NESCA is currently accepting Therapy and Executive Function Coaching clients from middle school-age through adulthood with Therapist/Executive Function Coach/Parent Coach Carly Loureiro, MSW, LCSW. Carly specializes in the ASD population and also sees individuals who are highly anxious, depressed, or suffer with low self-esteem. She also offers parent coaching and family sessions when needed. For more information or to schedule appointments, please complete our Intake Form.

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ACUPUNCTURE

2

Acupuncture for the Treatment of Specific Conditions

By | NESCA Notes 2019

By: Meghan Meade, L.Ac, MAOM, MS PREP, CYT

Licensed Acupuncturist, NESCA

A Primer on Acupuncture

While the insertion of needles into the skin to provoke a healing response is a hallmark characteristic of acupuncture, the practice actually involves the potential use of a number of other tools and techniques, including cupping, magnets and other non-insertive tools, and moxibustion, the topical application of a heated herbal substance designed to improve circulation and reduce inflammation.

Chinese medicine approaches healing by seeking to restore balance in the body; in so doing, it evaluates the patient as a complex and ever-changing ecosystem, a composite of multiple interrelated and mutually interdependent systems. Though a patient may be seeking relief from anxiety, for example, acupuncture addresses the issue within the context of a wider landscape, as there are often other symptoms and imbalances accompanying a primary imbalance. To that end, treatments will, of course, take into account a patient’s reported symptoms, but they are rarely the main driver of an acupuncturist’s treatment decisions. Acupuncturists additionally rely on observation of patients’ mannerisms, the sound and qualities of their voices, how they carry themselves and perhaps most importantly – the use of palpation techniques to elicit feedback from the body that guide treatment decisions. What an acupuncturist feels in a patient’s pulse or palpates on a patient’s abdomen or acupuncture channels is immensely influential to the diagnostic and treatment processes.

Implicit in this process is the notion that despite the fact that a patient may be seeking relief from a particular condition, that patient is not the same person he is today as he was yesterday, nor the same as he will be tomorrow. The treatment aims to address the nuances of a patient’s presentation within the present moment, guided by the knowledge of the patient’s health history and health objectives for the future.

Put into a biological context, we humans are continually and necessarily affected by our innate biochemistry as well as by our surroundings – both our mental-emotional and physical environments. Chinese medicine does not reduce a condition down to its primary symptoms, but rather considers all symptoms that are overtly or seemingly less-directly related. If the immune system is affected by a virus, for example, because of its cross-talk with the nervous and endocrine systems, all systems will be influenced in some way, shape or form. Though the rest of this article will discuss the ways in which acupuncture can impact specific conditions that commonly affect the pediatric population, it is predicated on this concept of mutual inter-relatedness and interdependence of the body’s systems.

Acupuncture’s Impact on Mental and Emotional Conditions

The incidence of anxiety, depression and behavior disorders has increased markedly in recent years, with data from the CDC indicating that anxiety and depression incidence among children aged 6-17 has grown from 5.4% in 2003 to 8.4% in 2011-2012. Currently, incidence rates among children aged 3-17 are 7.4% for behavior problems; 7.1% for anxiety; and 3.2% for depression. These afflictions do not occur in isolation and often accompany each other, as 73.8% of children aged 3-17 with diagnosed depression also have anxiety and 47.2% also have behavior problems.

Though we should keep in mind that enhanced awareness of these conditions among children as well as improved assessment and detection in recent years may paint a more dire picture of afflictions that have never in actuality been absent from the pediatric population, the data do represent a critical need to help children in their formative and impressionable years feel more at ease in their bodies as they navigate growth and development.

A dysregulation of the stress response is characteristic of chronic depression, anxiety and behavior disorders. The HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis is responsible in part for regulating the body’s response to stress, whether that stress be mental, emotional or physical. When stress becomes chronic, the ability of the HPA axis to allow for functional communication between the brain and body to keep a person feeling safe and calm becomes impaired, resulting in altered activity of stress hormones, such as cortisol, and neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine. Cortisol is of particular interest in this context, as it not only plays a significant role in the stress response but also modulates immune system activity. When cortisol is elevated due to chronic stress, the body ultimately becomes resistant to it, and the immune system is not kept in check, resulting in a proliferation of inflammation. Acupuncture has demonstrated the capacity to modulate HPA axis function to alleviate stress-related symptoms by restoring the body’s responsiveness to cortisol so that its roles in nervous and immune system function can be maintained appropriately. Dysregulated HPA axis function has been implicated in a number of allergic conditions, such as asthma and dermatitis; somatic conditions, such as Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; psychiatric conditions such as PTSD and depression; and numerous immune and autoimmune diseases, underscoring the importance of maintaining proper function of the HPA axis.

