TAKE THE STRESS OUT OF THE HOLIDAYS

The holidays are a big part of the fall and winter months. This is often a time to reconnect with family and loved ones, to attend social events, and celebrate your beliefs.

­Unfortunately, it can also be a time of extra commitments, nonstop activity, and pressure to get it all done. This can result in a lot of stress both mental and physical.

Everyone feels stressed occasionally, but when it continues for a long time or gets overwhelming it can take a real toll on your health. The immune system is particularly sensitive to the effects of stress, which means that ongoing stress can leave you vulnerable to colds, flu, and other illnesses.

The good news is that you can take charge of the stress in your life. One way to do that is to set realistic expectations for the holidays. Spend some time thinking about what’s important to you. Rather than concentrating on making everything “perfect,” try to focus on enjoying yourself whether that means spending time with family, volunteering to help others, or taking a vacation.
Another good strategy is to set boundaries. Don’t take on more than you can handle, say “no” if you have to, and ask for help if you need it.

Other ways to beat stress include:

Eating right: Remember to eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and try to keep your intake of sugary holiday treats to a minimum.

Rest: Get plenty of sleep, even if you have a lot to do, to keep your body and mind healthy and energized.

Meditation: Take a few minutes during the day to sit quietly and simply focus on your breathing.

Exercise: Try to work exercise into your schedule. It’s a natural energy and mood booster. Yoga is an excellent choice this time of year.

Talking to someone: Share your thoughts and feelings with a friend or a counselor. Expressing yourself may make you feel better and you might even find solutions to stressful situations.

Vitamins and herbs: Be sure to take a daily multivitamin, and consider taking extra vitamin C to help strengthen your immune system. Herbs such as ginseng can help you adapt to stress and valerian can soothe and calm your mind.

Additional methods include treatments such as acupuncture and massage, which can help relax both mind and body. With a little preparation and adding some new coping strategies, you can make this year’s holiday season happy, healthy and stress-free!

Where There’s Smoke

If you are like most people, you probably tend to measure your level of health by whether or not you are sick.  In other words, if you are sick or have obvious symptoms, you consider yourself unhealthy.  Once you have rid yourself of an illness and you are symptom-free, your pendulum swings back toward healthy again.  This is the model of health that most of us were raised on.  The media creates images of the family physician on house call, rushing to the ailing patient’s bedside, black bag in tow and magic elixir at the ready. It’s larger than life. It’s nostalgic. And it’s flawed.

First of all, contrary to what you may have been taught, symptoms are not meant to be used as a barometer of health.  When a roast burns in the oven, you don’t smell the smoke until after the meat has been charred.  In other words, the illness occurred first, creating damage before the symptoms even showed up.  There are billions of dollars spent every year in this country on drugs or products designed to take away our symptoms, implying that this is the equivalent of being healthy.  In actuality, this is like using a fan to divert the smoke out of the kitchen window while the roast continues to be reduced to charcoal.  Sure you might feel better, but your health remains in shambles.

Secondly, while the way you feel might change from day to day, your underlying level of health, albeit changing itself, is considerably more stable.  So it is erroneous to think that you can go from healthy to unhealthy and back again in a few days time, based simply on the symptoms expressed by your body.

Finally, it is unrealistic to describe health as black and white, sick or not sick.  According to this logic, as soon as the scales barely tip to the symptom-free side you are as healthy as you can be.  What an immense letdown life would be if reaching the pinnacle of health meant barely treading above the waters of sickness!

So what does it mean to be healthy?  Health is a state of optimum physical functioning, spiritual enlightenment, social well-being, and mental aptitude.  True health is so much more than settling for mediocrity.  It’s not about living life just barely above the doldrums, or hoping against hope that you won’t get sick or that you’ll finally feel better.

Understand that your body was designed to be healthy and in balance.  This is your natural state.  If you are struggling with your health, you have most likely, throughout the course of living, allowed your body to get out of balance. Taking medicine to treat a symptom will never create balance within the body.  Acupuncture works with the body to return it to its natural state of balance so that it can heal from the inside out.  Don’t divert the smoke, put out the fire!

The Face of Good Health

They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Did you know that the face can be the window to your health?

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), your face’s appearance can offer valuable information about issues that could be affecting your overall health. The shape of your face, the color of your complexion, and marks such as lines or lesions can all help us determine a diagnosis and treatment plan.

“The human body…

“The human body heals itself and nutrition provides the resources to accomplish the task.”

-Roger Williams Ph.D. (1971)

“One of the big…

“One of the biggest tragedies of human civilization is the precedents of chemical therapy over nutrition. It’s a substitution of artificial therapy over nature, of poisons over food, in which we are feeding people poisons trying to correct the reactions of starvation.”

– Dr. Royal Lee, January 12, 1951

“The doctor of…

“The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.”

-Thomas Edison

“The physician…

“The physician should not treat the disease but the patient who is suffering from it.”

– Maimonides

“Doctors give …

“Doctors give drugs of which they know little, into bodies, of which they know less, for
Diseases of which they know nothing at all.”

-Voltaire

“The doctor of …

“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease”

― Thomas Edison