One of the biggest myths about acupuncture is that “once you start, you have to go forever.”

First of all, it is entirely up to you how long you choose to continue to get treatments.  Of course, like any other healthy habit, the longer you maintain it, the better your quality of life.  But just to clear up some confusion, let’s look at the process of a comprehensive schedule of acupuncture care in another light.

Perhaps the most apt analogy for continuing care for the meridian system is reconstructive orthodontics for your teeth.  Both disciplines consist of an initial phase of care that usually involves overcoming a weakness, followed by a reconstructive or rehabilitative phase of care, and finally culminating in wellness or maintenance.

The earliest phase of your care usually consists of the highest visit frequency.  In cases of chronic imbalances within the meridian system it is common to initially require treatments a few days a week until your bodies energy is properly balanced and restored.

Using our orthodontic analogy, this would be the point at which the brackets and wires are put on your teeth and you are seen for check-ups every couple weeks.  Since there is no wire affixed within your meridian system, your acupuncture visits occur more frequently than orthodontic appointments, and are instead “wired together” by specific exercises, herbal prescriptions, self-care recommendations, etc.

As balance returns to your body, your visit frequency is diminished.  This is the phase in which the orthodontist would also begin spacing out his visits and begin to “tweak” the wires to make fine adjustments to your teeth and allow them to settle into their new structural pattern.  In both cases, this is a critical phase of care in that it is setting the stage for lifelong wellness or maintenance.

In regard to orthodontics, this is when you would be fitted for a retainer to be worn at least nightly for the rest of your life, or for as long as you wish to maintain healthy teeth.

As for acupuncture, this marks the transition to a schedule of wellness or maintenance care to ensure a lifelong abundance of health and well-being.

The maintenance or wellness phase of care is without a doubt the most important.  What is sickness, but a lack of wellness?  The whole objective of everything leading up to your wellness care is to get your body back to its natural state of balance.  Once there, staying well is simply a matter of sustaining that balance.

Wear your retainer and maintain a life of health and wellness.  Or neglect your maintenance and have the braces put back on?  The choice is clear.

There’s an old metaphor about a frog in boiling water.  If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, he will immediately jump out because of the sudden, drastic change in temperature.  If, however, you put a frog in a pot of tepid water and slowly bring it to a boil, the temperature change will be so subtle that the frog will never know what hit him as he boils to death.

People are very similar to the frog when it comes to identifying underlying health problems and seeking help. Based on the perceived severity of the problem, you are either driven to action, or more prone to let the problem continue as a mere annoyance.

Those who have suffered a major trauma such as an auto accident, work injury, or slip and fall are like a frog dropped in boiling water.  Because they have undergone such sudden and massive physical change they seek immediate action in correcting the damage done and look to professional help without delay.  Bear in mind that these are the same people who would normally overlook more minor aches and pains without a second thought.

Why does one act so quickly in a situation like this?  The injury happens so suddenly and swings them so far from their comfort zone that they will do whatever it takes to bring things back to normalcy as quickly as possible.  After all, a knock in your engine is something that you would typically let go for awhile, but a sudden cloud of smoke billowing from under the hood would likely spur you to immediate action.

The majority of people, however, are like a frog in tepid water, on a slow simmer until eventually being brought to a boil.  Most imbalances develop over time, and because they are often very subtle, and many times painless, the danger of their impact on our bodies goes unnoticed.

Over time, however, these imbalances are no less devastating to us than boiling water is to the frog.  A slow drip in your attic might not seem like a big deal, but its cumulative effects can eventually send your ceiling crashing down.

Until we get into the habit of being proactive when it comes to our health, these “simmering” imbalances will always be a threat.  Neutralizing that threat requires that we shift our thinking away from pain-based, symptom-relief care and more toward a system built around prevention and wellness.

If you know someone who has not been examined for imbalances yet, regardless of whether or not they are exhibiting any symptoms, send them in for a acupuncture evaluation.  Let’s get them the help they need before their pot comes to a boil!

