Traditional Chinese Medicine for Stress

Stress is everywhere, whether it's realized through parenting challenges, work situations and deadlines, or financial concerns.

It's something that every culture, in every part of the world has had to deal with for thousands of years.

Eastern medicine, specifically Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), has great modalities for dealing with stress.

Cathy Margolin is a primary health care physician, a Licensed Acupuncturist and Nationally Certified Diplomat of Oriental Medicine. She joins Lisa to share how TCM and other natural therapies can help you address your stress in healthy ways.

What are some of those tactics?

Acupuncture (or acupressure) and massage, as well as meditation and breathing techniques all have a very calming effect and are quite effective in relieving stress.

Foods and herbs can also have a great impact. Whole foods, by their very nature, are healing. They contain vitamins, minerals, phyto-chemicals and other nutrients that actually cause a chemical change in your body's hormones and the way your body responds to stress.

When you're stressed and anxious, it's easy to reach for those sugary, highly-processed "comfort" foods. But those foods can only make the impact stress has on your body worse.

In TCM, warming foods, such as ginger tea, are not only great for stress relief, but act as a digestive aid as well. Ginger is also considered an herb in TCM, and a great part of Chinese Medicine involves cooking with herbs.

Overall, it's important to have some key self-care strategies, whether that involves foods and herbs or setting aside 10 minutes for a quick meditation. Simple tactics like these can break that stress pattern, before your stress builds and builds and you ultimately reach a breaking point.

Listen in as Cathy shares more information about TCM and stress, as well as simple ways to alleviate your everyday worries.