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As we start to reopen South Scarborough Acupuncture we are making some changes to opening times. We will be open more days but for shorter times.

Opening hours are more flexible in some ways but also more limited than it may seem when looking at first glance. Appointments are available every weekday and by exception on Saturday. If you have to work all week and can only attend at a weekend, it is still possible to book an appointment. To do so, you will need to email or phone Sara on 07865 593972 rather than book online.

The new procedures at the clinic to reduce the Covid-19 risk, include a lot more deep cleaning between clients. This of course takes extra time, in addition to scheduling appointments so that clients don’t run into one another. Conducting consultations and treatments whilst masked up also takes its toll on both me and my client. To ensure that I manage my own Qi and can continue to give you a quality treatment, I plan to initially limit the number of in-person appointments each day to only 2-3.

Timings for booking appointments are fully open between opening hours. Once an in-person appointment has been booked on a particular day, this will then restrict appointments to those, suitably spaced, either side of the first one.

Opening Hours

Monday: 11:00AM–7:00PM
Tuesday: 8:30AM–5:30PM
Wednesday: 8:30AM–1:30PM
Thursday: 8:30AM–5:30PM
Friday: 8:30AM–1:30PM
Saturday: By special appt only

In addition, the first appointment of each week will be reserved for those urgent care or high needs clients that I consider most vulnerable. This ensures that they visit when the clinic has been closed to others for 72 hrs. These clients will have been identified through their pre-appointment screening questionnaire.

The changes to opening times will be reviewed as I learn what clients prefer and what works for my own energy levels. As always, a balance will be sought 😊

My article today is a brief introduction to Qi. This is pronounced and sometimes written in English as “chi”. I mention Qi many times throughout my website and blogposts and realised that I haven’t specifically talked about what Qi is yet. Partly that’s because it can be difficult to define and explain, partly it’s also about context.

It is probably easiest to think of Qi as energy although this really is incomplete. It is also sometimes thought of as life force. This is like the “force” in Star Wars and indeed there are many similarities between the two.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) however, there are actually many different types of Qi. Some of the main ones it is helpful to know about include:

• Original Qi – this promotes and stimulates the organs;
• Food Qi – food is transformed through various processes within our bodies, into Qi. The quality and quantity of the food we eat therefore affects our Qi;
• Gathering Qi – this is a mixture of air and Food-Qi and assists the Lungs and Heart in their functions of respiration, circulation and the controlling of Qi;
• Defensive Qi – this protects the body against external pathogens such as Wind, Cold, Heat and Damp.

Qi is important to us due to the functions it carries out:

• transforming food and fluids;
• transporting various substances around the body;
• holding fluids and Blood in their proper places;
• raising fluids and certain body structures so that they do not sink or prolapse;
• protecting the body from exterior pathogens; and
• warming

If Qi is transformed properly and moves in the proper direction then we have health. If Qi is weak, or if it moves in the wrong direction this can lead to illness.

We can influence our Qi through the foods we eat, getting sufficient good quality sleep, avoiding stress and of course, acupuncture.

If this introduction to Qi has interested you and you’d like to know more about how to improve your Qi, then please book your free “can telehealth help me” sessiontoday.

Stay safe, stay well, stay home (if you can).

We’ve already had a brief look at emotions and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to see how we’re feeling can affect our health. Today we’ll take a peek at weather and TCM. Yes, the weather can affect our health too. Our grandparents knew a thing or two when they told us to wrap up against the elements.

Usually our bodies can withstand the weather on a day to day basis. As always though, it’s a matter of balance. If the weather is excessive or unseasonal, or if we’re a little weak and rundown to start with, then there can be consequences on our health.

Think back to a time when you’ve been caught in a downpour. It wasn’t just rain, it was torrential rain, seeping through all layers. That’s excessive weather. Or consider when we have a sudden cold snap after a spell of hot weather, we think of it as unseasonal. These are the times when we may be vulnerable to changing weather patterns.