Another component of the body’s response to stress involves the autonomic nervous system, comprised of two branches – the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. Where the sympathetic branch of the nervous system is responsible for the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response that alerts us to and helps us remove ourselves from danger, the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system represents the ‘rest and digest’ state, which we’re biologically designed to occupy the majority of the time. Dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system is thought to underlie a number of prevalent mental, developmental and behavioral disorders, such as depression and anxiety, ADHD, and autism. Acupuncture has been shown to activate and modulate the function of brain regions involved with the autonomic nervous system through a number of mechanisms, including increasing concentrations of endogenous opioids, regulating the function of amino acids, such as GABA and glutamate, and enhancing the activity of neurotrophins, such as nerve growth factor (NGF) and brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).

While depression and anxiety are highly heterogeneous in their presentations, and are driven by numerous mechanisms in the central and peripheral nervous systems, increases in inflammation are thought to play a correlational – if not at least partly causative – role in their development. Depression and anxiety have been associated with elevated levels of inflammatory markers, such as C-reactive protein (CRP), Interleukin 6 (IL-6) and Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), all of which have been shown to be reduced through acupuncture.

Acupuncture and ADHD

ADHD, as defined by the DSM-IV, has a prevalence of 5.9% – 7.1% among children. Characterized by inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity, ADHD is commonly treated pharmacologically with stimulant medications, such as methylphenidate. While little is known about the long term effects of stimulant medication in this population, and short-to intermediate-term effects include anxiety, depression, weight loss and insomnia, 12% – 64% of parents of children with ADHD have sought out complementary and alternative (CAM) therapies, including acupuncture. In a study of children aged 7-18 diagnosed with ADHD, twice weekly acupuncture treatments for six weeks demonstrated improved attention and memory function among children not taking medication. Another study explored the potential for acupuncture to improve school performance among children aged 7-16; following a series of 10 acupuncture sessions over the course of eight weeks, study subjects showed significant improvements across all three school subjects: math, social studies and Turkish language. Aside from the capacity of acupuncture to improve the stress response through modulation of the HPA axis and autonomic nervous system, acupuncture’s effects on attention and memory and on learning and perception are thought to be mediated in part by its regulation of the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin, respectively.

Acupuncture and Autism

With prevalence reports ranging from as low as 1 in 500 to as high as 1 in 50, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects social communication and interaction, language and behavior. Standard treatment of ASD includes pharmacological therapy and behavioral/educational therapy, though reports from a wide sampling of children with ASD indicate that approximately 88% had utilized CAM therapies to address symptoms such as hyperactivity, inattention, poor sleep and digestive issues. In a study of boys with autism, a treatment regimen of five daily acupuncture sessions over the course of eight weeks demonstrated improvements in speech, self-care and cognition. Significant increases in glucose uptake were shown within the intervention group (vs. control), with improved glucose metabolism in areas of the brain involved in visual, auditory and attentional functioning being thought to underlie the improvements seen in language, attention and cognition. An analysis of 13 studies on acupuncture for autism indicated that the most effective treatment regimen entailed 12 sessions within four weeks, each using a minimum of four acupuncture points, and went on to associate individual acupuncture points with specific effects, from improved language comprehension to enhanced self-care abilities. A meta-analysis of 27 randomized controlled trials found that acupuncture in combination with behavioral and educational interventions (BEI) was more effective than BEI in improving symptoms as determined by a number of evaluation scales (CARS, ABC1, ATEC), suggesting the potential for acupuncture to yield an additive positive effect when utilized with standard of care therapy.

Ultimately, though research supports the use of acupuncture for specific conditions among children and adolescents, it is important to remember that the approach of an acupuncturist is generally not solely protocol-driven as it would be in a research setting. While research findings can and certainly do inform treatment decisions, acupuncturists also rely to a great extent on what is observed and felt during the treatment – they listen to patients’ reported symptoms and experiences, observe how patients speak and carry themselves, palpate acupuncture channels and reflex areas, and feel the pulse to determine imbalances in the body. In this way, Western and Eastern science and medicine are invited to work together to treat imbalances in an informed, patient-centric, holistic way.

References

Almaali, H. M. M. A., Gelewkhan, A., & Mahdi, Z. A. A. (2017, November 11). Analysis of Evidence-Based Autism Symptoms Enhancement by Acupuncture. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2005290117301395.

Data and Statistics on Children’s Mental Health. (2019, April 19). Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/data.html.

