Patient Acupuncture Healing Story
Angela is a 52 year old woman who came into my office suffering from severe insomnia. On an average night she would get around 3 -4 hours of interrupted sleep and would awaken with racing thoughts and anxiety. In the past, she had tried over the counter sleep aids, homeopathic remedies but refused to take prescription drugs like Ambien or Lunesta for fear of side effects. Angela walked into the Acupuncture Center of New jersey in Morristown, NJ three months ago feeling very tired, hopeless and frustrated, and was skeptical if acupuncture would be able to help. But, she had run out of options and came to The Acupuncture Center as the last option.
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After meeting Angela and delving into her health history, it was not hard to see why she was struggling with sleep issues. She had suffered from lifelong anxiety that fortunately never developed into a major health crisis, but which left her with a great deal of nervous energy that she didn't know what to do with. So she channeled this energy into the gym. She's an avid exerciser, health food fanatic, and worked out around two hours a day, every day. She did not have much body fat when I met her and spoke in a quick nervous tone. After conducting an acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine diagnostic procedure including looking at her tongue and taking her pulse, I determined that her body had accumulated a lot of heat in the heart, and her kidney pulses were weaker than they should be.
So in reality what was happening from an acupuncture standpoint is the kidney meridian was struggling to connect with the Heart energy, causing the mind to wander and drift, and that nervous energy to rush upward. At night our thoughts and ideas need to descend. If they cannot and get stuck in the mind then we will be unable to relax and fall asleep. The excessive exercise and strict eating were also contributing to her issue by leaving her body depleted. So I begin formulating Angela’s acupuncture treatment to clear the excess heart heat, strengthen the kidney Qi, and connect the meridian flow between them so her mind would be able to stay calm and rest at night. I gave her the Chinese herbal formula Tian Wang Bu Xin Dan to help start the process of reconnection, and I inserted needles in acupuncture points to the heart, Kidney, and Conception Vessels points to follow this pattern. I also asked her to cut back on the exercise in duration and frequency and told her to up her quantity of food a bit.
I would say after a solid three weeks of Angela coming in for acupuncture at twice a week, she started to sleep for longer periods of time without waking up. Now, three months later, she sleeps completely through the night. She is no longer on herbs, and we focus solely on the acupuncture. Her demeanor is calmer, her nervous energy is no longer present, and she fully relaxes during her treatments which she never used to be able to do. There was a lot of counting ceiling tiles those first few weeks! She now comes in once every few weeks for treatment and attributes her newly found sleep to the wonders of Acupuncture. Angela is a shining example of how important it is to achieve balance in your life, and how pivotal a role acupuncture and herbs can play in helping the body and mind to reconnect again.
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