by Debra Arko Novotny | Jul 6, 2022 | Acupuncture
Hey, did you know that community care provides acupuncture for veterans?
This isn’t anything new. Many vets are unaware of this option for care unless you ask. If you’re a veteran, you can request acupuncture for all pain-related problems and injuries, including those not from your time in the service, and for things like PTSD or anxiety.
I Love Doing Acupuncture for Veterans
These are usually complex cases. Helping someone feel better is a great feeling. I love treating people who served in the military. It’s my way of giving back.
How Does Acupuncture Help With These Problems?
My go-to care for pain-related problems is to use EAM or Electro-Acupuncture Medicine. Please note that this is not Estim or TENS.
EAM uses brackets around the center of the pain when possible. If you have low back pain, we ‘bracket’ this and then use “Wave-Forms” through a Bi-phasic rectangular frequency to teach the brain how to reset the body in that area.
That was a mouth full, so let’s break it down more. With the bracket and a specialized machine, we tell the brain to send natural healing chemicals to the area we treat!
It works with PTSD, anxiety, and insomnia too. The acupuncture points for these conditions become part of acupuncture treatment for veterans or anyone suffering from other diseases.
Statistics say everyone will experience pain in their lives. I believe this is true. When a patient doesn’t have pain but has other symptoms, the VA can provide you with acupuncture for veterans under the community care program.
The Hard Facts About Getting Acupuncture For Veterans
If you DO NOT indicate a specific acupuncturist, they will send you to the VA in Aurora–if you live in the Denver metropolitan area. This includes people living in Littleton, Lakewood, or the foothills! To avoid this, you can find a community care acupuncturist in your Littleton, Lakewood, or Conifer area – like me.
You, the patient, are your best advocate to stop this from happening. Tell your doctor that you want to see me! Yep, you can request acupuncture with Debra Novotny. Of course, if you have someone you like in your community, request them instead. They must be part of the VA Community Care team.
If you don’t have the name of someone in your area, which is part of the Community Care Network, they likely will send you to the Aurora VA location.
Know Your Rights
If you have stated my name or someone else to see and the VA tries to schedule you elsewhere, you can tell them no. You want acupuncture treatment with the person or me of your choice. If you don’t know anyone in your area, they have a list of names they can suggest.
Bottom line, you do not have to drive to Aurora, VA. If you feel the drive is too long or far for you. This can be because it will cause pain to sit that long. Traffic can trigger PTSD for many people. You might have your own reasons for wanting to stay in your community.
The Best Acupuncture for You
To me, what’s the most important is that you use acupuncture for your problem. Doctors put many vets on drugs or PT with no or negligible results. Wherever you live, here in Colorado or another state, check into how acupuncture for veterans is part of your care through the VA and try it.
by Debra Arko Novotny | May 31, 2021 | Acupuncture
In this article were going to be talking about intermittent fasting. A family member questioned if I was on a diet and I replied no intermittent fasting for me is a lifestyle.
This type of lifestyle has been around for decades in fact, if we examine our ancestors they followed this concept, even if we do not realize it. Before electricity, people would only eat during the daylight hours. This means in winter most cultures went to bed early, not eating in the evening, got up with the sun, began eating, working, and toiling in their lives until it was dark.
Weight Loss and Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting has benefits for your health because when we don’t eat constantly, our bodies can be healthier. The idea that intermittent fasting is a weight-loss diet became popularized in 2012 when a broadcast journalist did a TV documentary on it. Subsequently, several books came out written about losing weight, one of them the Obesity Code, goes into much of the idea of intermittent fasting being a way to lose weight.
A Lifestyle Not A Diet
I prefer to think of it as a lifestyle. With IF or intermittent fasting, it’s clarified that you still need to eat a nutritious diet. What I mean is that you should eat more fruits, vegetables, fiber, and healthy protein. Along with fats and avoid sugar, refined grains, processed foods, and of course stop snacking.
New research has suggested that not all Intermittent Fasting approaches are the same. We as human beings have become in sync with the day/night cycle, otherwise known as a circadian rhythm. Our bodies, our metabolism are used to daytime food, and nighttime sleep. Nighttime eating increases your risk of obesity and diabetes.
Time Window Of Eating
The second key to successful intermittent fasting is the time in which you eat. The ideal time frame is between 7 AM and 3 PM. Another popular time frame, the one I use, is from 10 AM to 6 PM. This one works best with my acupuncture practice.
What kind of health factors come into play?
Studies show that eating in these eight-hour windows is good for blood pressure, your heart, your digestion, and yes your weight. People who are close or at their ideal healthy weight live longer, experience less joint pain, sleep better, and are happier. Did I forget to mention you’ll have more energy as you age?
Why are they happier?
Could it be that intermittent fasting helps you keep your hormones in balance? There is research being done as I write this article suggesting that very thing. We know foods affect all of our hormones, not just the ones we know are important to our sexual drive but those that keep us alert and filled with energy.
So where to start?
First, start with limiting your sugars and carbohydrates. Take everything that falls into this category out of your life for 30 days. It will be hard and you’re likely addicted to sugars like many. One of the best ways is to read labels and find hidden grains or sugars.
Next stop snacking. If you need a snack, make it a piece of fruit. My go to is a banana which is high in sugar but it’s a healthy sugar. Another great one is apples.
