The surprising results of my exercise program

I have been working out 3-4 times per week for several months and have had some surprising results from it. I have attempted this in the past and failed miserably, but this time it is sticking and I like it. I have a couple of markers for this success that I will share with you at the end of this article, but let’s get to the nitty gritty for now.

Result #1 – My diet changed with very little effort from me

I really like lifting weights. It’s a lot of fun to feel my muscles get leaner and stronger. I found that when I ate a crappy diet on a day when I was going to the gym to lift that I couldn’t lift as much or as smoothly. I also noticed that when I grudgingly did my 20 minutes of cardio it was a whole lot harder. Simple carbohydrates like white flour based foods – pasta, bread, breading, Krispy Kremes, etc. – resulted in what I calculated with my bad math skills to be about a 20% decrease in strength and energy. Seriously people – don’t take that number as hard science! I noticed that when I ate cleanly (veggies, lean proteins, complex carbs like whole grains) I could lift 50 lbs doing lat pulldowns, but when I ate junky I could only pull 40 lbs.

That gets frustrating really quickly and I was seeing the correlation between diet and energy in ways I couldn’t deny. Soon I found I was making better food choices. Eating well and cooking for myself instead of going out to eat, eating more vegetables and fruits than simple carbohydrates. I started avoiding white foods like white rice, white breads, and potatoes. Now I am lifting even more and doing it with better form.

This translates to life outside of the gym too. I have more energy, my thought processes are more efficient, and concentration and memory are better too. There is a bit of a downside that I must admit too. I do love sugary treats. When I indulge in an occasional treat I feel pretty gross. My heart races, my anxiety level increases, my thoughts get scattered, and I feel overwhelmed by life. These are all things I used to feel on a daily basis but they became normal to me. Now the normalcy of this sick process is gone and I see the mental chaos for what it is. Blinders off! I can’t unsee it now.

A friend of mine recently said you can’t exercise away a bad diet. She is right in a way – you eat like garbage and exercise but it won’t cancel it out. But she is also wrong in a way – I think I am exercising away a bad diet!

Result #2 – Frozen shoulder gone!

I have had adhesive capulitis (commonly called frozen shoulder) in my left shoulder for years. It hurt to move it toward my body, over my head, or behind my back. It got severe enough that I couldn’t put my clothes on without some seriously contortionist moves. I had tried everything I could think of to resolve the problem: acupuncture, Reiki, massage, etc.

Once I started lifting weights I began to do lateral raises, front raises and reverse flyes for my shoulders. I know that’s gym-speak, but what you need to know is that those exercises work the different parts of the deltoid muscles, those big muscles that attach your arms to your shoulders. I started with very light weights – 3 lbs. About 3 weeks after starting at the gym I realized I was able to put my clothes on and take them off like a normal person! The first time I whipped a shirt off and lifted both arms over my head I danced around the house in excitement! 

With just a little bit of exercise my frozen shoulder began to thaw. It wasn’t passive therapy I needed, but active therapy. I soon noticed that with other exercises my creaky knees were getting less creaky. I was able to go up and down the stairs more easily, my back hurt less.

Cat’s Ten Tips for Gym Success

I know everyone is different about motivation. I am a long-term couch potato who hates to move and am a creature of convenience. I have friends who thrive on movement and actually run marathons for fun. (Fun?!) I have a long history of joining gyms and failing miserably, guiltily paying the gym membership without going for months on end. Here’s why I believe it is working this time.

