The recent article by NPR, Flattening The 'Mummy Tummy' With 1 Exercise, 10 Minutes A Day, starts off with a sensational, grabbing title. A click bait title that we wouldn't expect from a trusted news source like NPR. But it certainly got your attention, especially if you recently had a baby and now are feeling a little weak around the core. And since this is NPR this should be safer than something random you pull off the internet, right? Well, yes and no.
With addiction, deep fractures are drawn between our mind and our body, our needs and our habits, our emotions and our actions, and in the relationships that we have to ourselves and to others. Yoga, on the other hand, is connection.
It's a great time to pay attention to how stress is affecting you. Common stressors include work, family, money, children, illness and more. Stress can impact both your body and your mind causing symptoms such as muscular pain, irritability, fatigue, and headaches. Here's how we can help...
According to CDC data, 32% of women delivering a baby did so via C-section in 2015. Some of these are elective (planned) & others unplanned or emergent. If you are one of the 32%, what can you expect following a C-section?
Do you feel like your insurance coverage gets more confusing each year? That’s probably because it does! It seems like each year there is another rule or exception to your plan but the cost keeps going up. Here at Jade, we are often asked, “how much will this cost?” The answer isn’t as easy at it seems.
The start of the new year is full of energy and resolve to get into healthier habits. The problem with new year’s resolutions is that there is a tendency to make big declarations and huge commitments that can be unrealistic. At Jade, we encourage you to channel the momentum in the air instead to recommit to yourself, and join us in an effort to be more present.
After the end of Daylight Savings Time, most of us are well aware that we have entered a quieter time of year. In Chinese medicine, the winter is considered to be a more yin time. Every day has a balance of yin and yang, but in the winter, yin is more prominent. Yin is dark, nutritive, and restful, while yang is light, energetic, and active. As the winter is more yin in general, it calls for a calmer lifestyle.
Recent research on stress physiology supports the long standing notion that living “out of balance” or under the long-term influence of stress changes our chemical composition. These changes increase the occurrence of inflammation triggering proteins in the blood and generating markers that MDs see as pathogenic like LDLs (a.k.a. bad cholesterol).
Sources of stress can appear endless. Our new normal state of always being available and “on-call” is stressful, but leave your phone at home and the mind goes crazy with what it could be missing or that friends, family and even work can get worried that they can’t get in touch with you right away. The truth is, stress is unavoidable.
Modern technology has created a lot of flexibility in workspaces. The traditional 9-5 is morphing, with more people working remotely from wherever they are. That might mean creating space at home or having a moveable setup for use in a coffee shop or conference room. Being fluid with workspaces helps people escape the problem of being stuck in a cubicle all day, but it has downsides too.
It means your “office” may be anything from a couch to an Uber. Plus, the line between work and home is becoming blurry. When we used to be able to power down at the end of the day, we now have 24-hour access to emails and texts, and often use phones and tablets for our entertainment well into the night.
If you answer is “not great,” you aren’t alone. An increase in driving, computer work, and phone use is upping the daily physical stress for a lot of us. As an acupuncturist, I see patients with a variety of issues, but one part of the body that continually frustrates people is their tight neck. Our physical therapists see this a lot too. We even joke that “text neck” is becoming an epidemic.
Symptoms mentioned include tension and discomfort, pops and cracks in the spine, head-forward posture, knots, and muscle spasms. The neck is a common storage place for mental and emotional strain: Some of us literally wear our stress with our shoulders creeping closer to our ears as energy demands mount.
Step one is to be mindful about how we hold ourselves. Step two is integrating positive habits to minimize the damage.
In terms of acupuncture, any kind of pain is considered stagnation, or blockage, in the free flow of blood and energy through the body. Solving pain conditions requires unblocking “stuck” regions of the body and keeping it unblocked. To do that, we insert small needles into the affected area, unblocking the channels and promoting relaxation of muscles, improved blood flow, and reduction of inflammation, all easing the pain.
