Fatigue: Natural Remedies for Getting Your Energy Back.

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Feeling lethargic, fuzzy headed, or having trouble concentrating?  Fatigue is a common problem that can often be the first symptom of more serious imbalances.  Western medicine has no remedy for fatigue other than stimulants like caffeine or prescription amphetamine-class drugs.  While these substances certainly do make you feel more alert and awake, they don’t fix the underlying problem of fatigue, in fact, in the long run they might make it worse.  In this article we will discuss some of the common causes of fatigue and some simple remedies that may help you feel more awake and alert.

Fatigue is so tricky to treat because it can be indicative of numerous health issues.  Thyroid disfunction, depression, viruses, adrenal insufficiency, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, lymes disease, and even food allergies can all cause fatigue.  But often fatigue is just a sign that our bodies are run-down.  If the simple remedies in this article don’t help, or if your fatigue is interfering with your work, see your doctor to rule out more serious disorders.

Sleep:  My patients hate it when I tell them to get more sleep.  But the truth is, this time of year especially, our bodies need more sleep.  It is not uncommon to need 10 or more hours of sleep in the fall or winter.  It is only very short time  in human history that we have developed the capacity to extend our productive hours into the night-time.  Our bodies haven’t evolved to keep up with modern technology.  Traditionally we relied on this time of year to re-charge our batteries and prepare for next spring and summer.  If your body is needing to sleep more, let it.  Even getting an extra-hour of rest can make a world of difference.  Don’t push your body to act the same way it does in spring and summer, let it go at a slower pace. Your body will thank you come spring.  If increased need for sleep is the only sign of fatigue you have, then don’t read any further, you just need to give your body the sleep it craves.

Exercise: In the fall and winter we need to tone down our exercise routines, but not stop them all together.  The body naturally wants to conserve energy during the winter, letting it do so is healthy, but we still need to move.  Why not switch your normal workout to yoga, tai-chi, or walking?  Let your body warm up to the point of breaking a gentle sweat, and then slow down.  Try to strike a balance between complete inactivity and pushing yourself too hard.  After the solstice in late December, you will naturally feel your body wanting to pick up the pace.

Herbal Support: Herbal support to help with fatigue often focuses on revitalizing the adrenal glands.  Herbs that have been used for centuries to give energy and vitality are Ginseng, Eluthero, Astragalus, Cordyceps and Licorice.  There are several formulations out there that can be helpful fatigue like the Chinese remedies Si Jun Zi Tang, or Bu Zhong Yi Qi Tang.  Unlike caffeine, which alleviates the symptoms of fatigue, but leaves you more tired in the end, these herbs help you feel more awake as they replenish your body.  Some of these herbs actually help you sleep better too by balancing the body’s circadian rhythms and adrenal cycle.

Acupuncture:  This gentle therapy helps to balance the body’s system by stimulating points along the skin with thin needles.  In a typical acupuncture treatment, your whole health will be assessed to determine the pattern of imbalance that is causing fatigue.  Acupuncture can work regardless of any western medical diagnosis you may have, and it is often a great adjunct therapy to western treatments.  Acupuncture, like any other physical form of therapy, works best when it is used regularly.  For a problem like fatigue, you may need a series of treatments to really solve the problem.  Your practitioner can best help you determine a time-line for your treatment.

Diet: Diet plays an important part in your overall energy.  If you suffer from fatigue it is essential that you avoid sweet, greasy and starchy foods.  These foods have a sedating affect on the body.  Also in the winter months, it is wise to consider avoiding too many raw or cold foods.   According to the theory of Chinese Medicine, the digestive process is compared to a furnace, food is the fuel and your energy is the fire that burns the fuel. Too much greasy, cold or raw food is like putting wet wood on a fire, it’s harder to burn and it doesn’t burn clean, as a result, your  body has to work harder and this drains you of energy.  Try switching to lighter meals consisting of whole grains, steamed or sauteed veggies, fish, chicken or grass-fed red meats, and good fats like olive oil, fish oil and flax oil.

Food Allergies:  You may want to talk to your health practitioner about food allergies if your fatigue is also accompanied by indigestion, gas, or chronic diarrhea.  Your naturopath or acupuncturist can help guide you through an elimination diet to see if your symptoms are caused by food.  This is a lengthy and often difficult process, so try the remedies listed above first, before you suspect a food allergy, and it is best to work with a professional during an elimination diet.

Most of the time, fatigue will remedy itself if you take proper care of your body.   If these simple remedies don’t alleviate the fatigue, please think about seeing your doctor, or a natural-health practitioner, to rule out more serious disorders.

