The Oriental medical approach to losing weight is process oriented. The difference is that effective weight loss is best achieved not with extreme diets but with enhancing energy itself. This energy is known as chi. Digestive chi varies from person to person. That is why there is no universal weight loss diet that works for everyone.

The best diet for you strengthens your weak chi. An Oriental approach to successful weight loss assumes healthy cooking, NOT starvation diets or diet pills. The main thing is to strengthen the body, not weaken it.

With Acupuncture and carefully chosen foods chi can be stimulated in order to create strength, good digestion and elimination. In that way fat is treated as a toxin. Herbs when used properly help tonify the body, prevent fat, fatigue and depression. Slimming herbs can even help you crave healthier foods because chi and food cravings are related. The healthier your chi, the healthier your cravings.

Acupuncture can help the body to remember how it is supposed to work. It awakens the body’s intelligence. Acupuncture helps tonify chi which in turn helps boost energy and circulation. It moves stuck chi and blood which can cause fat and water weight and pain.

Later this week I will post some helpful weight loss tips. To jump start your weight loss program, start an exercise routine right away. Just walking an extra 20 minutes per day will help. Work up to a half hour per day. Take a yoga, tai chi or pilates class.

Jeanie Marie Kraft, L.Ac. MyAcuDoc.com

Body & Soul Massage & Wellness Center of Salem, MA is now offering acupuncture!
Body & Soul Massage & Wellness Center

Baseball and Acupuncture!

Chavez open to acupuncture
Slumping third baseman looking to heal forearm tendinitis
By Geoff Lepper, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area

OAKLAND — As Eric Chavez’s swing has gone south, his mind has opened to medical possibilities from the Far East. The A’s third baseman said Monday that he was seriously considering undergoing acupuncture treatments for the first time to try and heal the forearm tendinitis that has wracked his season.

“I’m willing to give it a try,” Chavez said, pulling from his locker a letter with a reference for an East Bay acupuncturist — one of many pieces of unsolicited advice he’s received since his pain became public.

Chavez was slated to meet Monday with A’s trainer Larry Davis and team doctors Jerrald Goldman and Allan Pont to discuss potential new avenues of diagnosis and treatment. Tried-and-true methods like rest, ice, stim and massage haven’t worked to anyone’s satisfaction, even with Chavez getting a full week of inactivity earlier this month.

“All we’re doing is treading water right now,” Davis said. “I would expect for him to have shown more improvement than he’s shown to this point. The fact that he hasn’t is a little bit concerning.”

Asked specifically about the potential for acupuncture, Davis — who has had former players use the treatments — shared Chavez’s open mind.

“At this point, I would explore anything,” Davis said. “Thousands of people have done that and it seems to work. There’s not a lot that I wouldn’t try in this case.”
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Jeanie Marie Kraft, L.Ac. MyAcuDoc.com

Body & Soul Massage & Wellness Center of Salem, MA is now offering acupuncture!
Body & Soul Massage & Wellness Center

Needles and Herbs Women look to the East for fertility help
By K. Oanh Ha
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

After three years of trying to conceive and three failed attempts at in vitro fertilization, Tracey Carroll, 33, desperately turned to the East for help. She sought the needles and herbs of an acupuncturist.
In fact, her new in-vitro doctor insisted. After she had her fourth session of getting pricked, her menstrual cycle became regular for the first time in three years. Carroll also swallowed 18 pills of “smelly, yucky herbs” with ingredients derived from cow spleen and pituitary gland believed to regulate her hormones.

Six months later, Carroll is expecting twins, due in December — and believes acupuncture played a large role. Carroll is among an increasing number of American women who are turning to alternative, Eastern medicinal arts for problems with infertility, menopause, weight loss and even dry skin. Once dismissed as mystical quackery by many medical doctors, acupuncture treatments are now recommended by some in-vitro specialists to increase fertility. Meanwhile, other women turn to ayurveda — a 5,000-year-old practice from India that incorporates mind, body and spirit — to ensure health. Women use it to rid their bodies of toxins and dull skin.
CLICK here to read more of this SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS article.

Jeanie Marie Kraft, L.Ac. MyAcuDoc.com
Body & Soul Massage & Wellness Center of Salem, MA is now offering acupuncture!
Body & Soul Massage & Wellness Center

Cupping

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(拔罐) is a method of applying acupressure by creating a vacuum next to the patient’s skin. In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) it involves placing glass, plastic, or bamboo cups on the skin with a vacuum. The therapy is used to relieve what is called “stagnation” in TCM terms, and is used in the treatment of respiratory diseases such as the common cold, pneumonia, and bronchitis. Cupping is also used to treat back, neck, shoulder, and other musculoskeletal pain. Its advocates claim it has other applications as well. This technique, in varying forms, has also been found in the folk medicine of Vietnam, the Balkans and modern Greece, among other places.

A NEW CONCLUSIVE STUDY Literary search and editing by Francine L. Comtois, sec. tres. of the ACDM Acupuncture would help to relieve the chronic headaches, migraine in particular.

