As the New Year begins, we all set our minds to certain resolutions that we hope to change in the upcoming year. Most of us hope to lose some weight. However, some of us are not willing to give up on delicious foods in order to lose weight and prefer to spend a few hours at the gym instead. But is exercising without a healthy diet a good good enough to achieve your weight loss resolution?
At HolliBalance Well-being Center, we have people come in looking for help with their acid reflux or indigestion problems. After speaking to them in depth about their dietary habits, we’ve come to the realization that they commonly consume ice cold drinks very often. Some of them enjoy iced drinks better because they’re more refreshing whilst others admitted that it’s simply because of cultural habit; cold beverages are all around and easier to access. In order to maintain a healthy metabolism, it’s important that everything we eat is close to our body’s temperature. However, it’s common for people to want to enjoy a cold beverage or consume cold food during the summer when the weather is very hot. This is because cold beverages are seemingly refreshing. However, many of us don’t realize that drinking ice water or consuming cold foods is detrimental to our health. For hundreds of years, traditional Chinese medicine has recommended against the consumption of cold beverages. However, this isn’t a common advice given in Western medicine so many people shrug the advice off because they don’t understand the reasoning behind it. It’s harder to comply with instructions when we’re unfamiliar with the reasons and benefits.
At HolliBalance Well-being Center, we’ve had many patients with various pain conditions tell us that they often use ice on the pain area as instructed by their orthopedic doctors or physical therapists. They are instructed to do so especially after doing exercises that involve the affected area. Some of them say that they do feel that ice help the area temporarily. Some of them never tried using heat for their pain because they were never instructed to do so and they thought heat would make the inflammation worse. After their visits at HolliBalance Well-being Center, they started using heat or combining heat and herbal pain spray and they feel that heat lessens the pain a lot more than ice. Some of the patients also pointed out that after using ice, they were still feeling extensive pain at night while sleeping and that the pain diminished after they used heat. These claims are not surprising because Chinese Medicine has been advising against the use of ice on injuries for centuries.
A 62 year old woman who had acupuncture treatments at HolliBalance Well-being Center several years ago came back for treatments of plantar fassciatis (heel pain). Upon examining, she mentioned that her right shoulder joint has been bothering her for over a year and she had quite a lot of pain just combing her hair in the morning. She said she had done physical therapy and the condition improved from its worst time but the pain from doing certain movements still lingers and hadn’t improved in the past six months. She explained that she hadn’t mentioned this issue previously because she was unaware that acupuncture could help improve her pain. However, after only two treatments the pain was noticeably gone and she could comb her hair without any pain.
At HolliBalance Well-Being Center, we often have patients come in with complaints related to their digestive system. Some of them experience bloating, frequent loose stool, indigestion and heart burn. More often than not, people don’t understand why they are having so many digestive system problems because they believe that they have been following healthy dietary habits. Many of them have been vegetarians for an extended period of time and thought that they weren’t prone to digestive issues due to their eating habits.
