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Acupuncture Works!

Acupuncture works in a series of treatments, similar to physical therapy, radiation therapy or exercise, & the effects are cumulative – very often long-lasting or permanent. The way Acupuncture works is by triggering the release of the supercharged energy molecule, ATP= adenosine triphosphate, which is made in each of our cells and is present and necessary for ALL of our bodys’ processes and functions to occur.

ATP breaks down to adenosine & 2 phosphates, & can convert back again to ATP, depending on what the body needs at the time.  Acupuncture is most well known for treating pain. Adenosine is released during acupuncture & has anti-inflammatory effects & mediates all types of pain: acute, chronic, & neuropathic.

The reason Acupuncture is effective to treat so MANY different conditions, is because ATP & adenosine are present in ALL cells, in ALL body tissues, in ALL body systems, & used for ALL body functions!

In a sense, an acupuncture treatment ‘reminds’ the body how to function when it is healthy ~ moving easily & without pain, all of the systems working smoothly and efficiently, emotions are calm, steady, and happy, with quality sleep! Acupuncture establishes homeostasis, or balance, by reminding the body how everything is ‘supposed to work’ together; how the systems (endocrine, reproductive, immune, cardiovascular, digestive, metabolism…) function when they are healthy- without disease and illness, & pain free!

ATP, the supercharged energy molecule in each of our cells, is the modern day equivalent of Qi, the energy described in Acupuncture & Chinese medicine.

From the 3000 year old Chinese medicine perspective, acupuncture works by promoting the movement of Qi, or energy, throughout the body, which directly impacts the body’s ability to function properly and nourishes our cells, tissues, organs. The concept of ‘qi’ originates from what the Chinese call ” life force” or animating energy”, it is found in nature and all living beings and is responsible for creating harmony and balance in health. If qi is blocked and does not flow freely, pain and illness will result…

In other words, ATP needs to be made available or accessible for our body to use, in order to function properly. Acupuncture stimulates the smooth flow of qi, by triggering the release of ATP for us to use, as needed.  This method is also referred to as “Purinergic Signalling”, due to the components of ATP, (adenenosine and 2 phosphates), being purines.

These findings are credited to the work of neurobiologist & nobel prize winner, Geoffrey Burnstock, president of the Autonomic Neuroscience Center @ UCL Medical School, who coined the term “Purinergic Signalling”, discovered in the 1970’s.

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DOES IT HURT?

Does It Hurt? ( See cute pic;)
The second most posed question when people come in for an acupuncture treatment is, “Does it hurt?”
My favorite response: My five year old daughter asks for it. She gets off the bus, chucks her backpack to
the ground, raises her little, exasperated hands to her head and says, “Mom! I had a SO, SO stressful day!” (In kindergarten;) “ I need my achoopunture! I want Yintang and my stomach points.” Which are
actually on her legs, as she point to them. She gets into her comfy spot, does her yoga breathing and after 3 teeny acupuncture needles, she usually falls asleep within minutes! Right away, the body starts producing the calming, feel-good endorphins, such as, serotonin and oxytocin, so people start relaxing. If there is pain, the anti-inflammatories that start getting released begin to soothe the pain. For example, the young babies that have been brought in by their parents for care, respond with curiosity when the teeny acupuncture needles get inserted, for such things as constipation. No tears, no crying! And, because children are amazingly efficient at healing, they have typically had a bowel movement within minutes to hours, after struggling from painful constipation for days. Happy little one = happy parent! If the little people stories didn’t convince you, that acupuncture is more relaxing than painful, our furry friends and actually even the bald ones;) love to get treatments. My golden chomped a bumblebee one time, out in the boonies, on a Sunday. Within a very few minutes her face started swelling up and she was gasping for breath, as I can only guess the bee probably stung her somewhere in her throat. Knowing I didn’t have access to a vet within miles on a Sunday, and only being a student of acupuncture at the time, I wasn’t yet experienced with the effects of acupuncture but I was too scared not to try. Two little needles in her paws to treat the face and throat and Yintang again, my daughter’s favorite point,
and within minutes my pup was breathing normally with her face swelling dissipating! Granted, golden retrievers are pretty chill in general but at no point did she try to get the needles out or off or even react in pain, so it must have hurt a lot less than that bee sting. I’m sharing these stories in hopes to alleviate some of the fear that people have around acupuncture because a lot of people could benefit from the efficacy of these treatments. Acupuncture is the oldest clinical medicine in the world & it reminds the body how to heal itself : It helps people to be pain-free, avoid surgery, and treat illness and disease. It restores calm balance. It’s very effective and efficient with the right prescription series for each person. So don’t let the fear of needles hold you back from getting what you need to be healthier! Find yourself a properly educated acupuncture physician (Google nccaom.Org); find someone that you feel comfortable with and trust, and go experience how strong & balanced you are truly able to feel. And
don’t forget to ask for Yintang;)

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Why All Athletes Should Try Acupuncture | STACK

https://www.stack.com/a/why-all-athletes-should-try-acupuncture

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Tips for the Best Kind of Wealth ~ Your Health!

