wellness

Let’s get right to the point. There is NO Magic Bullet! The easy way out is the wrong way, and quick fixes never stand the test of time. We all know this to be true, yet astoundingly we have been led to believe the exact opposite when it comes to our health and well-being. Medicine has become our magic elixer, our get-out-of-jail-free card. Why exercise your bones and joints when you can pop a pill instead? Sure, you risk side effects such as abdominal cramping, bone loss, liver and kidney disease, stroke…. but at least you don’t have to work up a sweat. And how could YOU be included in the 1% that has the rare side effects??? That always happens to the OTHER GUY. Hair loss, obesity, insomnia, anxiety, short temper, shyness, itchy skin, dry eyes… You can bet whatever ails you, no matter how trivial, there is a medication marketed for it. I am not talking about the people with major diseases that need to rely on medications in order to maintain good quality of life. I’m talking about the every day annoying ailments…. the allergies, sinus headaches, digestive conditions, tendonitis, arthritis, aches and pains, menstrual cramps… All these symptoms and conditions are an indicator that your body is not working properly.

Taking migraine medicine requires that your body not only fight the cause of the migraine itself, but it now has the added stress of breaking down and excreting the chemicals and by products from the medication. Some chemicals may never be excreted and will stay in your body creating the possibility of toxicities. We have been led to believe that the innate healing ability, that the body has been accomplishing over thousands of years with amazing efficiency, is suddenly no longer possible in the absence of medication. This is not necessarily true and has been dis-proven by many Acupuncturists. The reason acupuncture has continued to thrive for the past 2,500 years, even at times of fierce opposition, is because it is built on solid, lasting, time-tested principles and theories with proven results. The health of your body is in direct proportion to your body’s innate healing energies traveling through the network of energy pathways, called meridians. Recent studies have proven that these meridians exist and that energy is found within them. They reside beside the blood vessels and run all throughout the body. Acupuncturists manipulate these healing energies by using acupuncture points in order to help your body work at it’s optimum level, thus preventing as well as clearing medical conditions.

As much as we tend to over-complicate staying healthy, it is really pretty simple. One of the reasons people have a hard time staying healthy is because of the intense and stressful life they lead. Responsibilities are a little more complicated these days between work, deadlines, family responsibilities, lack of sleep, taking care of an elder…the list goes on. How many of you feel BURNT OUT already??

What needs to change is that people need to take back their lives. Using better time management skills, they should set aside time for themselves so they may heal from life’s stress. This requires a high level of commitment and necessitates specific action steps on a daily basis. The person will reap the rewards for a long time, instead of it being a quick fix. Everyone knows the formula for losing weight is to cut out the empty, unhealthy calories and food sensitivities, watch your portions and exercise daily. Only a few people are committed to following through. It’s easier to look for the pill that requires no work output or the exercise video that promises miracles after 2 weeks. This just doesn’t work and the results don’t last. It actually may make it harder to lose the weight in the future!

Your body is a self-healing masterpiece when given the right resources, and it requires consistent attention and respect in order to maintain good health. Healthy food choices provide your cells with good nutrition so the organ systems function properly; exercise and acupuncture help your body to function properly, can prevent genetic predispositions from becoming active, keeps your blood flowing normally, increases flexibility and strength, maintains immunity, calms stress and is anti-aging in itself; and a good restful sleep allows the body to regenerate itself. If you can commit to these healthy choices in life, your use of medications will be limited to dire situations. A healthier body is less reactive to stress also… A WIN-WIN SITUATION.

www.acupuncturect.com

Complements of Acupuncturemediaworks.com in combination with Wendy Haskell L.Ac.

Acupuncture for Balanced Wellness…..What’s in Your Carton?

If you’re like most people, you open the egg carton to check for broken eggs before buying them at a grocery store. You will usually find one or two eggs broken in a carton. You render the carton useless and just move on to another until you find a full carton of unbroken eggs.

Why must you go through the process of opening each carton? Because you can’t tell anything about the contents of the carton by simply looking at the outside packaging. Every carton looks identical on the outside, yet they can be very different on the inside.

The body is like our egg carton. It is often so good at compensating for health imbalances, we may look fine on the outside but may have masked underlying health problems or symptoms on the inside. If left undetected, these imbalances lead to :

Chronic Sickness
Degenerative Changes
Disease

When it comes to our health, we’ve been taught that what you see and feel is what you get. If things look okay on the outside and you don’t have any symptoms, you must be health, right? We’ve come to learn that this is not the case. Many diseases and disorders such as cancer and heart disease have no symptoms or warning signs on the outside until the sickness is well into the advanced stage. Imbalances within your body’s mechanisms are no different.

Energy Meridian imbalances are known as “silent problems”. They often go undetected because many times they are:

Painless
Reveal few outward signs or symptoms
Occur so gradually in terms of symptoms, that we get use to them or pass them off as “unimportant”or “age”

If there are enough “cracked eggs” in a carton, and they are left inside long enough, eventually they will begin to soak through and reveal themselves-too late.

The only way to know for certain whether or not you have meridian imbalances is to either wait for your carton to soak through, or open the carton and look inside with an acupuncture examination. An acupuncture exam starts when you walk through the door. Most examinations are so passive, you wouldn’t even know that aspect of yourself is being analyzed. Key examinations include:

Chinese Facial Diagnosis
Chinese Eye Diagnosis
Stature/Gate/Movement Analysis
Voice Analysis
Odor Analysis
Mood Analysis
Pulse Exam
Tongue Exam
Hara Diagnosis

All of these exams give clues in Chinese Medicine as to how your body and energy channels are working. These exams can catch imbalances within your body systems before you are aware of them. This is why I recommend occasional maintenance visits even when you feel well. This is called a “Tune Up” or Balanced Wellness. I use acupuncture points to bring your body back into balance and help your body’s systems work better. This allows you to enjoy your life more and strengthen your body’s ability to fend off the stress which create these imbalances, such as: