Big News for the New Year–I’m in Montpelier!

After five years at what is now Ariya Chiropractic, I have decided to move on to new things. Effective immediately, I will be moving to Montpelier Family Chiropractic in beautiful downtown Montpelier. I will be there on Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

Dr. Tree, Mark Atkinson, and Angelica Valencia

I am joining an amazing group of colleagues. Theresa Neiss (“Dr. Tree”) is the chiropractor at Montpelier Famiily Chiropractic. She has been my family’s chiropractor for the past five years. She has helped me, my husband, our friends and my patients stay healthy and happy, often with problems that were not improved at other chiropractic offices. She has a background in nutrition, and is well trained not only in spinal manipulation, but in adjusting every joint in the body. I didn’t know until recently that some chiropractors have little training in adjusting anything beyond the spine. Dr. Tree’s expertise with the entire body has been a great help when I come to her with a hurt ankle or wrist.

Mark Atkinson is the massage therapist here. The massage I got from him was one of the best I’ve ever had. He has special training in pregnancy massage and mobility stretches. His enthusiasm for life will infect you, too, when you see him.

Angelica Valencia is the chiropractic assistant extraordinaire. She is dedicated to natural living, homesteading, patient care and interesting information in general. I love going to the office just to learn what amazing thing she’s learned since my last visit. If you are curious, certainly about healthcare, but also about just about anything else, you will find a kindred spirit in Angelica.

Colleen and Tara round out the office support staff. Everyone at Montpelier Family Chiropractic is friendly, knowledgeable, and interested in you and your health. You will love coming here as much as I do.

The office is a star in itself. It is beautiful, and feels relaxing and open. They have put lovely plants everywhere, and the walls are a lovely green–perfect for me!

Snazzy Waiting Area

A Peek Into Mark’s Treatment Room

Angelica’s Domain

The First Door is My New Treatment Room

Stay tuned and check your email (be sure to sign up for email updates using the box in the upper right if you aren’t getting them yet) for a series of special promotions celebrating the move to the new office.

Please feel free to stop by and say hi. We’re at 17212 Mountain Road in Montpelier across the street from the Montpelier Center for Arts and Education, at the corner of Mountain Road (Hwy. 33, which is Staples Mill Road in Richmond) and Beaverdam Road.. 

Self-Care When Illness Strikes

An unintended side effect of illness: I’ve lost some weight!

This summer has been interesting chez Green. I’ve had two illnesses that landed me in the hospital, and needed a procedure that put me out of commission for about a week. It has been a month since I was declared more or less back to normal, and I’m still low on energy and don’t feel anywhere near recovered.

I’ve been shell-shocked by the whole ordeal. As a natural health practitioner who eats clean and uses herbs, acupuncture, chiropractic and other holistic healthcare nearly exclusively, the world of beeping machines and various pills, antiseptics, and scary diagnostic things that zap my insides is overwhelming. And I didn’t even need surgery.

I treat people every day who make multiple trips to a hospital or outpatient facility for procedures each year. Most of my patients take some kind of prescription medication every day, and many more see their doctor for health concerns frequently. After my brief sojourn in the land of modern medicine, I feel for them.

The doctors and nurses who have treated me have been almost universally professional, kind, and compassionate. They have also been overworked, and in a system that treats bodies like machines.

It is surprising how quickly you begin to feel like a piece of meat when people take your clothes and blood, and make your bodily fluids their business. Even knowing it is exactly what I needed to get well did not make me feel positive about the experience. Feeling my body reel from each medication and procedure disoriented me and made me distrust my natural knowledge.