Duivis, H. E., Vogelzangs, N., Kupper, N., Jonge, P. de, & Penninx, B. W. J. H. (2013, February 8). Differential association of somatic and cognitive symptoms of depression and anxiety with inflammation: Findings from the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA). Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453013000073.

Hong, S.-S., & Cho, S.-H. (2015, November 22). Treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder with acupuncture: A randomized controlled trial. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876382015300585.

Lee, B., Kim, S.-N., Park, H.-J., & Lee, H. (2014, April 1). Research advances in treatment of neurological and psychological diseases by acupuncture at the Acupuncture Meridian Science Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213422014000237.

Lee, B., Lee, J., Cheon, J.-H., Sung, H.-K., Cho, S.-H., & Chang, G. T. (2018, January 11). The Efficacy and Safety of Acupuncture for the Treatment of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29552077.

Li, Q.-Q., Shi, G.-X., Xu, Q., Wang, J., Liu, C.-Z., & Wang, L.-P. (2013). Acupuncture effect and central autonomic regulation. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3677642/.

Musser, E. D., Backs, R. W., Schmitt, C. F., Ablow, J. C., Measelle, J. R., & Nigg, J. T. (2011, August). Emotion regulation via the autonomic nervous system in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3112468/.

Wong, V. C.-N., Sun, J.-G., & Yeung, D. W.-C. (2014, December 19). Randomized control trial of using tongue acupuncture in autism spectrum disorder. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095754814000064.

 

About the Author

Meghan Meade is a licensed acupuncturist practicing part-time at NESCA.

Having suffered from anxiety, digestive issues, hormonal imbalances and exercise-induced repetitive stress injuries throughout her adolescence and twenties, Meghan first sought out acupuncture as a last ditch effort to salvage some semblance of health and sanity during a particularly stressful period in her life. It worked. Remarkably well. So palpable was the influence of acupuncture on her well being that she was compelled to leave a career in advertising to study Chinese medicine so that she could help others benefit from its effects.

Meghan earned her masters degree in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine from the New England School of Acupuncture at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS) and a masters degree in Pain Research, Education and Policy from Tufts University Medical School. She is licensed by the Massachusetts Board of Medicine and is a Diplomate of Oriental Medicine, certified by the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM).

In her clinical practice, Meghan integrates both Eastern and Western perspectives to provide treatments unique to each patient’s needs and endeavors to empower patients to move forward on their paths to not just feeling good, but feeling like their true selves. In addition to her work as a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist, Meghan serves as adjunct faculty at MCPHS and is a certified yoga teacher.

 

To learn even more about Meghan and acupuncture, visit her alternate web site or read her blog: https://meghanmeadeacu.com/. Meghan is practicing at NESCA during the following hours. Appointments at NESCA can be booked by reaching out to me directly at meghan@meghanmeadeacu.com.

Monday: 10am – 6pm

Thursday: 9am – 7pm

 

Neuropsychology & Education Services for Children & Adolescents (NESCA) is a pediatric neuropsychology practice and integrative treatment center with offices in Newton and Plainville, Massachusetts, and Londonderry, New Hampshire, serving clients from preschool through young adulthood and their families. For more information, please email info@nesca-newton.com or call 617-658-9800.

1

Introduction to Acupuncture with Licensed Acupuncturist Meghan Meade

By | NESCA Notes 2019

 

By: Meghan Meade, L.Ac, MAOM, MS PREP, CYT

Licensed Acupuncturist, NESCA

Acupuncture is one of eight branches of Chinese Medicine that dates back over 3,000 years and involves the insertion of hair-thin needles into the body to provoke a healing response.

The body registers needling as a microinjury to which it responds by summoning the immune, nervous and endocrine systems to increase circulation, produce endorphins and other pain-relieving substances and flips the switch on the stress response.1,2,3 The treatment itself effectively assesses the internal imbalance and sends a signal to the body to address it; for this reason, acupuncture’s effects are often described as regulating – reducing elevations in inflammatory markers, enhancing the production and function of essential neurotransmitters, and so on. 1,2,3

Because acupuncture is so regulating to the body’s internal environment, the effects experienced by the patient can be both targeted and systemic2 – while pain relief could be achieved for a specific injury such as a sprained ankle, a patient might also noticed improved sleep or reduced anxiety, for example.

As a practitioner of Japanese style acupuncture, a style that is particularly reliant on using the body’s feedback to guide treatment decisions (though not to the exclusion of a patient’s verbal feedback about their health concerns and experiences), I incorporate pulse diagnosis and palpation into my overall diagnosis and treatments. Because an individual is considered to be the ever-changing reflection of their environment and experiences – physical, mental and emotional – my treatments for a given patient and a given condition will never look the same; each day the body is slightly different than the day prior, and treatments are designed with this principle in mind.

