February

Carleton Magus
Alpine Acupuncture
425-391-7777

February Newsletter

Happy Valentines Day, everyone! I hope that midwinter is finding you well. As you may know, Alpine Acupuncture grows best with your support! The best referrals come from you. I appreciate it when you to tell your friends and family about the great benefit you have found from acupuncture. We have an exciting upcoming event to share with those you love: mark your calendar for Saturday February 23rd, 10- 2:30, for the 4th Annual Health Fair at Pickering Barn. It’s a great opportunity for your friends and family to learn about acupuncture and receive a complementary tongue and pulse diagnosis at the Alpine Acupuncture table and also discover all sorts of info on other health care resources. See you there!

This month’s newsletter is dedicated to your digestion. Your digestion is the cornerstone of your health; your gut is the first line of defense for your immune system. Energy comes from food, so proper digestion is key in order to feel vital! When your digestion is not working properly you can become sensitive to food, leading to gas, bloating, fatigue after meals, and trouble focusing. I will discuss a healthy and balanced diet along with some typical digestive disorders that acupuncture can help.

To quote my wife, “the only diet is The Diet”. We’ve all heard about fad diets and programs, but when it comes down to it, the only thing that really works (for weight loss, food sensitivities and tummy troubles) is to change how you eat over the long term. The first and foremost thing you can do for your digestion and your health is to eat a healthy well balanced diet. If you take care of yourself on a daily basis, you will gain health and vitality. The trend in our society is to grab at the latest trend diet and do that for a while. Then when we get bored or frustrated and go off that diet and eat whatever again, sometimes binging and gaining even more weight. This is called yo-yo dieting and wreaks havoc on our body, both in regards to weight and digestion.

So what is a healthy well balanced diet? There are many resources available to us, including healthy eating food tours at local health food stores, wonderful cookbooks and online sources of support groups and recipes (let me know if you need more info!) What I am going to discuss is the TCM philosophy of eating. Eat in moderation and at a regular time of day. Use oils, fats, sweeteners, and spices sparingly. And eat warm, nutritious and easy to digest foods, especially during winter months. The first and foremost thing you can do is to eat in moderation. In order to eat in moderation you need to listen to you body and stop eating when you are full. In order to do this you shouldn’t eat on the run and don’t eat in front of the television (even snacks). You digest more than your food, you also digest you surroundings. Eat in a calm environment, savoring what you eat and when you start feeling full, stop eating. Your mother was wrong-you don’t need to clean your plate!

Just as important as eating in moderation is the timing of when you eat. You need to eat before you are starving, and around the same time everyday, with the bigger meals earlier in the day. Your body works well with rhythm. If you eat at regular intervals then your digestion will be ready for the food you put into it. If you eat your bigger meals earlier in the day your digestive tract will be able to rest while you sleep at night. There are two benefits to this. The first is that you will be fresh and ready the next day to digest your food and the second is that you will sleep better. Eating your bigger meals earlier in the day gives your body the energy it needs when it needs it and you will more efficiently burn calories. If you eat a big meal before you go to bed your body stores the calories, and your digestion does not get the much needed break while you sleep.

The digestive tract works better with warm food. You should eat your vegetables steamed or lightly and quickly fried. By warming your vegetables your digestion does not need to work as hard to break them down. Lean meats, fish and poultry should be eaten daily in moderation and if you are cooking them yourself you should include a little dried ginger to aid your digestion. It is also a good idea with greens and raw vegetables to have some sort of vinegar with them, this aids digestion and helps utilize some of the vitamins. Cold raw food should be eaten in moderation, as these are harder to digest. A good exception to this rule is traditional foods. Many traditional raw foods are prepared in a way that makes them easier to digest. A good example of this is sushi. Included in the rice is vinegar, which is good for the digestion, along with the pickled ginger. And of course, miso soup is also commonly served alongside to warm up the digestion!

Eat from a variety of vegetables, grains, meats and fruits. Variety is the spice of life. Try something new every day! Our world is flooded with wheat, cheese, high fat/sugar and processed food. The easiest way to improve your health is to eat variety every day. A simple rule of thumb is to eat more whole grains. Eat more variety of grains and to make sure you are eating your vegetables. Sugar is not your enemy and neither is fat. Your body needs sugars and fats, but it does not need refined sugars and saturated fats. Avoid fried foods. Avoid junk foods. Enjoy butter. Enjoy simple desserts. Enjoy beef. Just enjoy these foods once or twice a week. This way you won’t feel deprived and yet you won’t overindulge. Again moderation and awareness are the keys to living in health. It is important to eat organic so your body does not have to process the excess chemicals and it is important to eat meats that are not heavily processed so you do not get the extra sodium and nitrates. The American Dietetic Association recommends you eat two servings of fish a week. I strongly encourage you look through the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch website so that you can make an educated decision about what fish you eat!
I also recommend that you carry around Seafood Watch’s wallet guide to safe fish that you can download from Monterey Bay Aquarium at the link above.

