I (Heart) the Heart

February is the American Heart Association's Heart Health Awareness Month, emphasizing the dangers of heart disease and the importance of heart health. Heart disease includes conditions affecting the heart, such as coronary heart disease, heart attacks, congestive heart failure, and congenital heart disease. Despite dramatic medical advances over the past fifty years, heart disease remains a leading cause of death globally and the number one cause of death in the United States. By integrating acupuncture and Oriental medicine into your heart healthy lifestyle, you can dramatically reduce your risk of heart disease.


Taking small steps to improve your health can reduce your risk for heart disease by as much as eighty percent. Steps to prevention include managing high blood pressure, quitting smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, reducing stress and improved sleep - all of which can be helped with acupuncture.

1. Manage High Blood Pressure
High blood pressure makes the heart work harder, increasing its oxygen demands and contributing to angina. This excessive pressure can lead to an enlarged heart (cardiomegaly), as well as damage to blood vessels in the kidneys and brain. It increases the risk of heart attacks, stroke and kidney disease.

Acupuncture has been found to be particularly helpful in lowering blood pressure. By applying acupuncture needles at specific sites along the wrist, inside the forearm or in the leg, researchers at the Susan Samueli Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, Irvine, were able to stimulate the release of opioids, which decreases the heart's activity and thus its need for oxygen. This, in turn, lowers blood pressure.
2. Quit Smoking
Most people associate cigarette smoking with breathing problems and lung cancer. But did you know that smoking is also a major cause of coronary artery disease? In fact, about twenty percent of all deaths from heart disease are directly related to cigarette smoking.

Acupuncture has shown to be an effective treatment for smoking. Acupuncture treatments for smoking cessation focus on jitters, cravings, irritability, and restlessness; symptoms that people commonly complain about when they quit. It also aids in relaxation and detoxification.

3. Maintain a Healthy Weight
Obesity is associated with diabetes, high blood pressure and coronary artery disease, all of which increase the risk of developing heart disease, but studies have shown that excess body weight itself (and not just the associated medical conditions) can also lead to heart failure. Even if you are entirely healthy otherwise, being overweight still places you at a greater risk of developing heart failure.
Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine are an excellent adjunctive tool when it comes to losing weight. They can help to energize the body, maximize the absorption of nutrients, regulate elimination, control overeating, suppress the appetite, and reduce anxiety.

4. Reduce Stress
Stress is a normal part of life. But if left unmanaged, stress can lead to emotional, psychological, and even physical problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, chest pains, or irregular heart beats. Medical researchers aren't sure exactly how stress increases the risk of heart disease. Stress itself might be a risk factor, or it could be that high levels of stress make other risk factors worse. For example, if you are under stress, your blood pressure goes up, you may overeat, you may exercise less, and you may be more likely to smoke.

Numerous studies have demonstrated the substantial benefits of acupuncture in the treatment of stress, anxiety and mental health. In addition to acupuncture, Oriental medicine offers a whole gamut of tools and techniques that can be integrated into your life to keep stress in check. These tools include Tui Na, Qi Gong exercises, herbal medicine, dietary therapy, meditations and acupressure that you can administer at home.

5. Improve Sleep
Poor sleep has been linked with high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, heart failure, heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, and obesity. Researchers have shown that getting at least eight hours of sleep is needed for good heart health and getting less than eight hours of sleep can put you at a greater risk for developing heart disease.
Acupuncture has shown great success treating a wide array of sleep problems without any of the side effects of prescription or over-the-counter sleep aids. The acupuncture treatments for problems sleeping focus on the root disharmony within the body that is causing the insomnia. Therefore, those who use acupuncture for insomnia achieve not only better sleep, but also an overall improvement of physical and mental health.

Come in for a consultation during Heart Health Awareness Month to see how acupuncture and Oriental medicine can assist you with your heart health and help you to live a longer, healthy life.   Reprinted from our February Newsletter here.

As Above, So below…

This week my back fell apart, and for many of my patients their bodies fell apart (inexplicably for most).  And for hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti on Tuesday night, their entire world fell apart. 

I have, after having literally thousands of patient visits, become used to the way our bodies mirror the changes taking place on the planet, and the way many of my clients are tuned in to SOMETHING happening even before it does.  For many over the last few weeks, sleep has been poor, feelings of impatient and anxiety “climbing the walls” and the desire to hunker down at home have been common.  The spine  and digestion seem to be the big winners in our physical radar for something shifting massively on the planet over the last week. 

