by Debra Arko Novotny | Nov 3, 2016 | Acupuncture
You know I’ve done acupuncture now for over twenty years now, and few people come in saying, “Hey can acupuncture help my high blood pressure?”
Hypertension Meets Acupuncture
It’s more the other problems you think about when you step into acupuncture. You try it for things like knee pain or a migraine, right? So have you ever thought about the fact it might work for other things? Guess what pain can raise your blood pressure leading to chronic high blood pressure.
While research is important, I want my blog to be fun and light. Health can get so serious and complicated. I think it’s smart to love your body and care for your health.
You probably want a little science and a recent study which appears in the presents the first evidence of the molecular activity behind the use of electroacupuncture’s high blood pressure lowering benefits. Susan Samueli Center for Integrative Medicine[1] in California did the study.
Their research is pretty impressive too! When they treated patients with certain acupuncture wrist points their patients’ high blood pressure decreased. It’s more exciting when the patients had repeated treatments weekly their hypertension lowered long term. The client was able to reduce their western medicine with their doctor’s approval.
Choosing Acupuncture To Treat High Blood Pressure
All I know is that when you reduce pain or stress, blood pressure goes down too. It’s good news for you.
Our bodies are amazing, and it does this thing called inflammation when we’re in pain. The purpose of inflammation is to eliminate cell injury and allow your body to repair itself.
Inflammation can cause migraines, and it can raise the pressure in our veins. The simple act of reducing pain helps the physical stress of discomfort.
Blood Pressure and Your Body’s Chemistry
So what did the study tell you in real people language? If you try acupuncture for high blood pressure is can reduce blood pressure for about two days. The electroacupuncture boosts these genes in your body called enkephalins. It’s really cool because these peptides are one of three major opioids produced by the body. What the heck are peptides you’re asking? In super simple terms, they’re a compound of amino acids, and your brain needs these things to be healthy.
Your body creates Opioid Peptides[2], and the opioid system controls pain, reward and addictive behaviors. Electroacupuncture lowers your blood pressure stimulates your body to make more enkephalins one of these Opioid Peptides! Kind of neat huh.
There’s more to chemistry, though. How tired are you? Do you sleep and dream at night? What kind of stress are you experiencing?
All these things can affect or indicate a vitamin deficiency. Just being borderline in vitamin D[3] can increase your risk. Again more studies for you in case you love research suggest you need to have higher vitamin D than once thought if you’re hoping to protect your heart and brain.
Wondering what to do when it comes to hypertension? I was too. Mine was a combination of a D deficiency, stress, and pain. Who knew! Yes, healers have health problems too.
I couldn’t fix it by eliminating my pain. That helped but didn’t get me in the range of healthy heart. I take my health very seriously. High blood pressure is a sign of something, and I like to investigate do you?
Meditation And ElectroAcupuncture Effects Blood Pressure
Adding daily meditation and checking my vitamins did the trick for me. Really I didn’t think I had stress in my life so maybe it’s just starting my day in a better way that worked. When my blood work [lab tests] came back, it was a simple tune-up of my vitamins and nutrition.
The idea of taking drugs with all their fillers and chemicals was scary to me; it is scary to you? I mean many prescriptions contain Aluminum[4], and that’s bad for your brain so why risk it?
Yes, it’s exciting acupuncture does lower hypertension. The better news is that most times it’s not a genetic thing and a few easy changes can help you keep your blood pressure in good shape.
[1] https://news.uci.edu/health/uci-study-finds-acupuncture-lowers-hypertension-by-activating-opioids/
[2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071014163647.htm
[3] Ullah, M. et al. Does Vitamin D Deficiency Cause Hypertension? Current Evidence from Clinical Studies and Potential Mechanisms. International Journal of Endocrinology 2010;579640;1-11.
[4] http://www.naturalnews.com/033431_aluminum_personal_care_products.html
by Debra Arko Novotny | Apr 1, 2015 | Health
Creating a Healthy Mindset
To live totally in the present is a moment-by-moment thing. Because there is no such thing as time living in the past is similar to being in a dream or fog. There simply is the moment or now. Each cell in our bodies’ continually renews this is health. Every thought moves forward if we allow it.
Our thoughts move into a new dimension. The question we have to ask ourselves is, ‘does thought exist in the past?’
My answer, “only when it’s a cancer of sorts.’ When a cell in our bodies’ stagnates and doesn’t renew this becomes cancer. Why is living in our past story much different?
It took me a full year to change a mindset I held, looking back personally I do feel that my brain was feeding a situation in my life. Once I formed a new mindset I was able to move forward having success in that area of my life within days. Today I can change unhappy moments within hours because of the new brain I possess – a healthy thinking brain.
Health coaching clients often tell me they experience the same thing using the tools from my health coaching. So what is Cancer of the mind?
Cancer Of the Mind – The Importance of Living Totally In the Present
Experiencing pain in our lives is inevitable. Often though we choose to suffer along with this experience. We continue the story in our lives and in our mind. It literally imprints on our human cells. This is the scientific fact [1] our brains can remember events that are emotionally easier than a daily activity that is rote.
Do you remember what you wore the second Tuesday of last month or last Tuesday for that matter? Unless something eventful happened, you might not. If you met a new love interest, I bet you do. When I pose this question to acupuncture clients they always remember when they met their significant other.
According to Robert Sanders, at UC Berkeley News Center [http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/06/14/new-neurons-help-to-remember-fear/] Berkeley neuroscientists recent research studies show that fear burns memories into our brain.
