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If you’ve experienced PMS or PMDD, you know that options are limited as far as effective treatments go, and many times, with a significant risk for side effects. These conditions can quite literally take you out for an entire week or even more impact your relationships, mental health, and work or other obligations. Being a victim of your own body is never a fun experience, and it often leaves us seeking answers in every place we can search. 
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Athletes of all levels usually look for new ways to enhance their sports performance and accuracy. I’m a powerlifter, rower, and swimmer, and I love all of those sports, but lifting can psych me out sometimes, and rowing a race can be equally challenging. We get nervous or anxious, we overthink or underthink, and then our performance might not be what we wanted.  Living with chronic pain is life-altering, to say the least. Chronic pain can interrupt daily life activities, our ability to connect with our loved ones, and even the way we think and feel about our lives and ourselves. Even day-to-day pain that is low grade can be incredibly impactful and put a negative stain on what once were pleasurable events and interactions. In many cases, modern medicine's approach to pain is quite limited, usually including pain medication that might be helpful but not without sometimes serious side effects and risk for addiction. Acupuncture, bodywork, physical therapy, and other body-based modalities can usually be quite powerful to reduce pain and improve quality of life. The issue, however, is that you often can’t ‘take the treatment home with you’ and need to continue to receive treatments to continue to benefit. Some patients benefit from talk therapy to help improve their quality of life while living with pain or illness. This can help us shift and change how we interact with our experience and find meaning when it might feel like there is none. But again, the results from therapy might be minimal at first, taking time and effort to attain. What about a treatment that produces impactful, noticeable results usually instantly? One that also teaches you tools and practices you can take home with you so that you eventually won’t even need the practitioner at all? Enter: Hypnotherapy for chronic pain and illness.  Tinnitus, ringing in the ears, and hearing loss are all issues that can significantly impact your quality of life, let alone your ability to hear. Not only can these symptoms be detrimental to your ability to communicate and your day-to-day life, but they are also annoying and bothersome and can create other symptoms like insomnia or difficulty concentrating. Traditional treatments for tinnitus and ear-ringing often fall short of expectations. The common advice to drown out the noise with more noise seems ineffective. While hearing loss can be managed, the results are not always satisfactory, and some options, like surgery, are extreme. Some treatments fail to deliver the desired outcome or come with intolerable side effects. It’s always important to see your Doctor to rule out any underlying causes for new-onset hearing loss or tinnitus, and sometimes the cause might be as simple as earwax impaction, but after you’ve had a thorough exam from your Doctor or ENT specialist, you might consider trying a more unconventional approach to help! Acupuncture, a lesser-known but highly effective treatment, has shown some favorable results in addressing hearing and ear-related issues. From children with hearing loss to adults experiencing tinnitus and ear ringing due to various causes, acupuncture has been helpful for many of our patients. But how does this ancient practice work its magic on hearing loss and tinnitus?  The Transformative Role of East Asian Medicine & Acupuncture in Palliative and End of Life Care5/23/2023 Previously published in the 2022 issue of The Journal of Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine ABSTRACT:
An undeniable reality of working with cancer patients is that some patients will not survive their diagnosis. Chinese medicine and acupuncture has the ability to significantly improve the quality of life of terminal patients. Many barriers exist that block the use and acceptance of acupuncture as a tool for end of life care, including lack of awareness of the modality, funding and insurance coverage. In addition to the ability to treat side effects of medication and disease along with the pain associated with death, acupuncture helps reduce anxiety, stress and helps patients find peace in the dying process. As practitioners working with patients with potentially terminal diseases, it is critical to place focus on our ability to hold space for the healing process through death as it is for the healing process through the curing of disease. As human beings, we are wired to protect ourselves from emotional pain and discomfort, and our ego takes the driver’s seat in this endeavor. One way we do this is through the use of primary defense mechanisms. These are coping strategies that help us deal with stress, anxiety, and difficult emotions. While these are coping mechanisms that prevent or postpone the feelings of discomfort and / or pain, when we use them too much they prevent us from growing and ultimately may actually block us from getting what we want out of life. To be centered within ourselves and show up authentically we also need to learn to weather discomfort and difficulty, this means facing a tough conversation or situation head on instead of leaning into these primary defense mechanisms. 
Chronic illness can be a challenging experience that affects every aspect of a person's life. It can cause physical, emotional, and spiritual distress, and can lead to feelings of hopelessness and despair. However, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests that Jungian depth psychology and shadow work life coaching can be effective tools for coping with chronic illness.  Every time something awful happens in the world, it makes its way into my clinic. This week Roe v Wade was overturned and it’s been the topic of every patient’s mind and heart. I often hear the words ‘you’re not my therapist but….’ while my patients explain to me their emotional or spiritual troubles. This happens so often that it’s now one of the main things I treat in my clinic - emotional pain, upset and trauma, and it’s also why I’ve become a transformational Jungian Life Coach, so that I can truly help you in the entire process of body, mind and spirit. You might think heading to an acupuncturist to deal with your break up doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the truth is, emotional pain goes far beyond just the mind, it affects our body and our spirit, and Chinese medicine is especially equipped to bridge between these three aspects of our lives: body - mind - spirit.  Maybe the Instagram or Tiktok algorithm has been sneakily suggesting it’s time for you to look at your shadow self by showing you posts about shadow work, or more likely, you’ve been noticing that life feels extra difficult lately - haven’t we all! Perhaps most things in your life are going pretty ok, you may have even gone to some therapy before and are making progress on becoming your best self, but something still isn’t quite right. When things start feeling stuck or prickly in a sort of abstract way, it might be time to look into shadow work.  Having anxiety can be a debilitating experience, it can come on out of nowhere, but even when we have awareness of the triggers, it can still catch us off guard, stop us in our tracks and really put a halt to anything we wanted to do. Having tools and coping mechanisms to help guide us through an anxiety or panic attack can be crucial to our ability to feel like we can release the anxiety and live our lives. While medications can be extremely helpful, they also come with side effects and can cause considerable drowsiness which isn’t always desirable. I’ve found acupuncture treatments on a regular basis to be particularly powerful for helping my patients move through anxiety, stress and other tough emotions. But if you aren’t near your Acupuncturist’s office the following acupressure points can help you become more grounded, present and calm in a matter of minutes.  |
AuthorDr. Kim Peirano, DACM, LAc is the Owner and Acupuncturist at Lion's Heart Wellness, the San Francisco Bay Area's #1 Cosmetic Acupuncturist and #1 Holistic Healer. Archives
September 2024
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