[Via http://allisoncarr.wordpress.com]

The pulse could be affected by medicationes, by Dr.Arthur Fan

The Pulse diagosis is one of main methods in Chinese Medicine. Traditionally, the evaluation impression could be reached after four style of disgnostic methods. So, patient’s pulse is important in this pressecc.

Traditionally, doctor consider the pulse reflect patient’s constitution and patient’s illness manifestation. However, it may be affected by many other condition, such as exercise,medications.

The medications affect patient’s pulse very much, for example, if patient uses Progesterone, the pulse is slipery and like already get pregnanted.

The beta-blocker could decrease the pulse rate and force, so the pulse may be weak and slower than should be; The anti-hypertension drugs also affect patient pulse depending on specific style of action.

Some medications may be in-directly affect the pulse. For example, some antibiotics may hurt patient’s stomach, causing gastritis and pain, which may cause patient has a string pulse.

Author Symposium: ALL ABOUT CHI

An acupuncturist, a Reiki teacher, and two artists who work with chi and creativity and chi gung will present their healing arts on Saturday, Nov. 21 from 2-4 p.m. at Berkeley Public Central Library in downtown Berkeley. This is the second author panel in the free series Get Well! Alternative Practitioners Talk With You About Healing, sponsored by North Atlantic Books and Berkeley Public Library.

Moderator for the Nov. symposium is Lindy Hough, Co-Founder and Publisher of North Atlantic Books in Berkeley.
The panelists:
- Kaleo and Elise Ching, Chi and Chi Gung;
Authors of Chi and Creativity: Vital Energy and Your Inner Artist
- Don Beckett, Reiki healer;
Author of Reiki–The True Story: An Exploration of Usui Reiki
- Robert Johns, Acupuncturist;
Author of The Art of Acupuncture Techniques

Authors will describe their practices and theoretical framework and read from their books. Audience questions will be followed by a book signing.

Kaleo and Elise Ching live and practice in El Cerrito, Robert Johns practices in Berkeley, and Reiki teacher Don Beckett is from Mesa, Arizona.

“We’re interested in helping people understand how these modalities work and how effective they are. Hearing how our authors, who are also practitioners, treat different diseases helps people see whether a given modality might be helpful with their own troublesome conditions or something a loved one is struggling with.” Most people who don’t use alternative medicine find it hard to distinguish how these different systems work. “The goal of the November panel is to have the audience come away with a clearer idea of how chi energy works in Reiki, acupuncture, chi gung and creative work,” Hough said.

“The Berkeley Public Library is excited to be working in partnership with North Atlantic Books to better serve the interest in mind/body/spirit their readers are seeking,” said Douglas Smith, Deputy Director of the Library. “We’re pleased to be expanding our programming, outreach, and collections in these important directions.”

ALL ABOUT CHI
Get Well! Alternative Practitioners Answer Your Questions About Healing series
Saturday, November 21, 2009
2pm-4pm
Berkeley Public Central Library
3rd Floor Community Meeting Room
2090 Kittredge Street
Berkeley, CA 94704

Wheelchair accessible. To request a sign language interpreter, real-time captioning, materials in large print or Braille, or other accommodations for this event, please call (510) 981-6107 (voice) or (510) 548-1240 (TTY); at least five working days will ensure availability. Please refrain from wearing scented products to public programs.

The waiting game

Waiting for January for our first insemination is proving to be difficult.  I feel like I need to do something to get my body ready and hopefully improve my chances to conceive.  A couple of weeks ago I had blood tests done and it was hard to wait for the results to come back.  Everything came back normal including my cholesterol, but my thyroid is on the high end of normal.  My doctor thought about putting me on medication, but I really don’t like that idea.  I want my body to regulate itself without putting unnatural things into it.  So I decided to do acupuncture as a way to treat the thyroid and help ready my body for pregnancy.

Yesterday was my firs appointment with the acupuncturist.  I’m really fortunate to have insurance that values alternative medicine.  My appointments only cost me $10 and the clinic is within walking distance, although it’s raining a lot so I don’t see me doing that at the moment.  I went into the clinic, filled out some paperwork, and was offered an assortment of teas and water while I wait.  The acupuncturist, who I was scheduled with, walked into the clinic wearing brown knee high boots, red skirt, dark orange sleeveless top, and long black dreadlocks.  She led me into another room with a wicker chair and a massage table.  The walls were painted in a light brown color with the tan ceiling.  We talked for a half hour about my long cycles, the thyroid, and hormones.  She looked at my tongue a few times and commented on how thick it was.  I felt very comfortable with her and remember thinking how happy I was that I had chosen this place to do treatment.

