Acupuncture and East Asian Medicine for Insomnia During Pregnancy

Strategies for Sleep Success

As you move through the weeks of pregnancy, you are likely to find yourself suffering from insomnia. While it’s true that soon you will be waking up with your baby throughout the night, it’s nice to get sleep while you still can. Difficulty sleeping can be addressed with acupuncture and herbal medicine but there are also some simple things you can do for yourself to help address this issue.  Remember, if you are going to take herbs during pregnancy, make sure to consult with a knowledgeable practitioner first.

Proper sleep posture can do a lot to alleviate sleeplessness and body pain. As your pregnancy progresses, sleeping on your back can cause your growing uterus to compress your blood vessels, interfering with blood flow and leaving you with a feeling of breathlessness or vague discomfort. Since sleeping on your belly is out for obvious reasons, getting comfortable on your side is important. You can use a couple of regular pillows or one long body pillow for support. Place one of the pillows between your knees and hug the other pillow. You can also sleep with your bottom leg straightened out and place the first pillow under the bent knee of your top leg. Switch sides throughout the night to avoid compressing your bottom hip. You might also find it helpful to wedge a folded towel under your growing belly as you get further along.

Make sure to keep yourself well-fed. Eat healthy foods at regular intervals. Have a snack close to bedtime or when you find yourself awake late at night. Something light, like cereal, can often help you fall back to sleep. Remember that your calorie requirements are higher in pregnancy and that you may be happier eating multiple small meals through the day. It’s not unusual for your body to wake you at night up for a snack. It could even help allay morning sickness–one of the tricks to fighting nausea in pregnancy is to keep your stomach from ever being completely empty.

Go to bed at the same time every night. Give yourself some time to unwind. Turn off all electronic equipment, especially the TV and computer, about a half hour to an hour before bedtime. Try meditation, yoga, tai chi or qi gong to practice relaxation. Make sure to get plenty of exercise. The optimal time for these activities varies per person, so try doing them at different times of the day if you’re experiencing sleep difficulties.

Remember that you’re not the only pregnant woman out there who can’t sleep. Combined with the fatigue of early and late (and for some of us middle too!) pregnancy, this can affect other areas of your life. If you find yourself struggling to cope, or if you’d like to treat yourself to some rejuvenating relaxation, go see your acupuncturist.

Acupuncture for Depression During Pregnancy & Postpartum

How to Beat the Baby Blues

Depression during pregnancy and in the postpartum period occurs quite frequently. During pregnancy, a woman’s hormones are in a very different state of balance, with about 100 times the estrogen and 10 times the progesterone of a non-pregnant woman. These are the hormones that cause premenstrual mood swings and bring to mind the image of the hysterical pregnant woman that resounds through our culture–now she’s laughing, now crying, now raging mad; look out! The changes take some getting used to. It’s good to keep in mind that they are helping our bodies become the perfect environment for growing and raising a strong, healthy baby. Postpartum, these hormones suddenly swing back towards where they used to be, unsettling us once again. Almost every woman has at least a mild case of “baby blues” and finds herself crying easily or without reason. Having a new baby can be overwhelming and difficult to prepare for. Also, due to the collapse of the extended family structure, women find themselves without much support. Others often focus on the newborn baby to the exclusion of the mother. This shift in attention can be a bewildering and difficult transition for some. In addition, most new moms aren’t getting enough sleep and may be struggling with other issues, such as difficulty breastfeeding and relationship stress.

More and more data suggests that the less we rely on pharmaceutical solutions for issues during pregnancy, the better. Pharmaceuticals always carry the risk of side effects. Many drugs used during pregnancy have never actually been tested for their safety during pregnancy and are given out based on “expert opinion.” Why no testing? Since it’s unethical to test drugs on pregnant women, no one designs the tests. Yet pregnant women are given drugs with the hope that nothing will go wrong. Much of the time, nothing does. However, the track record does have some disturbing moments: DES and thalidomide, once commonly given to respectively prevent miscarriage and treat morning sickness, both caused horrible birth defects. Thalidomide babies suffered malformed limbs that often resembled flippers. DES babies suffered malformations of their reproductive tracts, effects which have even been shown to pass on to the grandchildren of women who took it.

