Acupuncture & Self Care Articles

    Before & After Your Acupuncture Appointment
  • 8 Things To Remember Before An Acupuncture Appointment  ACUTAKE  --  Acupuncture isn’t really into hard-and-fast rules. What works for one person may not necessarily work for another. This is the beauty of acupuncture—it meets us wherever we’re at. However, there are some general rules of thumb when it comes to preparing...  (read full article...)
  • How To Take Care Of Yourself After An Acupuncture Treatment  ACUTAKE  --  When people ask me what they should and should not do after acupuncture, I usually tell them, “Be good to yourself.”  Vague advice, but it’s what most recommendations for taking care of yourself after acupuncture come down to...  (read full article...)   

    New To Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine?
  • How To Know When Acupuncture Is Working  ACUTAKE  --  Acupuncture is not a one-shot deal. It works cumulatively, meaning one treatment builds on the next. There are certainly instances of acupuncture producing immediate results... (read full article...) 
  • What Does Acupuncture Feel Like?  ACUTAKE  --  A common assumption about acupuncture is that it hurts. You are, after all, getting stuck with needles. Fear of pain from acupuncture needles is one of the most common reasons people forgo acupuncture. Often to the astonishment of those who take the plunge... (read full article...) 
  • 5 Most Common Side Effects Of Acupuncture  ACUTAKE --  Forget what you’ve been told. Acupuncture does have side effects. The unintended consequences of acupuncture, while not life-threatening, should not be overlooked. The side effects of acupuncture occur frequently and can seriously impact on your quality of life...  (read full article...)​
    General Acupuncture & TCM
  • Five Key Acupuncture Discoveries  HEALTH CMI --  Five new acupuncture discoveries received widespread global attention. Number one on the list was that of CT scans capturing acupuncture points. CT (computerized tomography) X-ray scans now reveal the anatomical structure of acupuncture points. This rocked the research world after... (read full article...)
  • Why All Athletes Should Use Acupuncture  ACUTAKE  --  NFL quarterback Matt Hasselbeck does it. So does hockey superstar Jaromir Jagr. Olympic high-jumper Amy Acuff likes it so much that she learned how to practice it herself. New York City Ballet dancers swear by it. Acupuncture is a go-to therapy for many of the world’s leading athletes... (read full article...)
    Acupuncture for Pain Management
  • Medical Breakthrough - Pain Reduced By Acupuncture  HEALTH CMI  --  A new breakthrough in medical science finds a special bodily chemical responsible for pain reduction that is activated by acupuncture. The new state-of-the-art German research is a major discovery on how acupuncture stops pain. The anti-pain chemical is a chemokine... (read full article...)
  • New - Acupuncture Relief From Low Back Pain  HEALTH CMI  --  Researchers conclude that acupuncture is effective for the treatment of chronic low back pain. A randomized, controlled trial was performed at the Dongzhimen Hospital in Beijing, China with a group of 60 participants. Acupuncture effectively decreased patient pain levels and... (read full article...)
  • Acupuncture Relieves Heel Pain and Plantar Fasciitis  HEALTH CMI  -- Recent research indicates acupuncture is an effective and safe treatment for heel pain. Heel pain is a common foot condition often characterized by intense pain, especially when placing weight onto the foot.  (read full article...)
  • Acupuncture & Herbs Best Drugs For Menstrual Pain and Cramps  HEALTH CMI  --  Acupuncture combined with moxibustion and herbs is more successful for reducing menstrual pain and cramping than ibuprofen. The results were published in new research of a randomized investigation of patients with primary dysmenorrhea... (read full article...)
  • Acupuncture Cuts Post-Surgical Pain - New Study  HEALTH CMI  --  Acupuncture relieves postoperative complications. Researchers compared laparoscopic surgery patients receiving only anesthesia with patients receiving anesthesia plus electroacupuncture. The group receiving electroacupuncture had less postoperative nausea and vomiting. The acupuncture patients also had improved mental state scores, less irritability and showed improvements in sedation scores.  (read full article...)
  • Acupuncture Relieves Knee Osteoarthritis – New Study  HEALTH CMI  --  Researchers conclude that acupuncture has a significant curative effect on patients with knee osteoarthritis. This condition often involves joint pain, swelling, stiffness, decreased range of motion and the formation of bone spurs. (...) In this recent study, the researchers from a community hospital in Beijing treated 200 cases of knee osteoarthritis using acupuncture. The overall effective rate was 98%...  (read full article...)

