loved ones is meant to be especially nourishing, but for someone with orthorexia, a shared meal often produces anxiety. In addition, Chinese food therapy is based on the idea that each person should eat according to their specific needs as well as what’s appropriate for the season. There are no good or bad real foods, only those that are best suited for each person’s nutritional requirements. Flavorful food eaten joyfully, coupled with moderation is thought to be the way to healthy eating.

While Chinese medicine offers up guidelines as to how one should eat, getting treatment for orthorexia is more complicated than simply letting go and eating joyfully. Orthorexia is similar to to other eating disorders, in that treatment usually involves dealing with the underlying emotional issues that have lead to the compulsive and restrictive behavior. In many cases, this requires the help of a mental health professional, ideally one who is well-versed in treating eating disorders.

Are you struggling with orthorexia? Take this quiz and find out. Simply circle the statements below that are true for you.

1) I think of most foods as either good or bad.

2) I have a difficult time eating meals that have been prepared by someone else.

3) I worry a lot about eating the “right” foods.

4) I feel guilty or like a failure when I eat a “bad” food.

5) I wonder how others can eat the things that they do.

6) I have rigid rules about what I allow myself to eat.

7) I feel self-righteous about my diet.

8) When I eat out, I need to alter how my food is served (salad dressing on the side, vegetables steamed instead of sauteed, etc.)

If you were able to agree with more than two or three of the above statements, it’s time for you to take a step back and look at your relationship with food. Talk with someone you can trust, and if necessary, enlist the help of a mental health professional. In addition, Chinese medicine can help with stress relief, digestive support, and recovery from this condition. Your physical and mental health depend on it!

Baby Maybe? Acupuncture for Infertility

Over the past several years, we have seen more women than ever before seeking our acupuncture services for help in getting pregnant. Surprisingly, fertility issues affect about 15 percent of couples in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and there seems to be a a number of reasons that this is happening. Many couples are waiting until their 30’s and 40’s to become pregnant, which can create fertility issues. In addition, the prevalence of plastics and other hormone disrupting chemicals found in everything from our cleaning products to cosmetics has increased dramatically over the past several decades. Food additives, pesticides, and GMO ingredients in our food may also play a role in impairing fertility.

The women who seek out acupuncture do so for a variety of reasons. Many want to explore acupuncture as a solution before they turn to Western fertility treatments such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF) or intrauterine insemination (IUI). Many women choose acupuncture first because they want to avoid the hormonal manipulation of the Western treatments, find acupuncture to be a less time-consuming and less expensive solution, or simply want to become naturally. Others have used acupuncture to support their Western fertility treatments.

Traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture can offer a number of benefits for women trying to become pregnant. Research on the physiological effects of Chinese medicine has documented that acupuncture alters brain chemistry in a way that reduces stress, (a huge factor for couples who are struggling with fertility issues). In addition, acupuncture has been found to regulate hormones, increase the circulation of blood to the reproductive organs, and Chinese herbs have been found to be helpful in regulating the menstrual cycle.

Practitioners of Chinese medicine have a variety of tools in which to help women trying to become pregnant, including acupuncture, Chinese herbs, dietary modifications, and lifestyle changes. In addition, if you are trying to get pregnant, there are a number of things that you can do on your own to help increase your chances. Some steps to take include:

-If you are a coffee drinker, decrease the amount you drink or cut it out altogether. New research indicates that coffee may slightly increase your risk for fertility issues.

-Eat organic foods when possible. This will help decrease the additives, genetically modified foods, and potentially hormone disrupting pesticides that you ingest.

-What you put on your skin makes a difference, too. Check out the Environmental Working Group‘s website for hormone disrupting chemicals in your cosmetics and skin care products.

-Get the chemicals out of your home by using natural cleaning products, glass containers (rather than plastic) when possible, and avoid BPA (bisphenol A) products in your food containers and packaging.

-Aim for a Mediterranean-type diet, with lots of plant-based foods, healthy fats from olive oil, nuts, and seeds, fish, and limited sweets and heavy meats.