Another important theme within Chinese Medicine is that of duality; acupuncturists consider mutually opposing and complementary elements, such as heat and cold, internal and external, male and female, and yin and yang to be crucial in both assessment and treatment. Whereas yang represents heat, energy, masculinity, day time and light, yin, by contrast, represents coolness, substance, femininity, night time and darkness. When we are born, we are at our peak state of yang, which progressively gives way to yin throughout the lifetime. Because children are by nature more yang, their energy is ample and at the surface; accordingly, treating children and adolescents with acupuncture requires less stimulation to yield a desired response. Often needling is not involved, and non-insertive tools and techniques are preferred for their gentle, effective and often expedient results. Pediatric treatments may involve the use of magnets placed on acupuncture points, as well as brushing and tapping techniques using stainless steel, copper and/or silver tools. Because acupuncture points exist along 14 channels that run up and down the body, an acupuncturist can effect change both in a given channel/organ system and systemically by stimulating a channel through brushing and tapping techniques. While the above statement is true that inserting needles into the skin triggers an extensive sequence of immune, nervous and endocrine system events, so, too, does the more superficial work that acupuncturists perform for their pediatric patients.

The goal of acupuncture is always to harmonize, reducing what is in excess and restoring what is deficient. On a biomedical level, this typically entails a shift in the autonomic nervous system from a sympathetic dominant state – fight or flight mode – to a parasympathetic state – the calmer and more productive – though elusive – ‘rest and digest’ mode.2,3 Similarly, acupuncture regulates the function of hormones, neurotransmitters and immune mediators to achieve this balance. While many feel a positive response from a single treatment, acupuncture is generally not a ‘one and done’ therapy; instead, the response to acupuncture becomes stronger and more lasting over the course of several treatments, as a cumulative signal is often required for the body to carry out the work of regulating imbalances. Often after an initial series of treatments, a patient can enter a maintenance mode of treatment, spacing treatments out in increasingly longer windows and eventually receiving treatment on a maintenance or as-needed basis.

I hope this introductory conversation provides some insight as to how acupuncture works. I will be back with a follow-up post to shed some light on the effect of acupuncture on specific conditions commonly seen among NESCA’s client base.

  1. Cheng, Kwokming James. “Neurobiological Mechanisms of Acupuncture for Some Common Illnesses: A Clinician’s Perspective.” Journal of Acupuncture and Meridian Studies 7.3 (2014): 105-14. Web.
  2. Carlsson, C. “Acupuncture Mechanisms for Clinically Relevant Long-term Effects – Reconsideration and a Hypothesis.” Acupuncture in Medicine 20.2-3 (2002): 82-99. Web.
  3. Cheng, K. J. “Neuroanatomical Characteristics of Acupuncture Points: Relationship between Their Anatomical Locations and Traditional Clinical Indications.” Acupuncture in Medicine 29.4 (2011): 289-94. Web.

 

About the Author: 

Meghan Meade is a licensed acupuncturist practicing part-time at NESCA.

Having suffered from anxiety, digestive issues, hormonal imbalances and exercise-induced repetitive stress injuries throughout her adolescence and twenties, Meghan first sought out acupuncture as a last ditch effort to salvage some semblance of health and sanity during a particularly stressful period in her life. It worked. Remarkably well. So palpable was the influence of acupuncture on her well being that she was compelled to leave a career in advertising to study Chinese medicine so that she could help others benefit from its effects.

Meghan earned her masters degree in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine from the New England School of Acupuncture at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS) and a masters degree in Pain Research, Education and Policy from Tufts University Medical School. She is licensed by the Massachusetts Board of Medicine and is a Diplomate of Oriental Medicine, certified by the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM).

In her clinical practice, Meghan integrates both Eastern and Western perspectives to provide treatments unique to each patient’s needs and endeavors to empower patients to move forward on their paths to not just feeling good, but feeling like their true selves. In addition to her work as a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist, Meghan serves as adjunct faculty at MCPHS and is a certified yoga teacher.

 

To learn even more about Meghan and acupuncture, visit her alternate web site or read her blog: https://meghanmeadeacu.com/. Meghan is practicing at NESCA during the following hours. Appointments at NESCA can be booked by reaching out to me directly at meghan@meghanmeadeacu.com.

Monday: 10am – 6pm

Thursday: 9am – 7pm

 

Neuropsychology & Education Services for Children & Adolescents (NESCA) is a pediatric neuropsychology practice and integrative treatment center with offices in Newton and Plainville, Massachusetts, and Londonderry, New Hampshire, serving clients from preschool through young adulthood and their families. For more information, please email info@nesca-newton.com or call 617-658-9800.

