by urban-acupuncture | Sep 3, 2020 | Acupuncture
Acupuncture Could Help Treat Your Hay Fever (Rhinitis) Symptoms
If you suffer from hay fever, you know just how miserable it can make you feel. Depending on the time of year and the severity of your symptoms, hay fever can even impact your performance at work or at school. Sometimes just getting through a normal day can feel like a challenge.
Hay fever is the common term for a medical condition known as allergic rhinitis. Simply put, it’s an allergic response to a trigger in the environment. Unfortunately, most hay fever triggers—like pollen—are unavoidable. Yet it is possible to control the symptoms. Conventional treatments for hay fever usually include antihistamines and nasal sprays.
Acupuncture, either as a stand-alone treatment or as a complement to medicinal treatments, can also provide both short-term relief from specific hay fever symptoms and longer-term treatment for the chronic, underlying conditions that may make you more susceptible to allergens in the environment. If you suffer from seasonal allergies and think acupuncture might offer you some relief, we encourage you to make an appointment with a licensed acupuncturist for a consultation.
Causes of Allergic Rhinitis (Hay Fever)
Allergic rhinitis is commonly called hay fever because it is usually associated with seasonal allergies. In other words, your body has an allergic response triggered by various types of pollen produced by trees, flowers, and grass. When you suffer from seasonal allergies depends in large part on where you live, the types of flora that grow in your region, and when they naturally produce triggers your body is allergic to.
The most common environmental triggers include:
- Tree pollen (early spring)
- Grass pollen (late spring and summer)
- Ragweed pollen (fall)
- Mold and fungi spores (can be either seasonal or perennial)
However, hay fever can also include indoor allergens such as:
- Dust mites
- Cockroaches
- Pet dander (dried particles of skin, saliva, and urine that become airborne)
Symptoms of Allergic Rhinitis (Hay Fever)
Allergic Rhinitis (hay fever or seasonal allergies) is easy to confuse with the common cold. Many of the symptoms are very similar, even if the underlying cause is very different: environmental allergy triggers for hay fever and a virus for the common cold. Common symptoms include:
- Nasal congestion (i.e. a “runny nose”)
- Post-nasal drip
- Sneezing
- Coughing
- Difficulty breathing or wheezing
- Itchy, watery, or red eyes
- Itchy nose and throat
- Swollen discoloration in the skin under the eyes
- Itchy skin or a rash
Allergic Rhinitis and Acupuncture
Acupuncture can help some patients find relief from seasonal allergies or hay fever in two ways.
First, acupuncture can help provide immediate relief from specific symptoms. For instance, stimulating acupuncture points around the nose and sinuses can help relieve nasal congestion and sneezing associated with seasonal allergies. Acupuncture points on the feet can be associated with itchy, watery eyes. And there are a variety of acupuncture points around the body that can help calm and soothe an immune system that has been sent into overdrive by the presence of allergens in the environment.
Second, acupuncture can offer some patients longer-term relief by stimulating the body’s natural defenses. Acupuncture is believed to help boost the immune system and help the body fight inflammation. Therefore, multiple acupuncture treatments in advance of allergy season can help your body develop a more appropriate—and less miserable—response to common environmental triggers.
If you suffer from seasonal allergies, and believe you might benefit from acupuncture, the first step is to make an appointment with a licensed and experienced acupuncturist. He or she can work with you—as well as with your allergist and primary care physician—to develop a comprehensive treatment plan. In some cases, this may involve multiple treatments over time, and scheduled at various times of the year to coincide with your specific hay fever triggers.
Contact Urban Acupuncture Center in Columbus, OH For More Information
For more information about how acupuncture, massage therapy and other alternative healing treatments can help you, please contact the Urban Acupuncture Center Board Certified Licensed Acupuncturist’s team at Indianola Ave, Clintonville (614) 725-2488 | Main St, Westerville (614) 426-4406 or click here. Taking new patients in and around greater Columbus, Ohio.
by urban-acupuncture | Aug 17, 2020 | Massage Therapy
Sports Massage
Medical experts agree that regular exercise is an important element of a healthy lifestyle. Yet as healthy as it is, many types of exercise can leave your muscles tight and sore. And even light exercise such as walking and yoga can potentially lead to short- and long-term injury.
Sports-related injury is not inevitable, however. Sustaining your active lifestyle requires developing a variety of healthy routines all designed to keep your muscles healthy. Eating a healthy diet and maintaining adequate sleep patterns will ensure that your body has the energy it needs to stay active. And incorporating appropriate warm-up and cool-down activities and active stretching into your routine can help keep your muscles loose and avoid muscular injury.
Another element of a healthy lifestyle is sports massage. Sports massage is an excellent way to promote muscular flexibility and avoid the potential for sports-related injury. Sports massage, unlike other types of massage therapy, is specifically designed to work out tightness and inelasticity in active muscle groups, reduce port-workout soreness, and promote active recovery in muscles and soft tissue stressed by an active lifestyle. Sports massage can even reduce recovery times between workouts, to help you stay more active and healthy than ever.