Exercise yields Happiness:)

How Ho Make Your Healthy Changes Stick & Feel Like YOU Again!
1 Decide what you would like your goal or outcome to be. For example, to be pain free, have more energy, or to just be happier…
Realize you can adjust and you are in control of your sleep, the food you choose to put into your body & taking advantage of your exercise opportunities. Those three things alone have a huge impact on how you feel everyday!
2 Choose one easy thing that you could trade out for a healthier upgrade. For example, instead of reaching for soda, drink water. Notice how you feel at the end of the week.
3 When you go grocery shopping shop the perimeter of the store where the REAL, WHOLE, actual foods are! Read ingredients: if you don’t recognize them or there are more than 5- it’s probably not actual food and your body won’t be able to use it as fuel for energy. Worse, it will cause damage to your body.
4 Add a vegetable to your plate with each meal. Eat the rainbow! (Not the Skittles rainbow;) The fruit & vegetable rainbow!
5 Eat dinner for breakfast. Include a vegetable you enjoy.
6 Trade out your dairy products for almond milk or coconut milk. Dairy makes phlegm/plaque and we’re not baby cows!
7 Add a small amount of protein with each meal. An awesome superfood is quinoa: easy to cook; just like rice, yet packed with proteins and amino acids which are the Lego building blocks of your body!
8 Do not take your cell phone to bed with you! choose a reasonable bedtime for you to get enough hours of sleep in put your cell phone in sleep mode and move it at least four feet away from your head.
9 Choose three things you’re thankful for each day & say them out loud either a dinner or before you go to bed at night or as soon as your feet hit the floor in the morning. Thankful people are happier people.
10 3 times throughout the day take 3 quality deep breaths with long complete exhales. Notice how you feel. This has an immediate calming effect on your whole body and all of your major organs.
11 Play and listen to the song weightless. It reduces anxiety by 65%. (Google neuroscience and Weightless by Marconi Union.
12 Be aware of your posture. Hold your head over your shoulders & put a smile on your face. Even placing your muscles into that position releases feel-good, happy endorphins in your brain. Amy Cuddy is the author of Presence & her TED talk about posture – how it affects your mood, attitude & confidence, immediately.
Remember: the hardest part is getting started. Pat yourself on the back for what you have accomplished each day! Recognize what you enjoy and what works for you based on how you feel. If you eat something and it makes you tired instead of giving you energy, next time make the healthier food choice. If you’re too tired to exercise after dinner, try taking a walk in the morning.

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Heartache, Health & Happiness

Published in Elephant Journal 2019!

Opportunities for kindness ~

It’s World Kindness day on Wednesday November 13th. World kindness may seem overwhelming, but a firefly spark of kindness initiates the butterfly effect. One small gesture may make someone else’s life easier or happier. It could be a smile in passing, an honest compliment or a few minutes of your attention with eye contact;)

Ever notice in the midst of heartache, hurt or being hammered on, it’s a small act of kindness that can make your heart melt ~ just because someone noticed and took the time to care. The cool thing is, that act of kindness, the feeling of being cared for and caring for someone else, can change the neurological pathways in your brain & stimulate the release of happy, feel good endorphins in your body – for the gifter and the giftee! Both being and doing kind makes people feel seen, heard, validated, acknowledged, appreciated and to a degree, loved.
While writing this my daughter said, “Heartache?! That’s not good!” But we talked about how through heartache, it lends perspective for what another person may be experiencing, which is empathy. Understanding, making the time to understand another person, is kindness.

Opportunities for kindness are everywhere! Tying a little kid’s shoe; letting someone else have the parking space; holding the door; putting your super-smart-phone down as soon as someone starts talking to you and looking at their much more interesting and animated cute face; saying thank-you! And… The hug; the hug is kind. A 30 second hug can boost your immune system: for both people!

Kindness is a gift given freely with no expectation, but the gift of kindness has an exponential return on investment yielding health and happiness for yourself and others. This Wednesday, on World Kindness day, I would encourage you to notice your opportunities for kindness & take them! You may not see the butterfly effect that was initiated from your kindness, but notice how you feel, and then go from there.

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Emotional Holidays

Holidays can be an emotional time for people. We are invested in the people we love and our relationships. Holidays are generally spent with the people closest to us & who matter the most, so of course our emotions are more intense at this time of year, especially!

Wouldn’t it be nice to ease into the holiday season feeling emotionally calm and balanced and able to focus on our loved ones and the quality time spent with them, in a peaceful & harmonious manner?