In TCM we consider six main weather conditions and how they relate to the seasons:

• Wind (Spring)
• Cold (Winter)
• Summer heat (Summer)
• Dampness (late Summer)
• Dryness (Autumn)
• Fire (Summer)

Although we link them to the seasons, each condition can usually occur at any time of year (though then it may be unseasonal). Summer heat is only in the summer though and the last one, Fire, is a special case that can be independent of the seasons.

Each weather condition is also related to a TCM organ:

• Wind (Liver)
• Cold (Kidneys)
• Summer heat (Heart)
• Dampness (Spleen)
• Dryness (Lungs)
• Fire (Heart)

These links show TCM practitioners how weather conditions can affect someone’s health and what symptoms they may show as a result. For example, many people that suffer with joint pain, will find that it gets worse when the weather is cold and damp. Cold and damp interior conditions are being made worse by the cold and damp that are outside. We can then work on dispersing damp and expelling cold internally, through point prescriptions, dietary changes or both.

If you’d like to know how to improve your resilience to the changes in weather, then please book your free “can telehealth help me” session today.

Stay safe, stay well, stay home (if you can).

Today we’re going to look at the food energetics of beetroot. I gave a little introduction to food energetics back in this post and we’ve already looked at the use of ginger and spearmint, specifically.

As we’ve already seen, different foods can be either heating (ginger) or cooling (spearmint). Beetroot is a little different however, as it is neutral in respect of temperature. This means that whether you tend to be more yin (cooler) or yang (warmer), beetroot won’t make that temperature condition any better or worse. On the other hand, it can help in many other ways.

In TCM terms, beetroot nourishes (strengthens) our blood and benefits the Heart and the Liver. It encourages qi and blood circulation and lubricates the Intestines. All of which combines to indicate that the food energetics of beetroot are helpful in:

• reducing irritability
• reducing constipation
• improving circulation

Cooking with beetroot

In cooking, many people will consider adding pickled beetroot to a salad, roasting it for a hot meal or blending it for a soup. It can however also be used in the same way as carrot, for adding moisture to a cake. In this case, it is most often combined with chocolate. There is a recipe for beetroot and chocolate cake here.

Beetroots are low fat, have antioxidant properties and are a great source of fibre. They are also packed with vitamins and minerals including folate (vitamin B9), manganese, potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Although beetroots come in different colours the most common one found in the supermarket, will be the dark purple kind. This pigment is the result of betacyanin, which is thought to have anticarcinogenic properties.

If you’d like to know how to improve your health through the foods you incorporate into your diet, then please book your free “can telehealth help me” session today.

Stay safe, stay well, stay home (if you can).

Emotional strain can most definitely affect our health, not just mental health but physical health too. Today I’m going to take a short look at the emotions and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). I’ll discuss what the effects of emotions can be on the body.

First of all, all our emotions have their natural place. It’s fine to feel an emotion, any emotion. It can become a problem to our health however, if it becomes long lasting, or if we feel it very deeply, or both. In these cases, the emotions can cause a pattern of disharmony and imbalance. Over time, if not addressed, they can make us ill.

All emotions affect the Heart. Different emotions also affect different TCM organs (these are not quite the same thing as the Western medicine view of these organs but I’ll discuss this in another article). They also affect our Qi in different ways.

Anger (whether expressed or bottled up), resentment, or frustration makes Qi rise and it affects the Liver. This often results in symptoms that occur in the head and neck, for example headaches, migraines, dizziness or tinnitus.

Joy slows down Qi and affects the Heart. Most of us think of joy as being a positive emotion and most of the time it is, when it comes and moves on. If it is long lasting, or felt too deeply though, then this excess of excitement and craving can lead to overstimulation and addiction. If you think how children can be when over-excited, this gives a better idea of Joy in TCM. This can result in symptoms such as palpitations, insomnia and restlessness.

Overthinking and worry, knots Qi and affects the Spleen. This can result in symptoms affecting the digestion, such as poor appetite, bloating, stomach pains and tiredness.