-Maintain a healthy weight. Being dramatically underweight or overweight can affect fertility.

-Your body heals and rejuvenates while you sleep–make sure you’re getting enough.

-Struggling with fertility issues is stressful, and that stress impacts your health negatively in a number of ways. Do whatever it takes to deal with the stress, whether it’s getting a massage, acupuncture, meditation, or quiet time in the woods.

The Healing Power of Pets

More than once a patient has brought their pet into my acupuncture clinic for a visit (not a treatment). I have had visitors in the form of pocket-sized dogs, spaniels and bulldogs, and even a bird (no cats to date, though). I grew up with lots of animals–from turtles and gerbils to cats, dogs, and even horses, and appreciate the presence of pets in my life.

While animal companions are a positive presence, there is also considerable research that pets have the ability to improve your health. Some of the physical benefits of spending time with a pet include:

-They can enhance your mood. Time spent watching fish or playing with your cat actually lowers the stress hormone cortisol. As a result, having Fido or Tigger at home can help with depression, decrease stress, and produce calming effects. In addition, caring for your pet is a way to “switch the channel” away from your problems and focus on another being.

-Pets can improve your heart health. The calming effects of owning a pet can help regulate high blood pressure and decrease cholesterol.

-If you’re a dog owner, you can thank your pooch for the fitness points gained every time you take him for a walk.

-While there are many people who are allergic to animal dander, there is research that suggests that kids who grow up around pets actually have better immunity than kids who aren’t exposed to pets.

-Pets offer companionship. The negative health implications of loneliness and isolation are well-documented. Pets offer a positive presence for those who are housebound or socially isolated.

Beyond the positive effects on your health, our animal companions have much to teach us about living life to the fullest. Among their lessons:

-Animals live in the moment. Your cat is not rehashing events from the past, and isn’t thinking about the future either. While animals have memory, they pretty much live in the right now.

-Your pet, especially if it’s a dog, is all about loyalty. When I was a kid, we had a little cocker spaniel, Rippy, who walked us kids to the bus stop every day. In the afternoons when the bus dropped us off, there was Rippy waiting patiently. Dogs can be the most incredibly loyal critters on the planet.

-Pets are the only beings that are truly able to just listen. They’re not thinking about what to say next or how to deliver a snarky comment. They. Just. Listen.

-Animals are very forgiving. Your kitty is not holding a grudge for that day you forgot to scoop out the litter box, and your pup won’t love you less if you get home an hour late–in fact, she’ll be even more excited to see you when you walk through the door.

-Finally, animals teach us those lessons we tend to forget about playing with abandon. They’re not self-conscious and aren’t afraid to look silly. They have the ability to make us laugh, which is golden.

Help for Your Feet With Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine

When a patient walks into my acupuncture clinic, I can frequently tell the state of their health just by looking at their face. Everything from the sparkle in their eyes to the color of their face tell me a little bit about how things are going for that patient. Similarly, it is almost as easy to determine the state of a patient’s health by looking at the health of their feet. That’s because your feet tend to be a barometer of your overall wellness, as health problems tend to show up first in your feet.

Here are nine things that your feet are telling me about your health:

Cold feet can be a sign of poor circulation or slow metabolism. In Chinese medicine Yang energy acts a bit like your body’s pilot light, warming and circulating warmth throughout your system. Your cold dogs tell me that the pilot light is low and things aren’t circulating.

Thick, yellow toenails occur as a result of a fungal infection in and under the nails. In Chinese medicine it also tells me that you probably tend to run a little damp (you retain water or metabolize it poorly) and might also have less than stellar immunity.

Dry, cracked skin on your feet (not just dry heels) is a sign that your body is dried out overall. A little moisturizer on your skin is helpful, but even better is adding more fatty, but nourishing foods to your diet. Think about bumping up your consumption of nuts, avocados, and healthy oils.

Poor healing in your feet are a common sign of diabetes, but is also a sign of poor circulation in general. Please pay attention to any sores that are slow to heal by having a medical professional take a look.