1

Understanding Chinese Medicine on a Deeper Level

By | NESCA Notes 2019

Breaking down a common pathology and get it in balance this spring

By Holly Pelletier, L.Ac.
Licensed Acupuncturist

If you are alive today, chances are you have some form of one of the most common Chinese medical diagnoses, Liver Qi stagnation. Let me break down this complex, and presumably new, terminology.

Liver (LV)—In Chinese medicine, all of the meridian systems are named after organs in the body. When we talk about Liver, Spleen or the Heart, for example, and you see it with a capital letter, the scope of the word’s meaning is much larger. When you see Liver in this post, know that it means the energetics of the organ as well as the organ itself. This includes the meridian system, the emotional connection and the actual physical lines in the body the meridian comprises—in this case, the inner leg line or your adductor muscles.

Qi—Qi = Energy (roughly). Everything is Qi, just like everything is energy—physics taught us this, and, well, there is no arguing with physics!

Stagnation—This one is simple. Stagnation simply means the stuck-ness of something/that something is not moving.

Pathology—A pathology is an imbalance in your system. Altogether, Liver Qi stagnation pathology is an imbalance caused by something not moving along your Liver meridian.

Now that you know the breakdown of the pathology, how do you know if you have Liver Qi stagnation? Let’s look at some common signs that might signal you have some (or a lot) of this imbalance.

Possible symptoms

Irritability, depression, displaced anger, tight muscles, pain anywhere in the body, restlessness, PMS, headaches, irregular and/or painful periods, constipation, inappropriate anger, frustration, abdominal pain/discomfort, mood swings, sighing, sensation of a lump in the throat, excessive sleep or hiccups. 99% of individuals have at least one of these common imbalances on a regular basis.

What causes LV Qi stagnation?

Stress and lack of movement are two BIG players, and the Liver organ system is actually most susceptible to imbalance in the Springtime. During spring, the above-mentioned symptoms can flare more easily. To take care of this organ system, now is the time to pay more attention to it, before we are fully into the spring season.

Why is it important to pay attention to this?

Understanding how your body works and how the seasons affect us is the first step in your own personal health journey. This is one of the foundational principles of Chinese medicine as a preventative means to wellness.

When the Liver is in balance, it is a strong force to be reckoned with. You’re more likely to experience a lot of forward progress, determination and healthy amounts of focus and clarity in completing a particular “job” (think of a job as dreams, hopes, desires).

Unfortunately, many people have the mindset of, “If I’m not sick, I’m healthy.” The problem with that is we are not trained to see symptoms of early illness or disease. For the most part, we do not know how to correct imbalances early on or properly deal with emotions—i.e. not pushing them down or not taking them out on those who do not deserve it. We don’t know how to tap into the energy of the body and world around us to create an environment and a lifestyle conducive to optimal health. We will have pain and brush it off, or a nagging headache and say that’s normal, when in reality these are symptoms our body is trying to tell us about an imbalance! We need to learn to listen and to tap in EARLY if we want to live a healthy, disease-free life.

What’s more is that a MAJOR cause of disease is stagnation. There is usually some form of stagnation in every illness or ailment, and the Liver is the organ system in charge of clearing, moving and breaking up stagnation.

3 Easy Tips to Balance your Liver Qi this Spring!

1. Move!

The best way to take care of your Liver and harness the energy of this organ system is to move your body. There is so much flexibility with this—whatever you like to do to get moving is A-OK. Try walking, biking, yoga or dancing! Anything goes…just get going TODAY!

If movement and exercise is totally out of your lifestyle at the moment, start with small tricks like taking the stairs or parking further away so you have a longer walk through the parking lot!

2. Let emotion out in a healthy way!

When I first did therapy, my therapist introduced me to a “rage room.” It took me about three years to actually use it, but when I did, I felt amazing! My rage room back then consisted of a punching bag that we hit with a bat, but there are so many ways to release pent up emotions so they don’t stagnate and lead to disease.

Some easy and accessible examples are:

  • Scream while alone—in the car, woods or at your house when no one else is around. Note: If you are thinking about this in terms of your child, which undoubtedly many of you are, it is good to encourage them to let out emotion. Help them find a safe space they can do it in.
  • Jump up and down, shaking out your limbs (really effective)
  • Run or jog
  • Practice Vinyasa Yoga
  • Write a “rage page” in your journal where you get all of your feelings out (Note: the secret to this is that you must throw the page away after and never look back at it again. We are letting things out, NOT trying to dwell on them more).
  • Take an exercise class, like kickboxing

3. Get acupuncture, or at least acupressure!

Schedule an acupuncture session with a licensed practitioner—stick to an acupuncturist and not someone who just does “dry needling,” which doesn’t offer the benefits of a well-rounded treatment that addresses your root pathology, whether that be Liver Qi stagnation or something else.