1. I have a partner in crime. 
   She motivates me, I motivate her. Sometimes it’s motivation by way of not wanting to let each other down. Last night after my workout I felt great. In my fit of endorphins (and yes, there really is an exercise high) I confessed that I hadn’t wanted to go but did because I told her I’d be there. She grinned said the same thing happened with her. Whatever gets you there, eh?
2. I can see the gym from the road on my daily route home. 
   I pull up to the last major intersection before my house and there it is on my right waving and looking at me, daring me to pass by. I rarely ignore the dare. I pull in and work out. But if I had to go out of my way to get there, as I did with the last gym, it would never happen. Bonus: since it is literally 5 minutes from my house I don’t have to shower there. Always hated that.
3. I keep my workout clothes in the car. 
   I got myself a gym bag I like and I keep it packed and ready to go – shorts, top, sports bra, shoes, socks, headphones, lock, water bottle, etc. I keep a sweatshirt hoodie in there too. If I’m sweaty and it’s cold out this keeps me from getting sick.
4. Real people work out there. 
   It’s an all women’s gym and people there look like me in varying stages of getting fit. The staff is awesome too. Very friendly and helpful. No judgy-ness.
5. I found an activity I love. 
   I am fond of saying I like to lift heavy things. Actually, that’s an understatement. I love to lift weights. I don’t know why. I did that for the first few weeks and then a friend who is a trainer clucked at me until I started doing some cardio. Nothing mammoth – just 20-30 minutes on a treadmill. I hated it at first, then realized I could do it and it was kind of fun.
6. I track my progress.
   That tells me that I’m actually making progress. That motivates me to keep going. “Look! I went from 50lb on the lat pulldown to 75! Awesome!” (And yes, I really have progressed that far in the last 3 months and I’ve done it safely.)
7. My secret to cardio: watch an ampy TV show or movie.
   I take my iPad, get on the treadmill, and link up to Hulu. (I’m not up to the elliptical trainers yet….someday.) I watch Bones, Castle, or (my favorite) Grimm. The Olympics have been working pretty well this week too. One day I forgot my iPad. I had to settle for music on my phone. I chose classic rock, so I sweated to the oldies: Rolling Stones, The Who, Three Dog Night. Almost as good as Grimm. Some days I choose music over video, listening to Nirvana, Guns and Roses, Janis Joplin, or whatever else iTunes radio throws at me.
8. I check in with a personal trainer from time to time
   I can’t afford it all the time, but every month or so I work with a trainer about my progress, safe workouts, etc. We talk about new routines, what’s working and what’s not. I find it very helpful.
9. I know my limits. 
   

   My “post-military-presses” face.

   I can’t get work done at home. Just can’t do it. I can’t write, study, and I certainly am not going to exercise when I have such a lovely comfortable couch and a cat who likes laps. I have to be out and about to get anything done. Exercise is no exception. If I had a Nautilus, a treadmill, or a stationary bike it would be a clothes catcher.

10. I have a goal.
    OK, no I don’t. I just wanted to put in 10 tips. It’s such a nice round number! But I know a lot of people who have a reason they want to go – like they want to run a marathon, hike in the Himalayas, etc. I just want to remain active as long as possible and I was feeling my body get less and less able to do really simple things like go up the stairs in the morning or sit in a chair without my back aching. I’m too young to be old.

So that’s it. Surprising results for really very little work! See you at the gym?

iMom

As an oriental medicine provider I often prescribe herbs and supplements for my clients to help them continue the good work we do together when I give them acupuncture and/or Reiki. Ideally herbs and supplements should be consumed in a manner that keeps a therapeutic dose in the body in order to keep the good changes rolling. Clients often tell me that they get busy in the middle of the day and find they are unintentionally skipping the 2nd dose in the middle of the day. I generally smile indulgently and tell them well, that happens to a lot of people and to split the middle dose between morning and night and take them that way.

Now time for a little confession: not only do I forget the middle doses of my own herbs and supplements, I often forget to take them the entire day! You would think that an intelligent woman such as myself would thing to set up some kind of timer to jog my memory, but I only started doing that four days ago. As a matter of fact, I started using my smart phone alerts to remind me to do all kinds of things: wake up in the morning, take my herbs, do stretches periodically, take more herbs in the middle of the day and again at night, and even to go to bed at a timely hour. Since I started doing this I find that I am taking much better care of myself and am actually getting enough sleep for a change. 

I’m referring to this new use of my smart phone as my “iMom.” She is the electronic mom I need right when I need her! It just took a couple of minutes to set up the alerts. It’s just the push I need to remind myself that I am my number one relationship and that if I can’t care for myself I can’t care for anyone else either.

If you are like me and can’t remember to do self-care of whatever kind, I encourage you to set up your own “iMom!”

Crazy idea

Yesterday was my birthday. (Thank you, I appreciate that.) Now I have to confess that I have spent most of my birthdays feeling vaguely disgruntled and a little resentful because the day didn’t go like I wanted it to, because I didn’t get the food I was craving, and/or because the world didn’t read my mind. This has been going on for decades. Yesterday I decided to do something different. I decided to serve other people all day and do it deliberately to celebrate My Big Day. I bought someone else’s coffee, I overtipped my waiter at lunch, I treated several clients, I gave money to homeless people, and I made dinner for my Lovely One.

