How Acupuncture Regulates Your Hormones

Acupuncture is a powerhouse for women’s health and hormones, even when nothing else helps. But, how?

If you are unsure about or sensitive to supplements, acupuncture can stimulate your ability to heal and program your brain, body, and nervous system to function better.

Acupuncture protocols are based in diagnosis of symptoms. This 5,000 year old medicine is designed to look at all your symptoms together and decide how to treat them by supporting the body for healing. Acupuncture has a broad systemic effect that can calm down your nervous system and cause other systems to work at their best. Over time, acupuncture can greatly normalize your body. 

Acupuncture works a lot like ibuprofen when it comes to dosing. It’s important to get your treatment frequently enough to heal. For example, if you decided to take ibuprofen for inflammation and you missed a dose, you would not have as good of results with your pain relief. I will diagnose you and tell you what treatment plan will be effective for your current situation – then the results will accumulate as you receive more treatments.

Acupuncture and Perimenopause

I often tell women in perimenopause and menopause that they are either making cortisol or making hormones. Acupuncture points that are specific to hormones reduce perimenopausal symptoms and calm your body down.

Acupuncture helps to support normal hormone function because when we quiet your nervous system your body stops making so much cortisol, the stress hormone. This is why acupuncture is helpful for PTSD as well.

Imagine one provider being able to address everything you have going on! That’s why acupuncture is so powerful.

Acupuncture can soothe your hip pain, calm an anxious and irritated mind, reduce heavy bleeding, cool down hot flashes, stop painful cramps, and help you sleep. It increases blood flow and decreases inflammation, including around your ovaries where you’re undergoing large amounts of change and imbalance.

 

Your Guide to Getting Back on Track During Perimenopause

In perimenopause and menopause, women suffer with:

1.  Worsening of previously diagnosed conditions.

2. Conditions that affect mood and regulation which can lead to struggles in their relationships or work.

3. Memory issues that cause problems with life and work.

4. Significant blood loss due to frequent or heavy cycles leading to migraines, blood pressure issues, hair loss, and other conditions. 

The more positive and empowered you feel, the less symptoms you should experience. Lacking a plan to heal or understanding of your symptoms becomes another major stressor, and stress makes your symptoms worse. Once you recognize how to approach this unique time in your hormonal life as a woman, you have fewer symptoms. Acupuncture can be an important part of your approach to staying calm and feeling good again. 

Having a solid plan to take care of yourself is incredibly important during this time in your life. You are the most complex body in your household, and it needs to be treated with great care. While men make testosterone from the testicles for life and your children’s hormones come online, the entire basis of your hormonal system is changing drastically.

Women in perimenopause spend years ovulating one month, not ovulating the next month, and suffering the whole time because they are not sure what amount of energy they will have to work with or what symptoms will derail their plans.

It’s important to understand what is happening in your body and to prepare your family and work with a proactive plan that allows for extra support and rest. Your plan will need to involve processing feelings of shame during this time because this very normal change in your body will feel anything but normal.

When you’re using acupuncture to balance your hormones, you’ll need adequate rest, emotional balance, a healthy diet, enough sleep, and exercise. The modern person is juggling too much and suffers from too much stress.

Our diets have changed significantly and for the worse, partially from factors outside our control like low nutrient soil and high yield farming. Serious nutrient deficiencies underlie stubborn inflammatory and neurological diseases, and I see them in younger and younger patients. This is why it’s so important to have a tailored health plan that supports your new needs.

 

What to Expect When You Start Acupuncture

Acupuncture is such a phenomenal treatment because it helps you heal, regulate, and normalize. My patients come in with horrible issues and start to improve quickly.

In some cases, you need a little help to get you back on track. The perimenopause period is long – up to 10-15 years of subtle and increasingly problematic symptoms. Navigating the varying opinions of doctors can make this time even more frustrating. 

Acupuncture can help as much as herbs and supplements, except there is nothing you have to remember to take. You get to come in and relax, and we choose points to help your body reach your health goals. 

I often see women for an initial six visits with a weekly visit to start. Then, over the long term, I like to see them around ovulation and the start of the cycle.

Acupuncture is often a covered insurance benefit for women in the United States for pain. Back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, period pain should all be billable to your insurance company and help to offset the cost of care. 

An acupuncturist gives you so much support and treatment to help you heal. I hope that I can be your partner in health during this time in your life. If you’re struggling with hormonal problems, come visit my acupuncture clinic in Lakewood, CO to figure out what you need to get better. Schedule an appointment, and I look forward to helping you gain your quality of life back.