If that is not in the cards for you, start tuning in to your own body. Begin with self-massage—the feet and hands are good places to begin—between the webbing of the fingers and the toes, in particular, and assess for stagnation. How can you tell if there is stagnation? If there is pain, sensitivity, built-up heat or cold, or numbness/tingling.

As you start to become intuitive with your own body, remember: Pain = Stagnation = Energy not flowing = built-up accumulation = disease at some point in the future. Start to get friendly with your own energy and begin to understand your body more!

 

About the Author:

Holly Pelletier, licensed acupuncturist, has been working with children, adolescents and young adults, in many different capacities since 2004. Prior to treating youth with acupuncture, she worked as a teacher, coach and mentor. She especially enjoys working with young people and acupuncture because of their speedy response time and genuine excitement about this form of medicine.  For more information about acupuncture at NESCA and our new ‘Acupuncture & Mindfulness’ program for teens, please email Holly Pelletier at hpelletier@nesca-newton.com. For more blog posts by Holly check out her personal blog: www.holisticallyinspired.org.

 

Neuropsychology & Education Services for Children & Adolescents (NESCA) is a pediatric neuropsychology practice and integrative treatment center with offices in Newton and Plainville, Massachusetts, and Londonderry, New Hampshire, serving clients from preschool through young adulthood and their families. For more information, please email info@nesca-newton.com or call 617-658-9800.

 

To book an appointment with Holly or other Integrative Treatment providers at NESCA, please fill out the intake form and note that you would like to see Holly.

1

Acupuncture for Mental and Emotional Spectrum

By | NESCA Notes 2018

 

By: Holly Pelletier, L.Ac.
Licensed Acupuncturist

Acupuncture is a gentle approach to health care that utilizes energy meridians in the body to help facilitate and unblock areas of stagnation and congestion. There are many different ways to perform an acupuncture treatment, some don’t even require the use of needles. Because acupuncture works to restore balance in the body, it can literally work for anything. In fact, some of my favorite things to work with lie on the mental-emotional spectrum; it works wonders for anxiety, depression, stress, obsessions/compulsions, and ADHD. It can also treat everything from digestive disorders to insomnia.

Acupuncture is a great preventative medicine, so you do not need some big serious main complaint to get treated. In fact, I recommend seeking treatment before anything arises, and even after your symptoms clear! I strongly encourage patients to continue treatments as a preventative and maintenance approach to their health.

For more information or to set up a consult and/or treatment please feel free to email me at hpelletier@nesca-newton.com.

 

About the Author: 

Holly Pelletier has been working with children of varying ages, in many different capacities since 2004. Prior to treating kids with acupuncture, she worked as a teacher, coach, and mentor. She especially enjoys working with children and acupuncture because of their speedy response time and genuine excitement about this form of medicine. Acupuncture is a wonderful healing modality because children’s bodies are very adaptable, and, being so young and not yet deeply affected by the stresses of life, children generally show signs of response to acupuncture quickly.

Holly has a very gentle technique and has specific training in non-insertive acupuncture styles, which does not require needling directly into the skin. Acupuncture is great for many different concerns because it’s focus is that of bringing balance back to a body where this has been disrupted. Therefore, basically any form of imbalance can be helped with acupuncture. Common imbalances kids seek treatment for, are stress, anxiety, digestive issues, headaches, low energy/motivation, and fluctuations in mood.

Holly is licensed by the Massachusetts Board of Medicine and by the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. She graduated from the New England School of Acupuncture at MCPHS University in Newton, MA where she studied Japanese and Chinese acupuncture styles, along with Chinese herbology.

For more written by Holly, check out her personal blog, www.holisticallyinspired.org

 

 

 

 

Neuropsychology & Education Services for Children & Adolescents (NESCA) is a pediatric neuropsychology practice and integrative treatment center with offices in Newton, Massachusetts, and Londonderry, New Hampshire, serving clients from preschool through young adulthood and their families. For more information, please email info@nesca-newton.com or call 617-658-9800.