And it was a great day. No resentment, no discontent.

Ain’t life sweet?

I often ask my patients if they have any particular food cravings. Most of the people I’ve asked tell me they crave sweets. What’s that all about? Is it an evil plot to make you gain weight? Actually, no. Biologically, it’s just how we were designed to roll.

The Biology

Sugar is a very basic form of energy. Our bodies live off of this fuel source. Yet, too much sugar in the blood stream is toxic, so we as a species have also gotten very good at converting excess sugar in the blood stream into fat, another excellent energy source that is used when food is scarce. These things were once vital for survival and rarely would you find a fat aboriginal being of any kind. However, as we as humans stopped beating each other to death for food and started working together, we were able to form town and an urban lifestyle. Relative peace over time has led to trade agreements and the ability to exchange goods or money for the food we need to eat which is now grown and gathered by someone else. Prosperity, which is also rather pleasant, has reduced our need to struggle for food and allows most of us to get food relatively easily.

And this brings us to a couple of problems:

1. In America we are rarely lacking in food. Without trying particularly hard I can think of 12 restaurants and two grocery stores within a 5 minutes drive of my house. A quick Google search on “fast food restaurants in Austin Texas” yields 536 different restaurants. Yelp has reviews for more than 2500 eateries and 415 grocery stores. That’s a lot of food.
2. The huge bulk of all that food is processed and full of high fructose corn syrup, a bunch of sugary chemicals ending in -ose, and a dazzling array of toxic materials used as artificial sweeteners. If you are trying to get healthy you may get advice from your health care provider (not me, mind you, but others) may suggest you eat low-fat alternatives to your favorite foods. Fat is what makes flavor stick to your tongue. When you take out or reduce the fat in a food it gets pretty boring, so manufacturers use high quantities sugars and sugar derivatives hidden by their chemical names to please your taste buds and prompt you to buy the product again.
3. Excess sugar in your blood stream is toxic. If you don’t burn it up with activity, you store it as fat. You can blame simple carbohydrates if you want to (white bread, mashed potatoes, white rice, corn products, donuts, etc.), but they convert to sugar very quickly in the blood stream, so it still comes down to excess sugar in the blood.

And so, America is fat. And the predominant reason is excess sugar.

The Spirit

The pundits say, “Just make better choices.” But that’s about as effective as “Just say no.” But that’s a band-aid fix and isn’t particularly effective especially when there’s a reason other than lack of will-power that is pushing those cravings. Ok, so there are a lot of biological reasons someone might crave sugar. But ponder this one. Perhaps the reason we crave sugar in the first place is because of a deficiency in our spirits.

In Chinese Medicine there are five major organ systems in the body: Liver, Heart, Spleen/Stomach (the digestive system), Lung, and Kidney. A quick overview of the digestive system in both Chinese and Western medicine looks like this.

1. Your digestive organs prompt a hunger pang. You eat.
2. The food you ingest passes to the stomach where it is ground into a liquid that then moves to the small intestine.
3. The small intestine soaks up the nutrients out of the liquid and passes on anything that it can’t use to other organs in your body for processing. Your liver takes a look at anything that is soaked up from the small intestine and makes sure it’s safe. If it’s not it is filtered out. If it is it is moved the blood stream for distribution.
4. The stuff that isn’t absorbed in the small intestine is passed to the large intestine for further processing and elimination.

Chinese medicine take the process a step further than just the physical body. The energy of the Spleen and Stomach take anything you ingest and process it. This includes the energy of the friends and co-workers you hang out with, the television you watch, the movies you go to, the conversations you have. These too are taken in and processed. The system tries to filter out the crud and only keep the good stuff, but just like in the physical world, toxins can get through to the energetic an emotional system. Things that might seem sweet can turn out to be poison.

So that brings us to crux of the matter. What if the physical sweet cravings are echoes of the emotional and spiritual need for sweetness in our lives? What if we are substituting processed sugars in an attempt to fill the void for the true sweetness of life? Can you find other ways to bring sweetness and joy into your life?

I challenge you today to find ways to make your life sweet and joyful. Don’t depend on others to do it: nurture yourself, take time to give yourself something that makes you joyful, give love to your own soul. Indulge in all of that sweetness you want – it’s calorie free.