Would you like to live to be 100?  You would be surprised at how many people would answer “no” to that question.  Many people are in such poor health that it is a physical and emotional struggle to get through each day, let alone an entire century.  It doesn’t have to be that way.

Actually, if we are living properly, enjoying the rich quality of life that we are entitled to, we should all be thrilled to live to 100!  In fact, the hard part should be figuring out how to squeeze all of our goals and accomplishments into such a relatively short period of time.

It’s true that we are living longer than our ancestors, but while the medical profession is quick to point out that our lifespan is increasing, what remains hidden in the fine print is the atrocious quality of life that our senior population must endure.  Twinkies® have a long shelf life, but it would be a stretch to call them healthy.

A balanced meridian system is the foundation of health and longevity, and it is like a bright light glowing deep within.  Dim the light and your quality of life dims along with it.  Extinguish the light and you die.

The key to living a long, healthy life is to maximize the function of the meridian system as long as possible.  Acupuncture does exactly that.

Understand that longevity is built right now.  Today.  This very day is part of your 100 years.  Your state of health at this moment is a result of your actions yesterday and the days prior.  Your state of health tomorrow depends on what you do today.

Health is not black and white.  It is a continuum, with death at one end and complete wellness at the other end.  We are never stagnant, we are constantly moving back and forth along the scale.

Every action you take either moves you toward health or away from it, and the key to longevity is to habitually engage in those activities that drive you in the right direction.  Things like acupuncture treatments, daily exercise, proper nutrition, gratitude, a positive mental outlook, spiritual fulfillment, love, and so on.

It’s been said that success is a journey, not a destination.  The same can be said of longevity.  If a long, healthy life is a goal of yours, then don’t just let your life play out and hope for the best.  Longevity is not about dragging out an existence just to make it to a certain age.  Longevity is a byproduct of living the right way every single day until, before you know it, a hundred years have passed.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” –Abraham Lincoln

Pain killer…Check.  Anti-inflammatory…Check.  Anti-anxiety…Check.  Antidepressant…Check.

And that’s just breakfast!

For many, starting the day by downing a handful of pills has become the norm, a natural accompaniment to their eggs and toast.

You take pills because you are taught to, and that’s what most people are accustomed to.  Because somehow the drugs are supposed to wipe the slate clean and zero out your not so healthy lifestyle choices.  Inherently you know that the drugs are not the best thing for you, but you figure that you can settle for good enough if the pills can help you just get by.

There is a reason that every drug or pill that you are prescribed comes with a list of side effects and warnings.  Continually putting foreign/toxic substances into your body over the long run often creates more illness than health.

The reality is that the body is designed to heal from the inside out and express life through an inborn intelligent energy, and it is only when this energy is impeded that the body begins to break down.

Drugging an imbalanced body does nothing to bring it back into balance, and in fact while on the surface it may appear that the drugs are serving a positive purpose, underneath, the body is thrown farther into a state of stress and dis-ease.  In effect, you have created a house divided.

The natural, recuperative power of the body is now pitted against the drug’s toxic effects.  Even when drugs are designed as closely as possible to work in harmony with the human body, it simply is not feasible to introduce chemicals into the body without also inducing stress.

You are either working to support the body’s innate healing energies or you are working against it.  You can’t have it both ways and expect to see positive change over a lifetime.

The key to producing a lifetime of health and wellness is to develop a unified front; to unleash the full power of the body’s meridian systems and then to nurture it through exercise, good nutrition, adequate rest, and a positive mental outlook.

Acupuncture works in unison with the body and serves to optimize your innate healing potential.  It is the natural choice to replenish and maintain optimal health!

24 hours.  One day.

What if you only got one?  What would you do with it?  Who would you see?  How would you act?  Where would you go?

Fortunately most of us get more than one day to live out our lives.  But for too many of us there seems to be something wrong with every single day we are given.  It’s too long.  It’s too short. It’s cold.  It’s rainy. It’s boring.  It’s too busy.