For some time now I have been practicing Traditional Chinese Medicine. Many times I wondered what the greatest impact I could possibly make as a Licensed Acupuncturist in the State of Maine. Katie Thomas’ article in The New York Times, Patients Prescribed Narcotic Painkillers Use More of Them for Longer, Study Finds, brought that need to a crisp reality. Maine was #1 in the country for Opiate pain medication prescribing three years ago and Ms. Thomas’ article gave stunning facts of what those prescriptions make possible in the lives of Mainers. In The Times article, it is said that nearly half of the people who used their pain med prescription for thirty days are still using their meds three years later. Conversely, my fifteen years of experience with reducing pain, few see me in terms of years and acupuncture is not habit forming. Prescription med overdose is the leading accidental cause of death with 16,000 deaths nationwide in 2012. In chronic situations, one third of those prescribed pain meds had concurrent prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs & muscle relaxants. If susceptible, addiction seems likely for those just trying to get beyond their injury or surgery. Other tools to reduce pain medicine prescriptions must be used.
America’s National Institute for Health support the use of acupuncture for the relief of pain. At Jade Integrated Health we ask doctors directly if there is a way to integrate the use of acupuncture to reduce pain and minimize the use of potentially addictive meds. Much of the time the visits are from folks in the chronic pain med use category and have additional sleep problems, anxiety or depression. All those additional symptoms are treatable with acupuncture, often times providing an opportunity to reduce or eliminate prescriptions for those additional imbalances.
Our dream here at Jade is providing Physicians a choice for their patients chronic or acute pain. We offer a well balance array of services provided by expert level clinicians. Pain will always be a part of living and currently medications are the most common solution used. When offered that solution please consider potential consequence for addiction as mentioned above. Ask your Medical Provider for non-addictive choices like Acupuncture, Yoga, Massage and Meditation.
Spring marks a time of metamorphosis and enlightenment. During this time, we make several changes to our lifestyle to help us transition from the heavy winter to the light, airy spring. Normally, people think about ‘spring cleaning’ to prepare for the change in season, but one of the areas in which we should think about change is our diet. Winter weather causes us to gravitate toward heavy, building foods (meats and cheeses) because the fatty, protein-based foods help us regulate our body temperature. Spring weather, on the other hand, does not take the same toll on our bodies, so it requires us to move away from such heavier foods and to develop a mind-body connection through food cleansing.
Food consumption should be reduced to the simplest foods that are in season. Bitter greens, such as kale, swiss chard, and dandelion, can help cleanse the body for spring. Fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and whole grains provide a milder cleanse for those who are not accustomed to a such light fare.
If you live in the South, you can begin cleansing early on in the season. Those who live in the North, might want to wait until the warmer weather of May. Please, however, consult a professional before beginning a cleanse and be careful not to cleanse too aggressively if you are not accustomed to it.
For more information on cleansing, please read Staying Healthy With the Seasons by Elson M. Haas, MD.
Dear friends, patients, colleagues and acupuncture advocates,
If you or someone you know has received acupuncture or understands the benefits of acupuncture please join me in support of including acupuncture as an "Essential Health Benefit" for Americans.
To be included in the Essential Health Benefits, the health care service must be effective, safe, affordable, and easy to be incorporated into our current medical system without wasting too many resources, especially during this economic situation. Acupuncture is the perfect therapeutic modality to meet all of these demands. Your support is needed.
1. It's easy click to send a letter via the internet.
Click Here to send electronic letter to Secretary Sebelius
2. It's easy to send a letter via the mail.
Copy and paste this letter from AAAOM and send itwith any edits you choose directly to the HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius at the addresses below before Nov. 4. Please include your name, physical address and e-mail address.
Attention: Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Re: Acupuncture Petition The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 200 Independence Avenue, S.W. Washington, D.C. 20201
We need to move forward and we can with your help.
Thank you for your participation.
Sincerely,
John Charlebois, LAc.
Additional Links:
AAAOM EHB Action Home About HR 646 Track HR 646 HR 646 Fact Book Sign the HR 646 Petition
Nationwide Clinical Survey of Acupuncture Patients
91.5 % reported a disappearance or improvement of symptoms.
79% said they use fewer drugs.
70% avoided surgery.
63% said "I can work better most of the time."
58% said "I have more energy most of the time."
63% said "I have less pain most of the time."