While separated by thousands of miles we are not separated from the people in Haiti.  Even if you don’t subscribe to the quantum physics piece that we are all connected at the atomic and energetic levels, we still connected as members of the human family.  So an entire country in ruins, the loss and grief of thousands of souls transitioning affects our collective family even if you don’t believe in energy of any kind. 

Hold them in your thoughts, keep sending positive energy and if you can send some money.  Thoughts are real, they have energy and intent, and if one soul is soothed by you holding them with love and good will then that will service be indeed.  Often we will not know the effects that our prayers or good thoughts have in the collective but I believe in that power nevertheless.

As the ground stops shaking and the recovery begins, our bodies will again find their center, although true north will be forever changed by what has transpired this week.  Certain eastern traditions teach us that when this many souls agree to transition together, a tremendous space in opened for all of humanity, for a paradigm shift in the heart of some kind.  I have seent his now with 9/11, Katrina, the tsunami.  We won’t know the nature of that shift for some time – a massive letting go.  Watch your dreams – are you dreaming at night of old friends, family, lovers, boyfriends, girlfriends?  Any unfinished business being wrapped up?  This is the energetic equivalent of a warm reboot and your relationship to everything that has happened in the past, your energetic and emotional relationship to all things will be shifted on some level.  You may just feel a sense of release or letting go, a sense of peace for that friend or your ex for whom there was some left over stuff. This may be followed by pain and discomfort in the thoracic spine (over the heart region), crying unexpectedly or feeling moved to tears, or pain in the low back and hips (root chakra or family - how we ground into the earth has moved).

Let us be grateful for the souls in Haiti who agreed to hold this space for us to continue our growth process, and perhaps now a measure of peace and healing can finally come to this tiny nation who has continued to survive while in the midst of tremendous corruption and so little support. 

Resolutions Schmesolutions (1/06/2010)

See if you can pronounce that 5 times fast.

Now well into the second week of the new year and not having written a word for well over a month may not be a good start to the new year.  Wanting to explore the idea of new years resolutions about health and how to make them palatable.  Did you know that for 7/10 people include weight loss and exercise and other health related items as part of their new years resolutions?  I am certainly no exception (although I did have a couple of golden years right before I went into private practice where I sort of gave up the ghost on that). 

But what to do when you don’t like veggies, are gluten free and (this one generously donated by the mother of one of my Mexican friends) thus will never enjoy connubial bliss due to my lack in the culinary area, particularly my inability to make (or eat for that matter) tortillas or tamales. 

I have always included health-related things as part of my new years resolutions, usually something like I will exercise more, take more yoga classes, lose the last 8 pounds of the 35 I put on my first couple years of practice, and the piece de resistance, run a half marathon (my secret desire to no longer look like a shar-pei in a bikini).  Forget about the fact that running is torture.  Plain and simple, work.  Not fun. No play,  No way.  (Not like tennis which has all sorts of opportunities for bullet-like profanity and hitting things with a resounding smack).

And what about my resolution to actually learn how to cook?  Smitten as I’m sure thousands are by Julie/Julia, and infatuated with the idea of actually figuring out how to make Beef Bourguignon and that in this was might secure lasting happiness of the culinary kind, how does 4 pounds of butter weekly and TONS of cow coincide with my health?  And let’s not forget the fact that as a reformed vegetarian, I never quite got the meat thing down. I am 0/5 with meat dishes for my friends, now relegated to salads and appetizers like cream cheese stuffed in salami or whatever will sit on a Ritz.   Add to that a near obsession for researching new trends in nutrition and Joel Fuhrman’s humorless assertion that we should all be strict vegans, with not even olive oil to keep us company (Eat to Live). [Brrr, it's cold in that oil-free world].

Well, I began my journey into the notion of cooking SOMETHING by going to the bookstore and actually looking at Julia Child’s book, and I am happy to say that it looks like my 1963 Edition of Stryer (Biochem) and pretty much reads like my Pchem text.  And who Knew her Beef Bourguignon used BACON (she lost me right there).   Happily, this puts to rest my brief infatuation of cooking a la Julia, (and hosting Texas hold em nights with lovely French food).  My thighs are thanking me already and I truly believe this was the intervention of a higher power.  (Now if only I can break up with cheese).