I am used to using food and herbs to gently allow my body to heal. In most cases, this approach is ideal, allowing your body to makes the minute adjustments that encourage balance. In an emergency, you take care of the potentially life-threatening problem and then help your body recover from any side effects. I have had to develop some strategies to help me recover from the more extreme but necessary healthcare I’ve had over the past several months. Here are a few things that have helped me:

1. Remember every person recovers differently. I have taken far longer than I like to get my energy and verve back. My husband and friends keep reminding me that while I was very blessed in not having as severe a health issue as I could have had, I was still seriously ill. They also remind me that I have always been slightly frail, for lack of a better word, and usually take longer than average to recover from anything, even a night of poor sleep. Once I stopped fighting the time I needed to get better, I noticed I improved more quickly.
2. Take better care of yourself than usual. I already eat well and try to give myself plenty of rest and moderate exercise. But this illness has made it necessary for me to be extra careful in my food. A little too much sugar, too much starch, or a food I know I do not digest well, and I will feel bad for at least the next twenty-four hours. A night’s lost sleep means a nap the next day, no arguments. If I don’t take care of myself, my muscles hurt, I can’t focus, and I’m likely to have an emotional meltdown. So I try to eat mostly simply cooked food with an emphasis on vegetables. When I stick to this diet, I feel better than when I eat too much sugar or spice. I also give myself plenty of rest, and try–the hardest thing for me–to keep calm thoughts and stay optimistic. I am a recovering worrier.
3. Make a plan for the future. I have been diagnosed with a chronic illness that requires some maintenance. Since I’ve been used to mild symptoms and did not realize they signalled something more serious, I’ve had to educate myself. I knew the “book-knowledge” information from my schooling in healthcare, but learning what symptoms feel like in my body has taken concentrated study. I now have a plan for a)diet changes and herbal supplements as preventative changes when symptoms start, b) at what point I will go to a doctor, and c) when the best course of action is rest.
4. Accept managing illness is a process. I am still learning the exact parameters to best manage my health. I have made mistake in overdoing things, and I suspect I could have pushed myself sometimes and did not. After being lectured by my friends and family to take the advice I give to others, I took the pressure off myself to be perfect. Now I don’t worry too much about misteps. My goal is to be healthy for years to come, not to be perfect today. I think my strategy is working.

I hope these tips will help you, whether you are dealing with a cold or a serious illness. If you are not healthy, you cannot enjoy life to its fullest. Take the time to take care of yourself so you can enjoy your time on this lovely planet.

Hitting The Problem From All Angles–Using Multiple Modalites

Photo Credit: Stock.xchng

For the past four months, I have been in pain. An old back injury got aggravated, then aggravated some more. As an acupuncturist, this situation has hurt my pride. I treat back pain all the time, and one of the reasons I got into acupuncture is because of the pain relief it gave me. I’ve tried lots of different things–acupuncture, of course, but also stretching, acupressure, massage, and chiropractic. Each one seemed to help, but after a day or two the pain returned. And I was discouraged.

In the past two weeks, I decided to play “what would I do for a patient in the same situation?” The answer was easy–I would suggest a slew of treatments all at once–throw everything we had at the problem in hopes of subduing it.

So that’s what I did. This week, I’ve had two acupuncture treatments, two chiropractic adjustments, and one massage. I have also had better improvement than I have in months. I believed I couldn’t spare the time to make these treatments a reality. But now I see that the time I wasted feeling bad led to reduced productivity, reduced creativity, and certainly did not help me be an example of the benefits of natural living.

Natural remedies, while often quite effective, are also often quite gentle. They guide your body back into balance instead of dragging it, kicking and screaming, to a level of forced functioning. Building health sometimes takes many layers of effort–a little adjustment to diet, some slight changes to exercise, and maybe a few forms of treatment to address all areas that affected by a health problem. So if you’re dealing with depression, therapy or herbs or diet changes or exercise alone may not be enough to solve the problem–they may need to be used together. If allergies are your issue, you may need to avoid known allergens, build your system with health food and supplements, and deal with stress, which compromises your immune system.

Going the natural path sometimes requires more effort than filling a prescription and popping a pill. (And, of course, there are some things in our modern age that require doing that in addition to healthy life changes.) Layering therapies is a way to get more out of your natural living strategy.

I’m not completely out of the woods yet, but I am hopeful that slow and creaky is not my new normal. Sometimes when you have a problem, you have to attack it head-on and throw all your resources at it. Have you had a similar health experience? Tell me about it in the comments!