Controlling Stress
- Posted on: Jul 26 2019
Dealing with the complications of modern life requires some form of stress management. Acupuncture can be an ideal therapy to use in conjunction with lifestyle changes to help you combat stress and enter a more harmonious state. When your body is subjected to constant stress, this stagnation of circulation causes a variety of physical and mental symptoms, such as anger, depression, cold limbs, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), tight tendons and muscles, headaches, and pain.
Stress is primarily a mental reaction to your perception of life. Often, the mind will amplify this condition as it constantly deliberates the many complicated aspects of life. You actually end up creating more stress than you truly experience by these mental reactions. This type of mental tension can be especially relieved by acupuncture. The deep unwinding that occurs during acupuncture treatment parallels the effects of meditation, allowing you to release the stress and begin to perceive your stress from a different perspective.
As acupuncture helps the mind relax, the body returns to a more balanced state. This can improve the functioning of your organ systems, and in turn help you to manage stress more effectively. Digestion is one system of the body that is easily disturbed by stress leading to common stress reactions of IBS, vomiting, and diarrhea. By supporting the digestive system, the entire body becomes stronger and better able to handle the next stressful situation.
What happens when stress gets out of control? The body’s stress-response system is usually self-limiting. Once a perceived threat has passed, hormone levels return to normal. As adrenaline and cortisol levels drop, your heart rate and blood pressure return to baseline levels, and other systems resume their regular activities.
But when stressors are always present and you constantly feel under attack, that fight-or-flight reaction stays turned on.
The long-term activation of the stress-response system and the overexposure to cortisol and other stress hormones that follows can disrupt almost all your body’s processes. This puts you at increased risk of many health problems. The importance of finding solutions to stress cannot be emphasized enough before its too late and the stress becomes out of control.
Mayoclinic.com
Posted in: Acupuncture
