Cupping

What is Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)?  Traditional Chinese Medicine is a two thousand year old holistic natural medicine modality based in ancient China. Practitioners use acupuncture, herbal remedies, tuina massage, cupping and several mind-body practices, such as qigong exercise and tai chi to treat, prevent future health problems and bring the body back to balance.

Cupping is when you take either a glass or plastic “cup-shaped” tool and create a vacuum suction to attach them to the body. Glass cupping uses the traditional “fire cupping” method: a vacuum is created by quickly inserting and removing a burning cotton ball inside the cup, and then placing the cup on the preferred location, sealing it on the skin. For safety purposes, flames are kept far enough away that no heat is felt on the skin when using this method. Plastic cupping are usually attached to a hand pump to create the proper suction needed to keep the cups attached to the skin.

Which ever type of cup is used, the true work is done by the vacuum - it pulls and pinches a small patch of skin in the area that may be in pain, sore, or over-worked (such as for athletes). The most common place to use cupping is on the back and shoulders, but it has been known to help other muscular areas and scar tissue as well.

The cups are often placed along the energy meridians in the body that provide acupressure and acupuncture points used by acupuncturists, or where the patient dictates pain is present. The practitioner leaves the cups on the body for around five minutes, but can be left on for up to ten minutes in some cases. With several cups, they look almost like lightbulbs lining the body. Afterwards, there may be circular marks resembling bruises that could last a few days, but will fade within a week. They are not painful upon touch, solely a strong suction-style bruise.

The popularity of cupping has increased lately due to the American Olympic Swim team showing up at the Rio Olympics sporting the tell-tale circular bruises from cupping. Some interesting articles to check out regarding this are added below.

Intuitive Acupuncture and Wellness considers cupping an important tool in helping deal with any back pain complaints or chronic illness. The added bonus is it also tends to increase a sense of calm and relaxation for a patient. Call today to inquire if acupuncture and cupping is right for you.

http://www.pjstar.com/news/20160811/what-is-cupping-therapy-we-tried-it-to-find-out

http://www.vocativ.com/350116/michael-phelps-cupping/

Food Therapy Tip

What is Food Therapy?  Food therapy is using your food as medicine to heal your body, bring the nutrients needed in a way that is wholesome, natural and easy for your body to utilize.

With school about to start, it may feel like summer is wrapping up.  Until you go outside, that is.  With the incredible heat out there, be sure to keep hydrated by drinking plenty of water.  

Keep cool by eating "cooling" foods, and believe it or not, spicy foods, like peppers or ginger root!  These piquant and pungent foods help your body sweat, and in turn cool off.  

Capsaicin (the active component in peppers) also works as a mood enhancer.  To help make up for the burning sensation, your body releases endorphins, which make you happy afterwards.  

A list of fruits and veggies that can help cool you down:  melons, berries, cucumbers, celery, citrus fruits, mint, radishes, green leafy vegetables for salad 

Stay cool everyone!

Why Try Acupuncture?

The human body's ability to heal itself is absolutely amazing.  We can recover and recoup in great strides on our own most of the time.  We don't realize how hard our bodies work everyday managing the organ systems, fighting off free-radical damage that can start potential malignancies or inflammation present in the cellular level that over the long-term can compromise the integrity of our health and well being.  But there are always those moments when we cannot go over that hill back to good health and wellness on our own.  There are many, many ways to help our bodies recoup after an illness or imbalance.  This imbalance can occur due to injury, personal health choices over many years and other times due to our personal constitution or the genes we were gifted with when we were born.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been around for over two thousand years and has given us a tried and true ability to aid the body's natural healing response with herbal formulas and very thin needles placed on specific acupuncture points.  The needles are like beacons to guide the body's natural healing energy to focus itself on where the imbalance is present.  As a licensed acupuncturist, I recognize that I am only a guide to my patient's health.  The brunt of the work happens within themselves. Especially if we address any nutritional needs or food therapy concerns present.

But that is just the basic background for TCM and acupuncture.  Why try acupuncture is a little more personal.  Maybe you have tried everything and nothing has changed your situation.  Maybe you are tired of being in pain.  Maybe you have not made any breakthroughs with recurring anxiety and depression.  Or maybe you really want to go a natural route for balancing hormones and improve fertility.  Either way, it can assist many people for many different reasons and I invite you to trust your instinct on why you are thinking about acupuncture.  There is no pain involved in receiving acupuncture and one can easily focus on the herbal formulas and request that in place of both acupuncture and herbs.