If it were your last day, do you think you would give things like the weather a second thought?  If you had just one day to live, your focus would undoubtedly shift from complaining and complacency to productivity, love, and thankfulness.

Well, the truth of the matter is that every day is of equal value.  Today is no less important than your last day.  Each day is a brand new start and we are all given the same 24 hours to make of them what we will.

All of this may sound a little too cliché, but consider that billionaire powerhouses like Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett are given the same 24 hours every day that you are.  They are afforded no more time and no less time.  The difference comes in how they choose to utilize their hours.  And if you think they just somehow happened to arrive at their success by chance or privilege, read up on their life histories and you’ll find that this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Now your goal might not be to become a billionaire, but most people are longing for something more out of life, but are either waiting around for it to come to them, or just don’t know how to go about getting it.

The good news is that it doesn’t take a genius to create an extraordinary life; just persistent focused action on a daily basis.

Maybe you would love to write a best-seller, but are intimidated by the whole process.  If you got to work and wrote just one page a day, in a year’s time you will have completed a 365 page book!  Even if it took you 2 days per page, you would still have a substantial 180 pages.

Advancing your life simply requires that you prioritize and change your focus.  Evaluate your typical day and find those “lost moments” or “voids” in which nothing meaningful seems to take place, and then plan the night before how you are going to better utilize that time.  Listen to educational programs during your commute. Instead of surfing the web, study your field of business.  Turn the TV off in favor of some quality family time.

You may not be destined to change the world, but by focusing 24 hours at a time it is easily within your power to change your life!

Imagine you are driving down the road with your gas pedal to the floor. Your car runs great and gets you to where you need to be. All is good.

But then you look around and notice that everyone else is whizzing right by you.

Determined to keep up with those around you, you take your car into the shop and have the mechanic give it a good once-over.

The mechanic finds that while you have been getting to where you need to be, you have been doing so while driving in only one gear. In actuality, he discovers that your car has an entire set of gears that have never even been utilized!

Many people live out their lives the same way; stuck in first gear and never living up to their full potential; not quite hurting, but definitely not at their best. The problem is that while most people realize that they simply are not living up to par, they don’t know how to access their hidden gearbox to take their health to the next level.

These are the people that need to be under acupuncture care!

The old misconception that acupuncture care is just for those in pain or battling symptoms is quickly being exposed for the fallacy that it is.

Those who get the most out of their acupuncture treatments are the ones who take their care beyond the relief phase and work with their acupuncturist to maintain lifelong health and wellness.

The true essence of acupuncture actually has nothing to do with the treatment of pain and symptoms. Acupuncture treatments remove meridian system blockages by detecting and correcting imbalances in the meridian system. Symptoms are relieved as a byproduct of building a healthier body.

A blockage within the meridian system, ones that are continually out of balance, will never allow the body to run at maximum speed and efficiency. The blockage and imbalance in effect acts as a governor on your body’s engine, limiting it to a certain speed that it can’t rise above.

You are not designed to sputter through life in first gear. You are created to live all out at full throttle. Settle for any less and you not only short-change yourself, but also those who depend upon you.

Your meridian system is housing a whole new set of gears that most of us never even tap into. By unleashing the full scope of your body’s innate potential, acupuncture can help you take your health and your life to unparalleled heights.

As women, we’re expected to be natural multitaskers. Just ask any mother about her average evening – helping the kids with their homework while she cooks dinner, exchanging news of the day with her partner, caring for an aging parent, feeding the pets, refusing telephone solicitations, opening the mail, and getting notes ready for her presentation at the next day’s meeting.

I should know…this is what my average evening looks like! I always feel like Dr. Seuss’ Cat In the Hat, swapping off one hat for another at a nanosecond’s notice. Teacher – swap! Mother – swap!  Spouse – swap! Caregiver – swap! – and all the rest…

Sound familiar? It’s all in a day’s work; we do it without even thinking about it. Oh, occasionally we get overloaded and forget to turn on the oven when we put the chicken in, so at dinnertime we’re faced with raw bird and the need for an emergency Plan B.  By and large, though, we manage to swap one hat for another without even breaking stride.

