4 Lifestyle Changes for Optimum Health & How Acupuncture Can Help

Recently my car was broken into. I had finished my usual morning swim at the health club. When I opened the car door, I realized that someone had smashed the passenger-side window and taken my briefcase with my laptop in it. It was the beginning of a really bad month.

I did not sleep for the first week after the event. I was consumed with trying to remember all the different files on the laptop. Luckily there were no patient files. However, I had a lot of personal information on the computer—social security numbers, bank account numbers, pictures, my personal journal, home address and more. Whoever had that laptop and took the time to look through it would know me better than even my wife. I was also nervous that the person who took the computer would come to my home to find more stuff to steal, or worse.

Don’t Let Stress Make You Sick

As a result of all this stress, I came down with the flu. I can’t remember the last time I was this sick. I had a fever, then a cough, then sweats for about two weeks. All the while, I was dealing with getting a security system for my home, having credit monitoring started on our social security numbers, getting the car door fixed, contacting the police, and all of those things that must be taken care of after a crime occurs.

Well, I am glad to say that I have survived the ordeal. I think that I am actually better off because I have now taken all these extra precautions that I otherwise would have just put off for the future. I imagine that it would be much more difficult trying to fix my credit after it had been compromised, or putting in a security system after the house had already been ransacked. As it is, I am much more proactive about my safety. Hopefully, these measures will keep me and my family secure.

Take Preventative Measures

I thought about how this story is actually a great parable about our health. We never think of taking care of things until something bad occurs. By the time a disease has been diagnosed, for example, it is too late. It is much better if we take the steps to prevent disease in the first place. Especially if the preventable steps are easy to do and will make life more enjoyable.

Caregivers are a great example, as they oftentimes focus so much on maintaining the health of their senior loved one that they neglect to take care of themselves. Caregiving requires long hours, leaving little time to deal with the stress involved, which can ultimately take a toll on the caregivers’ own health. Seniors and the very elderly are also vulnerable to external factors that compromise health, not only due to increased frailty, decreased mobility and because our bodily systems become more susceptible to diseases as we age, but also because increasingly, they have less power to make daily choices about the things that will help them maintain optimal health. This is particularly true of institutionalized seniors who live as residents of nursing homes.

The 4 Pillars of Good Health

In traditional Chinese medicine, there is really nothing magical about maintaining good health. The four main pillars of good health are eating, sleeping, elimination and exercise. That is all. The simplicity is deceiving, however. By prioritizing these four elements in your life, everything will change.

While studying in Beijing, one of the things that we had to do was qi gong exercise at 6:00 AM. Qi gong, pronounced “chi gong,” literally means “energy work.” We were taught by one of the masters of this exercise. It was just breathing in and breathing out. Hand and body movements were coordinated with the breathing. It was very peaceful and initially seemed very easy. At end of the forty-five minute class, I was usually covered in sweat. Our teacher appeared to be in his fifties or maybe sixties. He could move more quickly than any of us, and after the sessions, he was not even winded. It turned out he was eighty-two! We were all in our twenties and thirties. He had practiced qi gong since he was a child, taught by his father and grandfather.

It turned out the qi gong exercise was the key to good health. And not because it was necessarily good exercise. I thought about Master Wong and why he kept his youthfulness. He had to get up at 5:00 every morning. For me to get up at 5:00, I had to go to sleep by 9:00 each night. Since we practiced this qi gong every morning even on the weekends, this meant no partying on Friday or Saturday nights. No sleeping in on weekends and holidays.

Getting up at 5:00 each morning meant that I ate breakfast by 7:00, lunch by 12:00, and dinner at 5:00. It was difficult to eat out because no one else would eat that early. But if I ate too late, the full tummy would keep me awake. Then it dawned on me. Of course Master Wong looked and acted so young! This was the life that he had lived since he was a child. Imagine a body never subjected to hangovers, dating wrong people, breathing bad bar air, sleeping eight hours each night. It is boring, but you too can look fifty when you are actually eighty.

Get on a Schedule

Eating, sleeping, elimination and exercise: doing these things like clockwork is the key to good health. Our bodies function best when these vital functions occur at regular intervals. Imagine your body trying to digest food. By having a set time to eat a set amount of food every day, your body is prepared to digest the food. Your liver, gall bladder, and pancreas have prepared all those enzymes and hormones even before the first morsel of food arrives in your mouth. With this preparation, of course you will be able to digest the food more completely and extract every last nutrient. And with regular food intake, the body is more likely to have regular elimination of waste as well.

It’s the same thing with sleep. Sleep is probably the most underappreciated component of life and good health. We spend a third of our lives in bed! It is still rather mysterious what our brains and bodies do during this stage of our daily cycle. But it is crucial to good health. Several studies have shown a close relationship with sleep and the immune system, brain function and longevity. Some of the things that scientists have found have been the hormones that are produced by the body during specific stages of sleep. For example, growth hormones are produced during stage four, the deepest part of sleep. So, without getting into the deep sleep, your body literally cannot heal itself. Also a certain amount of sleep is required for the body produce the cortisol “surge.” The body produces this surge just before you get up, which helps “kick” you out of bed. However, if you do not get enough sleep, your body does not produce this surge. That is why when you get a good night’s sleep, you wake up in the morning refreshed and ready to face the day.