 

Resources:

Twenty Way to Add Sweetness to Life

The Sweetness of Life: Joy as a Practice

Evolution’s Sweet Tooth

Kids’ Sugar Cravings Might Be Biological

Aspartame Poisoning

 

Quick Fix For Stress

It’s Monday morning. The alarm sounds and you roll out of bed. You hit the floor with your to-do list running in your head. The momentum of your day carries you forward through one task, one stressor after another. Before you know it, it’s time for bed. Go to sleep. Wake up to the alarm on Tuesday morning. Repeat. 

That’s how the vast majority of us live: checking off things on our to-do lists with little time to actually be. And yet it is crucial to our well-being and thus the well-being of those who depend on us that we take time out to just be. 

Take a look at the link and see how just a few minutes of stillness in your day can change your life and the life of your family.

Meditation Health Benefits: What the Practice Does to Your Body

If you don’t know how to quiet your mind, to relax your body, and reduce your stress I can help you. I offer acupuncture, acupressure, and Reiki to help you balance your body, making it easier for you to find your inner stillness. I offer simple to apply meditation techniques to get you started and will show you how to fit it into your day without adding one more “to-do” to that list. 

Click here to book your appointment online or call 512-619-5549 to schedule with me. 

 

Acupuncture works!

Great article on acupuncture and how well it works.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/11/health/health-acupuncture

Why our grandparents weren’t gluten intolerant

Austin Texas, where I live, is famous for allergies. We joke in a not-so-funny manner that if you don’t have allergies when you arrive, you will once you’ve been here for a couple of years. Seems like Austinites are allergic to everything. Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it seems like the gluten allergy or gluten intolerance is the “flavor of the week,” outpacing even the mold and cedar allergies in the list of top complaints. This has bothered me. My grandparents were farmers, grew wheat, and ate bread with every meal. Why didn’t they have a problem with grains?

It’s not a bad question, actually. Grains have been the ‘staff of life’ for a very long time. There is better than decent evidence to support the belief that people have been eating grains since the Middle Paleolithic age some 100,000 years ago. Literate ancient cultures across the world have consumed grains and yet no one can find hieroglyphics or written text suggesting Celiac’s disease, gluten intolerance, or “Wheat Belly.” In Chinese Medicine the digestive system is referred to as “The Sea of Grain and Water.” So when did grains become the bad guy?

If you take a high-speed tour through agricultural history you will note that human-kind has been messing with the genetics of plants and animals for a very long time. Even though there is a lot of talk about GMO’s, it is not a new concept or practice. The ancient peoples of Meso-america selectively bred strains of grass into corn over the span of thousands of years. The hundreds of breeds of dogs you see on the Westminster Dog Shows were selectively bred from wolves over huge spans of time as well. Seems we are always trying to find a better way to produce the things we want. Wheat and other glutinous grains (rye, barley, spelt, couscous, and bulgar for instance), have been modified by selective breeding and more recently by more direct genetic modifications such as gene splicing.

As a matter of fact, we are in the thick of an agricultural revolution with which our genes cannot keep pace. We are hominids, descendants of tree-dwelling primates. For the bulk of our history on earth we have not been a primarily grain eating species. True, our ancestors probably did eat grains, they just didn’t eat them as extensively as we do now. The top modern-day food crops are overwhelmingly grains: corn, rice, wheat, barley, oats, rye and sorghum. These grains make up over half of the food energy in the world and half of the protein consumed. That’s an awful lot of grain feeding an awful lot of people. And that’s why there has been an awful lot of genetic modification. Genetic modification makes it more disease-resistant, more pest-resistant, faster growing and higher yield. This great for the producers, but is it good for us?

Not so much. The problem isn’t the grain itself. The problem is what has been done to the grain coupled with our increasing dependence on it to the exclusion of other and more nutritious sources of food. Basically, if our grandparents ate like we do today, they might be gluten intolerant too.

So what is gluten? And what does gluten intolerance look like?

