The holidays can lead to a lot of unnecessary stress and unhealthy eating, which may bring about “not-so-holly-jolly” health challenges. In fact, the leading causes of disease, early aging, and illness that often find their start during the holiday season are inflammation, stress, pain, and poor nutrition.
Acupuncture can be a viable solution to feel your best not just during the holiday season, but also the rest of your life if you wish to grow older gracefully, and heal yourself from sickness or chronic disease
Inflammation
A small amount of inflammation is normal. It’s your body’s defense against bad cells, viruses, bacteria, and anxiety. When you get a cold, you may encounter inflammation by way of a fever as the body tries to safeguard itself. Or when you sprain your ankle and it swells up – that inflammation is good.
The new epidemic of chronic, low-grade inflammation is bad for your body and makes you more vulnerable to aging and diseases like: asthma, arthritis, autoimmune disease, bronchitis, chronic discomfort, diabetes, depression, eczema, fibromyalgia, gallbladder disease, cardiovascular disease, bad cholesterol, infertility, neuropathy, and the list goes on…
Acupuncture has been proven to lessen inflammation. Acupuncture influences adenosine, which may regulate discomfort and inflammation and the body’s disease-fighting capability. Research has shown that acupuncture comes with an antidepressant-like effect because of anti-inflammatory mediators in your brain.
Increasing physical activity can also help lessen inflammation. A leisurely walk or some calming yoga might help the body detoxify and circulate blood flow better. Our lymphatic system doesn’t possess a pump, unlike our circulatory system has the heart to push blood through the body. For this reason, exercise can help jumpstart your lymphatic system. Therefore this will reduce discomfort and inflammation and mitigate the consequences of stress.
Stress
Imagine prehistoric humans 20,000 years back, peacefully consuming berries, when all of a sudden a tiger leaps out and threatens them. All of the actions in their bodies change — from digesting the berries to escaping the tiger. Their hearts beat more rapidly, their reflexes quicken to provide energy to escape. Their blood clots even more readily in case they are captured and bitten by the tiger. They display the classic fight-or-flight response. Everyday maintenance, like digestive, immune, and hormonal operations, are temporarily placed on hold.
In the modern day we live in, the fight-or-flight feeling of “escaping the tiger” can be a daily event. Our cell phones, for example, are constantly alerting us of our obligations. We can’t differentiate between small stresses like “Oh no! Another message among many unanswered messages” and life-threatening stressors. Anxiety and stress is any thought or belief which makes the human brain feel threatened. That includes extreme cases, such as being chased by a tiger, but also include work stress, financial problems, struggles, relationship issues and thoughts of resentment, and sadness.
A baseline of chronic stress is a lot more common than we realize. For most of us, it’s the new normal. Recognizing this is important, but being able to tell the difference is another thing entirely. For example, for some people, nothing stresses them out more than being told to relax. The need to be calm and stress-free will often feel like yet another task to add to one’s list of many tasks. If this describes you, acupuncture may again be a solution to consider. Here’s why: Acupuncture is proven to reduce tension and anxiety and even reverse the repercussions of stress. Research demonstrates that acupuncture helps generate oxytocin, a hormone that indicates and regulates the parasympathetic central nervous system.
Additionally, acupuncture addresses the side effects of stress, like high blood pressure, elevated blood sugar levels, and insomnia. Since it returns blood circulation from the extremities back again to the inner organs like the digestive and reproductive organs, there is often an increase in fertility and pregnancy.
Meditation, a positive outlook on life, and appreciation immediately slingshot you away from fight or flight mode and into the parasympathetic rest-and-relax mode. It transmits an alert to the brain that you will be safe and it could relax. This allows the body to heal from tension, stress, pain, and inflammation.
Pain
People who have chronic pain understand how it could utterly disrupt life. Pain and discomfort can reduce one’s enjoyment of even simple, day-to-day pleasures, and make activities like cooking or working out, challenging.
Chronic pain is oftentimes not well understood or managed by standard medicine. It’s not necessarily a manifestation of underlying damage or disease. There can often be no objective proof to clarify the origin of the pain. This can leave the patient with little to no options for treatment from doctors. Acupuncture is a well-researched healing modality that relieves all types of pain — from head to back discomfort, to fibromyalgia and peripheral neuropathy.
Research demonstrates that acupuncture works well at treating pain and discomfort for several reasons. Acupuncture releases the body’s own organic painkillers. As shown in a number of studies, inserting a needle into an acupoint sends a sign through the central nervous system and to the brain, where chemical substances like endorphins, adenosine, oxytocin, and norepinephrine are released. Many of these chemicals are 10 to 200 times stronger than morphine!
Inflammation, stress, and pain are 3 of the most common factors driving illness, the aging process, and disease. The good thing is you can control these elements to a considerable degree. These can be reduced, alleviated and actually reversed with acupuncture. By addressing all of these overall health disrupters, the body is more likely to heal, remain healthy, and thrive.