After she inserted the needles, turned on some Chinese ting-dong music, and left the room, I thought about my dad.  A little over two years ago, I had my dad do acupuncture to fight the fatigue and pain he was feeling.  The A. doctor kept saying that there was something wrong with his liver, but we didn’t really pay that much attention since that was not were the pain was.  We went to my dad’s lung specialist (he had lung cancer a year or two before, which led to a small part of his lung taken out, but no chemo) because the pain wasn’t getting any better.  I was just about to start grad school, finishing up my B.S degrees (yes, 2 of them) when we learned that he had several tumors throughout the body, including the liver.  Lying on that table with the needles sticking in me brought me back to what he must have been going through when he was having acupuncture.  If I could have traded places with him I would have, to take all the cancer out of his body and place it in me.  It was hard to get married without him physically being there, but I know he was there in spirit.  I have a whole new life that he’s not here for.  He never met my wife and she feels sad for that.  She says that she thinks about him every now and then.

Anyway, the acupuncture was great and I look forward to doing it again next week.  I’m still trying to remember to take the prenatal vitamins and I have modified my diet to be healthier.  Like I might have already said, we don’t eat any red meat, no fast food (which was hard for me to break that habit), and we even make our own bread thanks to my sister-in-law for that wedding present!  I’m committed to exercising 3 days a week and I’ll build up to more as time goes on.  I’ve been told not to go on a diet because that could mess up the hormone levels and my cycles.  I’m definitely overweight with a high BMI, but my doctor assured me that just losing 10 pounds by January would help increase my chances, though it’s not necessary. Since I have seen her, I have lost almost 5 pounds with doing nothing more that eating healthy and moving a bit more.

Learning through experience at the Teaching Clinic

Anna Bernard recently joined LCTA as Teaching Clinic Practice Manager.  Here she tells us a bit about herself and explains how the clinic works.

Anna tells us what happens in the LCTA Teaching Clinic

 

I’ve been a qualified acupuncturist for seven years.  I ran the Neal’s Yard therapy rooms five years ago and then left to focus on my own practice.  I worked with Zita West for a year and set up a vocal clinic specialising in singing and presenting for voiceovers which is the other thing that I do to earn a living.  Coming back into such a creative college environment is great; the student environment is fantastic, it’s the best environment to learn in.

In my role as Teaching Clinic Practice Manager I co-ordinate all of the student clinics across acupuncture, herbs and tui na.  I look after both the day-to-day and the strategic management of the clinic, looking at the patient experience and working out how we can give our students the best possible teaching.  This includes ensuring that we attract enough patients for our students to learn from, so I am looking at ways of branching out into the community.

The ideal patient is probably a difficult one: whether it’s a difficult case or just a difficult personality; for instance, a patient who turns up late, or one who doesn’t turn up at all, although it is nice to have a patient who they treat weekly for 12 weeks and see them get better – as this gives the students confidence.  But whilst they are a student it’s also good to have a difficult case so that they can experience as much as possible before they graduate and set up on their own.

The final year students have four clinic blocks lasting eight weeks each and the number of patients is built up slowly but surely so that in the first block they will treat one to two patients per week and by the fourth block, they will have a fairly solid clinic day.  We make sure that they have enough patients to be continually learning.

Part of the clinic day is a two-hour discussion as a group with the clinic supervisor.  There is a set amount that has to be taught in the clinic for each block and the discussion time is also used to discuss stuff that comes up with patients.  So if a student has an interesting case, they have the opportunity to discuss how best to deal with it and all the students have a chance to learn from it through discussion.

The Teaching Clinic gives the students a really valuable insight into what it is like to run a practice.  They get to experience the good and the bad days, the easy and the difficult patients and they learn how to deal with their personal issues – it’s a real journey.

This group of third years is incredible, they have been so good and all the supervisors are really pleased with their progress in this first clinic block.   They work fast and are focused, they’re a very strong group.  This is really exciting for me and you can really feel it in the clinic as well – people are coming back and booking in all the time.  Part of the requirement of the clinical year is that students see and retain a certain number of patients, so this cohort have got off to a great start.

There are clinics available every day apart from Wednesdays and if you don’t mind being observed, it’s a fantastic way to get treated.

For more information about the LCTA Teaching Clinic see the news and information section of the blog.

Headaches are a Pain in the...