Glutinous foods

Gluten is a protein complex made up of gliadin and glutelin. Gluten is found in many grains, most breads and cereals, and an astonishing number of foods. Chicken breasts you find in places like Chik-Fil-A, for instance, are not solid pieces of chicken breast, but bits of chicken that are “glued” together with a glutinous substance which makes it look like the real thing. Ditto for chicken nuggets. You’re not safe by avoiding meat either, as many vegan and vegetarian foods are also heavily dependent upon glutens – wheat roast, tempeh, and most of the meat substitute products contain it. And those “natural flavors” you listed on packaged foods? A lot of those are glutinous. There are even a lot of herbal supplements that are prepared with gluten containing flours. The upshot of all this is you probably consume far more grain and gluten on a daily basis than you realize.

Systemic responses to this gluten overload (and that’s probably a better term than gluten intolerance) vary, but some of the more common responses are:

• Respiratory problems
  These include runny nose, nasal congestion, coughing, itching eyes, and even snoring. 
• Digestive difficulties
  Bloating and stomach pains, excess gas, and diarrhea are common complaints. Gluten overload can irritate the stomach lining and even cause an inflammatory response in the small intestine that can damage the small villi that absorb your food. Celiac’s disease, an autoimmune disease in which the immune system reacts to gliadin (a component of the gluten protein complex) causes an extreme amount of pain in the body.
• And even more…
  Gluten reactions has even been linked to depression, fatigue, insomnia, foggy mind, lethargy after eating, certain GI cancers, and ADHD. An astonishing 80% of your immune system is in your digestive system, so it’s not surprising that gluten has also been implicated in a number of autoimmune disorders besides Celiac’s.

Should you totally give it up? Maybe. Maybe not. If you have symptoms like those above that are impacting your life or if you’ve been diagnosed with or have signs of Celiac’s Disease then it would be worth your while to feel better. There is certainly a strong argument for avoiding GMO’s no matter what the immediate symptoms.

Gluten, however, proves to be a very hard thing to give up. It has addictive properties because it mimics the effects of opiods. Even the smell of glutinous foods triggers the internal happy chemicals. (That’s why savvy realtors who are trying to sell a house will sometimes have cookies or bread baking when they show a home.) Conversely, when you try to give it up, your body goes into a withdrawal-like craving when you are without it for a period of time.

Unless you have a severe dysfunction associated with glutens, it might be more advisable to simply cut down on them and see how you feel. As with anything healthy you do about your diet, you are probably going to have to prepare your own food rather than going out to eat. Try substituting rice, amaranth, buckwheat (which isn’t truly a wheat), millet, or quinoa for the more glutinous options. As with any diet change, be clear on why you are changing your eating.

Personally, I find that I have more energy, sleep better, have far less congestion and asthma-like symptoms, and digest my food better when I reduce the amount of highly processed grains I consume. I think my grandparents would approve.

Picky Eaters Unite!

I don’t like vegetables. There. I’ve said it. I don’t know how or why this is true for me, but I have detested everything vegetable since I was a small child. This has led to some long-term difficulties for me, not the least of which was my mother’s exasperation with me a the dinner table in my childhood years!

I know intellectually that I should eat veggies. Green leafy vegetables protect you from diseases such as cancer and diverticulitis, many of them have more calcium than dairy, they have trace minerals and vitamins we need for optimal health, and on and on and on. But I just can’t stand them. I don’t even like the orange or red ones like carrots, beets, squashes, or pumpkins. And I don’t mean I just don’t like them. They gross me out and trigger a gag reflex that just isn’t pretty, especially at a holiday table set with candied yams, green beans, and buttered brussel sprouts. I can appreciate these things on a photographic, esthetic level, but then I need to leave the room!

Unfortunately, a life-long avoidance of vegetables has led to some life-long problems. For many years my diet was high in animal proteins, nuts, starches, and sugars. (And Diet Dr. Pepper. There was a lot of that too.) That diet triggered a lot of inflammation which showed up in my body as asthma, allergies, joint pain, weight gain, and what my polite Southern upbringing has taught me to refer to as “digestive dysfunction.”

So what’s the solution? If you don’t like vegetables either or if you have a picky eater at home, I have a couple of suggestions for you to help increase consumption of greens and other vegetables.

