by admin | Oct 15, 2013 | Diet
One of the most beautiful aspects of traditional Chinese medicine is as a tool to live harmoniously with the seasons. Ancient Chinese physicians observed the natural cycles of the seasons and recorded the best everyday practices for staying healthy and harmonizing our own energy with that of our environment.
“In the three months of autumn all things in nature reach their full maturity. The grains ripen and harvesting occurs. The heavenly energy cools, as does the weather. The wind begins to stir. This is the changing or pivoting point when the yang, or active, phase turns into its opposite, the yin, or passive, phase. One should retire with the sunset and arise with the dawn. Just as the weather in autumn turns harsh, so does the emotional climate. It is therefore important to remain calm and peaceful, refraining from depression so that one can make the transition to winter smoothly. This is the time to gather one’s spirit and energy, be more focused, and not allow desires to run wild. One must keep the lung energy free full, clean, and quiet. This means practicing breathing exercises to enhance lung Qi. Also, one should refrain from smoking and grief, the emotion of lung. This will prevent the kidney or digestive problems in the winter. If this natural order is violated, damage will occur to the lungs, resulting in diarrhea with undigested food in the winter. This compromises the body’s ability to store in winter.” – Huangdi Neijing Suwen
Eating with the season
In the fall, eat fewer cold, uncooked foods — such as salads — and more warm, cooked foods. Switch from salads to soups and steamed vegetables such as winter squash, winter peas, broccoli, sweet potatoes, and yams. Incorporate yellow and red foods into your meals. Start your day with hot oatmeal.
Here are some more warm and nourishing foods and herbs to add to your fall diet:
- Apple
- Banana
- Beets
- Bell pepper
- Bok choy
- Broccoli
- Brussels sprouts
- Cabbage
- Carrot
- Cauliflower
- Cinnamon
- Cranberry
- Figs
- Garlic
- Ginger
- Grapes
- Horseradish
- Leeks
- Pears
- Persimmons
- Plums
- Pomegranate
- Pumpkin
- Red cabbage
- Rosemary
- Sage
- Spinach
- Thyme
- Whole grains
- Wild rice
- Winter squash
- Yam
Protecting Your Lung Qi
Lung 7 is one of the most powerful points on the lung meridian points. It is a popular acupuncture point to use for stopping a persistent cough and relieving a sore throat. Besides treating those symptoms, LU 7 is often used to treat conditions related to the head and neck, such as headaches, migraines, stiff neck, facial paralysis, and toothache.
LU 7 is considered to be the “command point” of the head and neck and is also used to improve circulation in the brain and stimulate memory.
This acupuncture point is located above the wrist on the inside of the arm. To find this point, interlock your thumb and index finger of one hand with those of the other, the point lies on the edge of the index finger, in a depression between the sinew and the bone.
Stimulate this point on both hands with the tip of your index finger for approximately 30 seconds or until your cough subsides.
by admin | Mar 5, 2013 | Diet
Catalyn – Is Your Daily Supplement This Complete?
In our last newsletter, we introduced the concept of supplementing one’s diet with vitamins and minerals. The basic idea behind this is to fill in the nutrient gaps that each of us likely has based on our personal food intakes. No one’s diet is perfect all of the time; and, unfortunately, some of the foods that we consume and assume to be healthy simply don’t have the same nutritional contents that they did fifty years ago. The Western diet is composed mostly of processed and refined foods. These foods are commonly eaten at the expense of nutrient-dense, whole foods. To complicate matters, we are regularly exposed to many environmental toxins, also having a negative impact on our health.
Therefore, it has become even more important for each of us to take personal responsibility for what we eat. And that, my friends, is the beauty of ‘whole food’ supplements. They are just like eating food because that is what they contain. When comparing multivitamins, examine the source of ingredients. Manmade compounds, found in typical retail multivitamins, often provide mega-doses of single vitamins and minerals, but Standard Process goes one step further – by delivering whole food ingredients. For example, Catalyn contains 15 whole food ingredients, including carrot root which supplies over 200 known phytonutrients. It’s the combination of these foods, not just a single component, which provides the vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients you need to help maintain optimal health. Synthetic multivitamins comprised solely of single vitamins and minerals do not have the full spectrum of components that whole food multivitamins offer.
