acubalance Bettina Rosche – acupuncture in Randwick

The Qi of summer has the vibrant and expanding nature of fire. Therefore this season is the phase of the Fire element. It is about heart felt connections, community, joy and laughter. When we are ill, we benefit greatly from integrative health care, sourcing the best from Modern and Traditional medicine. Heartfelt care and dedicated expertise guide us on our path to wellness. Support from family, friends, colleagues and neighbours help us to accept and grow with health challenges.

Eat light and well

Summer is the season when we digest more easily a variety of salads and raw foods. In contrast, imagine how you would feel after eating a huge piece of fatty turkey on a hot day! If you like traditional heavy winter delicacies on a hot Chrsitmas Day, a good option is to enjoy small portions of that combined with fresh and light salads.

Protect your stomach

Once we get the very hot days, you may feel a desire for ice cold foods and drinks. In Traditional Chinese Medicine we recommend to let the cool drink warm up in the mouth before swallowing to protect the Stomach Qi from the cold. This is particularly helpful if you suffer from digestive problems.

Cooling foods

Herbal medicine as well as food interacts with the body in relation to temperature. Ingredients are classified as: hot, warm, neutral, cool, or cold. This is not the temperature of what we place in our mouth but the effect on our body. Cooling foods are for example water melon and cucumber. It is also important to stay hydrated because dehydration depletes the Yin and that generates internal Heat.

You can create drinks that have room temperature, yet feel refreshing. I love to keep a jug of water that contains either some leaves of mint from my balcony or some slices of lime or lemon. I keep the jug on the kitchen bench for half a day and keep sipping, then I make it up again. Or would you even enjoy a splash of apple cider vinegar in water? Enjoy experimenting!

“Health and well-being can be achieved only by remaining centred with one’s spirit, guarding against squandering one’s energy, maintaining the constant flow of one’s Qi and Blood, adapting to the changing seasonal and yearly macrocosmic influences, and nourishing one’s self preventively.” (From the classical text Huang Di Neijing Suwen, thought to be more than 2000 years old)

In essence, not much is required to be as well as we possibly can be…

• Remain centred with one’s spirit
• Allow for appropriate rest and movement physically, emotionally and mentally
• Live connected within society and nature while adapting to change with ease
• Eat well and nourish the spirit

How to live this will be individually different. If you have questions in regards to any of these areas in your life, please let me know during your next visit and we can reflect on it together!

And if you know someone who may benefit from acupuncture, please encourage them to contact me for further information.

A meta-analysis of 17,922 patients from randomized controlled trials “provided the most robust evidence to date that acupuncture is a reasonable referral option for patients with chronic pain”. The chronic pain conditions included musculoskeletal pain (low back, neck, and shoulder), osteoarthritis of the knee, and headache/migraine. Publisched in: Vickers et al. 2012 Archives of Internal Medicine 172(19):1444-53.

A follow up study analysed this data for long-term pain relief. Benefits of acupuncture persisted 12 months after treatment ended. The researchers concluded “The effects of a course of acupuncture treatment for patients with chronic pain do not seem to decrease importantly over 12 months. Patients can generally be reassured that treatment effects persist. Studies of the cost-effectiveness of acupuncture should take our findings into account when considering the time horizon of acupuncture effects. Further research should measure longer term outcomes of acupuncture.” Published in MacPherson et al. 2017 Pain 158(5):784–793.

Acupuncture is based on an extensive body of knowledge developed over at least two thousand years of clinical experience and reasoning.

Modern research has added to this, yet a lot of research remains to be done. Clinical trials into effectiveness are constraint by the likelihood that any form of skin stimulation used as a control procedure in “placebo controlled” studies may have physiological effects.

We understand very little about the biological mechanisms of acupuncture. Both systems of knowledge look at how various aspects of the human being and the environment interact and have the capacity to adapt. This dynamic balance is the meaning behind the name acubalance.