Acupuncture and Holiday Stress Relief
Happy Holidays! Get ready for beautiful landscapes, glowing Christmas lights, parties with distant relatives and old friends, gifts, and indulgent meals. All of this sounds amazing, right? If your answer is “no” or “kinda, maybe, inbetween,” you’re not alone, I promise! The holidays can be great but may come with an overwhelming amount of stress— and there is research to back it up.
One study from 2015 shows that 62% of respondents have a “very or somewhat” elevated stress level during the end-of-year holiday season. Only 10% of respondents said they didn’t feel any stress at all during the holiday season, which means you could assume 9 out of every 10 people you meet could be feeling a little on edge the next few months.
The point is, if you’re feeling stressed, you’re not alone. There are many reasons people feel stress: financial strains of gift giving, stressful family dynamics, travel challenges, even the weather and length of the day provide challenges to our mental health. While we can’t prevent all of these external factors contributing to stress, acupuncture can help you deal with it.
The Impact of Stress on The Body
First off, let’s make something clear: stress is a real issue, and it has real health consequences. There are no medals for toughing it out, no rewards for not seeking help. On the contrary: chronic stress can contribute to severe conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, digestive disorders, infertility, and more.
The reason for these consequences is the biological response to stress. When we are faced with a stressful situation, the sympathetic nervous system activates, releasing cortisol, norepinephrine, and adrenaline to maximize muscular exertion. This is a great response to have when your muscles actually need to be exerted: adrenaline can be great when you need to escape from a fire or rescue a child in danger.
In the case where you’re caught in a financial bind or bad traffic, however, there’s nowhere for those stress chemicals to go. Over time, this chemical buildup leads to chronic inflammation. So, if you’re feeling like you’re in fight-or-flight for sustained periods of time, it’s important to listen to your body’s warnings and seek some relief.
How Acupuncture Helps With Stress
In Chinese Medical Theory, we use different terminology to explain what’s going on in the body, but it leads to the same conclusion. Stress leads to Qi stagnation— either of the liver, lung, or heart meridian. These heightened emotions an also lead to a diagnosis of “heat” or “Qi exhaustion.”
Heat from liver, lung, or heart Qi stagnation can lead to some familiar symptoms. Depending on which meridian is experiencing an imbalance, a person might experience depression, anxiety, irritability, insomnia, fatigue, fibromyalgia, shortness of breath, a weakened immune system, and other complex symptoms. Acupuncture has been used for thousands of years to reduce stress and help with managing these symptoms.
A study performed by Georgetown University showed that acupuncture plays a role in balancing the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. Rats who received acupuncture had significantly lower levels of cortisol in their blood and displayed calmer and happier behavior when compared with rats who did not receive acupuncture.
Herbs For Stress Relief
Herbal formulas are an essential part of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and as such we always have something to recommend. When dealing with stress, it’s no different— herbs are your best friend!
Some herbal decoctions are designed to address stress head-on, such as our Stress Away decoction kit. This decoction is a blend of ashwagandha, tulsi, reishi mushroom, lemon balm, bupleurium, angelica, peony root, and chrysanthemum.
We also believe that it’s important to think about why you are stressed around the holidays, and attempt to address those underlying issues. For instance, lack of sleep can be a huge stressor— you have a lot to get done every day, and if you’re lethargic and irritable due to lack of sleep, you’re likely to end up more stressed as the day goes on. Herbs can be a fantastic, low-impact sleep aid. We offer a Peaceful Sleep decoction kit, as well as valerian root tinctures.
On a similar note, nobody wants to get sick around the holidays. November and December are the start of the winter cold and flu season— we’re spending more time indoors with others, and there are many, many pathogens in the air. Getting even a mild cold can slow you down significantly. When you’re on the other side of an illness, all the things that didn’t get done when you were laid out are all of the sudden piled up and demanding attention— what could be more stressful than that? A nice spoonful of elderberry syrup could help reduce your recovery time, getting you back on your feet and ready for action before too many holiday chores pile up.
Taking Care of Yourself During The Holidays
It doesn’t stop with the positive effects of needles and herbs, simply spending the time to take care of yourself is crucial. Many people state that one of the most challenging aspects of the holiday season is maintaining self-care routines. It’s so easy to fall out of exercise routines and focus so much on others that we lose sight of our own health.
Scheduling acupuncture treatments means there is a one-hour block of time every week where you are going to shut everything out and focus on your own health. You can turn your phone off, lay on the table, relax, and let the needles do their work. It’s worth remembering that every time you give to someone, you are pouring from your own cup— whether you’re giving time, energy, or attention. We can’t pour from an empty cup. Taking care of yourself refills that cup and allows you to be more present and giving in a season dedicated to kindness to others.
In addition to the immediate effects of a little extra stress relief, taking care of yourself has positive long-term effects. So, if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed this holiday season, We have got your back at Roots Acupuncture & Apothecary!
Sources:
https://hms.harvard.edu/news-events/publications-archive/brain/holiday-stress-brain
https://roots-acupuncture.com/blog/systemic-inflammation-and-stress