Catalyn is both a multiple vitamin and trace mineral product. It contains living enzymes to promote digestion as well as specific glandular tissues to stimulate cell and tissue repair. It is ‘cold processed’, without heat, to preserve the integrity of these nutrients. Therefore, Catalyn works in a number of ways to: maintain the health and growth of new cells in your body, to keep your skin healthy and nourish collagen production, to promote overall cardiac health, and to support energy metabolism and digestion throughout the body.
In short, in this day and age, whole-food supplements have many benefits to offer each of us. So, the next time that you are at Urban to receive your needles, pick up a bottle, and try it for yourself. Acupuncture, to some degree, must work within the confines of the body and make use of the resources available to it. Whether treating pain or some other chronic, internal disorder, this is of paramount importance, and can make all the difference in the success of the treatment. Feed your body ‘real’ food and supply it with ‘whole’ food vitamins. You won’t be disappointed with the tangible and long lasting results.
-Steve Drugan, L.Ac
by urban-acupuncture | Nov 20, 2012 | Diet
What do we mean by this? Our diets are not complete. As a nation, we eat poor-quality foods that have been stripped of nutrients. Most of us do not consume enough fresh fruits and vegetables. Many of us get our whole grains from instant rice, refined wheat breads, pastas and cereal. We eat a tremendous amount of prepackaged and pre-made meals. One-quarter of Americans eat at fast food restaurants each day.
We eat plenty, but we are still starving. The foods we eat are not providing our bodies with the nutrition they need to survive and be healthy. We are starving our bodies and we are sick. We suffer from diabetes, heart attacks, obesity, and the list goes on and on.
Given proper nutrition, the human body has an amazing ability of keeping itself healthy. If properly fed and given the right nutrients, the human body is designed to repair itself. To do so, we need to eat a healthier diet, exercise, and take high-quality supplements made from whole foods. Whole food supplements supply our bodies with the nutrients we are not getting from our diet – all the vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, and phytonutrients that foods possess – in the way that nature intended, in a whole food form.
Whole food supplements are made by concentrating foods for use in supplements. When concentrated correctly, they supply a multitude of the food’s components. Foods provide nutrients that work together to provide you with optimal nutrition for good health. However, not all whole food supplements are the same. Many supplements available in today’s marketplace range in quality. Companies are riding the wave of supplement popularity rather than focusing on commitment and quality.
For these reasons and many more, Urban Acupuncture Center both recommends and sells Standard Process whole food supplements at our office. We suggest that all of our patients start with a basic whole food multivitamin called Catalyn. More on Catalyn in our next newsletter.
by urban-acupuncture | Nov 15, 2012 | Diet
By Anne Van Druten, L.Ac
When choosing produce, choose locally grown, seasonal vegetables that help you adapt to your surrounding by subtly connecting you to the rhythm of the seasons. In the winter eat more contractive vegetables (vegetables that are more Yang in nature therefore are more warming). These include hearty, sturdy leafy greens, compact vegetables and downward-growing roots such as carrots, kale, collards, broccoli, parsnips, rutabaga and turnips. These will not only weather the frost but taste sweeter afterwards!
We gain stamina and vitality when we eat them in the winter. Winter style cooking is cooking that is more yang or more warming. Slow-simmer, pressure-cook, bake or saute your meals. Serve and eat every meal warm versus raw and cold. When it’s cold outside you want to consume foods that are cooked and warming. Whereas in the warmer months it is more acceptable to eat raw and cooling foods to help your body cool off. Add a little sea salt, miso, tamari soy sauce or sauerkraut to your meals. And enhance your recipes with green onions, sea vegetables, ginger and dried herbs.
In the fall, eat fewer cold, uncooked foods — such as salads — and more warm, cooked foods. Switch from salads to soups and steamed vegetables such as winter squash, winter peas, broccoli, sweet potatoes, and yams. Incorporate yellow and red foods into your meals. Start your day with hot oatmeal.