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Do you or someone you know, experience stress related symptoms including and not limited to:
- Emotional imbalance: moody, irritability, worry, nervous tension, poor memory, difficulty focusing, depression, apathy
- Fatigue, lack of motivation
- Headaches, body pain, muscle tension, and numbness
- Insomnia, restless, excessive sleep
- Indigestion, diarrhea, digestive imbalance
- Heart palpitations, shortness of breath
- Overweight, underweight
- Increased or decreased blood pressure/ dizziness
- Menstrual concerns, bladder problems, infertility
- Decreased immunity/ frequent colds
- Cold extremities, poor circulation
If you experience symptoms like those mentioned above, you may be experiencing an overloaded nervous system causing you to feel physical, mental, and emotional imbalance.
It is estimated that between 70-80% of all visits to physicians are for stress related illnesses (1).
What is stress?
Quoting Doc Childre and Howard Martin, The HeartMath Solution:
Stress is the body and mind's response to any pressure that disrupts its normal balance. It occurs when our perceptions of events don't meet our expectations and we don't manage our reaction to the disappointment. As a response, stress expresses itself as resistance, tension, strain or frustration, that throws off our physiological and psychological equilibrium, keeping us out-of-sync (2).
When we encounter an immediate demand or threat, a series of chemical reactions are triggered by the autonomic nervous system (ANS) commonly known as the “flight-or-flight” response. Public speaking, plague, divorce, global pollution, nuclear threats, job-layoffs, failing economy, being chased by a lion et cetera, all of these things can cause stress. Your heart races, your palms sweat, and you have difficulty swallowing, eating, sleeping. This stress response, however, is a natural reaction of the body, and was originally developed to increase your chance of survival.
The stress response is the human body's reaction to anything that throws off homeostasis: infection, fear, exercise, or pain. The body reacts with:
1) Alarm phase.
2) Resistance phase, during which it tries to fix the imbalance, and finally, if that fails.
3) Exhaustion phase.
During the alarm phase the brain’s hypothalamus gland detects stress, signalling the pituitary gland which signals the adrenal glands to release Epinephrine (Adrenaline).
Adrenalin affects the liver to release glucose (stored sugar) into the blood to fuel fight or flight energy. The heart rate increases, raising BP, blood vessels to the skin, intestines and kidneys constrict directing blood to the skeletal muscles (heart attacks and strokes can result). Blood is reduced to the skin and digestive system. Breathing volume increases, the body begins to sweat, and becomes less sensitive to pain. These reactions enable you to fight harder and run faster, raise your alertness and clarity of thinking to increase your chance of survival.
If stress continues and blood sugar (glucose) decreases from excessive use; stored fats and proteins are converted into blood sugar (glucose). Cortisol provides a source of extra energy to the brain and muscles. Triggering a breakdown of muscle and fat into glucose. Cortisol temporarily redirects certain immune cells and processes from the blood out into the surface tissue where they are needed in anticipation of an immediate attack or threat. This results in lower immune and inflammation functions in the blood and joints.(3)
Normally, when the threat or demand is removed, your body can revert back to the normal “unstressed” state. Your adrenaline and cortisol levels return to their normal levels. Your blood pressure lowers, you regain your appetite, your immune and inflammation responses lower back to normal, and the hyper-alertness fades allowing you to sleep easily.
In a fast paced, high demand society, our jobs and lifestyles expose us to high-levels of stress on a daily basis. If the cause of stress is not removed, overuse of the body`s defence mechanism eventually leads to disease. While excess levels of adrenaline and cortisol are wonderful for coping with an immediate attack, they can cause some serious health problems if left unchecked.
Prolonged release of adrenaline, for example, can lead to:
- Tremors
- Insomnia
- Digestive disorders
- Excess sweating leading to dehydration and neuroendocrine disorders
- Heart palpitations
- High blood pressure (3).
Prolonged release of high-levels of cortisol levels are now being shown to cause a large number of health problems and has been shown to:
- depress cartilage and bone formation
- inhibit inflammation, prevent vasodilation
- alter digestive function
- It is also linked to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, weight gain, damage to the hippocampus (part of the brain responsible for short-term memory), secondary infections resulting from a suppressed immune system, and an increased rate of miscarriage.(3)
During the exhaustion phase of the stress response: The body has run out of its reserve of body energy and immunity. Mental, physical and emotional resources suffer heavily. The body experiences "adrenal exhaustion". The blood sugar levels decrease as the adrenals become depleted, leading to decreased stress tolerance, progressive mental and physical exhaustion, illness and collapse (4).
As a result, many turn to recreational, and prescription drugs; anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication. These however, come with a host of dangerous side-effects such as: drowsiness, lack of energy, clumsiness, slow reflexes, slurred speech, confusion and disorientation, depression, dizziness, lightheadedness, hallucinations, memory loss, forgetfulness, nausea, stomach upset, blurred or double vision, mania, hostility, rage and others (5).
Lacking the common risks, unbalancing, addictive and toxic side-effects involved with conventional drugs, acupuncture works with the body’s natural self-healing abilities to efficiently restore and maintain health.
Acupuncture treats the whole person: body, emotions, mind and spirit. Acupuncture has a “self-regulatory” effect that can blunt excess cortisol levels during high stress, but also boost cortisol and nor-epinephrine levels during times of exhaustion (3).
The general sense of well-being may also be attributed to increased/ normalizing levels of mood altering neuropeptides which regulate and affect behavior, learning, sleep, attention, cognition, appetite, memory, motivation, blood pressure, heart rate and more. These neuropeptides include and are not limited to:
- Melatonin
- Serotonin
- Dopamine (3).
Acupuncture helps the body to relax: recent research suggests that acupuncture stimulates the release of oxytocin, a hormone and signaling substance that regulates the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system has been called the “rest-and-digest” or “calm-and-connect” system (6).
Generally speaking, stress speeds up aging. The good news is acupuncture, cupping therapy and complimenting therapies can change how the body reacts to stress to assist balance, reinforcing the body’s ability to restore balance to look and feel younger.
Guiding Needle Acupuncture offers pulse diagnosis; feeling different pulse positions along the radial arteries of each wrist. This method is used to assess the circulation of the body to determine the status of organs, systems, and functions, assessing if they are stressed, balanced or weakened, and by how much. Tongue diagnosis is employed to analyze mapped out areas of the tongue corresponding to different parts of the body. Examining the tongue’s color, cacks, toothmarks, swelling, distribution of coating, texture and other distinguishing features reveal the internal state of the body. Arm and palm diagnosis allows for the comprehension of tension in the body; relative to dark distended vein locations.
These diagnosis benefit anyone interested in examining and improving the functional energetic status of their own bodies, enabling the best treatment principle to bring areas of imbalance back into balance and harmony.
Thomas welcomes you to experience how acupuncture works with your body’s natural self-healing abilities to efficiently restore and maintain your robust health and vitality.
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