Boost Immunity and Lower Stress this Holiday Season

Stress can quickly turn holiday cheers to tears. When stress levels rise, the strength of your immune system can begin to diminish. Stress around the holiday season is inevitable since energy, expectations and emotions are all running high. Stress not only appears as tension or pain in your body, but it can also be the factor behind why you get a cold or the flu. Acupuncture is a treatment you can seek to help relieve these symptoms.

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine you are one mind and one body intricately connected. Your body uses information from your emotions in the form of chemical and hormone actions. This form of communication allows the body to determine how it needs to function to survive. If you don’t allow your body time to reset those actions they can keep you in a heightened state that will eventually wear you down. For example, chronic stress can increase cortisol in the body. Elevated cortisol levels weaken your immune system making you more susceptible to colds and flu and other serious health issues such as diabetes and heart disease. By treating the physical body with acupuncture you can alter your response stress levels and reduce the chances of getting sick.

Acupuncture restores balance throughout your whole system: physical, mental and emotional. It addresses the source of the stress on the level it exists, meaning if it's an emotional stress the acupuncturist can choose acupoints to work at it on an emotional level. This approach treats the root of the problem, rather than covering up the problem, the way a pain or stress relieving medication might.

In addition to proper diet, sleep and exercise try acupuncture this holiday season to restore balance and health naturally. Other Traditional Chinese Medicine techniques which can help reduce stress and enhance the performance of your immune system are: qi gong, tui na, cupping and gua sha. For more information visit www.healingfoundationschicago.com.