0

Acupuncture and its Role in Treating Anxiety

By | NESCA Notes 2018
By: Holly Pelletier, L.Ac.
Licensed Acupuncturist, NESCA
Whether or not you’re familiar with acupuncture, you may be wondering what role it could possibly play in the field of mental health. Most people associate acupuncture with the treatment of pain conditions, and although it has gained recent popularity and prevalence in our little corner of the world, it is often only given a portion of the credit it deserves when it comes to the scope of treatment possibilities.
Acupuncture is a branch of Chinese medicine based upon a meridian system that runs throughout the entire body. On the meridians, there are acupuncture points that can be accessed through different means such as needling, acupressure, or by using a warming herb called mugwort. The purpose of using these points is to move blockages of energy, blood, or fluids (i.e. lymph) in the body. By using different needling techniques and various point combinations you can either add to a deficient area or move an excess one.
How does acupuncture work with anxiety and other mental health concerns? To explain fully, we can look at it from two different perspectives:
The first is a more traditional “western” approach where we look at things on a biochemical level. Acupuncture points are specific areas beneath the surface of the skin that have high concentrations of nerve endings, mast cells, lymphatic vessels and capillaries. When an acupuncture needle is inserted into a point, it stimulates the sensory receptor, which in turn stimulates the nerve and transmits impulses to the brain. In this sense, it can be viewed as a “feedback loop” that directly affects your brain, your hormones, and your glands. So, the relaxed feeling you get after an acupuncture session is real, it is not just a placebo or “in your head”. The needles directly adjust imbalances in the body and allow the person to begin the healing process with a “blank slate.” This unique aspect, specific to acupuncture, is extremely powerful because it allows the body to access its own, innate power to heal itself.
The second approach is the stance of Chinese medicine, which frames anxiety as a symptom of something out of balance. If everything was functioning as it should, there would be no symptoms, we would live pain and stress free every single day of our lives. When something is “off”, tiny sensations start surfacing that at first may seem like nothing at all – a foggy head, fatigue, or tight shoulders. But as time goes by, symptoms worsen and the imbalance becomes larger, making it harder to reverse.
Zooming in even closer to examine just the anxiety is helpful as well. Anxiety comes in all forms. If you have only seen or felt it one way in yourself or your child, it may surprise you that there is a wide array of symptoms that can show up when someone experiences anxiety. Some may have digestive upset while others get headaches or a racing heart, and others may have trouble breathing or dissociate from the world around them. Often, a person is treated for anxiety and given the same medication as someone else, regardless of their symptoms. Rather than treating someone for anxiety and having one specific point protocol or herbal approach, acupuncture treats those symptoms associated with the anxiety instead. For instance, the headaches, or the palpitations that signal stress to the body. Therefore, each person is looked at individually and each case/course of treatment is completely unique.
As mentioned above, acupuncture is only a part of a much larger system of medicine. Other branches of the system include nutrition, meditation, herbs, and Qi Gong to name a few. Incorporating these other aspects allows the patient to not only feel better temporarily, but to possibly relieve the anxiety fully.
If you have any questions about acupuncture and want to see if you or your child would be a good candidate, please contact our acupuncturist, Holly at: hpelletier@nesca-newton.com
To read Holly’s Blog with simple ways to incorporate Chinese Medicine in daily life, visit: http://holisticallyinspiredblog.blogspot.com/
About the Author:
Holly Pelletier, L.Ac. is a licensed acupuncturist who practices part-time at NESCA. Holly Pelletier has been working with children of varying ages, in many different capacities since 2004. Prior to treating kids with acupuncture, she worked as a teacher, coach, and mentor. She exceptionally enjoys working with children and acupuncture because of their speedy response time and genuine excitement about this form of medicine. Holly has a very gentle technique and has specific training in non-insertive acupuncture styles, which does not require needling directly into the skin. In additions to working with children, Holly is also very passionate about working with issues involving women’s health, nutrition/herbs, neurological disease, and psychological challenges such as anxiety and depression.
For more information on our acupuncturist, Holly visit: http://www.hpelletieracu.com/
4

Is Acupuncture Right for You?

By | NESCA Notes 2017

 

By:  Holly Pelletier, La.C.
Licensed Acupuncturist

One of the most common questions I receive as an acupuncturist is “Can it help with (insert any condition or ailment here)?”   And the answer is most emphatically “Yes”.  This is because the majority of us suffer from something we wish we didn’t have to. The reason is that we have been taught only to receive medicine and health care as a means of fixing something which is already broken. We do not think about creating and maintaining a healthy body before these malfunctions begin to occur. But what if we could change our way of thinking?