So you’d think, when it comes to multitasking as solopreneurs, women would be primed for success…right?  Truth is, most of us go in with that expectation, and quickly find the reality is very different.

For me, the realization didn’t come until I’d taken a step beyond my private shiatsu practice and my teaching schedule at the Baltimore School of Massage to create the Howard County Holistic Center. Then, finally, I understood that I had just added a towering pile of hats on top of those that were already teetering on my head. I could feel them threatening to topple over at any moment.

Not only was I the chief cook and bottle washer for two businesses – keeping the books, scheduling appointments, running the office, buying supplies, doing the marketing and networking on top of my teaching and the shiatsu services I was providing to my clients – but I was doing all of this on top of my family responsibilities!

What to do? The Holistic Center was a small startup; I couldn’t afford to hire an office manager, accountant, marketer, administrative assistant, and all the other support staff I needed! So I gritted my teeth and decided: somehow or other, I would make this work.

If you’ve ever been in that position – or if you’re facing that challenge now – you know the feelings.  They cover the spectrum from anxiety and obsessive list-checking (Did I scrub the toilets? Order new needles? Pay the bills? Check the next day’s appointments? Practice my talk ready for tomorrow’s workshop?), all the way to sheer overwhelm (Where am I going today? What am I doing in this room? What day is this?).

In a healing practice that required me to be grounded and centered, I was a one-woman vortex!

When I spoke of this challenge at On Purpose networking meetings, other women would tell me, “It’s cheaper to pay an expert than to have an amateur do it for free.”

It was all based on the old axiom: Time is Money, they said. For example, if you and an office manager each charged, say, $75 per hour, and you each spent the same amount of time to organize your office, you would have exactly equivalent values being spent and received.

Now, let’s say you had no aptitude for accounting, and it took you 16 stress-filled hours to run your quarterly tax report, when it would take a CPA two hours at $125 per hour. In this case, you would lose nearly $1000 (not counting the cost of Tension Tamer tea, massages, and other anxiety-reducers) by attempting to do it yourself!

But what about low-paying “service” tasks such as cleaning? The same principle applied! If you spent four hours at $75 per hour to clean your business property when a cleaning service would charge $35 per hour for the same length of time, you would lose $160 for that half-day. Actually, when you consider that you could not see clients during the time when you were cleaning, you would lose $460. Either way, my fellow solopreneurs told me, I lost money by trying to do all of the jobs involved in my business.

In theory, I could understand their point. But the simple fact remained: given the amount of income the business was earning, my budget could handle those losses better than it could handle the up-front expense of professional support. So I continued my whirl of frantic activity.

Finally, I whirled myself into such a frenzy that – as the Recovery folks would say – I hit bottom. I realized that not only was my frantic activity costing me time, sleep, peace of mind, and money – it was also costing my clients. I was missing appointments because I was double-booked, and even when I was physically present, I wasn’t giving the client my full attention …or the best treatment I was capable of giving.

That was the breaking point. Personally, I was willing to pay the price of my macho “I can do it” compulsion – but when it started hurting my clients, something had to change! Indeed, it was cheaper to pay an expert than to do it myself.

So I changed my ways. I set up a crackerjack team of gifted experts with plenty of experience in their fields: Amber Lee Scott of TrueUVoice.com for social media marketing and project coordination; Karen Brand of WingsOfTheSun.com for website design and development; Phila Hoopes for copywriting; Josie Thompson of JosieDesigns.com for design of print collateral, and Debbie Barry of Design4TheSoul.com for administrative assistance and Feng Shui.  (anybody else? –Accountant? Cleaners? Others?)

We sat down together, planned our strategies, and suddenly I felt my bowed shoulders straightening. I could lift my head; the weight of (how many?) hats was being gently lifted and redistributed around the conference table. I didn’t need to worry about mustering up the energy to do everything in addition to treating my clients and holding the larger vision for the business.

