QiMail Newsletter - 5 Steps to a Healthy Heart with Acupuncture

February is the American Heart Association's Heart Health Awareness Month, emphasizing the dangers of heart disease and the importance of heart health.

Heart disease includes conditions affecting the heart, such as coronary heart disease, heart attacks, congestive heart failure, and congenital heart disease. Despite dramatic medical advances over the past fifty years, heart disease remains a leading cause of death globally and the number one cause of death in the United States.

By integrating acupuncture and Oriental medicine into your heart healthy lifestyle, you can dramatically reduce your risk of heart disease.

Taking small steps to improve your health can reduce your risk for heart disease by as much as eighty percent. Steps to prevention include managing high blood pressure, quitting smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, reducing stress and improved sleep - all of which can be helped with acupuncture.

1. Manage High Blood Pressure
High blood pressure makes the heart work harder, increasing its oxygen demands and contributing to angina. This excessive pressure can lead to an enlarged heart (cardiomegaly), as well as damage to blood vessels in the kidneys and brain. It increases the risk of heart attacks, stroke and kidney disease.

Acupuncture has been found to be particularly helpful in lowering blood pressure. By applying acupuncture needles at specific sites along the wrist, inside the forearm or in the leg, researchers at the Susan Samueli Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, Irvine, were able to stimulate the release of opioids, which decreases the heart's activity and thus its need for oxygen. This, in turn, lowers blood pressure.

2. Quit Smoking
Most people associate cigarette smoking with breathing problems and lung cancer. But did you know that smoking is also a major cause of coronary artery disease? In fact, about twenty percent of all deaths from heart disease are directly related to cigarette smoking.

Acupuncture has shown to be an effective treatment for smoking. Acupuncture treatments for smoking cessation focus on jitters, cravings, irritability, and restlessness; symptoms that people commonly complain about when they quit. It also aids in relaxation and detoxification.

3. Maintain a Healthy Weight
Obesity is associated with diabetes, high blood pressure and coronary artery disease, all of which increase the risk of developing heart disease, but studies have shown that excess body weight itself (and not just the associated medical conditions) can also lead to heart failure. Even if you are entirely healthy otherwise, being overweight still places you at a greater risk of developing heart failure.

Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine are an excellent adjunctive tool when it comes to losing weight. They can help to energize the body, maximize the absorption of nutrients, regulate elimination, control overeating, suppress the appetite, and reduce anxiety.

4. Reduce Stress
Stress is a normal part of life. But if left unmanaged, stress can lead to emotional, psychological, and even physical problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, chest pains, or irregular heart beats. Medical researchers aren't sure exactly how stress increases the risk of heart disease. Stress itself might be a risk factor, or it could be that high levels of stress make other risk factors worse. For example, if you are under stress, your blood pressure goes up, you may overeat, you may exercise less, and you may be more likely to smoke.

Numerous studies have demonstrated the substantial benefits of acupuncture in the treatment of stress, anxiety and mental health. In addition to acupuncture, Oriental medicine offers a whole gamut of tools and techniques that can be integrated into your life to keep stress in check. These tools include Tui Na, Qi Gong exercises, herbal medicine, dietary therapy, meditations and acupressure that you can administer at home.

5. Improve Sleep
Poor sleep has been linked with high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, heart failure, heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, and obesity. Researchers have shown that getting at least eight hours of sleep is needed for good heart health and getting less than eight hours of sleep can put you at a greater risk for developing heart disease.

Acupuncture has shown great success treating a wide array of sleep problems without any of the side effects of prescription or over-the-counter sleep aids. The acupuncture treatments for problems sleeping focus on the root disharmony within the body that is causing the insomnia. Therefore, those who use acupuncture for insomnia achieve not only better sleep, but also an overall improvement of physical and mental health.

Visit your acupuncturist during Heart Health Awareness Month to see how acupuncture and Oriental medicine can assist you with your heart health and help you to live a long, healthy life.

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Study Shows Acupuncture Significantly Lowers Blood Pressure
Blood Pressure Lowered by Acupuncture
Study Shows Acupuncture Effective for Weight Loss
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Green Tea

Study Shows Acupuncture Significantly Lowers Blood Pressure

A German study published in the journal, Circulation, found that acupuncture significantly lowers both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. The extent of the blood pressure reductions by acupuncture treatments was comparable to those seen with antihypertensive medication or aggressive lifestyle changes, including radical salt restrictions.