As a society in general, we tend to be hyper-focused on fixing problems. When we shift our focus back a bit, we can usually see that problems come from preventable causes. It is these precipitants or causes that need to be addressed. When it comes to the human body, we all ought to be able to recognize ourselves in the following scenario:

Imagine a time where you had an injury or felt pain somewhere in the body. You may have noticed that you quickly developed a very intuitive way to relieve the pain; perhaps you shifted your bodyweight to avoid an achy foot, or used your non-dominant hand to pick up something heavy, or placed a pillow below a sore hip in the car. Whatever the situation, I’m sure you instinctively and creatively found a way to lessen your pain.

At first, these adjustments may have been just what you needed to allow some part of your body to rest and heal. Sometimes, however, circumventing pain can cause prolonged unnatural use of your body in other areas; and when you strain one part of your body in order to avoid strain on another part of your body every day for a week or a month, or in many cases even years, you will without a doubt begin to feel pain somewhere else. The body has a way it is supposed to move, and when you move in a way that is contradictory to it, you incite a domino effect.

The entire body is interconnected. Every system, every organ, and every cell that is out of balance has to pull from reserves somewhere else. Simply put, the sick robs from the healthy. This is how imbalance forms in the body, and it is the reason unpleasant symptoms begin to manifest.

Symptoms of imbalance can be subtle–they may show up in the form of dry mouth, a slightly aching head, or difficulty sleeping. Every person has a different chemical makeup, and therefore these imbalances will show up differently in everyone. It takes an in-tune and aware individual to begin noticing these changes in their body, and an even more proactive and intelligent person to decide to do something about them when the first signs arise.

At last, we come to acupuncture and its role. Acupuncture is part of a holistic medicine system that originated in China and dates back thousands of years. Its entire motivation is to restore balance anywhere in the body. That means that, in a roundabout way, acupuncture can work with any ailment, although its strength is with preventative and early-onset illness.

This is why acupuncture is a phenomenal modality for children and adolescents. Their imbalances are fresh and new, still close to their root cause, and relatively easy to reverse. It becomes more difficult as we age.

When explaining this to those who are new to acupuncture, I often get follow-up questions about whether or not acupuncture can cure things such as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and other extreme ailments. Without a doubt, there are some very debilitating diseases that are best managed with a combination of pharmacological treatments and acupuncture.

Until you begin getting treated with acupuncture and seeing how your body responds, it is nearly impossible to determine the level of imbalance in the body. What I can say with clarity and assertion is that acupuncture will most definitely help in some areas of a person’s life. When dealing with chronic illness, there is such a deep imbalance in the body that the person’s main concern may not be transformed in the way that they hope. In these individuals, although their illness may not be cured, their quality of life will almost certainly improve and many symptoms will be managed with acupuncture included in their care.

Because acupuncture works with such a variety of individuals with drastically differently manifesting symptoms, it is challenging to specifically say what changes you will see after beginning your course of treatments. Following are a list of benefits I have found to show up in almost everyone I treat, regardless of primary concern:

  • Improved and more stable mood
  • Stress reduction and the body’s ability to handle difficult situations
  • Better and more sustainable energy throughout the day
  • Deeper and more quality sleep
  • Appetite regulation – more or less depending on what the individual needs
  • Overall increased feeling of well being
  • Decrease in pain and inflammation in the body

There are many lists out that there have been approved by the FDA detailing specific ailments that “acupuncture treats” and they can be helpful, but looking at the benefits of acupuncture in that way minimizes the vast comprehensive approach that it actually has on the body.

It is a much more holistic medicine that can positively affect many individuals.

For any questions involving acupuncture, or to set up a free consult or appointment please contact Holly at hpelletier@nesca-newton.com.

 

 

About the Author:

Holly Pelletier, L.Ac. is a licensed acupuncturist who practices part-time at NESCA. Holly Pelletier has been working with children of varying ages, in many different capacities since 2004. Prior to treating kids with acupuncture, she worked as a teacher, coach, and mentor. She exceptionally enjoys working with children and acupuncture because of their speedy response time and genuine excitement about this form of medicine. Holly has a very gentle technique and has specific training in non-insertive acupuncture styles, which does not require needling directly into the skin. In additions to working with children, Holly is also very passionate about working with issues involving women’s health, nutrition/herbs, neurological disease, and psychological challenges such as anxiety and depression. For more information on our acupuncturist, Holly visit: http://www.hpelletieracu.com/

 

 

 

Neuropsychology & Education Services for Children & Adolescents (NESCA) is a pediatric neuropsychology practice and integrative treatment center with offices in Newton, Massachusetts, Plainville, Massachusetts, and Londonderry, New Hampshire, serving clients from preschool through young adulthood and their families. For more information, please email info@nesca-newton.com or call 617-658-9800.