• Disguise them. Put vegetables in a soup, puree them, chop them small and hide them in other foods. Speaking personally, put vegetables into anything you call “potato soup” and I’ll probably eat it.
• Blend them. I’m a big fan of green smoothies. Blend 60% fruit with about 40% spinach or kale and drink up. There are a million recipes online to try. This is a great way to consume fruits and vegetables if you are a picky eater or have one in your life.
• Juice them! This is my current favorite option. There are a lot of juicers on the market and a huge online contingent of Juice Geeks touting their favorite juicer and why this one is better than that one. But the important part is getting those veggies in your system when and how you can. I juice 3-4 carrots and an apple together several times a week and the results are amazing. The down-side of juicing is the compost that’s created, so get your compost going if you haven’t already.

The important thing here is to ingest those veggies. Get them fresh, get them organic. No amount of herbs or pharmaceuticals or supplements can take the place of these.

Cat Calhoun, L.Ac.

Water, water everywhere and….and don’t drink from that plastic bottle!

Here we are in the throes of the annual hotter-than-Hades Texas summer when staying hydrated is more important than any other time of the year. I think we all know the dangers of poor hydration by now: increased fatigue, yawning and sleepiness despite getting enough sleep, increased risk of kidney stones and urinary tract infections, headaches, poor concentration, etc. Severe dehydration can even lead to a chemical imbalance in the body that can cascade all the way to death.

So what do the vast majority of Americans do when they feel the need to hydrate? They stop by the store for a bottle of water. We’ve all gotten the commercial message that bottled water is superior to tap water, a message that is largely untrue, but is nonetheless heeded.

Then along comes an e-mail or Facebook post about the dangers of bottled water. Have you seen one yet? There’s probably one in your inbox right now. The one that is making the rounds again this summer warns women not to leave their plastic water bottles in the car as this will release dioxin, a toxin which causes cancer. Sometimes this is advice is attributed to a doctor, sometimes there is a quote from Sheryl Crow allegedly from the Ellen Degeneres show about how drinking bottled water caused her breast cancer.

While a quick trip to Snopes.com will show you that this is an urban myth, there is some truth in the claim too. Plastics folks say plastic water bottles are safe, many scientists say no they aren’t. I’m not here to referee this debate, so I will point out that there are enough scary facts that are undisputed to make you think twice about buying bottled water.

1. Heated plastics leach out chemicals.
   Plastics, when heated, can release some of the many chemicals that are used to create them. Dr. Rolf Halden from Johns Hopkins School of Public health says there are no dioxins in plastics, but confirms that plastics release chemicals when heated – this might be heating foods in plastic in the microwave or drinking hot liquids from straws that are not designed for exposure to heat. Both cause a heat extraction of chemicals which then transfer to your food or beverages.

   Any time you heat something the likelihood of pulling something out of what is heated increases. That’s why when you want a cup of tea you heat the water then pour it over the bag. Have you ever made “sun tea?” You put a whole bunch of tea bags in a jar you can seal, fill it with water and sit it out in the sun all day. That jar generally doesn’t get as hot as a plastic water bottle sitting in your car, yet out comes the tea.

2. Cancer, endocrine dysfunction, and depression, oh my!
   Phthalates, often used to make plastic bottles less brittle, are contaminants which function much like hormones do. These can disrupt your endocrine system. This is dangerous for anyone, but in women it can promote the growth of hormone related tumors such as breast cancers.

   Antimony, which is found in PET plastic bottles, even in very small doses can cause depression and dizziness. In larger doses it can cause nausea, vomiting, and death.

3. Plastic bottles are wildly inefficient.
   It takes 17 million barrels of oil to make the water bottles used in the US alone each year. For the record, that would fill up 1.3 million cars for a year.

   If you drink the recommended 8 glasses of water per day, filling up a glass at the tap in your kitchen you will drink about 49 cents worth of water. But if you buy it all in bottles? $1400 a year!Most sources agree that when you buy a liter of water it took 3 more liters to get the stuff into the bottle. You are in essence, wasting 75% of the water you used by purchasing water in a bottle.

So what is the solution?

• Get a water filter and filter the water out of your tap.
  This improves the taste and pulls out contaminants that might be lurking in the tap water. Options abound – you can use a Britta type  pitcher to filter a liter or so at a time, or you can go for an under-sink filter. All of these do a respectable job of keeping your water clean and good tasting.
• Tote your own!
  Spend a little bit to save a whole lot. Ideally, you want to get a stainless steel or glass bottle. Neither is as expensive as buying a weeks’ worth of bottled water, both clean up easily, and both are free of taste and smell.Stainless steel will set you back about $20. I carry a Kleen Kanteen stainless steel bottle that serves me well. You can get flip tops for them now that are far easier than unscrewing the bottle each time you want a drink. This makes it more likely that you will hydrate yourself and stay healthier.

