Have you experienced the stress spiral?

Have you ever felt like your stress was spiraling out of control? I see this a lot in my acupuncture practice. Maybe it starts with a stressful life event, or a specific health challenge. It can also build up over time.

The stress of the situation, whatever it may be, can then exacerbate symptoms across multiple systems in your body. Stress can:

-increase pain

-disrupt sleep

-cause digestive distress

-trigger autoimmune conditions, etc.

It really can affect any system!

So then you stress even more about the increased symptoms... And that extra stress further exacerbates symptoms! The vicious stress-symptom cycle can easily spiral out of control.

It's frustrating. Exhausting. Defeating. It can feel impossible to turn things around.

When I see this in the office, I think of acupuncture as a wedge. We can pump the brakes by driving a wedge into that vicious cycle. Acupuncture helps switch your body out of sympathetic dominance ("fight or flight" mode), and give it a break. Acupuncture helps re-teach your body how to calm itself and relax - that's where all the magic happens! In that mode your body rests, digests, recovers from all that you've put it through, and heals. With successive treatments, it gets easier and easier for your body to get into this healing mode (in AND out of the treatment room!).

It is work for your body to constantly remain in a stressed out state, and it means that your body isn't prioritizing a lot of the processes it needs to heal.

Give your body a break. Give your body what it needs to heal.

Ready to let your body heal? Book an appointment here.

Not ready to try acupuncture yet? Try out one of these other self-care tips.