The chirping of the alarm barely rouses you enough to pry one arm out from under the blanket. Your hand automatically navigates its way to the bedside nightstand and inches its way to the alarm clock, a move ingrained by years of repetition.
Despite your best intentions of arising on time, not only do you sleep through the first alarm, but somehow manage to hit the snooze button twice more, rationalizing to yourself that you don’t need that much time to get ready for work anyway.
Finally, the Critical Alert goes off in your head. GET UP NOW OR GET FIRED!
Or better yet, with the change in time last weekend, are you waking up an hour earlier because your inner clock hasn’t reset itself?
Either way, you shower at hyper-speed, grab breakfast on the run, and you’re out the door. You notice your blood pressure is through the roof and you’re still tired, feeling unrested. The problem in this scenario is not that you ignored your alarm or woke up too early. And you did that day after day after day until finally your whole life has been thrown so far out of balance that you simply can not recover once you hit that tipping point.
Unfortunately, the same story is played out every day by those of us who ignore our own internal “alarms”, otherwise known as symptoms. You see, symptoms are your body’s warning systems, built in to alert you of a potential crisis.
What are your options when symptoms arise?
First, you could choose to do nothing, which is what most people do for a little while. Many hope that by ignoring the problem, it will somehow go away. Even if the pain eventually subsides, the underlying cause rarely resolves on its own.
When ignoring the problem proves ineffective, your next course of action might be to seek medicinal assistance. Unfortunately, medicating a symptom is like hitting the snooze on the alarm. It just delays the inevitable, which eventually you will have to address in a sensible, effective manner.
That brings us to your third option: Acupuncture. The focus of acupuncture is to remove meridian system blockages and imbalances within the body, allowing the free flow of the body’s energy. Symptoms don’t exist in the absence of an underlying imbalance. Eliminate the cause and the symptom goes away once and for all. Please consider calling your local acupuncturist and find out what is means to wake up just in time and feel rested and renewed every morning!
symptoms
Acupuncture and Herbs: Let’s Talk About Allergies
As the snow continues to melt here in Massachusetts (even though we got a little but more last night), Spring is around the corner! For most of us, it is a time for appreciating gardens full of color, the chance to leisurely walk around the block in the evening, start our triathlon/race training outside, go camping or hiking…just enjoy the outdoors after being cooped up in our homes for a long winter. For some of us, it is the dreaded time of stuffy heads, headaches, watery itchy eyes, contact sinus drainage, all over body discomfort, itchy skin…do I really need to go on? Allergies are never much fun! Stress and lifestyle/diet choices can compound the problem and it’s symptoms.
Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal medicine has answers for those of you who suffer from seasonal allergies! Acupuncture can help boost the immune system while treating the symptoms present. Chinese herbal medicine has fantastic formulas that when they are taken 1-2 months in advance of the targeting expected allergy season, can do away with most of the reactions to the environmental allergens. Many clients have walked in the doors of the Marlborough Wellness Center in an amazing of amount of discomfort only to leave after their treatment plan timeline symptom free (or maybe needing a minor tune-up for good measure)!
If you are tired of suffering and have tried a few of the natural remedies without much effect, please consider calling your acupuncturist-herbalist and discuss the options that will best fit your needs! You do not have to suffer from allergies!