In about seven days, lessen the time frame you eat to a smaller time. Instead of eating from the moment you wake to the moment you go to bed, set a goal of not eating after 6 PM. Do this for another week or two.
Then change the time you begin to eat in the morning to later in the day. Now this is if your goal is the 10 AM to 6 PM window. It would be the same if your goal is to eat only during the 7 AM to 3 PM window. I recommend the earlier times if you’re retired.
With intermittent fasting, you will enjoy more energy and sleep better at the very least. Your digestion may be happier and you find that you’re not as hungry. Is this easy?
More Energy and Less Pain
It takes time about 30 days to feel you have made this a lifestyle. Within about 14 days, your energy increases, perhaps even joint pain will decrease, and you will sleep better. I hope intermittent fasting as a lifestyle keeps you young and healthy no matter what age you are right.
by Debra Arko Novotny | Feb 17, 2021 | Acupuncture
Most people have enough to worry about right now with COVID-19 and wearing masks, but it can increase your unhappiness if you have pain. Conquering low back pain with acupuncture is much safer and healthier than surgery, and as I always say, try everything before you go under the knife.
It’s Not All In Your Back
Orthopedic acupuncture, notably the best form for conquering low back pain, involves first relaxing the lower back muscles and the hamstrings and mid-back. Think of it as a tug-of-war game between your muscles as they get tighter and pull. Tightness in other places can lead to sciatica, hip pain, and piriformis pain.
Conquering Low Back Pain With Acupuncture
Have you ever felt like arching your back or bendin
g over to get a good stretch? That’s a signal that your muscles are screaming, “I’m stiff!” This can be the beginning of things like a bulging disc or a ruptured disc.
Remember, as a kid, you bent down more, ran more, and did many fun things more than we do as adults. All these activities helped you to stretch. We called it playing.
Lifestyle Changes
Now, we sit at desks, work from home, and watch more HBOMAX than we did before COVID-19. Even during these times, you can add orthopedic acupuncture to help with conquering your low back pain. It is a safer bet than a doctor’s office visit. At your acupuncture visit, we stretch and relax the stiff muscles before doing painless acupuncture.
Many times, low back pain, especially sciatica, has radiating pain or numbness. This can feel like pins and needles in your leg, even a dull ache. It’s also important to treat this area with neurological acupuncture.
Sciatica And Disc Problems
Once your acupuncture treatment is complete, we use either cupping or hot stones to provide manual traction or fascia release. Both are excellent finishing touches for conquering low back pain.
Orthopedic acupuncture utilizes locations near the spine for back problems. In this way, we’re treating the dermatome getting the neurological treatment too. With a bulging disc or ruptured disc, this treatment relieves the muscles’ pressure on the nerves allowing the muscle to relax and the disc not to press on the nerves.
When the disc is ruptured, there’s still fluid inside it that can act as a cushion in many cases. The fluid also will close the rupture with time and rejuvenate itself. In this case, acupuncture is your rescuer because it relaxes the muscles and takes the pressure off the nerves at the same time.
Faster Healing And Reduced Pain
Using bracketing style acupuncture, a type of Orthopedic acupuncture can restore disc and low back problems including sciatica. Adding Prolotherapy can speed your healing and reduce your pain. Acupuncture injections also known as Prolotherapy are natural substances not western steroids. 
Conquering low back pain with acupuncture can happen quickly or take time, depending on your problem. Health insurance covers it at our office either under ‘acupuncture benefits’ or “physical therapy – dry needling [acupuncture]. Also, the Veteran administration is happy to refer you to us too.
by Debra Arko Novotny | Sep 9, 2020 | Acupuncture
It’s such an up & down journey having knee pain. Maybe it comes and goes or remains a constant reminder that we’re human. We will inevitably learn some life lessons through our discomfort. Acupuncture for knee pain can help us understand ourselves better.
Doing acupuncture can decrease or eliminate our discomfort.
Acupuncture For Knee Pain
Dealing with pain grows us. We learn what matters most to us as we find it hard to run, walk, or move around when our body isn’t working. Things we took for granted now have value.
Sometimes the people around us that we’ve have known us a long time may sense a change. Their love and support are important though they may not realize our issue and the new limits in our life.
When you begin acupuncture treatment, you connect to your body, mind, and emotional self that I refer to as our Spiritual self.
Support Through Family – Friends & Others
We also can connect with like-minded souls all over the world who have similar problems because acupuncture for knee pain is universal.
Many people try and love acupuncture for pain.
Knee pain can be complicated. It’s also scary. Acupuncture is essential to keep you moving and out of pain.
Pain Is Not Inherited
Age is not always a factor in pain. Activity or lack of it is what usually created knee pain. It’s not hereditary. Just because your dad or mom 
had it doesn’t mean you will. We determine our lives through what we eat, how we care for our bodies, and what we think.
Knee pain is treatable with acupuncture and should be a choice you make before surgery or medications. It can help you connect with your body more. Eliminating pain and giving you a sense of when something isn’t working for you is part of what alternative medicine does.
Simply put acupuncture for knee pain at the top of your wellness problem; if you have knee problems – you’ll be happy you did.
If you have stated my name or someone else to see and the VA tries to schedule you elsewhere, you can tell them no. You want acupuncture treatment with the person or me of your choice. If you don’t know anyone in your area, they have a list of names they can suggest.