An enlarged big toe that is sore and swollen is often a sign of gout, which occurs due to excess uric acid settling in the joint. Interestingly, gout tends to occur in the joints of your body that are the coldest, like your feet, however, a gouty joint will become inflamed, red and swollen. In terms of Chinese medicine, that would be dampness plus heat.

Heel pain in Western medicine is often diagnosed as plantar fasciitis, which is an inflammation of the tendon and fascia that runs through the arch of your foot and back to your heel. In Chinese medicine, it’s considered to be a kind of stagnation and slow healing due to poor circulation.

A neuroma is a pinched nerve or a nerve bundle in your foot that can be annoyingly painful. Frequently, the nerve gets caught in the space between your metatarsals (the bones in your forefoot that connect to your toes). In Chinese medicine, a neuroma is also considered to be a stagnation, in which energy, blood, and nerves are constricted.

A bunion is a painful, enlarged and misaligned joint at the base of your big toe, and is also considered to be a kind of stagnation in Chinese medicine. When a bunion gets red and swollen, it’s also considered to be a pattern of dampness and heat. However, when a bunion acts up during the cold weather, it’s considered to be a pattern of cold (and usually dampness, too). The majority of bunion sufferers are women, and the cause can be genetic, over pronation of the foot, and tight, pointy shoes.

This list would not be complete without talking about smelly feet. In almost every case of funky stanky dogs that I have seen, the owner of said feet had some dampness. Again, dampness occurs when your body doesn’t metabolize fluids very well, and smelly feet come from bacteria that thrive in warm damp conditions, like your feet inside your shoes.

While many of the above conditions are slow to heal, the good news is that for many of the conditions plaguing your feet, acupuncture and Chinese medicine may be the answer. Whether your feet are dry, damp, smelly, or achy, a few sessions on the acupuncture table may be all it takes to put things right.

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?

Seven Things to Know About Spring and Your Chinese Liver

As a practitioner of acupuncture and Chinese medicine, I can see the impact that the weather and seasons have on my patients’ health. This winter was a tough one for everyone. Here in Minnesota, it was just too cold to go outdoors and enjoy the usual winter activities, so people who usually breeze through winter were struggling this year with seasonal depression, irritability, poor motivation, and promises to move someplace warmer.

But now the seasons are changing. The snow is melting at last, the birds have begun to sing, the sun is shining, and the air just smells like spring. For our bodies, this time of year is like a frozen river that is finally melting. All winter we have been hunkering down, eating rich food, and staying warm inside by the fireplace (or heater). In contrast, with the advent of spring, we want to go outside and move our bodies. In essence, we move from a state of contraction to a place of expansion. The ice on the frozen river is melting, breaking up, and beginning to flow again.

In Chinese medicine, spring is associated with the element of wood and our Liver organ system. In Western medicine, the Liver is associated with filtering toxins, however in Chinese medicine it is responsible for the nourishing quality of your blood. In addition, our Chinese Liver is responsible for the smooth flow of everything in your body, including your digestion, hormones, and even your emotions. Here are some things to know about your Chinese Liver system:

1) The element associated with your Liver is wood, and for a good reason. Like hard wood , the Liver is a strong organ system. Its function of smooth movement can be compared to the slow but steady growth of plants in the spring or the slow but steady rise of sap in trees.

2) While appearing hard on the surface, wood must remain supple or it will break, and this is also true of your Liver system. Without the physical or emotional flexibility of healthy live wood, your Liver may stagnate and can cause symptoms such as depression, irritability, poor digestion, tight muscles and tendons, and migraines.

3) The color associated with your Liver and the season of spring is green. In addition, the upward and outward movement of new shoots of plants that have been dormant throughout the winter are a good analogy for the action of the Liver system during the spring.

4) The emotional landscape of your Liver is strong and assertive. However, when the strong and assertive nature of your Liver is thwarted, depression or anger may result. When I see people in my clinic with depression, I will always pay attention to treating their Liver system.