Strangely enough though, it has brought me back into the kitchen, and I realize belatedly that while my culinary skills are lacking  in the animal department, I have a certain talent for vegetables.  You see (and I am outing myself to patients here) I really don’t like them very much.  (I know – shock and betrayal)   I am a meat and potatoes girl at heart (sadly having given up any wheat laced pasta long ago).  But since one of my resolutions is to move to a more plant based diet, which includes wholesome foods that I actually COOK (note to readers:  my specialty to date is salad.  I KNOW, but really great salads).  And I am discovering that I have a certain talent for disguising vegetables so that they don’t really seem so much like vegetables (we can thank my travels in Italy– and no I do not mean they are covered in red tomato sauce ala the Cowboy curry my ex used to make (don’t ask). 

So how do we make our new year's resolutions palatable?  Regardless of our resolutions, they have to be pleasurable on some level, tasty, playful, a joy, or we just won’t do them.  So whether yours is to spend 1-2 days a week walking more, or not eating junk food, or visiting your acupuncturist more (wink),  or not getting angry over things you cannot control (#5 on my list),  they need to be realistic, kind (to ourselves and others – I mean it just would not do to abandon the family nightly to hang with the personal trainer) and fun.  We spend enough time “should-ing” ourselves as it is. 

So tonight, I made a large pot of broccoli soup, and sautéed a bunch of veggies in lemon and cilantro with parmesan to have over greens I grew in my community garden.  It was good day,  and already that’s better than anything I did last year in the kitchen.   (OK if you think about it I have no where to go but up].  Maybe that’s my theme – for most of us, pick on or two small things – walk 10 minutes a day, go to bed 30 minutes earlier, get body work once a month.  These are doable, and will build on themselves.

And hopefully by the end of the year we will be able to button out trousers while standing up...

There are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio....

Welcome back to another edition of AcuNut's Health Watch.

In the midst of the ever-present debate about the national health care system, I felt the need to explore the idea of health and healing as a commodity in our society, the notion that health and healing can be packaged and bought.   The baby boomers are beginning to hit their "senior" birthdays, and have been raised in a culture where technology and the advances in medicine seemingly had no limits, particularly with the miracles of vaccines and antibiotics.  Add to that the introduction of the HMO and the idea of a $10 copay and we have a fundamental shift with regards to personal responsibility, and a relinqushing of personal power over to HMOs.   In bygone days, when health care was less ubiquitous and not readily paid for (or you had a high deductible), I think more emphasis as placed on prevention - stay home when you are sick, eat your vegetables, have 2 prunes a day, the daily constitutional, and my personal favorite - nap time (so civilized).  In addition people had to save for their annual deductibles, and this could be a few thousand dollars annually.  There was, on some level, an understanding that health care was part of the family budget.

The fundamental health crises in our country may be less about the ability for us to save lives or even prevent disease then it is about personal responsibility, about being proactive with your health and not necessarily accepting the MD's word as final or the only option.   Technology has a price, not only in $$ but in quality of life. The basics of preventive medicine have been sacrificed to feed the beast of technology because insurance companies cannot afford to pay doctors for the time it takes to council patients. It is quicker to just give them the little purple pill and move on. And the pharmaceutical companies will make far more $$ from you as a diabetic over 25 years than if you use diet and exercises.  There is no financial incentive for wellness as a culture at present in the US.

As an ancillary provider (alternative to conventional medicine such as chiro, acupuncture, naturopathic, massage, etc.) many times I see patients only after they have had their condition for months or years, have tried multiple trips to the doctor, and been put on a potent mix of medications.  If there was one message I could impart to the general public, it would be to seek help sooner, that they have the means to live a pain-free or more energetic life, the downside being that they may have to pay for some of it outside of their conventional medicine. 

As to the arguments that these modalities have not been "scientifically proven"  I would encourage people to become their own scientists with regards to their bodies.  The advantage of working with a licensed and credentialed provider of alternative medicine is that you will experience far fewer side effects or  permanent injury than with many conventional therapies, particularly drugs.  (It may come as a shock to many people that in the Physician's Desk reference, that for over half the meds, they don't understand the mechanism of action, which is med speak for they don't know how the drugs work in the body.  This may also explain why they cannot explain the side affects associated with the drugs).

