Acupuncture and Massage therapy has been shown to provide effective forms of stress relief. This can help improve emotional and mental well-being and ease symptoms associated with specific mental health disorders, such as anxiety and depression
Many traditional doctors are partnering with doctors in other fields in order to make a multidisciplinary approach to mental health treatment. It is hoped that by using natural healing and talk therapy that the use of powerful prescriptions could decline, giving people a better overall quality of life without the burden of mental health symptoms. If you or someone you know is affected by Mental Health and are looking for a more natural alternative treatment plan, Functional Medicine could be for you.
Don’t forget to save the date for our Patient Appreciation Party, May 17th. There will be snacks, games, giveaways, and if you have a scheduled appointment, an NWA Health Solutions SWAG bag! You don’t want to miss out. Call today to schedule your appointment with Dr. Josh or Dr. Sarah. If you leave us a Google review you could go home with awesome Yeti Cooler
At some point, everyone experiences stress in their life. Stress is different for everyone. What is stressful for one may not be stressful for another. Anything can cause stress. What is stress? It is anything that causes your body to change the way it is functioning right now. Stress can cause physical, emotional, and behavioral symptoms. When you feel threatened your nervous system responds by releasing a flood of stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol. Your heart pounds faster, your muscles can start to tighten, your blood pressure rises, and your breath quickens.
When you feel stressed, you may start to experience excess sweating, pain in the back of the chest, headaches, high blood pressure, and cramps or muscle spasms. Stress not only takes a toll on you in a physical way but it also can affect you emotionally and behaviorally. If in a heightened state of stress you may expereince feelings of restlessness, anger, anxiety, sadness, and depression. You may find yourself unable to concentrate. You can be more forgetful and irritable if you are feeling stressed. All of these stressful feelings can cause you to overreact and have angry outbursts. Many people who expereince stress self medicate by overeating, using drugs or drinking alcohol.
Stress is just a fact of life, but how you respond to it is most important. Stress can be overwhelming and if left unmanaged it can lead to serious health problems. If you are feeling stressed stop what you are doing, and take a moment to breathe. Time management and prioritizing your activities can help with feelings of being stressed. We can only do so much in a day. Take time to practice self-care, exercise, eat a balanced diet and rest. If you are feeling stressed communicate it to those around you, maybe they can help.
Acupuncture and massage are great tools to help relieve stress by restoring a healthy flow of energy. Both acupuncture and massage are powerful healing therapies that can provide complimentary health benefits.
The Essentials of How We Stress
Stress is generally thought of as being all bad. We associate it with feeling up-tight, uneasy, nervous, distracted, possibly sick, but generally miserable. Stress is just a fact of life, but how you respond to it is most important.
What is stress? It is anything that causes your body to change the way it is functioning right now. This involves more than just feeling frustrated, anxious, or pressed for time.
Although we tend to think of stress as purely emotional, life is a never ending series of three types of stress: Physical Stress, Nutritional Stress and Emotional Stress. The body is designed to survive all three types of stress.
Physical Stress comes from an actual threat of injury to your body. Physical activity and physical accidents put a stress on your body. Given time, your body will repair exercise injuries in a short time. Although physical trauma may leave a scar of some sort, it does not impose long-term stress on the body. Take care of immediate needs of physical stress, then return to life as usual. Physical stress is short term.
Pain in the human body
Emotional Stress comes from within. It originates in your conscious mind, your feelings, beliefs, memories, attitudes toward people and events in your life. Emotional Stress comes from your responses to events around you. You can suffer emotional stress along with physical stress. Being physically attacked, in a bad car accident, or another type of traumatic accident can create emotional stress long after the physical stress subsides. As long as your emotional stress continues, your physiology must adapt to handle it. These adaptations are conditions such as high blood pressure. You do not always have a choice about the situation, but you do have a choice about how your respond to the situation.
Nutritional Stress goes hand-in-hand with eating and drinking. Your body reacts to everything that enters it-an apple, a juicy hamburger, a vitamin, a prescription pill, cigarette smoke, city smog and even water. Either way, your body must handle it. If you eat an apple and the body doesn’t “handle” it, then it would rot and ferment. You would be in trouble. Putting the least amount of stress on the body is ideal; so the easier it is for the body to “handle” what enters it, the less undue stress is put on the body. Make healthy choices with what you choose to eat and drink.
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine by thy food” -Hippocrates
Stress itself isn’t a problem, the way you deal with stress and for how long you deal with stress is the problem. Your response to stress is key. Your response determines how you feel mentally and physically. You have no control over how your body will respond to certain stimuli, however you can control the stimuli that prompt the responses- mainly your actions and thoughts.
Dr. Sarah Morter Rowden, D.C.
Dr. Josh Rowden, D.C.
5300 South Southern Hills Court
Suite 200, Rogers, AR 72758
479-636-1324