Benefits of Sports Massage
You don’t need to be a professional sports player or competitive athlete to enjoy the benefits of sports massage. In fact, sports massage offers many benefits for anyone seeking to maintain a regular exercise routine, from biking or running to walking, yoga, or water aerobics.
When performed by a licensed massage therapist, sports massage can help:
- Improve muscle flexibility and elasticity, and even extent range of motion
- Relieve workout-related tension, discomfort, and pain in active muscle groups
- Promote muscular recovery to decrease recovery time between workouts
- Decrease healing time for existing injuries
- Prevent common sports- and overuse-related injuries
- Increase muscle growth and endurance performance by improving blood circulation
- Reduce blood pressure and heart rate
Your Unique Sports Massage Experience
Sports massage is a targeted massage technique designed to concentrate on specific muscle groups and areas of soft tissue stressed by exercise and an active lifestyle. Your specific sports massage will depend on the type or types of exercise you do, and will require a customized plan unique to you and your body.
Your specific sports massage may involve a variety of different massage techniques, including for example:
- Muscle energy: by actively contracting large muscular grouping, sports massage can help relax, stretch, and strengthen tight and inflexible muscles
- Trigger point massage repeatedly manipulates trigger points (also called “knots”) within large muscle groupings utilizing patterns of isolated pressure and release
- Myofascial release targets the fascia (the connective tissue around bones, muscles, and tendons) by alternatively relaxing and stretching the target zones
- Soft tissue release utilizes active, passive, and potentially even weight-bearing techniques in order to target stiff, tight tendons, fascia, and muscles
Unlike other types of massage, sports massage targets specific muscle groups stressed by your active lifestyle. Yet while sports massage isn’t generally performed for relaxation, studies have shown that sports massage can have psychological as well as physical benefits. Like more relaxation-focused massage techniques, sports massage can help lower anxiety, improve mood, and help promote better sleep.
Adding sports massage into your active lifestyle can help you sustain your regular exercise, support your physical fitness, and improve your health and well-being. So schedule your sports massage today!
Contact Urban Acupuncture Center in Columbus, OH For More Information
For more information about how acupuncture, massage therapy and other alternative healing treatments can help you, please contact the Urban Acupuncture Center Board Certified Licensed Acupuncturist’s team at Indianola Ave, Clintonville (614) 725-2488 | Main St, Westerville (614) 426-4406 or click here. Taking new patients in and around greater Columbus, Ohio.
by urban-acupuncture | Aug 7, 2020 | Acupuncture
What is Asthma?
Asthma is a chronic form of lung disease that causes the airways inside the lungs to be inflamed or swollen, making it difficult to move air in and out of the lungs and
constricting breathing.
For asthma suffers, normal breathing that most of us take for granted can prove challenging. And at times, breathing in specific triggers in the environment can cause the airways to swell or inflame even more than normal. Breathing is further constricted by a build-up of mucus within the airways. In some cases, these triggers can even cause the muscles around the airways to constrict. These flare-ups, or asthma attacks, can be very serious and potentially life-threatening.
Common asthma triggers include airborne allergens such as pollen, pet dander (particles of skin and dried saliva), mold spores, or even cockroach waste, as well as occupational-related airborne triggers such as dust, certain gases, and chemical fumes. For individual suffering from exercise induced asthma, the airways become constricted as the individuals tries to take in greater quantities of air. Exercise induced asthma is often worse when triggered by cold or dry air.
Symptoms of asthma include:
- Difficulty breathing
- Shortness of breath
- Pain or tightness in the chest
- Wheezing when attempting to exhale
- Coughing or wheezing that gets worse during the flu or a cold
- Difficulty sleeping caused by breathing problems like coughing, wheezing, or shortness of breath
Can Acupuncture Improve Lung Function for Asthma Sufferers?
Asthma is a chronic condition that cannot be cured, but asthma symptoms can be controlled. The conventional treatment for asthma, depending on severity, is a combination of daily medication and the use of an inhaler to combat flare-ups or asthma attacks.
For some asthma sufferers, acupuncture has also proven to be an effective complement to these conventional treatments.
The key to acupuncture’s success in minimizing inflammation and thus controlling some asthma symptoms lies in its ability to spark the body’s natural self-healing mechanisms. Rooted in long-standing techniques based on Traditional Chinese Medicine, acupuncture stimulates specific points along the body’s energy lines, or meridians, to unblock the natural flow of the body’s vital life-energy, or chi.
By enabling the proper flow of chi, acupuncture can help bring the body back into natural alignment and restore homeostasis. Regular acupuncture treatments can help control asthma symptoms by reducing the inflammation of the airways, as well as improving blood flow and boosting the body’s natural immune system.
Acupuncture is not recommended as a stand-alone treatment for asthma, and will not replace fast-acting inhalers for sudden flare-ups or asthma attacks. Yet for some asthma suffers, acupuncture can work alongside conventional medications to improve asthma symptoms and even, for some patients, reduce the frequency of asthma flare-ups.
