Resolving stress

We all have to deal with some level of stress.  Stress can be beneficial and sometimes saves your life, especially if you have to run from a tiger (or other similar situation).  As your amazing body shunts the blood to vital areas so you can flee, or fight or get everything done that you have to do that day, you have extra power to move and act.  However, when we are using our reserves because we have created a pattern of unnecessary stress due to our reactions to daily life, we are literally burning up our life force faster than we can build it back up, just like burning our candle at both ends, or even throwing the candle in the fire.  These patterns can be hard to break once we have become accustom to them, it is hard to see how we could exist any other way.  The problem is that when you are using your blood in your muscles and not to digest and assimilate your food and nutrients, or running instead of restoring your muscles and tendons, your body will literally break down leading to increased injury, illness and a shorter life.

So how do we change these patterns and find balance?  Starting with simple routine can be quite profound.  There are cycles of hormones, like cortisol, going on in your body signaled by light, food, and time.  If you work with these patterns transitions into balance can seem effortless.  

The following recommendations are based on extensive research on biomollecular physiology and have been shown to have measurable effects on health:

•  Keep patterns of waking, sleeping and eating that are in line with the light of day.
  
•  Eat 3 healthy meals a day that include 7-9 servings of a variety of fruit and vegetables in a variety of colors.

•  Have breakfast between 7-9, within 2 hours of waking.  

•  Include protein and fat, and avoid all processed carbohydrates (flour, sugar, processed oatmeal, or any bread or pastries) especially in the morning.  

•  Have a snack (not refined carbs) around 11 am, and 2 pm.

•  Have dinner before 7 pm and 2 hours before bedtime.

• Practice finding peace in your heart and mind through meditation, prayer, breathing exercises or anything that works for you on a daily basis.  Coherence is a term used to describe the heart and brain connection that can be measured by proven tools such as an EmWave2® so you can evaluate whatever method you choose for effectiveness on your own or in a class.

•  Adaptogens like ginseng, rhodiola and others can help put a cap on the stress response and nutrients like L-Tyrosine, theanine and others can help support the neurotransmitters and hormones that maintain stability in the body and brain.  Always consult your practitioner to get a personalized recommendation plan prior to purchasing these types of supplements as type and timing should be individualized for optimum benefit and safety.

Dietary considerations are important, so here is some more information about the basics in relation to stress:

Every bite of food affects our entire body, it's chemistry and neurons.  Sugar, including processed carbohydrates like bread, quickly raise your glucose level.  Your body has to process that glucose to maintain balance so it quickly absorbs the energy, uses what it can and stores what it can't use now as fat, often flooding the body with insulin to help with the process.  If we eat a diet that often raises our blood sugar quickly (high glycemic index) this system can be overwhelmed leading to insulin resistance, inflammation and a vast array of diseases, not just diabetes.

Fats have gotten a bad name because most of the fats we eat have been destroyed with processing, and chemicals.  The science that originally showed fat was causing disease did not take sugar into account as a variable.  We have just begun to explore the incredible importance and complexity of this vital category of nutrition.  Good fats digest slowly helping us maintain our stable blood sugar preventing inflammation and keeping our mind, body and spirit nourished and stable.  Fats make our cell walls, our brain (which is 60% fat), and our hormones and can be slowly broken down or easily excreted if the energy is not needed, helping us to loose weight.  The idea that calories are calories is antiquated as we clearly understand now that not all food acts the same in the body and different forms of calories (even from the same food, like fruit juice vs. fruit) act completely differently in our body.  Fats like coconut oil are even being used successfully for weight loss, and being prescribed by all sorts of practitioners, allopathic and alternative to prevent and treat disease.  Omega 3's have been shown to help with heart problems, inflammation, ear infections, allergies, and more (references will be added at a later date, please contact me if you have any questions about the research to support any part of this post).

Protein is another crucial building block of our bodies, muscles, immunity and more.  It also stabilizes blood sugar and can be used to help maintain and rebuild our bodies.  Too much protein fat or carbs can cause imbalance.

Not having essential nutrients that we get from eating a wide variety of vegetables can create unnecessary stress on the body.  I recommend a basic nutrient supplement along with a healthy diet for everyone because to ensure adequate nutrient and co-factor intake.  Co factors such as zinc or magnesium are crucial for many processes in the body that have to do with maintaining balance and preventing and recovering from stress.  Different people will benefit from different 


The Need for Relevant Acupuncture Research

A paper written for Graceland University 
by Sarah Piestrup EAMP, Dipl OM, RN

Some promising research is being conducted that sheds light on a few of the mechanisms behind the effects of acupuncture. These include adenosine, endomorphin-1, beta endorphin, encephalin, and serotonin release and fMRI changes (Cabyoglu, Ergene, & Tan, 2006; Fang, et al., 2004; Goldman, et al., 2010; Hui, et al., 2005). There is even theory that shows a plausible explanation for the physical existence of acupuncture channels just under the skin and between muscles (Silberstein, 2009). However, most research looking at acupuncture for allopathic diagnoses in humans is simply irrelevant.