For the study, 160 outpatients with uncomplicated, mild to moderate hypertension were randomized to six weeks of acupuncture performed by Oriental medicine practitioners or to a sham procedure. Patients underwent 22 sessions, each 30 minutes in length. By the end of the six weeks, 24 hour ambulatory systolic and diastolic blood pressures were significantly reduced from baseline in the acupuncture treated patients (5.4 mm Hg and 3.0 mm Hg, respectively). No significant changes were seen in the sham acupuncture group.

After six months the blood pressure reductions disappeared, leading investigators to conclude that ongoing acupuncture treatments would be required to maintain the blood pressure reductions.

Source: Circulation, June 2007

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"Your Genes Are Not Your Fate"

A Tip of the Hat to Dr. Dean Ornish


This short 3 minute video is a brief talk by Dr. Dean Ornish, a man who proved scientifically that heart disease is REVERSIBLE through diet, exercise and lifestyle change. He is also the author of "The Spectrum: A Scientifically Proven Program to Feel Better, Live Longer, Lose Weight and Gain Health" and "Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease" among other things. I hope you enjoy this short video about his perspective, key to which is stress reduction and avoiding/reducing chronic stress in particular. Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine are a great way to combat stress. By balancing the bodies energetic system, especially the Liver and Heart meridians which govern the mind and emotions, Acupuncture, reflexology and Chinese Herbs can decrease anxiety, increase calm and increase your capacity to "stay cool" during a crisis.

Website Redesigned with more Educational Information + Amazon Store of Patient Resources!
That's right! I felt it was time for my website to have a new pair of shoes and so voila! I gave it one. In addition to a new look I've added a Learning Center which will be populated with articles about health, Chinese diet and lifestyle advice, information about Chinese medicine treatment for specific disorders and more. For now it has some good links to some of my favorite resources for learning more about getting well and staying that way as well as a link to my new Amazon Store! I've been feeling recently like I recommend so many books and resources to patients that I'm constantly sending out emails with links to more information and I wanted to consolidate that information to one location that would be easy for patients and people wanting to learn more about Chinese medicine and health to go. I'll be increasing and updating the inventory there frequently, so check back often, AND I will be adding a music section with the tunes I play in my office as well - I get requests for those CD's a lot! Check in out using THIS link.

Green Tea - A cup a day to keep the doctor away
Green tea has been used as medicine in China for thousands of years and recently, the west has been catching on. Traditionally used in combination with Chinese Herbs for headache, mental fog, colds and flu's, it provides the body with powerful antioxidants that have been proven effective in increasing the strength of the immune system, inhibiting the growth of cancer cells, inhibiting the abnormal formation of blood clots (thus decreasing stroke and heart attack risk) and decreasing LDL (bad cholesterol) levels just to name of few of its most exciting health benefits. If you want to add one simple thing to your routine to increase your health and longevity, adding green tea into your diet is a great way to go but people often wonder how much is too much? And what if you want decaf? Is it still effective? To answer the first question - officially, you can't have too much as long as the caffeine isn't effecting you in a negative way but personally, I recommend no more than 3 cups of caffeinated green tea per day. While green tea has much less caffeine than coffee, it is still caffeinated and caffeine can contribute to stress, anxiety, tension as well as miscarriage so I always advise decreasing caffeine in the diet as much as possible. Luckily, decaffeinated green tea IS as effective as caffeinated green tea but then the question becomes - where do we get good decaf? Bag teas typically contain the lowest grade tea leftovers and lack the delicate tantalizing flavors of whole leaf green tea, but I for one have not been able to find whole leaf decaf. Luckily there is a simple - and ancient - solution. Throw away the first steep and drink everything after. Most of the caffeine in green tea is lost during the first steep so if you throw this away you are left with delicious decaf which you can consume to your hearts delight with all the great health benefits and flavor you desire, and you're only limited by how many steeps you can get out of a single pot. Traditionally in Chinese tea ceremonies the tea from first steep is used to warm the cups but is discarded and not consumed. My favorite tea shop in town is the Tao of Tea which has stores in SE Belmont area, in the Pearl district and inside the Chinese Garden downtown. They are very friendly about helping you learn more if you have questions.

Hope to see you soon!
Well, I hope this message finds you well and that you enjoy the Ornish video with a nice cup of green tea in hand. Please do check out the revisions to my website if you get a chance and stay tuned for more educational content - its coming soon! Yours - Rebecca