In general, with a provider with whom you have a poor fit, or with whom you have a bad exeprience you will just not get better rather than experience lasting harm.  I have seen quite a few lame ducks in my own journey to wellness.  Although it seemed like wasted money at the time,  my experience has been that with persistence I eventually am lead to a great provider, one with whom I have a good rapport.  Trial and error is part of the scientific process.  

The Journey of a thousand miles....
begins with one step.   I had a teacher who likened the search for the right provider to a pilgrimage of sorts - a refining process that happens when we become willing to search for our recovery and perhaps to go to any lengths to get better.  She likened it to a sword being tempered by fire, sharpened, the blade made perfect.  Furthermore, the journey to health is seldom simple because we are often unclear in our intentions.  While we may want this or that to be "fixed,"  sometimes we are not ready to work our side of the street, to take the steps to achieve health.   The journey, the longing for recovery is sharpened by the suffering,  and we find our ego being whittled away in the process, creating an energetic opening through which grace can pass.  For me, the search created willingness to do what was asked, perhaps to abstain from certain foods, to exercise more, meditate, to take foul tasting herbs.     

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." (Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167).

Perhaps it was my background as a research scientist that caused me to look outside the box when confronted with my own health care crises back in the 80s, where the answers I heard from my primary care didn't work for me and neither did the idea of taking Vicodin for the rest of my life or walking with a cane.  It took several years to find a combo of modalities that worked and then several years of treatment before things were a lot better.  Have I been cured?  Gosh no, I manage the structural issues by regular bodywork and I have to budget accordingly, because like many of you, my insurance does not cover ANY of my ancillary services. 

Given that I have spent the better part of the down-payment on a house on my health in the last decade, you may want to ask if it was worth the investment...  Absolutely.  And now when there are periodic flare-ups - and trust me, at least once a year I manage to mangle myself pretty badly to where I am laid up again and I have to get a lot more bodywork ($$), at least now I know how and what to do.  That may be the biggest difference with my clients is that I know with certainty that within a few months things will be better.  It is an empowering thing to feel like I have a choice, that I am not locked into the HMO having the last word, that I can make my own choices with regards to my health care as an educated consumer. 

Consider that no treatment or practitioner can fix you - all physicians, no matter what style of medicine they practice, merely help make it possible for your body to heal.  With the health care consuming a great deal of the airwaves at present, it might be a helpful to consider what aspects of our health we would like to improve in 2010 and what we are able and willing to pay for that care. 

Contact me directly at jmoffitt@acunut.com.

Digestive Issues Galore

Welcome back to Health Watch, San Diego Health News you can use.

I recently made some revisions to my marketing campaigns for my website and decided to include some material specific to Digestive issues since we have had such a great success treating chronic digestive issues at the clinic.   After only 5 days, there have been over 20,000 inquiries just in San Diego County, and they estimate traffic to be over a million over a year.  Wow, that is a lot of upset tummies and a whole lot of meds.  I have decided to answer the most recent questions via blog to cut down on correspondence time.

What types of conditions do I see regularly in the clinic which respond to acupuncture and oriental medicine?
Almost every kind of digestive problem responds, and the wonderful thing about Integrative Medicine is that we actually work toward the cure as opposed to managing or suppressing symptoms.  Western meds will frequently use pharmaceutical medication to suppress a symptom which to us, is one part of an entire pattern of disharmony.  Proton pump inhibitors cause permanent damage to the lining of the stomach and their use should be avoided where possible.

Do you treat acid reflux?

• Yes, and I have never yet seen a case that is due to excess stomach acid.  In Chinese Medicine, there are literally dozens of reasons why a patient has reflux symptoms, such as food allergies, weak stomach acid, or my personal favorite (and most often misdiagnosed) which is chronic biliary disease, aka gallbladder problems.  Sometimes a patient will have a vertebrae out of alignment, which we can tell during the back treatment.  For this, I will refer out to a chiropractor to have the vertebra adjusted, and then we finish up with a few treatments after to help them hold the adjustment.  Sometimes patients are actually eating foods which trigger their symptoms or they need herbal medicine to help strengthen their digestion.

What about Constipation/Diarrhea/ Abdominal pain? 

• Again, there are many causes of either, and sometimes the treatment is very straightforward.  I have several cases of sub-clinical celiac patients (often diagnosed as IBS or Crohn's) - this is a slowly growing diagnosis in gastroenterology and can be diagnosed with a simple blood test, although the dietary cheanges will confirm it in about 4 days.  Dietary changes, along with acupuncture and herbs, and many patients are great in about 6 weeks.  Medications such as statin drugs or BP medication can also cause these symptoms and cannot be ruled out.  OB-GYN issues are common in women, post partum or even beyond and many times we need to clear up those issues.  Simple nutritional issues are common too such as Magnesium deficiency, which is much more common in women.

