Anxiety | Michigan Associates of Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine

Acupuncture: A New Alternative for Treating Depression

February 20, 2018 By Karen Siegel Propis Leave a Comment

Depression is the most common of mood disorders. It is estimated that nearly 30 million Americans suffer from the often-debilitating disease and it is, in fact, one of the 15 leading causes of disability in developed countries. It is widely believed that depression may the body’s response to chronic and significant stress that seems insurmountable to most people.

While Western physicians are often quick to prescribe drugs, Eastern medicine, used alone or in combination with medication, can offer quick and lasting relief from depression.

The following signs describe someone who suffers from depression, with at least five of the symptoms lasting for at least 14 days:

* Depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day
* Markedly diminished interest in pleasure in almost all activities most of the day, every day
* Significant weight loss or gain without dieting, or major changes in appetite or eating habits
* Insomnia or hypersomnia nearly every day
* Anxiety or lack of desire to do anything
* Fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day
* Ongoing feelings of worthlessness, guilt, desperation and psychic pain
* Inability to think or concentrate; indecisiveness daily
* Recurrent thoughts of death or suicide

While drugs have largely been effective in providing temporary relief from acute depression and can assist in the therapeutic process, the side effects are proving to be a severe downside to treatment. In fact, one of the potential side effects is increased suicide risk in certain patients. Most recent studies have shown that number to be increasingly higher in teenage patients taking antidepressants. Another drawback is that the drugs often take up to six weeks to begin working. [Read more…]

Flower Essences: Natures Remedy

February 20, 2018 By Julie Silver Leave a Comment

A number of years ago, while I was living in Chicago, I was going through a difficult and stressful time. I was in school for acupuncture, working full time and trying to manage the various aspects of my life. I was overwhelmed! It was during this time that a massage therapist told me about flower essences. I had not heard of them and went to a local health and healing store to find out more.

What I learned is that flower essences are liquid infusions (remedies) made from the flowering part of a plant. Interestingly enough, there is no physical part of the flower that is included in the remedy. The flowers are soaked in water and it is this infusion that is and made into a tincture.

Much like acupuncture, flower essences promote our own body’s ability to move toward healing – in this case emotional healing.

Flower essences are specifically designed to address emotional health and wellbeing. Flower essences do not address specific physical ailments; rather, they address emotional issues as well as the underlying emotional issues that accompany health issues. [Read more…]

Finding Balance When the World Seems Out of Balance.

January 17, 2017 By Karen Siegel Propis Leave a Comment

For each new year, we often set health-related goals. We want to eat better, exercise more, balance our lives, and try to behave in a kinder way in our world. When we strive for balance, we don’t often think about balancing our physical health and our emotional health. We tend to focus on the physical aspects of our being. However, our emotional health impacts our physical health in ways we don’t often realize.

Chinese medicine recognized thousands of years ago that an important relationship exists between emotions and physical health. The Chinese Canon of Medicine recognized that emotional and psychological factors are important causes of physical illness and can negatively affect the internal organs of the human body. It states that “anger hurts the liver, joy hurts the heart, brooding hurts the spleen and melancholy hurts the lungs.”

[Read more…]

Natural Cures for Seasonal Affective Disorder

September 23, 2015 By Julie Silver Leave a Comment

As the dark nights and short days of winter are upon is, it is not uncommon to feel more tired, lower energy, and a desire to stay inside a warm house and cozy up with a good book. For many of us, this is a passing experience that can be cured by a weekend getaway or a few sunny days. However, for some, these symptoms can be indicative of a form of depression called Season Affective Disorder. According to the web site familydoctor.org, as many as ½ a million people have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). It is not surprising that SAD is more common in the Northern part of the country. Symptoms of winter-onset Seasonal Affective Disorder include: loss of energy, depression, anxiety, oversleeping, changes in appetite and difficulty concentrating. There are a number of natural ways to treat SAD. [Read more…]

Integrative Approach to Menopause!

July 17, 2014 By Julie Silver Leave a Comment

Menopause and peri-menopause are natural occurring processes which take place when the secretion of estrogen and progesterone in our body diminishes. As a result, menstrual cycles become irregular and eventually stop. Menopause becomes “official” when a woman has not had a cycle for one year. Symptoms of menopause can vary from woman to woman. However, typical symptoms include: hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, changes to skin and hair, sleep and mood. Symptoms vary from woman to woman as does the length and severity of symptoms. There are many women who are looking for an integrative approach to managing peri-menopause and menopause and there are a number of options available.

Acupuncture

A study conducted at Henry Ford Hospital and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (volume 28, number 4) compared the use of acupuncture vs. Effexor for the management of hot flashes for patients undergoing treatment of breast cancer. In this study, 50 patients were assigned either to receive acupuncture 2 times a week for 2 weeks followed up by once a week for 4 weeks or take Effexor. Both groups experienced significant decreases in hot flashes, depressive symptoms and other menopausal quality of life symptoms indicating that acupuncture is at least as effective as Effexor; with none of the side effects commonly associated with this medication.

Most remarkably, the duration of reduced symptoms lasted much longer with acupuncture (2 months) vs. Effexor in which most symptoms returned within 2 weeks after the medication was discontinued. [Read more…]

Healing Touch

May 10, 2013 By Julie Shindler-Cohen Leave a Comment

I recently had the pleasure of being hospitalized for 8 days. I call this a pleasure because I have never been hospitalized before and it was quite a learning experience (that I hope to never repeat). Also, because my personal experience with Western medicine is relatively limited, my hospital-stay can be likened to a fast-track course in how Western medicine operates. It was fascinating! [Read more…]

Why Meditate?