Self Care

  • Top 12 Strategies for Optimizing Your Health  MERCOLA --  A recent article by CNN lists 25 ways to get healthier. Some of the suggestions certainly have merit, but it was more noteworthy for the many ridiculous tips they included, and some of the crucially important ones they neglected. (read full article...)
  • Want a Good Night's Sleep? Then Never Do These Things Before Bed  MERCOLA  --  Sleep is one of the great mysteries of life. Like gravity or the quantum field, we still don't understand exactly why we sleep—although we are learning more about it every day. We do know, however, that good sleep is one of the cornerstones of health.  (read full article...)
  • Why Walking Barefoot Might Be an Essential Element of Good Health  MERCOLA  --  When's the last time you kicked off your shoes and reveled in the feeling of the Earth under your feet? Been awhile? It may sound hard to believe, but engaging in this simple pleasure could give your health a much-needed boost.  (read full article...)
  • Worse than Cigarettes? The Silent Enemy Harming Your Health Today...  MERCOLA  --  Many still do not realize that they're chronically exposed to something that can deteriorate their health, and, unless it's identified and remediated, can lead to premature death—an exposure that is completely invisible, tasteless, and odorless. The exposure I'm referring to is electromagnetic fields, or EMF.  (read full article...)
  • Countless Uses for Coconut Oil – The Simple, the Strange, and the Downright Odd  MERCOLA  --  Coconut oil has been a dietary and beauty staple for millennia. It’s a powerful destroyer of all kinds of microbes, from viruses to bacteria to protozoa, many of which can be harmful, and provides your body with high-quality fat that is critical for optimal health.  (read full article...)
  • Improve Your Posture In One Simple Step  ACUTAKE  --  Want to improve your posture quickly, for free, with almost zero effort? I recently did it. So can you. I don’t deserve any credit for this accomplishment. (...) I can, however, vouch for its effectiveness... (read full article...)

Nutrition

  • 5 Delicious, Real Foods That Reduce Inflammation  MIND BODY GREEN  --  I've been itching to write this post for a while now since I'm frequently being asked how I manage my fibromyalgia through diet. In the past couple of years I've been eating an anti-inflammatory diet and my autoimmune symptoms are noticeably improved. So much so that I lead a fulfilling and energetic life and feel healthier than I ever have. (read full article...)
  • 9 Foods You Should Never Eat  MERCOLA  --  Many foods have been heavily promoted as being healthy when they are nothing more than pernicious junk foods. In the featured article, Clean Plates founder Jared Koch shared his list of nine staple foods that are far less “good for you” than you’ve been led to believe.  (read full article...)
  • 3 Ounces of This a Day May Be Harming Your Brain  MERCOLA  --  Eating wheat may not be beneficial to your health. Among many other reasons, each grain contains about one microgram of Wheat Germ Agglutinin (WGA). Even in small quantities, WGA can have profoundly adverse effects. It may be pro-inflammatory, immunotoxic, cardiotoxic ... and neurotoxic.  (read full article...)
  • Eating This "Healthy" Food? It Could be Slowly and Silently Killing You  MERCOLA, by The Weston A. Price Foundation  --  Are you confused about soy? The Weston A. Price Foundation has compiled a list of soy dangers and myths to get the truth out once and for all.  (read full article...)

Yoga, Pranayama & Meditation

  • Pranayama Practices for Stress, Anxiety, and Depression  YOGA JOURNAL -- Sooner or later, most of us feel a little depressed or anxious, and certainly all of us know what it’s like to feel tired. There are many different ways of treating these feelings, [...] But you may not realize that you have a safe, effective, and inexpensive remedy right at hand for each of these conditions. What is this magical elixir? Your own breath. (read full article...)
  • Upside Down  YOGA JOURNAL -- The Oxford English Dictionary committee recently revealed that the most commonly used noun in English is “time.” Probably when we use this word in daily conversation, it is to express our belief that we do not have enough time in our lives. We fill our calendars with tasks and appointments. The consequence of living this way is that we are stressed and seemingly have no time to de-stress. (read full article...)
  • 12 Ways Yoga Meditation Helps Nourish The Body, Brain and Mind  SHARP BRAINS  --  An easy, low cost, nat­ural prac­tice can help us boost our brain power, be health­ier and more spir­i­tu­ally attuned as we age, and improve our qual­ity of life and hap­pi­ness. It could also reduce some of the stag­ger­ing health care costs seen today.  Curi­ous about what that prac­tice is?  Recently The Alzheimer’s Research and Pre­ven­tion Foun­da­tion (ARPF)... (read full article...)
  • The Real Reason Downward Facing Dog Is So Good For You  ELEPHANT JOURNAL  --  Downward-facing dog is the most ubiquitous pose in yoga. Acupuncture explains why. This popular yoga pose is the one we see in advertisements and movies, on yoga DVDs, and the covers of health and fitness magazines. Downward-facing dog is taught in beginner yoga classes and returned to again and again by the most advanced yoga practitioners. ... (read full article...)
  • Mindfulness Meditation Training Changes Brain Structure in Eight Weeks  SCIENCE DAILY  --  Participating in an 8-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress. A new study is the first to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain's gray matter.  (read full article...)

Corporate Wellness

  • Challenge 2013: Linking Employee Wellness, Morale And The Bottom-Line  FORBES  --  As the work-life balance debate roars on with employees wondering whether to lean-in or lean-out these days, perception is everything ... And the perception of being cared for in a workplace culture that encourages wellness...   (read full article...)

The Jolt Files Podcasts
by Acupuncture Professional

Listen below to "learn how the complex system of acupuncture and oriental medicine looks at the interconnections between everything in our bodies"...

Health News from Mercola
Kristen A. Chew, L.Ac., C.M.T, C.Y.T.  .  San Francisco, California  .  415.692.1191  .  info@kristenchew.com