5) One secret to Liver health is flexibility. This includes both flexibility in your thinking and physical flexibility. Emotional flexibility might be expressed through creative endeavors and through trying to see things from another viewpoint. Physical flexibility can be accomplished through stretching and disciplines like Yoga, Pilates, Qi Gong, and Tai Qi that work to lengthen your muscles and strengthen your tendons and ligaments.

6) Foods that nourish your Liver are those that have the ability to cleanse. Sour foods (the taste associated with the Liver) help your Liver release toxins and stimulate your Gallbladder to excrete bile, which is used in breaking down fats in your diet.

7) Eating new plants that have sprouted early in the spring are also especially nourishing to your Liver. Sprouts, salads, greens, and early plants are all Liver foods. In addition, because the health of your Liver is associated with the nourishing quality of your blood, foods that nourish your blood are also beneficial. Dark fruits and vegetables, leafy greens, meat, eggs, legumes, and whole grains would all be good choices.

So for the sake of your Chinese Liver, take advantage of the expansiveness that this spring season has to offer. Go outside, play, move, stay loose, and eat small green things growing from the ground.

Take Care of Your Legs with Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine

Your legs are incredible things. They walk, run, dance, take stairs two at a time, and carry a lot of weight. You probably don’t think much about your legs until they start to give you problems. In addition, you may not think much about acupuncture when your legs are acting up, but you should. There are a number of conditions related to your legs that acupuncture can really help. Among them:

Restless Legs. If your legs are running, jumping, and twitching all night long, chances are you have Restless Leg Syndrome. The jury is still out as to why this happens. You may find your symptoms are worse when you exercise or maybe when you don’t. Either way, once you’re in bed for the evening, your legs start up. In Chinese medicine however, restless legs tend to be a pattern of depletion. In other words your energy is low, you may feel fatigued overall, and while it may sound counter intuitive, there’s not enough energy to hold things still.

Hip or Knee Pain. At Acupuncture in the Park, we have worked with many patients who are experiencing knee and/or hip pain. Many know that they have a joint replacement looming on the horizon, but just aren’t quite ready yet. Others are recovering from surgery, and some just need relief from a tweak or an overuse injury. We have found acupuncture to be effective for both pain relief and inflammation. Locally (around the joint) a few well-placed needles increase the circulation of white blood cells which help counter inflammation, and systemically, acupuncture acts to block the transmission of pain signals to your brain.

Gout. Anyone who has suffered from gout is no stranger to the painful, red swelling that most commonly occurs at the base of your big toe. Gout is the build up of uric acid crystals which settle in the joint, causing you all kinds of grief. While your big toe is the most common site of gout inflammation, it can occur in other joints. In Chinese medicine, the redness and swelling indicate that gout is a pattern of dampness (the build up of fluids, often from eating too much rich food) plus heat. This is a problem that your acupuncturist will treat both locally, but also by dealing with the retention of dampness and heat in your body.

Leg Qi. This one has a funny name, but it’s a condition of red, swollen, and hot legs and feet. It’s similar to gout in that the pattern of imbalance in Chinese medicine is dampness and heat. However, while gout affects just the joints, Leg Qi presents as redness and swelling of the feet and lower legs. Like gout, the treatment would involve getting rid of your dampness, which will decrease the swelling, and cooling off the heat.

Ankle Sprains. A couple of years ago, I rolled my ankle while working out in the yard. It was a mild sprain, but I was surprised at how much it hurt! Acupuncture can help patients with sprained ankles in a couple of ways. While we don’t needle into a bruised and swollen ankle, once the swelling has gone down, acupuncture can help with pain relief and the inflammation associated with the sprain. In some cases, an ankle sprain can linger for months and even years, with weakness, poor range of motion, and even persistent pain. I have seen more than my share of surprised patients who have believed that their ankle pain is just something they are stuck with, only to find that a couple of acupuncture sessions has restored ankle function and rendered them pain-free.

Your legs are the work horses of your body. Keep them healthy by exercising and stretching. When they act up, pay attention. In many cases acupuncture and Chinese medicine can be the answer to restoring function when your legs become sore, swollen, twitchy, or traumatized.

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