April 9, 2012 By Julie Silver Leave a Comment

The thought of meditation often brings cringes of resistance and images uncomfortably sitting, legs crossed, in a still position for long periods of time. Most people resist the idea of meditation because they cannot imagine themselves slowing down.

We live in a world that is extremely fast-paced. Most of our daily actions and activity support us in moving even faster. Television, computers, cell phones, text messaging, emails and instant messages overload us with information; keeping us connected to the world 24 hours a day/7 days a week. Much of the information is challenging – news of war, earthquakes, crime and scandals become difficult to hear. We hate it, we fear it – yet we are drawn to and often forced to listen. Most of us seek peace and harmony. We often feel this is lacking in our lives. We strive to be happy yet few of us attain this. Individual distress and tensions combine to create stress in society. Meditation can provide the respite one needs. [Read more…]

How to Stay Well: An Emotional Perspective

October 6, 2011 By Julie Shindler-Cohen Leave a Comment

Acupuncture is one of the best forms of preventative medicine available today. The goal of acupuncture is to maintain balance within the energy channels so that disease will not present itself. Maintaining balance ensures that there is not too much (an excess) of energy in one channel and a lack of (deficiency) of energy in another channel. Chinese herbs are also used for this purpose; to clear out any excess, support any deficiency or treat any resulting pathologies. From an emotional perspective, I have found that when people become stressed or emotionally vulnerable, any preexisting deficiency becomes a more serious problem. For example, the person who has a long history of digestive disorders gets severe digestive problems when they experience a loss in their life. Or a person who has a long history of allergies and frequent colds get a long standing cough that will not go away when life becomes stressful. [Read more…]

Creating an Intention for your IVF Cycle

September 12, 2011 By Monica Mae Leibson Leave a Comment

For women going through IVF, it’s a very emotional time. And it seems sometimes easier for the human psyche to worry about the negative rather than create a positive future. Now if having a baby were as easy as “creating a positive future,” we wouldn’t need IVF! This practice is simply used to focus the mind, rather than letting anxiety and fear get the best of us.

Step 1. Release the past.

If our mind is cluttered with memories of yesterday or anxiety regarding tomorrow, we cannot truly create from a blank slate.

Breathing in, I allow myself to come into this present moment.

I choose to consciously release the past at this moment. I internally declare that the past has no power over me and I release and let go. (Deep sigh of relief).

Step 2. Create an intention

With an intention, you begin by stating your desire. Be sure to use juicy adjectives like loving, nurturing, and fully self-expressed. You want your intention to feel like it really resonates with why you desire to have a child.

The flow of the intention can go something like this…

I would love the opportunity to be a loving mother to a healthy child.
My intention at this time is be a nurturing mother in a beautiful family with a child.
Who I am is the possibility of peace, love, and joy.
I am a stand for loving families on our planet.

Step 3. Release and let go.

Oftentimes this is the hardest part. But just practice it and see how your heart opens. You can speak your intention with love and gracefully follow it with a releasing meditation.

“I have shared my intention with the universe and know that it has been received. With that knowing, I release and let go. I release the attachment of my intention and choose to stay focused on who I am being, rather than what I am asking for.”

“I choose to have faith in this life. I know it is not always easy but regardless of the outcome, I choose to have faith in my journey.”

Step 4. Rinse and repeat

I recommend writing down the intention you’ve created and include the releasing meditation. You can carry it around with you in your wallet. You could put it on the mirror in your bathroom. The honest truth is that you might need to say it a lot in each day. Worry and anxiety can be so familiar to our brains that it becomes our automatic thought process. This will truly be a lesson in consciously creating your thoughts. Enjoy!

Cascade of Endorphins

January 22, 2011 By Monica Mae Leibson Leave a Comment

In these modern times, we are busy. We are busy juggling our work lives, personal lives, hobbies, etc. Between all of our responsibilities, we try to fit in a movie or a book. With all of this busyness, many people are experiencing anxiety. The nervous system of the human body is not really designed for the type of constant stress that we are under. Rather, our nervous system prefers to be in “rest & repair mode” most of the day while switching over to “fight or flight” only when something life threatening occurs. But with people feeling so overwhelmed by the amount of things on their to do list, they subsequently feel frazzled.  One way to calm the nervous system, as well as calm our emotional selves, is to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. During anxiety, the nervous system releases catecholamine hormones that trigger an increase in heart rate & breathing. There is also a constriction of blood vessels in many parts of the body and a tightening of the muscles. When we focus on gratitude, a cascade of endorphins is released that produce a feeling of well-being. When we start to focus on our blessings, we actually create a renewed sense of love for life not only in our minds but also in our bodies.
The easiest way to create that attitude of gratitude is to go on a ‘rampage of appreciation’ (see Ask & It is Given by Esther & Jerry Hicks). Basically, say one thing that you are grateful for. And as you experience that gratitude, let another thing slip into your mind. Most of us are fortunate enough to have many wonderful blessings so we don’t need to think too hard. If you’re having trouble, start here. “I am grateful for my eyes that see the beauty around me & allow me to read this article.” As you find more and more to be grateful for, you may realize that sometimes negativity creates your perception, rather than this optimistic view. It’s really a rather simple exercise, but it can have dramatic short term & long term benefits. It is a great tool to allow people to enjoy their lives, no matter how busy they are. In fact, many find that they can cultivate an appreciation for their active lives. They are able to choose to interpret the busyness as a gift.
Blessings on your journey,
Monica Mae Leibson