Just a few acupuncture treatments can get you their back to your calm & capable self; it helps lighten the load of anxiety, stress and worry and opens up the door for joy, laughter & relaxed comfortability with people you care about:) ~ Call today to schedule just a few treatments for a peaceful holiday season!

(850)736-4325

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Acupuncture 101

Tinnitus & TMJ Relief With Acupuncture

Tinnitus and TMJ often dissipate and are alleviated with an acupuncture treatment series, due to the relaxation response that acupuncture initiates.  The calming neurotransmitters, such as acetylcholine, for example, are released with acupuncture, easing stress and jaw tension.  Often, TMJ and tinnitus are present with high- stress, multitasking, type A personality people.  Acupuncture is extremely effective at calming the mind, especially when these personality types are in a constant state of overthinking or overanalyzing.

Tinnitus and TMJ due to injury or inflammation

Right away upon needle insertion acupuncture stimulates the release of anti-inflammatories at the site of injury and throughout the bloodstream. Pro-inflammatory cytokines are inhibited, as illustrated in the following study, showing the circuitry of the inflammatory reflex regulating  inflammation : neural (https://psychologytoday.com/basics/neuroscience)

The vagus nerve, in particular when stimulated;there’s an actual vagus nerve acupuncture point located on the ear, inhibits cytokine production. In other words, slowing down the inflammation response within the body- calming tinnitus and relaxing jaw tension with TMJ.

Acupuncture is a realistic solution for resolving tinnitus and TMJ

Tinnitus can be debilitating for people, interfering with their daily activities such as driving as it can impair balance and stability, resulting in vertigo and more stress. Often, people stop socializing, as background noise will exacerbate tinnitus, and become isolated and depressed.  In my practice patients have even expressed they were told to “learn to live with it,” or that “they would get used to it”. It can be frustrating and scary when there is no hope for solution in sight. My purpose for writing this article is to bring awareness and offer hope to people, that tinnitus and TMJ have been effectively treated with an acupuncture series administered by a properly trained acupuncturist.  Search for one in your area by visiting the website NCCAOM.org for an acupuncturist who has been through 3.5 years of an accredited Masters program, with 3500+ clinical hours of training.  Or, if you’re in the Pensacola Beach area, the author, Sarah Newman Kalb is the acupuncture physician of Vitality Acupuncture LLC.

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COLOR ME HAPPY WITH ACUPUNCTURE BY SARAH KALB, LAC, MAOM, RTT

For me, it made the colors brighter. I stepped outside into a gray & wintery day in Vermont, and the colors were bright.

I had just had my very first acupuncture treatment, (actually, to treat some pretty bad asthma from bronchitis that I’d had for months), and it was already coloring my world.

Being a 3000 year old medicine, acupuncture has helped many people with many different conditions. It is well known to be effective for pain alleviation, less well known, yet just as effective at treating chronic diseases and symptoms, and the most studied and applied efficient medical treatment focusing on how women’s bodies function and flourish. The reason for Chinese medicine being credited for treating women so effectively goes back in history to the desire for Chinese people to have sons born into the family, in order to run their farmland. The Chinese studied women’s health; the reproductive cycles, their hormones, what altered their hormones, the mind-body-spiritual & emotional connection, at all stages of each woman’s lifetime.

Throughout my years of acupuncture practice, I can honestly say that acupuncture makes people feel better. It helps people to get healthier, and it strengthens from the inside out. Often, people feel a bit different after their very first treatment – more relaxed, usually. After a few consecutive acupuncture treatments, people notice a slight difference in the way they perceive things and react to people or situations – a slight internal shift is noticed. And, as the acupuncture treatments build on one another, a gradual strength builds within and people start feeling more accepting of them self, behave kinder toward them self, and they make better choices for themselves. Acupuncture helps to bring balance to the person on physical, mental-emotional, and spiritual levels.

And I have noticed what acupuncture has done for the people who have invested in their health with regular treatments: acupuncture nourishes confidence.

People usually seek acupuncture for a specific health problem (as I had with my asthma), and because acupuncture treats thewhole person, it is therefore, very effective at allowing the body to provide what the person is in need of. Whether it be pain relief, hormone balance, less stress & anxiety, and even brighter colors in their world.

Oh – and that first treatment for that debilitating (kind that takes a 4 mile a day runner at the age of 20, and makes her pause to grab the stair rail just to suck wind) asthma? Well, by the time I had walked to my car across the road, I noticed I was breathing 80% better than in when I had walked in to the acupuncture office.

Sarah practices Vitality Acupuncture at Signature Wellness, and is an advocate for gentle, natural, and whole healing for each individual to experience their best self and a better life. Sarah holds a dual master’s in Acupuncture & Chinese herbal medicine from the New England School of Acupuncture in Boston. Get in touch with Vitality @ (850)736-4325 or email: Sarah@VitalityAcupuncture.Net

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REFRESH IN YOUR NEW YEAR!