Stay tuned as we explore this further.

Qi Cultivation (3/3): Pray/Play

Qi Cultivation (Tai Qi, qi gong, yoga, martial arts), Play/Pray, Exercise
 I include the all of the above as Qi cultivation because in different ways they all help balance the cellular effects from certain physical and emotional states, and to help maintain the patency or ‘free-flowing’ nature of qi. Some of you who read my article on bodywork now understand that the nature of qi is like a river, and it needs to flow freely and evenly. Chronic pain and disease are signs that the qi has gotten diminished or stuck in some way. This category includes ways to help ensure that qi moves freely and smoothly, and also helps bring a level of self awareness into your body to help prevent recurrences in the future.

What types of qi cultivation you choose depend on your personality and taste, and I don’t find one to be more beneficial than the other. It should be something in which you find immediate gratification (or you won’t continue doing it). I have experimented with almost everything – sadly I lack the temperament to do tai ji – gave it my best shot for over a year – do not have the patience for it. But found immediate results when I started doing yoga for my back. So to each his own. In general I find there is a need for something with movement and stretching (frees up the qi in the large muscle groups and maintains flexibility and strength) and something which allows for quiet time and contemplation (relieves stress and allows the body to mentally and physically recharge the batteries. Sometime they can be combined like long solitary walks on the beach, so again, search out ones that are pleasing.

In addition to the physical benefits of clearing out stress, improving flexibility, freeing up stuck qi from the large muscle groups, the process of qi cultivation for me personally has brought with it a greater level of awareness of how I hold myself during the day, where my qi gets stuck, how my emotions affect me physically. This is very liberating because I am much less at the mercy of them – I am more aware that when I haven’t taken the time to stretch or have quiet time for inner contemplation, I am a little too tightly wrapped, both mentally and physically. And I have learned over time, that when this gets really out of balance, then I get grumpy, my back goes out, and the cycle begins again. The great news is that I have the practices to go back to, and within a fairly short period of time, the qi is flowing, and my body and mind are in better shape.

I also find that ‘play’ is one of the most important aspects of self-care, and one that seems to get left behind after childhood. Dogs and kids remember already know this. Play can be anything, but it should be something that genuinely is joyful, makes you glad to be alive, and renews the heart. Dinner parties with friends, tennis, golf, singing, salsa dancing, church choir. It doesn’t matter what. 

  Let’s be honest, martyrs are boring – remembering to play makes us more enjoyable to be around, and it provides a reserve of good feelings so that on bad days I am less likely to go home and kick the dog or yell at my spouse.  (All Work and No Play... remember the Shining? Not good).  It gives us a cushion – which again is partly biochemical! If we go back to the idea of cellular chemistry, play has a powerful affect chemically on the body in terms of the pleasure receptors in the brain, and stimulates the immune system. From the TCM perspective, it helps to stimulate the heart energetic (joy), and relieves mental and physical stagnation. Seriousness of mind leads to seriousness (or stuck- ness) of the body, and we now know what happens now when the qi gets stuck.

In the oriental classic, The Great Dao (6) (a great read by the way), great attention is given to qi cultivation and self- care – meaning right diet, right action, right thought, bodywork like tui na, etc. Acupuncture was considered crude and invasive – it was only used when the other aspects had been neglected. For the practitioner who was skilled in therapeutic massage and offering wise counsel in terms of diet, exercise, and mindfulness, there was no need to resort to something as crude as needles…. While I am not yet ready to give up my weekly acupuncture visits, this brought me to a renewed respect for all the elements of self-care, including qi cultivation. Truth be told, there are not enough hours in the day for me to do everything I need to to maintain myself so that I don’t need to rely on bodywork to help balance the equation. I would rather go horseback riding….

Contact me directly at jmoffitt@acunut.com.