These memories often are unpleasant and tend to become life-stories of hard times. We wear a badge of honor into the ‘me too’ club of pain and suffering. 
We all have these times you don’t have to join this metaphoric club. Health coaching focuses on helping you escape this group and move into a happier life.
Living totally in the present reduces physical pain too and end suffering. This allows us to focus on what we want in our life. This cancer of the mind affects our body too by sending pain signals setting up patterns that are hard to break without tools like acupuncture.
Living Totally In The Present – Leaving The Past Where It Belongs
They also believe other highly emotional experiences lead to incredibly strong memories too. This can be the birth of your child or the day your spouse proposes.
This is one reason we love rituals around important events in our lives. It helps us to remember vividly a feeling of happiness that counter-balances the times we felt fear.
Nature knows most women fear the birth process so it sends chemicals soaring through our bodies as our newborn enters the world changing our mindset.
Science knows that neurons form based on our thoughts. If we continue to think in a negative pattern, our brainpower will give us resolutions that always have a negative effect on our thinking.
Robert Sapolsky’s lab at Stanford University is conducting studies on Gage’s theory that new neurons are especially sensitive to input two weeks after they form.
Their data shows that new neurons forming in the brain can develop ‘active’ connections, leading to happy thoughts, peace of mind, and the ability to bounce back from emotions of fear or stress.
While they are doing this chemically [through the use of drugs], other natural methods abound! Brain Gym is proof of mental retraining.
Laying New Pathways For Living Totally In The Present
Neuropathways connect inside our brain in patterns. These neurons store information or stimuli. If tall, dark men remind you of your loving father, you’ll feel a sense of peace. On the other hand, if your father was abusive, you’ll have a sense of fear even though you may not be conscious of this effect.
Muscle tense and irritability may increase all because of an unconscious response.
This held true with a distant family member for me. They always found ways to make me feel unwanted and small. Changing my own feelings about this person helped me recover.
When we are faced with a negative emotion, to reprogram the brain – literally, we must lay down new pathways so we can live totally in the present. Acupuncture can help stimulate the process while you use gratitude and forgiveness at home.
It sounds silly, but I and many clients have proven this theory many times. In my case, I started seeing the degrading behavior as a way to grow and be better. It taught me kindness, love, and finding joy in the faces of my small children at the time.
I also had to move past the anger and forgive this person. The surprise came when I forgave myself. I’ve found that we all feel we allowed these things to happen to us or we deserved the treatment in some way. I call these esteem-breakers. Also, we aren’t ourselves during these times and lash out at innocent people who don’t deserve our anger.
Using Affirmations And Meditation Really
If you’ve followed my articles long, you know I believe in using daily meditation and affirmations. In my own life, the initial change began right away but took months to feel it. Reprogramming your thinking is taught at Harvard, Stanford, and many other prestigious universities known for their research in medicine.
Health coaching methods help us use these tools to move you out of living in the past and totally in the present. It starts the first time you do it though you might not notice a change in yourself yet. Remember from a scientific point of view, you’re laying down new pathways.
It doesn’t matter if you do this once daily or multiple times. It’s consistency that matters. Set the same time daily aside. I do this first thing in the morning. You can start with one, two, five minutes. Today I enjoy being in a state of bliss and peace for 30 minutes each morning. You do not need to do this. It is part of my career it may not be your calling so don’t worry about how long you spend, just do it daily
Set a mantra for yourself. Are you working on being happy and feeling joy? Then use that as your affirmation. ‘I am happy and full of joy.” With health coaching we may work with other affirmations around weight loss, or insomnia, even careers.
I felt so silly saying this in my own mind at first. Silently I added ‘thank goodness no one can hear me.’ Don’t worry only you and whatever you believe in can hear you. Often we don’t feel we deserve to feel joy and be happy. This is where forgiving ourselves comes into the mantra.
Let Yourself Off The Hook
For any of this to work, you have to do it. Once I began forgiving myself and others, things moved fast. Clients share it’s like lightning going off in their lives. They aren’t angry, they laugh more, and love more fully.
When we start living in the now, we begin to see a future creating a mental equivalent of what we desire to create in our lives. Seeing a better future is only possible when we have a mindset that supports us.
Shawn Achor is an expert in positive psychology with a dozen distinguished teaching awards at Harvard University, where he delivered lectures in Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar’s class “Positive Psychology,” the most popular class at Harvard, confirms that growing new neuro-pathways in our brains is possible by using repetition.
The principle is simple. Right now, you repeat your story daily to someone or in your mind. Just change your story by using this tool. Do the meditation; repeat your mantra with breathing once daily then say it to yourself as often as you can. If you do this, every time your negative story pops in your mind you’ll replace it with new neuron connections in your body, especially your brain.
While it doesn’t change the past, it allows living totally in the present to be your way of life. Enjoying the things that now are free to come your way will appear when you’re open to receiving.
All photos Dreamstime Copyright.
Science articles into cell reprogramming is not new you can read more about it here, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150836/.
[1] http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/uploads/HeartMath%20article.pdf
All I know is that when you reduce pain or stress, blood pressure goes down too. It’s good news for you.
Adding daily meditation and checking my vitamins did the trick for me. Really I didn’t think I had stress in my life so maybe it’s just starting my day in a better way that worked. When my blood work [lab tests] came back, it was a simple tune-up of my vitamins and nutrition.