There has been recent research on the use of antidepressants during pregnancy which shows that newborn babies suffer withdrawal symptoms and side effects including agitation, altered muscle tone, and breathing and suction problems. There is also evidence that these effects can occur through breastmilk transfer. The side effects are not just of concern for our babies, but for ourselves.  Depression has a varying range of severity and may require differing levels of treatment. The more we learn, the more desirable non-drug methods of treatment become in less severe cases. This may include personal therapy, support groups, yoga, exercise, massage, and acupuncture and Chinese herbs. A recent study found at least a 50% reduction in depression to be almost 20% higher when treated with acupuncture alone versus a sham treatment or massage.

Get in touch for questions or to schedule an appointment and experience the uplifting qualities of acupuncture yourself.

Treating painful periods

What East Asian Medicine Can Do for Your Cramps

Some of us truly dread our monthly cycle because it always comes with cramps. They can range anywhere from dull, mild aches to intense, raging, stabbing pain that knocks us off our feet. They can come at different times of our cycle—some women get them right before their menses, some during the first few days, all the way through, or right at the end, even when they’re not bleeding at all. Most of us have tried the usual suspects: pain pills from Ibuprofen to Demerol, birth control pills to regulate our hormones, depo provera to stop our cycles… lots of drugs have been thrown at women with cramps. Sometimes they even help, especially for milder cases. But what do you do if your pain is persistent and resists this type of treatment, or if you simply don’t want to keep putting chemicals into your body?

Luckily, there is the ages-old tradition of East Asian Medicine.  According to this tradition, there are a few main categories of patterns that might cause cramping. The first two patterns are due to blockage and fullness, while the last is a pattern of emptiness or deficiency.

• Qi stasis. If you experience cramping right at the start of your cycle, perhaps even a day or so before bleeding begins, you are likely to have a pattern of qi stasis. Qi is the force that moves energy and fluids (including blood) through your body. If your qi isn’t flowing smoothly, neither is your blood. In this pattern, you might have small, thready, tissue-like, reddish clots that come out with your menstrual flow. The cramps can be intense but generally have an achy quality.
• Blood stasis. If your cramps are sharp, intense, stabbing pains then you are more likely to have blood stasis, which means that there is some blood in your uterus that has gotten stuck. The pain is caused when your body tries to move this stuck blood out of your body but can’t. This is a common diagnosis for those of us with endometrial tissue. Blood stasis may further be due to cold stasis. In East Asian Medicine, the elements can literally enter our bodies and cause problems. Western cultures used to believe this too; just think of your grandma saying “bundle up or you might catch a chill.” Cold can enter the uterus when you’re exposed to a lot of cold things. Maybe you eat lots of raw food like salads or dairy (sadly, ice cream is a double whammy). Maybe you often go outside in the cold without adequately covering your abdomen or low back (think low-rise jeans and cropped tops). Your cramps are likely to be due to cold if you feel better curled up in a ball or with the application of heat to your low back or abdomen. You may also experience dark blood clots in a wide range of sizes, from bebes to silver dollars.
• Deficiency. If your cramps tend to come at the end of your cycle, perhaps even a day after the bleeding itself has stopped, your pattern is more likely due to a deficiency. Your body needs blood to function properly. It expends a fair amount every time you have a cycle, which then must be regenerated. Generating blood takes lots of energy and qi. When you are low on blood and qi, your body becomes reluctant to let go of your menstrual blood. As you reach the end of your menses, your uterus starts cramping as it tries to hold onto what’s left.

All of these patterns can be treated through acupuncture and other techniques to move stuck qi, tone down excesses in the body or nourish its deficiencies.  Schedule an appointment today, or contact me for a free consultation.