As we go into the new year 2018 together, Id like to share the top 3 most simple, favorite, nourishing tips that we give in our clinic to feel better and be better…
1. Speak kindly to yourself. Shift that voice inside your head to be supportive, gentle, encouraging, and non-judgmental. Talk to yourself as you would a friend. That running to-do list? -At the end of the day, pat yourself on the back for what you DID accomplish! When you look in the mirror- bypass the wrinkles and announce “It’s a GOOD-lookin’ day! (With extra enthusiasm if your young daughter is watching;) Tap into your inner dork, and discover your funny side again. We all have it.
2. Notice how you feel 20 minutes to 3 hours after you eat something. Full, and then hungry soon after? Nourished, comfortable and content? Did your food give you energy to support you through your day, or make you tired? Quality food nourishes our body and mind, giving us physical energy and strength and mental clarity and focus. Eat the colors of the rainbow – in nature, not from a Skittles packet!
3. Breathe. Best and most challenging tip I dish out ever, over and over. Really breathe. With a big HUGE exhale and let it all go… Then do it again, 3 more times. Did you know the tops of your lungs go up to your clavicles or collar bones? Most people barely belly breathe. Most people have a very uncomfortable time exhaling. Breathe out what you want to let go; Breathe in possibilities, opportunities, hope…whatever you want to let in, accept, become. Work it.
So, the thoughts that fire, wire. Meaning, our thoughts fire neurons in our brains which create or wire pathways: What we think changes our brains. What you believe to be true, is. Regarding the food- unless you are a baby cow, dairy is not the healthiest choice. (More on that to come;) And, even just 3 quality deep breathes can start tapping into your happy endorphins- serotonin, oxytocin…You know- the same feel good ones that you feel after an acupuncture treatment.
That’s it! Practice any 1 of those tips and things will start shifting for you. Adopt all 3 and you may just bust out with your happy-dance because you feel so good! Happy New Year to you!
-Sarah Newman Kalb, Acupuncture Physician @ Vitality Acupuncture LLC
VitalityAcupuncture.Net
(850)736-4325
913 Gulf Breeze Parkway #15A
Gulf Breeze, FL 32561

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VAGUS NERVE ACUPUNCTURE FOR DYSAUTONOMIA/ POTS RELIEF

Vagus Nerve Acupuncture for Dysautonomia / POTS Relief
The Vagus nerve point is one of the most potent acupuncture points to use when treating people who have the challenge of managing dysautonomia and is therefore included in our acupuncture POTS protocol. The Vagus nerve is the longest, cranial “wandering” nerve that covers the heart and innervates most major organs, impacting the cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, respiratory, and digestive systems. The Vagus nerve also impacts the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems.

Creating Homeostasis
In the case of dysautonomia, a few of the major complications are gastroparesis accompanied by intense pain and vomiting, bradycardia, syncope or fainting, and inability to sweat. Gastroparesis is the result of underactive vagus nerve activity, with delayed gastric emptying and inhibited peristalsis – or the inability to digest food and its’ nutrients, necessary to live. At the same time, an overactive vagus nerve can cause an abnormally low heart rate and fainting, or vasovagal syncope due to a sudden drop in cardiac output.

Whether the vagus nerve is hypo or hyper aroused, both in the case of dysautonomia, treating the vagus nerve acupuncture point encourages the body toward homeostasis and efficient function. Since the body has a natural tendency toward maintaining homeostasis and optimal functioning for survival, vagal nerve stimulation, via acupuncture, communicates the appropriate need for increasing or subduing vagal nerve function.

The Benefits of Acupuncture
Acupuncture, in particular, reminds the body how to heal itself. Acupuncture is clinical medicine that treats illness, disease, pain and inflammation and it encourages the maintenance of our homeostasis or balance. For example, the same acupoint can be treated for either high or low blood pressure and the body will adjust accordingly to establish that happy 120/80 range. Same with a fever or a hot flash – treating a certain acupuncture point can drop body temperature in order to recuperate our perfect 98.6-degree F.

Summary About the Vagus Nerve
Acupuncture can help to establish proper Vagal tone, which seems imperative when managing dysautonomia, POTS, and many of the debilitating side effects of the disease. People with dysautonomia have common symptoms from the disease, yet, are also navigating very individual complications. The beauty of acupuncture is that it is a catalyst for the body to do what it needs to do, according to each individual’s necessary health requirements. Including the Vagus nerve acupuncture point in a patient’s customized acupuncture treatment plan, should be of serious consideration – for the benefit of a person’s quality of life… Isn’t that the Point?:)
Written 3/25/18

Sarah Newman Kalb, Acupuncture physician, MAOM @ Vitality Acupuncture LLC in Gulf Breeze, FL
VitalityAcupuncture.Net (850)736-4325