acupuncture, thai bodywork & zero balancing

Let’s fire up the love not fear.

Feel good hormones or Love hormones – oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin – help ward off anxiety and depression, as well as support your immune system. They have the opposite effect of the fight, flight, freeze response.

Fear, anxiety and worry increase cortisol, stress the adrenal gland and decrease immune function. Stress, overwhelm, fight or flight, trauma. Our fearful, isolated, stressed-out society is not helpful. Stress hormones are high, which is not helpful for our immune function.

Get some Physical and Social Contact

Positive social connection, socializing, laughing, meaningful conversations. Trust, sharing and gift giving. Hugs, cuddles, making love. Self-care, massage, acupuncture. All of these things release feel-good hormones, which aren’t just helping you feel better, but be healthier, too.

Not only in women related to labor and lactation, but also the love hormones help the male reproductive system by supporting the production of testosterone.

Regular physical activity can kick stress hormones to the curb and increase the love hormones.

Cardio like walking, running, hiking, biking, aerobic classes. Muscle building exercise is especially good for the over-40 crowd.

Yoga, meditation, deep breathing and mindfulness training. Obviously, great for reducing stress. Start small. Short and frequent meditation, or moving meditation, like walking meditation or Tqi Chi, is an alternate to sitting or lying down meditation.

Laughter lowers stress hormones. Jokes lower cortisol levels! Make movie night all about the comedies.

Music Listening to music you love lowers cortisol levels and increases happiness. Do you have an instrument collecting dust? Play it. It is good for your brain.

Acupuncture can help as well. I’ve been helping relieve the trauma on our bodies and minds that has come with the pandemic. Some feel it in their gut and it shows up as digestive issues. Others have anxiety and panic, depression, fatigue, body aches or irritability. Depending upon where we have deficiency or stagnation, we will see the effects in different areas.

Spring is a great time to get acupuncture, as this time of year it is easy for Qi to get stuck.

Check out my added session combo options.

I had COVID last month and I’m glad that I’m over that hump.

artwork by Gabe Davidson

For prevention and early treatment of COVID and other viruses, one of the best things we can do is treat the area that the viruses come in and hang out: the nose and throat. Gargling is one way to get to the throat, while a spray will take care of the nose and behind, where the nose and throat meet. This effective method has been shown to reduce PCR positivity and shorten the duration of illness.

There are many options for what anti-viral/microbial agent to use use. Solutions of Betadine (povidone-iodine 1%) and hydrogen peroxide (3%) are highly effective. Grapefruit seed extract has anti-viral and anti-microbial effects, as do many essential oils, like the ones used in Listerine. Obviously, Listerine is great for gargling, but not so great for spraying up one’s nose. Xlear Nasal Spray contains grapefruit seed extract.

The goal is to decontaminate the nose and throat to reduce the viral load that your body has to deal with, and to reduce the transmission of the virus.

2 teaspoons Betadine in 6 ounces of water

Use nasal spray or syringe bulb and spray up nose – snort it to back of throat and then spit it out.

Gargle the rest of the Betadine solution, spit it out – do not swallow.

Finish with Listerine gargle

This method is recommended for early stages of COVID or flu, or if nasal symptoms continue. This can be done up to every 4 hours while you are awake. Read More »

Gargling is an easy way to reduce infection and transmission of viruses. Antiseptic mouthwashes, like Listerine, effectively reduce oro- and nasopharyngeal (mouth, throat and nose) viral load and inactivate coronaviruses.

The nose, throat and salivary glands are major sites of virus replication and transmission during early stages of coronavirus infection, as well as other respiratory viruses and bacteria. Targeting these areas with mouthwashes and nasal rinses can help prevent progression and reduce transmission of the disease.

While the vaccines aim to prevent viruses from replicating in the lungs, they do not prevent viruses from replicating in the nose, mouth and pharynx, which has a different type of mucosa than the lungs and this area is the first area to be infected.

The easiest thing we can do is to gargle daily for prevention of transmission of viruses and bacteria. Alternatively, gargling can be applied after exposure to someone who is sick or potential exposure after flying or being in a crowded place. This can be helpful for all people regardless of vaccination history.

What to gargle and how often: Read More »