If you have digestive issues then you should know that digestive health is a goal of acupuncture. If your digestion is healthy then your body and mind stay healthy. Digestive complaints that acupuncture can help with are heartburn, IBS and Crohn’s to name just a few. If I was to rank the top three areas of a patient’s health that acupuncture can help I would put digestion as my number two after pain. Acupuncture can help all sorts of digestive disorders. I have included below three studies highlighting the benefits of acupuncture for people with Heartburn, IBS and Crohn’s. I can also help you with your diarrhea, constipation, acute GI upset, and nausea.

Research:

Calcium and Vitamin D:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/569488

Clinical trial: acupuncture vs. doubling the proton pump inhibitor dose in refractory heartburn.

Original article
Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics. 26(10):1333-1344, November 2007.
DICKMAN, R. *,+; SCHIFF, E. ++,[S]; HOLLAND, A. ++,[P]; WRIGHT, C. [P]; SARELA, S. R. *; HAN, B. *; FASS, R. *

Summery of the abstract: The current standard of care in proton pump inhibitor failure is to double the proton pump inhibitor dose, despite limited therapeutic gain. The aim of the study was to determine the efficacy of adding acupuncture vs. doubling the proton pump inhibitor dose in gastro-oesophageal reflux disease patients who failed symptomatically on proton pump inhibitors once daily. Thirty patients with classic heartburn symptoms who continued to be symptomatic on standard-dose proton pump inhibitors were enrolled into the study. Patients were randomized to either adding acupuncture to their proton pump inhibitor or doubling the proton pump inhibitor dose over a period of 4 weeks. The acupuncture + proton pump inhibitor group demonstrated a significant decrease in the mean daytime heartburn, night-time heartburn and acid regurgitation scores at the end of treatment when compared with baseline, while the double-dose proton pump inhibitor group did not demonstrate a significant change in their clinical endpoints. Adding acupuncture is more effective than doubling the proton pump inhibitor dose in controlling gastro-oesophageal reflux disease-related symptoms in patients who failed standard-dose proton pump inhibitors.

Copyright (C) 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Treatment of Irritable Bowel Syndrome With Chinese Herbal Medicine

Alan Bensoussan, MSc; Nick J. Talley, MD; Michael Hing, MBBS, FRACP; Robert Menzies, PhD; Anna Guo, PhD; Meng Ngu, PhD

JAMA. 1998;280:1585-1589.

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common functional bowel disorder for which there is no reliable medical treatment. The Objective of the study is to determine whether Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) is of any benefit in the treatment of IBS. This is a Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial conducted during 1996 through 1997. A total of 116 patients were recruited through 2 teaching hospitals and 5 private practices of gastroenterologists, and received CHM in 3 Chinese herbal clinics. Compared with patients in the placebo group, patients in the active treatment groups had significant improvement in bowel symptom, and global improvement scores as rated by patients and by gastroenterologists. Patients reported that treatment significantly reduced the degree of interference with life caused by IBS symptoms. Chinese herbal formulations individually tailored to the patient proved no more effective than standard CHM treatment. On follow-up 14 weeks after completion of treatment, only the individualized CHM treatment group maintained improvement. Chinese herbal formulations appear to offer improvement in symptoms for some patients with IBS.



Acupuncture and Moxibustion in the Treatment of Active Crohn's Disease: A Randomized Controlled Study
Stefanie Joosa, Benno Brinkhausa, Christa Maluchea, Nathalie Maupaia, Ralf Kohnenb, Nils Kraehmera, Eckhart G. Hahna, Detlef Schuppana

a. Department of Medicine I (Gastroenterology), Research Group for Alternative Medicine, Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, and
b. Institute for Medical Research Management and Biometrics, Nuremberg, Germany

Digestion 2004;69:131-139 (DOI: 10.1159/000078151)

Background: Acupuncture has traditionally been used in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease in China and is increasingly being applied in Western countries. The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of acupuncture in the treatment of active Crohn's disease (CD). Methods: A prospective, randomized, controlled, single-blind clinical trial was carried out to analyze the change in the CD activity index (CDAI) after treatment as a main outcome measure, and the changes in quality of life and general well-being, serum markers of inflammation (alpha1-acid glycoprotein, C-reactive protein) as secondary outcome measures. 51 patients with mild to moderately active CD were treated in a single center for complementary medicine by three trained acupuncturists and randomly assigned to receive either traditional acupuncture (TCM group, n = 27) or control treatment at non-acupuncture points (control group, n = 24). Patients were treated in 10 sessions over a period of 4 weeks and followed up for 12 weeks. Results: In the TCM group the CDAI decreased from 250 ± 51 to 163 ± 56 points as compared with a mean decrease from 220 ± 42 to 181 ± 46 points in the control group (TCM vs. control group: p = 0.003). In both groups these changes were associated with improvements in general well-being and quality of life. With regard to general well-being, traditional acupuncture was superior to control treatment (p = 0.045). alpha1-acid glycoprotein concentration fell significantly only in the TCM group (p = 0.046). Conclusions: Apart from a marked placebo effect, traditional acupuncture offers an additional therapeutic benefit in patients with mild to moderately active CD.

Copyright © 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel

Carleton Magus
Alpine Acupuncture
425-391-7777

AlpineAcupuncture.com