  Glass is more fragile, but you can now get bottles with silicone sleeves that help protect against bumps and breaks. Lifefactory makes a bottle like this which is currently available at Whole Foods.

• Get a filtered water bottle
  Spend a lot of time away from your house and need to be able to drink more than you can carry? Camelbak now makes a stainless steel Eddy bottle with a built-in changeable filter that sells for about $25.

  http://www.camelbak.com/Sports-Recreation/Bottles/2012-eddy-Stainless-7L.aspx

Even if you have to spend a little to ditch the plastic bottle habit, you’re about to save more than $1300 per year. That’s like getting a $100/month raise!

Now that I have just saved you a ton of money and maybe even your health, why not schedule an appointment to come see me, improve your health, your energy, and your ability to get back out there with your new water bottle and have fun!

Call 512-619-5549 for an appointment or book online!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en4XzfR0FE8

After the disaster

Last year early in the fall I sat on a hill in Austin, Texas and wept watching the entire eastern sky turn a deep black as the fire in Bastrop County raged in uncontrollable fury 30 miles away. When the sun slipped below the horizon I could see the flames from this massive maelstrom of heat reflected angrily in the clouds of smoke that filled my field of vision. The fire burned for a month without relenting, claiming over 34,000 acres. Over 1600 people lost their homes. I will probably never forget this. Even as I write this it is hard to keep from crying, remembering the horror, shock, and sorrow on the faces of people who lived it, people who lost everything, often including pets, homes, and livestock.

After the disaster I treated a number of people who survived the fires. Many of them had nightmares,  both sleeping and waking, experiencing recurrent memories from which they couldn’t look away. Hurricane Katrina had a similar effect. Even now, seven years later,  I see people in my practice who are still shaking with the wind that battered New Orleans. Some of these people have alcohol and drug problems accumulated in an effort to deal with what happened to them.

The common thread between these two disasters is post traumatic stress disorder (or PTSD). PTSD is a type of anxiety disorder that can occur when a person experiences or even witnesses a shocking or terrifying event of any kind. The folks at risk for developing PTSD include but aren’t limited to:

• Survivors of war, both soldiers and civilians in the path of war
• Survivors of hurricanes and other natural disasters
• Anyone who as been sexually or physically assaulted
• People who have survived abuse (child abuse, domestic violence of all kinds, religious abuse, etc.),
• People who have been incarcerated in prison
• Emergency service and rescue workers
• Anyone who has experienced the unexpected death of a loved one

Even families of these people and counselors can develop a form of PTSD called secondary PTSD which results from listening to and helping people recover from trauma.

Do you have it?

There is no specific test for PTSD, but if you have lived through or witnessed a traumatic event and find that you recurrent symptoms such as the ones below for more than 30 days, then you just might. If you have these symptoms but it’s been less than 30 days, then the acronym changes to ASD (acute stress disorder), but it is no less disabling. PTSD and ASD include both physical and mental/emotional symptoms, many of which are listed below.

Mental and emotional symptoms fall into 3 main categories.

• Reliving
  Many people keep reliving the event, which disturbs daily activity and can be paralyzing. Your brain generates the same chemical fight/flight signals during the reliving of the event than it did when the event or events occurred, so it’s as if you keep experiencing the trauma over and over again.Reliving includes flashback episodes in which the event seems to be occurring again, repeated upsetting memories of the traumatic event/s, nightmares, and strong emotional reactions to situations that remind you in some way of the trauma or  event.
• Avoidance
  Avoidance is a way of dodging the memories – a sort of “just don’t think about it” tactic. “Numbing out” is one way of doing this. This refers to feeling like you just don’t care about anything at all or feeling detached from life or activities you usually enjoy. Sometimes the mind just blocks the event or part of the event out so that you can’t remember important aspects of the trauma you experienced. If you feel as if you have no future or you find yourself avoiding places, thoughts, or people who remind you of the traumatic event or events, this too is a sign of avoidance.In the longer term, avoidance can lead to a chemical form of numbing out through the use of alcohol or drugs, leading to alcoholism or drug abuse. Depression is a very real problem too, as the feeling of having no future or a sense of helplessness against the memories lingers.
• Arousal
  Hypervigilance is a feeling that you are more aware of your surroundings and what is going on than normal. It’s as if you are always “on guard” and can’t relax. This can lead to irritability and sudden outbursts of anger. You or others around you might notice an exaggerated response to things that startle you or annoy you. You might also be aware that you are startled more easily and have trouble sleeping.