Finally, by trusting others to do their jobs for me, I was free to do my job!

Once upon a time, life was very uncomplicated. Humans were hunter-gatherers in a primal, natural environment, and depending on what sort of animal we encountered, we could be either predator or prey. Stress served a simple purpose then: to help us find food, or to help us avoid becoming food ourselves.

Our bodies evolved to survive in this environment…and in several million years of evolution, this hasn’t changed much. When we feel stressed, scared, or threatened, our cerebral cortex still sends a stress signal to the hypothalamus (a switch in the midbrain controlling the stress response). In response, the hypothalamus signals the sympathetic nervous system to release adrenaline-like hormones and prepare the body to fight or run away:

• Heartbeat, blood volume and blood pressure increase
• The heart sends blood to the large muscles to get ready for action
• Sweat glands release perspiration
• Pupils dilate to sharpen vision
• Hearing becomes more acute

Once the danger or worry passes, the hypothalamus gives the “all clear” to the sympathetic nervous system, and the body returns to a normal resting condition.

But today, you’re not facing woolly mammoths or saber-toothed tigers! Instead, you have wages to earn, deadlines to meet, bills to pay, and all the stresses of modern life. You can’t get rid of them in a single community hunt; instead, all of these stressors persist over time, and your brain continually signals for stress hormones to be released. Your body never seems to get the “all clear” to calm down the stress signal and relax.

• Stress disrupts your sleep cycle, resulting in fatigue, foggy thinking, and irritability.
• Your thyroid goes into overdrive, then becomes exhausted and slows down your metabolism, resulting in weight gain, depression and brain fog.
• Your adrenal glands secrete cortisol, which, over time, can keep you awake and hyper alert, distort your thinking, and make you irritable and agitated.

So what can you do about it?

Even if you can’t ditch your boss and your bills, you can still let go of some of the stressors in your life…

• Try reducing the sugar and caffeine in your diet, and eating more complex carbohydrates and proteins. This relieves high/low energy cycling and reduces wear and tear on your adrenals.
• If you’re truly feeling depleted by stress, talk to your holistic health care practitioner about bodywork and nutritional supplements that can support your thyroid and adrenals.
• Instead of eating lunch at your desk, go for a walk in a neighborhood green space and picnic on a park bench. Walking helps to release endorphins – the feel-good hormones – and natural environments help to relieve anxiety.
• Laughter defuses stress! Instead of ramping up your adrenaline levels with a thrilling crime drama on prime-time TV, consider a comedy.
• First thing in the morning and last thing at night, spend some quiet time in meditation. This will help you to begin the day with a quiet mind and go to sleep more peacefully.
• Hug your friends and family at least once a day, bond with a pet, or get a weekly massage– touch is a great stress reliever!
• Finally, instead of bottling up your stress, talk with a therapist or join a support group. You don’t need to suffer alone.

As the days grow chillier, you may be feeling the call to spruce up your living space before the long winter months. However – especially if you or someone in your family has respiratory problems such as asthma, COPD or emphysema – it’s a good idea to know about the products you’ll be using to clean or redecorate your home.

According to the EPA, indoor air can be two to five times more toxic than outside, even in industrial areas! Why? Roughly 80,000 chemicals and compounds make up our everyday household products, with about 1,800 added yearly. Only 200 have ever been tested for toxicity, and only five have ever been banned.

For example…

Volatile Organic Compounds (a.k.a. VOCs) show up in building materials, caulks and paint strippers, paints and lacquers, furnishings, cleaning supplies, pesticides, permanent markers, glues, copier and printer toner, and much more. The fumes that off-gas from these products have health effects including eye, nose, and throat irritation; headaches, nausea, and damage to the liver, kidneys, and central nervous system.

Phthalates are a family of chemicals used as softeners and solvents in products including vinyl (synthetic linoleum, PVC, Plastic #3), air fresheners, detergents, cleaning supplies, and just about anything containing “fragrance” as an ingredient. They can damage the liver, kidneys, lungs and reproductive system, particularly the developing genitals of young boys.