The Key to a Good Night’s Sleep

But to get good sleep, you have to make it a priority. You have to sleep at the same time each and every night. If you go to sleep and wake up at the same time each day, your brain will be prepared to produce the hormones that make you sleep and keep you asleep. If you sleep at different times every night, if you sleep in on weekends and holidays and then try to wake up at 5:00 AM on Monday, you will never have good sleep. Your body will always be confused. It does not know if you are going to sleep at 9:00 or 12:00 or 3:00 AM. Your brain won’t know when to produce the melatonin to put you to sleep. Indeed, it is good to have a set ritual before sleep to let your body know it is time to get ready. For me, the ritual includes putting the kids to bed, brushing my teeth, taking a bath, then getting to sleep by 9:00 PM every night. And I mean every night: Saturdays, Sundays, even New Years Eves are not excluded.

The final leg of good health is regular exercise. I am afraid I must admit that I have not kept up with my qi gong practice. Without Master Wong, I can’t seem to keep the focus needed to do qi gong correctly. Instead, I swim every morning. I am a member of a club that gives me access to the pool twenty-four hours a day. I have no excuse to not swim. I have found that my daily swim is actually very similar to the qi gong exercises. It, too, involves breathing in and breathing out and moving your body in rhythm to the breathing. In the water it is easier to not get distracted by the phone, or the computer, or other people. It is like an isolation booth. You cannot do anything except breathe and move. So just like it was in Beijing, I get up at 5:00 AM and swim at 6:00 AM. I swim for about forty minutes every day. I tried many times to swim just four days out of the week. But it was too easy to make excuses to not swim. Finally, I decided to just swim every day, seven days a week. This way there would be no excuses. Unless the pool is closed or I have a transmissible life-threatening disease, I will swim.

After the swim, I go to the office and see patients at 7:00 AM. I can tell you that the daily swim helps me have a great day every day. The endorphins from the swim make everything much more tolerable. I have also found the daily swim to be essential for a good night’s sleep that night. The exertion of the swim helps the body relax so you can go to sleep at night. Indeed, one of the things I most dislike is traveling. I can never get a good swim in those tiny hotel pools. As a result, I never sleep well when I travel.

How Acupuncture Plays a Part

Since this is an article about acupuncture, how does acupuncture play a role in maintaining the four pillars of health? Well, it is very helpful in supporting the different components of eating, sleeping, elimination and exercise, especially when they become disrupted as a result of stress, pain or disease. For pain control and insomnia, acupuncture can provide relief without toxicity or addiction. For digestion and elimination, acupuncture can be very helpful even when there are no Western medical treatments. Things like appetite, bloating and abdominal pain can all be controlled with acupuncture as well.

However, the only way to maintain good health and longevity is not through acupuncture, herbs, medications or surgeries. The only way to good health is to remove the obstacles that prevent you from eating, sleeping, eliminating and exercising. This means living your life according to a clock that enhances your energy and health. You have to work hard to make sure that these components of good health are the main priorities of your life. Our American lifestyle often conflicts with these components. You may have to make hard choices. Considering whether to work the night shift and get time and a half or working a shift that lets you get good sleep, weighing whether you should stay in a job that causes you terrible stress and insomnia or finding work that may not pay so well but lets you enjoy your life, eating at odd times or skipping meals altogether, staying in bed rather than going to the gym—these are all hard choices. But there is no other way to good health.

While I am a Western medicine physician as well as an acupuncture provider, I recognize that Western medicine often offers really bad solutions to these problems. The medications that we give, while they provide powerful temporary relief will often have long-term side effects that eventually become more of a problem than the original issue. For example, if your life is causing you anxiety, it is easy to become dependent on a pill rather than identifying and changing those things that have made life so intolerable in the first place.

After my experiences, I can report firsthand that acupuncture can be useful in helping people find their way back to good health after a stressful event. For me, acupuncture was very useful in helping me relax and reduce my stress level . The endorphins that are produced after a treatment helped reduce my stress and ultimately helped me sleep . With better sleep, I was much more able to cope with the extra work. I can also report that acupuncture is useful in restoring normal digestion . I have irritable bowel syndrome. With the added stress, it was difficult to eat without developing bloating, diarrhea and abdominal pain. Acupuncture treatments were very helpful controlling these symptoms.

I am fortunate. I have a supportive family, a loving wife, wonderful children and a father who is one of the most skillful acupuncturists I have ever met. It is good to know a good acupuncturist. All of these components of life contribute to good health. Without these supports, it is impossible to stay healthy or to even stay alive.

The window on the car has been fixed. I have a better and faster laptop than the one before. Finally, with my sleeping, eating, elimination, and exercise restored, I am back to my usual level of good health and function. I hope I am wiser now.

Posted in Acupuncture, Acupuncture, Natural Remedies