1. Pert CB. Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine. New York, N.Y.: Touchstone, 1997, p. 9.
2. Psychoneuroimmunology: Body-spirit-mind medicine (http://www.journeyofhearts.org/jofh/transition/pni_p)
3. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company: 2000. Available at: http://www.bartleby.com/61/59/P0635950.html.
4. Maier SF, Watkins LR, Fleshner M. Psychoneuroimmunology: The Interface between Behavior, Brain and Immunity. American Psychologist. 1994;49;1004-17.
5. http://www.what-is-cancer.com/index.html
6. The Great Dao Doctrine was founded by Liu Deren, who declared that an old man had taught him the mysterious Dao in the second Huangtong year (AD 1142) of the Jin dynasty (1115-1234), leading to the birth of the Great Dao Doctrine. (http://www.eng.taoism.org.hk/general-daoism/major-daoist-sects/pg1-3-18.asp)


© Copyright 2003 - 2009 Jennifer Moffitt, Healing Arts Center Press, and AcuNut.com. All rights reserved.

Qi Cultivation (2/3): The New Paradigm of Body and Mind

Ok so in our last letter I mentioned PNI - becasue the medical effects of the mind and emotions are much deeper than just stress, or depression. In order to illustrate this I am going to introduce a fairly new field of medicine:  
Psychoneuro-immunology (PNI)… a mouthful to say the least, and it is helpful to break up the word into it’s component parts:

• Psyche - the mind component or study of psychology, the cognitive and emotional processes involving mood states.
• Neuro - the neurological connections e.g. neurotransmitters and neuroendocrine secretions, or study of neurology
• Immunology - how the immune system e.g. the cellular and humeral components are impacted, or the study of immunology.

The study of the interaction of behavioral, neural, and endocrine factors and the functioning of the immune system. (3) 

 The study of interactions, bidirectional communication occurring between behavior, brain, the immune and endocrine systems. (4)

 My personal favorite was from Dr. Kirsti Dyer’s website on Transitional Medicine: PNI is an interdisciplinary science that studies the interrelationships between psychological, behavioral, neuroendocrine processes and immunology. (2) 

PNI includes the effect of the mind and emotions on the immune system. We have Dr. Candice Pert to thank for her discovery of the opiate receptor in cell biology (a basic receptor responsible for the pleasure principle and my lingering addiction to chocolate). Basically PNI is extremely new, looking to discover how the body-mind-emotions affect cell repair, regulation, communication, protein synthesis – all things which we now understand affect qi production. Finally! A Medical paradigm that includes what Traditional Chinese Medicine has observed for several thousand years.

Cells are repaired and regulated at different rates depending upon the type of cell - epithelia in the digestive lining live a couple of days, skin cells, three weeks; red blood cells 120 days, and bone cells, several years. Dying cells are replaced with newly formed cells, a process known as cell turnover. (5) As you may have already guessed, the strength and speed by which cells are repaired depend upon the raw materials that we provide for it (diet, cellular nutition, sleep), and how effectively the body is able to make that repair (bodywork, sleep). However, what you may not know is that the cells are bathed in neuropeptides, hormones, protein fragments, and enzymes that all dictate how well we metabolize our food, the strength of our immune system, inflammatory processes in the body. They are dramatically affected by our emotions because of the chemical messengers released during certain emotional states (e.g. prostaglandins, cortisol, adrenaline). Someone who lives in chronic fear, worry, or stress bathes their cells in a very different chemical environment than someone who meditates every day in a cave, or who gets to run and play on a daily basis; they have a different cellular environment to show for it. Added up over time, these micro-changes play a much larger role for things like cell-to-cell communication, fertility, metabolism.

The time needed for cell reproduction and repair is one of the fundamental reasons that chronic disease and pain are not healed quickly – this is something I have to explain constantly to patients. It takes time for the cells to repair themselves, and a long period of proper nutrients, rest, exercise, bodywork to support the healing process. As we have stated before, even if it seems like it happened overnight, unless you were in an accident, it didn’t. And it takes time for the body to heal. The hardest part of my job is when a patient leaves before the miracle happens, or who absolutely won’t take any action to help support this process on their own. For them, at most all I can do is make them comfortable a few days a week.

Not surprisingly then, our emotions are a reflection of our cellular health and well-being. At some point in the not too distant future, they will be able to predict with some certainty the chemical effects that the various emotions have on the immune system.

  In future columns we will cover more about the TCM approach to the mind and emotions and how they affect the physical organs. For now I want to make a pitch to include some of the following activities in your self-care routine and briefly explain why.  (See 3/3)

 © Copyright 2003 - 2009 Jennifer Moffitt, Healing Arts Center Press, and AcuNut.com. All rights reserved.