Pain

There Are Different Kinds of Headaches

What causes them?
Contrary to some of my colleges some headaches are treated better by other means than Chiropractic.  Acupuncture and yes even medicine work.  Trust me when you have been driven to your knees and crippled by a headache you will try anything.
Headaches are most commonly caused by

• Tension in the muscles
• Changes by vascular constriction
• Sinus congestion

Chiropractic seems to work best in the types of headaches that are based around muscle tension and changes to vascular flow. Sinus headaches have also had success, but they are likely to have a more complicated cause.
There are three main types of headaches typically found in a chiropractic office:

• -Migraine headaches
• -Tension headaches
• -Cervicogenic headaches

The last type of headache mentioned sounds a bit scary, but it just simply means a headache that is caused by referred pain that originates within the bone, muscles, or nerves of the neck.
Tension Headaches
If we become stressed, scared, or angry, your body will respond with increased muscle tension in the head, neck, and shoulders. This reaction is called the fight or flight response, and it is the normal response to stress. If we are stressed often (as most of us are) and we can neither run or fight, the muscle tension becomes a habit.
This can lead to some imbalances in the way we hold our body, which in turn leads to more muscle tension and pain. Chiropractic treatment can relax these muscles and realign the spine’s structure to put and end to the vicious cycle of pain. Those seeking chiropractic care for tension headaches can often see a marked improvement in just a few treatments as the nerves become less irritated and the muscles begin to relax.
Migraine Headaches
Migraines are brought about by changes in vascular flow, triggered by a variety of factors such as different smells, foods, weather, hormonal changes, and stress. These often very painful headaches do not always start off as pain. They can begin with nausea or the person may experience a halo effect called a visual aura.
Recent studies have shown chiropractic treatment may play a significant role in reducing the number of migraines a person has. By careful manipulation of the neck and spine, chiropractic adjustments may be able to reduce nerve irritation in the spine, thus preventing radiating or referred pain, and improve vascular flow.
Treatment Types
Chiropractic care can best help:  Tension, and Cervicogenic Headaches.  It centers around manipulation of the spine and neck to improve blood flow and posture. To reduce the headaches, the chiropractor will perform spinal adjustments using his hands, but may also include massage, trigger point therapy, or other types of complementary treatments to address the problem. The doctor of chiropractic will probably also include some home care recommendations such as stretching exercises and posture education to help keep things balanced between visits.
Acupuncture care can best help:  Migraines, Vascular headaches.  Acupuncture centers on energy and the balance of flow.  It sounds a bit hooky to the lay person, but its been around for over 2000 years and people use it every day to alleviate their headaches.

Acupuncture Beneficial for Many Age-related Illnesses

Acupuncture originated in China more than 5,000 years ago and continues to be a part of Traditional Chinese Medicine.  The acupuncture points provide gateways to influence, redirect, increase, or decrease the body’s vital substances, qi (energy) & blood, to help correct many of the body’s imbalances.

You are probably thinking “ouch” but actually, the needles used for acupuncture are very thin and delicate.  You will not even feel most of them go in if you have a good practitioner.  And once the needles are in, you still won’t feel them except for feeliing maybe extra pressure in that area for a moment.  On one of my visits for acupuncture, I started to get up, thinking all the needles were out.  The ones I could see were gone but there was still one in my forehead, which I didn’t realize was still there.  It is a very relaxing experience and not at all painful.

I saw a presentation on senior care in China recently and it was noted that most of their nursing homes offer acupuncture treatments for everything from stroke to memory loss to depression.  It is routinely provided as part of the senior’s daily activities- grab breakfast and then show up for an acupuncture treatment.

Acupuncture is beginning to be covered by more health insurance plans in the U.S. and offered in integrative medicine programs at hospitals and clinics.  In addition, more acupuncture research studies are being done to provide us westerners with the proof we seem to need before giving something new a try.  And much of this research is studying the benefits of acupuncture for age-related illnesses.  If it benefits the elderly in other countries, it can benefit the elderly in our country.

One national study showed half of 78 stroke patients receiving standard rehabilitative care, who also received acupuncture treatment recovered faster and to a greater extent, spending 88 days in a hospital or nursing home compared to 161 days for those without acupuncture treatment.  And guess what?  This saves dollars for insurance companies which is another reason acupuncture research is taking place and the reason there is a movement to incorporate it into health insurance plans.

I have found acupuncture to work amazingly well and to be the most cost-effective treatment for ailments.  I fell on my elbow a couple years ago and several months later still had a bump on my elbow along with shooting pain, at times, when my elbow hit something just wrong.  One acupuncture treatment later and the bump disappeared, along with the pain.  All for just $35 at my local college of oriental medicine.

As a caregiver, you may want to find out what acupuncture offerings are available in your area and if there are discounted pricing for seniors – the clinic near me does offer senior discounts.

Source:

http://caregiverlist.com/blog/julie/archive/2009/01/09/acupuncture.aspx