Health Insights – Acupuncture, Eastern Medicine and Your Health

Lessons on Staying Healthy during Winter

Today marks the winter solstice, in which we celebrate the darkest day of the year. What we’re really celebrating is that light is slowly returning to our world in the form of incrementally longer days. There’s an element of triumph associated with the solstice, in that we made it through the darkest days of the year. What’s often missed is that these cold, dark days are an important component in sustaining our health, and the health of all living things.

Right now in Minnesota, the landscape looks dead. The trees are devoid of leaves and the fields are crispy and brown with dried leaves and litter from the grasses and wildflowers of last summer. However, the trees and grasses aren’t dead, but are in a kind of suspended animation. Yes, their leaves are gone, but there’s still life in the roots and core of each plant. This dormant period is a time for plants to stop growing for a while, take a rest, and conserve energy so they can leaf out again in the spring.

Trees and plants aren’t the only living things that go dormant in the winter. Many animals, such as bears, skunks, raccoons, reptiles, and even insects hibernate in the winter. Their body temperature cools down and their heart rate and respiration slow, all as a way to survive the cold and protect their energy stores until the warmer weather returns.

In Chinese theory, each season is associated with an energetic task that’s hardwired into the DNA of plants and animals. And knowing the task for each season is a key to good health, but also keeps you in touch with the natural world. For example, spring is a time of expansiveness. Birds migrate north to nest, hibernating animals become active again, the sap starts running in trees and they being to sprout leaves. Summer is active with nesting, mating, and raising young. In the fall, animals look for an abundance of food to provide energy for the coming winter. And the seasonal task of winter is dormancy; to slow down, store energy, and regenerate in the coming spring.

While animals know this instinctively, we humans also feel these seasonal tasks, but our signals are somewhat muted, perhaps because we’ve lived indoors for thousands of years. But the pull of the seasons is also still deep in our DNA. It’s found in the urge to go outside to run and play on the first warm days of spring. It’s found in the bright activity of summer, and it’s found during the fall harvest when we gravitate toward heartier fare of winter squash, root vegetables, soups, and stews.

Which brings us to winter. I’ve been bemoaning the couple extra pounds my scale says I’ve gained in the last month or so. I feel just a little bit guilty for staying in bed later in the morning or shuffling off to take a nap some afternoons. And even though I get outdoors every day, I struggle to want to go outside and walk the hiking paths and trails that I so loved during the summer. Rationally, I know that this is what my body is supposed to do during the coldest and darkest days of winter—to practice dormancy. I will just say okay to the extra carbs that somehow end up on my dinner plate, and I’ll indulge in a few holiday sweets. I’ll try to be okay with weighing a little more and sleeping a little longer, because this is what’s expected of winter.

The lesson of winter is this: You’re meant to slow down, build up a little energy, and take the time to restore your health. The extra energy that you build up during winter helps to keep you warm, fuel your metabolism, and support your immune system. So allow yourself to eat heavier meals, be okay with an extra pound or two, get a little extra sleep, and know that this is what your body needs during the winter.

The Little Things that Affect Your Health

Every several weeks I get this funky headache. Ground zero is a knot on the left side of my upper back. It tightens up and then it gets dull and achy, and after a while it becomes downright painful all the way up into my forehead. It has many of the qualities of a migraine—one-sided, beginning at a specific focal point, accompanied by chills, and pretty intense.

I used to think that these headaches were all about the knot in my back; when my back was tight (I thought) I would get a headache. Then I realized that carrying a bag on my left shoulder or a tight athletic bra, or even being a little dehydrated could trigger a headache. Interestingly, it seemed that the headaches were most likely to crop up Saturdays. And then I had a very bad day at work a couple of weeks ago, and boom! There was my old pal, the headache helping to make my bad day even worse.

I have spent a lot of time working out the source of these headaches. All along I have assumed that there was only one cause. However, what I have come to believe is that what is making my head hurt is a perfect storm of several small triggers that add up to a whopper of a headache. The combination of stress, wearing things on my shoulder, dehydration, and timing are all contributors. What I found interesting is that many of the headaches occurred on Saturdays. But when I think about it, Saturday is the day when I’m out and about with a handbag on my shoulder, right after I’ve done some kind of workout in a sports bra. It’s an interesting fact that many people get headaches on the weekends after having kept it together throughout the work week.

My point here is not really about headaches. It’s about the fact that too often we assume that there is only one answer to our health concerns, when in reality what makes or breaks our health is the accumulation of a bunch of little things. This is true whether you are trying to figure out what’s causing your symptoms or how best to treat them.

We live in a time of Magic Bullet Thinking. We want to take a pill and have our health problems go away; we want to know the one super food to eat to be healthy forever; and we want the one single diet that will make us look like we spend our days at the gym. We want the miracle cure, whether it’s anti-depressants, acupuncture, or acai berries–and we want it to work fast.

Unfortunately, that’s not how your health works. In Chinese medicine, there are a number of causes of poor health. Among them, improper diet (eating the wrong food for your body), overeating, strong emotions, stress, overworking, not enough rest, not enough exercise, and physical trauma. However, it’s rarely just one of those things that’s making you sick, but a combination of several. For example, it’s not just your cranky boss that’s messing you up, it’s the long hours at work combined with the stress, the wakeful nights, and the crappy diet that also go with the job that’s really dragging your health down.

So while a combination of many factors may have made you sick, it is also true that it may also take a combination of small steps to make you well. An acupuncture treatment or massage session may be a great place to start, but frequently it’s a beginning, not the complete answer. You may also have to deal with your boss or get a new job, get more hours of sleep, tweak your diet, and spend some down time relaxing to really achieve the health and feeling of balance that you’re seeking.

Knowing that it will likely take many small changes to deal with my headaches, I will start with acupuncture. But I’ll also use some heat on the knot in my upper back, stretch, get the purse off my shoulder, drink more water, work on relaxing more during the week, and wear undergarments that don’t aggravate the knot in my back. I realize that there is no magic elixir that will fix this, but rather it will take a bunch of small changes that when combined can be very effective. If your health could be better, what small changes will you make to help turn things around?