During your acupuncture treatment, a licensed acupuncturist will gently place very small, sterile needles at specific points along your body’s meridians. Each acupuncture treatment is customized to your unique needs, depending on the triggers and severity of your asthma. And while the main goal of acupuncture for asthma suffers is to reduce and help control asthma specific symptoms, most patients find it can also help improve overall wellness through enhanced relaxation and improved sleep patterns.
If you suffer from asthma and are wondering if acupuncture might help control your asthma symptoms, we encourage you to speak with your doctor about incorporating acupuncture into your treatment plan.
Contact Urban Acupuncture Center in Columbus, OH For More Information
For more information about how acupuncture, massage therapy and other alternative healing treatments can help you, please contact the Urban Acupuncture Center Board Certified Licensed Acupuncturist’s team at Indianola Ave, Clintonville (614) 725-2488 | Main St, Westerville (614) 426-4406 or click here. Taking new patients in and around greater Columbus, Ohio.
by urban-acupuncture | Aug 6, 2020 | Acupuncture
Acupressure and positional techniques to help manage labor pain and encourage a smooth delivery.
About this Event
Join licensed acupuncturist Autumn Snavely, LSW, L.Ac, as she demonstrates effective acupressure and positional techniques to help manage labor pain as well as encourage a smooth delivery. This class is great for partners or support people to gain an active role in the labor and delivery process. Due to COVID-19, many hospitals are not permitting the presence of doulas, who would typically help with managing pain and providing emotional support. Now more than ever, these techniques will be crucial to families as they navigate this new birth world.
Virtual Webinar: This event will be hosted online via Zoom. Event registrants will receive a webinar link via email within 24 hours of the event.
by urban-acupuncture | Jul 17, 2020 | Acupuncture Columbus
Treat your Neck Pain with a Good Massage
A sore, stiff, or achy neck is an all-too-common part of life, especially as we age. Whether your neck pain is a chronic or recurrent problem that you’ve been coping with throughout your life, whether it’s the result of a traumatic event such as a car accident, or whether you simply “slept on it wrong”, it can be tough to make it through the day when you can’t easily move your neck without discomfort. And whatever the cause, neck pain can lead to a significant increase in stress and anxiety, which can, in turn, further aggravate your discomfort.
Unfortunately, identifying the ultimate cause of neck pain can be extremely difficult, complicating efforts to treat the pain effectively. Even if you know the event that led to the neck pain—such as whiplash from a car accident—knowing how the musculature and ligature of the neck was affected so as to cause discomfort can be a mystery, and one that medical science has been slow to solve. Given the complexity of the spinal column, simply blaming misalignment of the vertebrae, for instance, is likely to be a dramatic oversimplification.
There is good news, however, for those who are suffering from neck pain. First, the body has the incredible ability to self-heal even fairly significant malfunctions in this critical area. In many cases, the uncomfortable crick, stiffness, or soreness will, eventually, work itself out. Second, therapeutic massage can help dramatically reduce discomfort and pain in the neck and upper spine, even when the ultimate cause of the pain is not known. And as a bonus, massage can also address underlying mental anxiety that may be amplifying the discomfort.
Benefits of Massage as a Treatment for Neck Pain
Gentle massage can play a critical role in reducing and potentially even eliminating soreness, stiffness, and discomfort in the neck. In most cases, your licensed massage therapist will utilize light touching techniques around the cervical spine—the seven stacked vertebrae that make up the “neck”—as well as the musculature surrounding the spine. However, given the amazing complexity of the spine, and its interconnectedness to the rest of the body, gentle massage in other areas—such as the shoulders, cranium, and even lower back—may also help reduce discomfort in the neck.
A secondary—but no less important—benefit of massage in the treatment of neck pain is general relaxation and stress reduction. As noted above, pain and discomfort in the neck, regardless of the original cause, can lead to an increase in anxiety and stress. And “holding” stress and anxiety by tightening the muscles around the neck, shoulders, and scapula (shoulder blades) can aggravate the discomfort even further. Thus, eliminating stress- and anxiety-related tension around the neck can significantly reduce neck pain, even without necessarily addressing the root physical cause.
In the treatment of neck pain, a one-time massage or series of massages can be an effective part of your pain management plan. However, massage can be most effective when incorporated into a whole-body wellness plan focused on ensuring that your body is balanced, centered, and tension-free. Regularly-scheduled massage can play a vital role in maintaining both your emotional and physical health, which in turn can significantly improve your ability to manage—and potentially even prevent—neck pain.
Neck pain may be an inevitable part of life as we get older, but that doesn’t mean simply putting up with it. Gentle massage, especially when incorporated into an ongoing wellness routine, can play a vital role in reducing neck pain and even addressing the underlying sources of pain and discomfort. So don’t let neck pain slow you down: schedule your therapeutic massage today!
Contact Urban Acupuncture Center in Columbus, OH For More Information
For more information about how acupuncture, massage therapy and other alternative healing treatments can help you, please contact the Urban Acupuncture Center Board Certified Licensed Acupuncturist’s team at Indianola Ave, Clintonville (614) 725-2488 | Main St, Westerville (614) 426-4406 or click here. Taking new patients in and around greater Columbus, Ohio.