Because acupuncture is based on an ancient Asian conceptual framework it is difficult to transfer meaning into modern allopathic scientific understanding. Studies that look at “Traditional Chinese Medicine for treatment of fibromyalgia” are as irrelevant as a study looking at “Allopathic medicine for heart fire.” With detailed study design it can be done, and scientific studies have shown some benefits of acupuncture as compared to placebo (Cao, Liu & Lewith, 2010). However, because fibromyalgia does not have one equivalent diagnosis in Traditional East Asian Medicine (TEAM), the meaning of this word is irrelevant to what points or modalities are chosen to treat an individual patient. In other words, the individual patient would normally be diagnosed with a TEAM diagnosis that would be different for different patients with the allopathic diagnosis of fibromyalgia, and different treatments would be rendered based on that individual TEAM diagnosis. There are many ways to treat this one allopathic diagnosis based on the person’s underlying constitution, their specific symptoms and how they all relate to their specific lifestyle. Indeed, there are many different styles in the TEAM system that could be used, making conducting a controlled study very difficult.

Some levels of control, like consistency of treatment details, such as specific point use, would render the study irrelevant because they would remove the theoretical basis and diagnosis of acupuncture when used with placebo needling which is sure to stimulate a nearby point. In this type of case we are left with a study that is comparing bad acupuncture to bad acupuncture. It would be just as irrelevant as an allopathic study on an acupuncture diagnosis that has no relevance to modern terminology and no allopathic diagnostic equivalent.

Volker Scheid helped shed some light on some of the deeper aspects of this problem (such as a lack of consistency within the acupuncture community in regards to terminology and diagnoses) with his papers and research that scientifically examines the system of Chinese medicine. He illustrates how the terms used to describe patterns such as menopause are westernized in modern acupuncture schools and textbooks. These oversimplify the medicine and ignore the meaning of the time-tested system (Scheid, 2008). He also had a hand in research looking critically at this problem with a review of the literature on the treatment of menopause with TEAM (Scheid, et al., 2010). This type of refinement is crucial for TEAM to be critically analyzed with any relevance. It is useless to study it without a clear understanding of the basic diagnosis and terminology that define a medicine.

TEAM is the longest continually practiced literate medicine used consistently worldwide with the first known evidence of acupuncture on Otzi the Iceman; a 5,300 year old mummy found in Austria who had tattoos of acupuncture points used today for lumbar lordosis of which his spine showed evidence. This long history must not be lost to modern confusion because TEAM is a far too important and valuable system of medicine to loose.



References

Cabyoglu, M. T., Ergene, N. & Tan, U. (2006). The mechanism of acupuncture and clinical applications. International Journal of Neuroscience, 116, 115-125.

Cao, H., Liu J., & Lewith, G. T. (2010). Traditional Chinese Medicine for treatment of fibromyalgia: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Journal of Alternative and Complimentary Medicine, 16(4), 397-409.

Fang, J. L., Krings, T., Weidemann, J., Meister, I. G. & Thron, A. (2004). Functional MRI in healthy subjects during acupuncture: different effects of needle rotation in real and false acupoints. Neuroradiology, 46(5), 359-62.

Goldman, N., Chen, M., Fujita, T., Xu, Q., Peng, W., Liu, W., ... Nedergaard, M. (2010). Adenosine A1 receptors mediate local anti-nociceptive effects of acupuncture. Nature Neuroscience, 13, 883-888. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v13/n7/full/nn.2562.html

Hui, K. K., Liu, J., Marina, O., Napadow, V., Haselgrove, C., Kwong, K. K., Kennedy, D. N., & Makris, N. (2005). The integrated response of the human cerbro-cerebellar and limbic systems to acupuncture stimulation at ST 36 as evidenced by fMRI. Neuroimage, 27(3), 479-96.

Otzi the iceman. (2011). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi_the_Iceman

Scheid, V., Ward, T., Cha, W., Watanabe, K. & Liao, X. (2010). The treatment of menopausal symptoms by traditional East Asian medicines: Review and perspectives. Maturitas. doi: 10.1016/j.maturitas.2009.11.020

Silberstein, M. (2009). The cutaneous intrinsic visceral afferent nervous system: A new model for acupuncture analgesia. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 262(4), 637-642.