Physical symptoms such as agitation, dizziness, fainting, feeling your heart beating in your chest (also called palpitations) and recurrent headaches are also common for people with PTSD. You might also feel a sense of guilt over having survived trauma such as war or a disaster, or you might feel as if you generated the event if you are a survivor of abuse or rape.

So is this all in your head? Yes and no. “No,” in that this is not in your imagination. “Yes” because there really are physical responses occurring in your head, specifically in your brain. There are several parts of your brain that seem to be involved when you suffer from PTSD. One is the amygdala, the part of the brain in which your fear and fight/flight responses are generated. Once the amygdala is in “go” mode the fight/flight responses stay on, hence the hypervigilance. This is also the part of your brain that triggers the stress hormone, cortisol. The hormone keeps flowing as long as you are in stress mode, which in the case of PTSD is basically always. The hippocampus controls long-term memory and your ability to navigate through the world. The excess cortisol produced by the triggers from the amygdala will actually shrink the hippocampus, impairing your ability to store and recall emotional content, which is why some people have all of the stress but can’t remember significant parts of the trauma.

So what do you do about it?

Identifying whether or not you have PTSD or ASD is just the first step to recovering from it. There is a pervasive idea in western culture that there is some kind of cure-all pill or surgery for every condition. While you might alleviate some of the more debilitating symptoms of PTSD by taking anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medications, there are other ways to get relief without the side effects of drugs and actually heal the disorder. True, if the condition is so debilitating that you can no longer function, you may need to start with medication to take the raw sharp edges off of the pain, but please consider these other options. And bear in mind that most physical, mental and emotional challenges respond better to multiple forms of therapy than just to one.

• Acupuncture
  A great deal of research and testing has been focused on using acupuncture for both battlefield and domestic trauma. Acupuncture can shift blood chemistry by signaling the brain to shift from the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) to the parasympathetic nervous system, a restful mode which promotes relaxation and stimulates the healing systems in the body. This gives instant relief from the stress reactions which keep the body in a hypervigilant state. In 2007 Dr. Michael Hollifield at the University of New Mexico performed a study on this very subject and found that acupuncture provided an effectiveness similar to that of cognitive behavioral therapy.
• Energy therapies
  Energy therapies include Reiki, Qigong, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), Therapeutic Touch and more. These methods work with the energetic body, providing calming and a sense of ease. Energetic therapies are used by the US military to help heal battle trauma and PTSD, allowing soldiers to return to their units if they choose. Energetic medicine gives people affected by PTSD the tools to shift out of fight/flight and into a calmer state of mind, thus changing the body chemistry, shutting of the shower of cortisol, and allowing the body and mind to relax and heal.
• Herbal therapies
  Herbs are a more natural and less processed form of medicine  which can calm the mind and body without the side effects associated with drugs. Many herbs are also food, and indeed food therapy can have a definite effect on state of mind and body.

These are just a few of the therapies available to people who suffer from PTSD. Others include exercise, cognitive and talk therapies, and more. If you or someone you love suffers from PTSD, give me a call (512-619-5549). Acupuncture is a great first step for many people, opening the door to healing and a return to a peaceful life.

June is National PTSD Awareness Month. For the month of June, treatment for PTSD is 20% off at Calhoun Acupuncture. I offer package deals too which can help make treatment more affordable.

Health and happiness,

Cat Calhoun, L.Ac.

Resources:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001923/

http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/post-traumatic-stress-disorder

http://www.ptsd.va.gov/about/ptsd-awareness/ptsd_awareness_month.asp

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/post_traumatic_stress_disorder_symptoms_treatment.htm

http://www.acuwithoutborders.org/

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/military-tries-acupuncture-to-treat-troops-for-ptsd-757786.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/032174_PTSD_acupuncture.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17568299

http://www.va.gov/VATAP/docs/CAMPTSD2009.pdf

http://ptsdlove.blogspot.com/

http://fightingptsd.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/10-common-misconceptions-about-ptsd-2/