Formaldehyde is a toxic adhesive, bonding agent and solvent that acts as a preservative in some paints and coating products. Most often it’s used as an adhesive resin in pressed wood, plywood, and medium-density fiberboard products such sub-flooring, decorative wall covering, shelving, cabinetry and furniture. Formaldehyde is also used to add permanent-press qualities to clothing and draperies. Health effects may include eye, nose, and throat irritation; wheezing and coughing; asthma attacks; fatigue; skin rash, and severe allergic reactions.

You probably noticed that cleaning supplies showed up in two of these three rogues’ lists…and for good reason. In 1989, the EPA disclosed that toxins included in common household cleaners (often inhaled as fumes during cleaning) are three times more likely to cause cancer than are other air pollutants. According to a 15-year study by the National Cancer Association, women who work in the home are at a 54% higher risk of developing cancer than women who work outside the home. The American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC) warns that household cleaning products are a leading cause of long and short term poisoning in adults as well as in children.

What can you do to protect yourself and your loved ones?

First of all – educate yourself! Before you buy a product, check it out in the U.S. Health and Human Services Household Products Database. For a listing of products that have been screened and certified as safe, see GreenSeal.org.

Second – locate sources of healthy products. Look in the National Green Pages for eco-friendly hardware and houseware stores, or, if you’re feeling proactive, ask at your local stores for products without these toxins. They may already have them in stock – and if they don’t, you are providing an important educational service for your community.

Finally – with any product you use, always follow the instructions on the label, and don’t hesitate to call the manufacturer with questions if the instructions aren’t clear.

Just as you learn to be proactive about improving your health, you can empower yourself to create a healthy, safe environment for yourself and your loved ones!

If you’ve been wrestling with heart or blood pressure problems, and feeling guilty about needing your morning java, here’s some good news: it seems some new studies are flip-flopping the verdict yet again! From being an adrenal-exhausting, blood-pressure-skyjacking, cholesterol-boosting, diuretic and dessicant (dehydrator), coffee is now getting its image refurbished…

Women who drank one or more cups daily during a 10-year study had a 25 percent lower risk of stroke than women who drank less than one cup a day.

Other long-term studies indicate that coffee may not increase the risk of high blood pressure over time.

While coffee can raise cholesterol levels, filtered brewing can reduce this risk.

So how should you interpret this new information, when study results seem to change depending on who’s performing and funding the research? Embrace one set of data and ignore the rest? Try frantically to keep up with the latest news and change your diet with every new development? Throw up your hands and say, “I’m going to die of something one day; might as well enjoy myself”?

We don’t think so.

Sure, studies can give basic information, and there are some common-sense truths that stand firm (no, that 1600-calorie burger is not a heart-healthy meal choice, no matter how temptingly it’s presented). But unless you dive into the study’s parameters – how the experiments were set up, who was doing the research, etc. – you’re seeing incomplete data. So how do you find the truth?

In the end, your body will give you the answers you need.

When you begin to listen to your body, you learn that it has its own wisdom. Once you start paying attention to its signals, you can easily determine what’s good for you and what isn’t. Here are just a few tips to get you started:

Ask your holistic health care practitioner to teach you kinesiology (muscle-testing) to identify your body’s response to a food or drink before you ingest it.

Keep a diary of what you eat and drink, and note your body’s responses. Does one cup of java open your eyes, while the second starts your heart pounding wildly? Write it down.

As you become more attuned to your body, take time to check in about everything you put on your plate. Is there an inward “Yes!” or an inward shudder?

As you note your body’s responses, ask your health care practitioner “why?” Further testing can give a broader picture of your overall health.

Be flexible – your body has different needs at different times. Adapt your choices to match.

Bottom line? While the latest studies can help, only you and your holistic health practitioners can determine the diet and lifestyle that will support your cardiovascular health and total wellness. Talk to us!