Tag: stress and health

Health & Fitness

How Acupuncture Controls the Stress Response

In this episode we’re going to dive into the way acupuncture has an incredible ability to reduce the stress response. It’s a game-changer for your health and well-being. Please click on my photo for a related video! I have a personal story to share with you. I had to step away from traditional medical practice…

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Medical Research

A new model for the HPA axis explains dysregulation of stress hormones on the timescale of weeks.

This study seeks to understand how the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, or HPA, can become so dysregulated. What they found is that the actual size or mass of the affected organs can change.  Stress and its sequelae is so important to all aspects of health, that any insights into its workings can be key. Acupuncture lowers stress…

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Health & Fitness

Deep Resilience: Chapter Stress Matters

Updated Stress Response Chapter here Stress Response Chapter for sharing rough draft 11.21.2020 I’ve “completed” another chapter in my long form writing project called “Stress Matters.”  As blog readers know, I’ve been researching stress and monitoring autonomic nervous system activity in the clinic for many years.  This chapter is still in a rough form, but…

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Health & Fitness

Does Mindfulness Meditation Work?

For the record. The question is, as always, what is the risk/benefit assessment?  I would assume the risk to be small, but that would probably depend on the “dosage” and individual’s mental make up.  I’ve had a Vipassana practice off and on for decades, and have also done a lot of self-hypnosis and creative visualization. …

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Health & Fitness

David Sinclair on the Potential for Reversing Aging: Hormesis Revisited

The Biochemistry of Longevity is Discussed in this video For any readers who are interested in some of the biochemistry behind the latest science on strategies to age more slowly.  Many of the strategies we’ve discussed before, as well as the concept of hormesis.  Basically, the current thinking is that we are too comfortable.  Never…

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Health & Fitness

Heart rate variability: Can it serve as a marker of mental health resilience?

This article looks at HRV and how it relates to subjects’ reactions to “stressful laboratory tasks” (sounds dicey!). Subjects with higher vagal activity ( ie higher HRV) before and during the challenges,had improved resilience to tasks and lower markers of stress. This could be a companion piece to this other study which advocates for HRV…

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Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation Regulates the Cholinergic Anti-inflammatory Pathway to Counteract 1, 2-Dimethylhydrazine Induced Colon Carcinogenesis in Albino wistar Rats.

I have no idea if we can extrapolate the parameters used in this study to humans, but nice to have them anyway.  Incredible that they were able to see actual cytological changes with the TaVNS. Front Pharmacol. 2019 May 21;10:353. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2019.00353. eCollection 2019. Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation Regulates the Cholinergic Anti-inflammatory Pathway to Counteract…

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Case Studies

Heart Rate Variability as a Biomarker for Resilience and Prevention: Data

In the latest issue of Medical Acupuncture they highlighted the importance of Acupuncture as a preventative and a way to optimize health.  I’m preparing a journal article to show that HRV improves, stress decreases in migraineurs who have been successfully treated.  This data is over patient visits for at least a year.  I tried to…

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Case Studies

Stress reduction Na.Am Edition: Tales from the Clinic

This is data from a patient who I’ve treated in the past.  She always has a profound sense of calm and relaxation from treatment. So the data shows a decrease in stress during treatment and some reduction over time.  If you also notice, she has a pronounced increase in her stress levels during needling.  This…

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Case Studies

HRV Stress Levels in Acupuncture Clinic: Na.Am edition

This is an almost picture perfect example of an overall decrease in stress levels with acupuncture.  This, of course, does not always happen. But this data illustrates a few aspects evaluating  the data that I’ve been interested in. Her overall HRV RMSSD and Pnn50 are midrange from 25-40, and .07 to .25 respectively.  With this…

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