Such are the conclusions of a clinical study, carried out in England and in Wales, which was published in British Medical Journal.

The study was made with an aim of evaluating if acupuncture could be rather effective, in the case of the headaches, to be integrated into the free care of the system of public health in England.

For 12 months, the researchers followed 401 patients suffering from chronic headaches, mainly of migraines. These patients had been divided randomly in two groups: one received up to 12 treatments of acupuncture for three months, while the others (which were used as reference group) were treated by a usual medication.

The gravity of the headaches among patients of the two groups was measured, after 3 and 12 months; the researchers also evaluated, every three months, the need to take drugs or to consult a doctor.

After 12 months, the results showed that the headaches had decreased more in the group treated by acupuncture (reduction of 34%) that in the group which received a medication (reduction of 16%).

The patients, who belonged to the group treated by acupuncture, counted on average 22 days fewer headaches per year. Compared with the reference group, they, during this period, had used 15% less drugs, makes 25% less medical visits and taken 15% less sick leave.

The researchers thus concluded from it that acupuncture produces beneficial and persistent effects among patients suffering from chronic headaches, especially from migraines. These conclusions were however criticized, in particular by famous Dr. Edzard Ernst, of the Laing Pulpit of complementary medicines at the Peninsula Medical School of the university of Exeter in England. According to him, being given the methodology of the study, the waitings of the patients could influence the effects allotted to the treatments of acupuncture.

© Copyright ACDM ACDM Article

Acupuncture shows promise for fibromyalgia
NEW YORK (Reuters) –

Acupuncture may help relieve the symptoms of fibromyalgia, especially the fatigue and anxiety that often come with the condition, a new study suggests. Fibromyalgia is a syndrome marked by chronic widespread aches and pains, fatigue and sleep problems, among other symptoms; the cause is unknown, and there are no medications specifically approved for the condition.

Instead, treatment usually involves a combination of approaches, such as painkillers, antidepressants and exercise therapy. Only two well-designed clinical trials have tested acupuncture’s effects on fibromyalgia, and these studies yielded conflicting results.

The new study was conducted by researchers at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, and in Jackson, Florida. Fifty fibromyalgia patients were randomly assigned to acupuncture or to a “placebo” version of the therapy, where a dull surgical instrument was pressed against the skin rather than acupuncture needles. The subjects were positioned so they could not see which treatment they received. All but one subject was female. The patients underwent six treatment sessions over two to three weeks. None of the patients had been treated with acupuncture before. Overall, the fibromyalgia patients who underwent the real treatment showed a significantly greater improvement in their symptoms than placebo recipients did — particularly when it came to fatigue and anxiety, Dr. David P. Martin and his colleagues report in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

Acupuncture is among the most popular and best-studied forms of alternative medicine; research suggests it can help ease pain stemming from a range of conditions, including lower back problems, migraine and arthritis. As far as the therapy’s effects on fibromyalgia, “the trend in the evidence is tipping toward a benefit,” Martin told Reuters. “I think people can try it, because there are really no bad side effects,” he said, adding that many may tolerate acupuncture better than the medications often used for the condition. It’s not clear, according to Martin, why the fatigue and anxiety symptoms in particular improved, just as it’s not completely understood why acupuncture works at all.

According to traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture points on the skin are connected to internal pathways that conduct energy, and stimulating the points with a fine needle promotes a balanced flow of this energy. Research in recent years has suggested that acupuncture may work by altering signals among nerve cells or affecting the release of various chemicals of the central nervous system. Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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One of the most frequent injuries suffered by athletes and weekend warriors alike is tennis elbow, or epicondylitis, which is an inflammation of the muscles and tendons. It is caused by repeated twisting of the wrist or frequent rotation of the forearm, and can lead to a weakened grip, elbow pain, and damage to the tendons that connect to the humerus, the bone of the upper arm.

Golfer’s elbow, also referred to as medial epicondylitis is quite similar to tennis elbow except the inflammation occurs on the inside of the elbow, around the bone called the medial epicondyle.. The inner part of the elbow becomes painful and tender as a result of damage or tearing of the tendons and muscles of this area.
Symptoms of Tennis Elbow and Golfer’s Elbow

* Difficulty with movements such as gripping, lifting and carrying
* Pain and tenderness either on the outside of the elbow (tennis elbow) or on the inside of the elbow (golfer’s elbow)
* Pain that radiates down the arm toward the wrist
* Difficulty extending the forearm

If you are suffering from Tennis or Golfer’s Elbow or Frozen Shoulder syndrome acupuncture is a natural alternative to traditional treatments such as medications, heat, magnets, braces, physical therapy and rest, which are effective in relieving pain but do very little to prevent the condition from recurring. Research has proven that acupuncture not only relieves the symptoms of tennis and golfer’s elbow, and frozen shoulder syndrome, it appears to resolve the condition completely.