Stress – the cause of all disease
How many times has someone gone through a barrage of tests and examinations for a condition, only then to be told, we don’t know what it is and probably due to stress. It is reported that in the United States stress is leading cause of cancer, coronary heart disease, accidental injuries, respiratory diseases, cirrhosis of the liver and suicide. Knowing that science and modern medicine concludes how much of an impact stress has on health, one would think more work is done in finding ways for people to deal with stress.
What is stress?
What is stress to one person may not necessarily be stress to another person. One parent may find they do not get emotionally overwhelmed in looking after a sick child but yet another parent gets completely distraught if their child has the simplest ailment. One person working in the office just looks at the pile of tasks accumulating in the in tray and says it will get done in due time but another worker may churn inside because they feel they have to get it done and finished asap.
Stress and the emotions
Chinese medicine says that the first foremost cause of disease is an imbalance in the 7 emotions such anger, worry fear and grief. People say they feel stress in different areas. Some people feel butterflies in the stomach, others a tightening in the chest and others react in the neck and shoulder muscles.
How to relieve stress?
There are many ways to reduce stress that people swear by and some work better for some people than others. Cardiovascular type exercises where you increase the heart rate and accompanied oxygen supply to the brain can make people feel “better” almost straight away. Other times certain yoga postures to stretch and relieve neck tension does the trick. Qi gong, meditation and massage have all been used to reduce stress.
Acupuncture and its role in treating stress
There have been numerous studies on acupuncture. It has been shown that acupuncture stimulates the body’s natural feel-good hormones such as serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and endorphin whilst reducing the level of stress hormones like cortisol. This explains why many people when first seeking acupuncture for a specific injury then report many other benefits such as more energy, increased sense of well being and better sleep.
Acupuncture and wellness maintenance
Many people get regular massage to help with stress and many of my patients now opt for regular wellness acupuncture maintenance treatments that help with preventing symptoms arising and keep the body operating on a higher level. What I suggest to patients is once a month for general wellbeing and if you too busy to come once a month, then you need to come each fortnight.
Acupuncture in New Zealand
Please contact Acupuncture New Zealand to find the nearest practitioner. Heiko Lade of The Acupuncture Clinic in Hastings and Kane Monrad of Connect Therapies in Hamilton are both using Master Tung Style Acupuncture in their clinics.
