by Christine Sotmary M.S., L.Ac., CPC
Dancers aren't any different from the rest of us. Dancers get anxious. Dancers feel depressed. Dancers suffer with stress. Dancers have physical pain. Acupuncture can help support healing and create a nice balanced life again. But how? Finally some answers are coming out of a variety of research centers.
The most
common reason most of us go to the doctor is the desire to feel better. When
you look at the research it shows that pain, stress, anxiety and depression are
our most common complaints. Most common….yes. However, most doctors will tell
you that these four conditions are the most difficult to treat with
conventional modern medicine.
The
general public, including medical doctors, expect that acupuncture is primarily
used to treat pain. They may already know that a reduction in pain comes from
the release of endorphins. What may be less widely known is, when it comes to
treating stress, anxiety and depression, acupuncture has also been shown to
directly impact brain chemistry and nerve pathways.
All
medical specialties see patients who suffer with anxiety along with their other
physical symptoms. As common as anxiety is, the real dilemma for doctors is in
treating depression. Medications and talk therapy are not always successful and
witnessing someone in such chronic emotional pain is difficult for any
healthcare provider. Because acupuncture has been shown to reduce the stress
response, it also aides in the treatment of depression by allowing conventional
treatments to work better.
The
stress response is the root of many physical symptoms that bring patients to
their doctors. What are some of these physical symptoms of stress? A patient
can have any or all of the following: high blood pressure, headaches, reflux,
indigestion, fast pulse, disrupted sleep, increased appetite with belly fat and
hair loss.
Acupuncture
has been shown to decrease stress. It literally interrupts the stress response
and reestablishes chemical and emotional balance. Stress, pain, anxiety and
depression involve major nerve pathways in the brain. Areas of the brain that are the most
susceptible to stress are also involved with the mood disorders of anxiety and
depression. Science has also shown that acupuncture fundamentally recalibrates
the Central Nervous System(CNS), including the networks of nerve cells that
account for the different types and severity of chronic symptoms involved in
anxiety and depression. Through brain imaging and chemical tracing it has been
shown that acupuncture directly corrects this failure to control stress.
In
addition when one system in the body is affected by stress it throws off the
balance in other systems. This is how stress that affects the nervous system
can also impact digestion, circulation, immunity and inflammation. When a patient is overwhelmed by the stress
in their lives, conventional treatments no longer are effective. Acupuncture
has been proven to reduce the effects of complicated pressures in a person’s
life, so that conventional treatments are better able to have their desired results.
SUMMARY
Anxiety and depression affect nearly every
other condition and complaint in the body. Overwhelming stress can render
conventional treatments useless. Acupuncture can restore balance, reduce the
stress response, disrupt the pathways of stress and reduce the effects of
overwhelming burdens so that doctors are able to effectively treat even their
most difficult cases.
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