Sadness, grief and regret all deplete Qi and affect the Lungs. This can result in symptoms felt most in the chest area, such as breathlessness, discomfort in the chest and tiredness.

Chronic fear, anxiety or a sudden fright, makes Qi descend and affects the Kidney. This can result in bed-wetting, incontinence and diarrhoea.

Some of the emotions affect first one organ but then can go on to affect others, so the route is not always simple. It’s also possible for a symptom to link back to more than one organ/emotion. For example, depression could be due to repressed anger or resentment, or it could be due to grief.

If you’d like to understand how your emotions could be affecting your health and learn some strategies to prevent becoming a slave to them, then please join me for a telehealth session. 

Stay safe, stay well, stay home.

Today I want to share a short introduction to mindfulness. I wonder how many of you have, or are about to switch away from this post 😊 For those people that are goal oriented and like to live at a fast pace, getting things done, the idea of mindfulness can be quite alarming. They often can’t see the point – the time could be better spent ticking another item from their to-do list. Mindfulness though, can be a fantastic tool for improving our mental health. For most of us at the moment, that’s a little more fragile than it was two months ago.

What is mindfulness?

It’s simply being more aware of the present moment. Awareness of how you feel, of the environment around you and where your thoughts are leading you. It’s about noticing “being” rather than always doing. Do you find yourself thinking mostly about the future? Possibly the very near future. What needs doing this afternoon? What to have for tea? When you’ll fit in some priority task? Do you find yourself “overthinking”, analysing a problem or situation over and over? Or perhaps you spend a lot of time remembering past events. Imagining how you could have acted/reacted differently and how the outcome could have been different. All of these ways of thinking are a great drain on our energy. Left unchecked, they can lead to both physical fatigue and also damage our mental wellbeing.

Practicing mindfulness (and it does take practice) helps us to avoid being overwhelmed by our thoughts and feelings. It can actually give you greater control, by letting go of thoughts that don’t help you.

Mindfulness can also help us reconnect with our bodies so that we notice and understand the messages it is sending us. We can then notice when we are thirsty and take a drink, instead of being so busy doing, that we mistake the signal and eat rather than drink.

Now that you’ve had an introduction to mindfulness, you may want to know how you can integrate it into your own health plan. If, as I said at the beginning, you’re a goal oriented person, you probably know that mindfulness is going to be a challenge for you. In either case, I can help get you started and then keep you on track through a series of telehealth sessions.

Stay safe, stay well, stay home.

I gave a little introduction to food energetics back in this post. Then this was followed up with a look at the properties of ginger. Today we’re going to look at the food energetics of spearmint.

As we’ve already seen, different foods can be either heating or cooling. As with heat, there are also degrees of cold and we say that some foods are cool and others cold. Spearmint is considered to be cooling to cold. You may be able to find it in the fresh herbs section of the supermarket. If not spearmint, then you’re likely to find peppermint. Peppermint is also cooling but has a slightly stronger, sharper effect than spearmint. In taste terms, spearmint is a little sweeter and peppermint has a little more menthol-like astringency.

In TCM terms, spearmint encourages qi circulation and clears heat but it does it in a more gentle way than peppermint, which is why I’m recommending it. It works especially through the Lung and Liver meridians and drains external Wind. All of which combines to indicate that spearmint is helpful in:

• clearing the head and eyes
• reducing tension
• soothing indigestion and nausea

In cooking, spearmint can be added to sweet or savoury dishes. It can be ground into a sauce, muddled into cold drinks or even added as a garnish. There is a simple recipe for mint tea here.

Spearmint is generally safe to use and is usually considered safer, relative to peppermint, though most people are fine with either. Mint (all forms) can however increase the absorption rate of drugs such as salicylic acid and paracetamol. If you are taking either/both of these medications, then you need to be extremely cautious in your use of mint.

If you’d like to understand whether the food energetics of spearmint could improve your health or if you may do better with something more warming, then please book your free “can telehealth help me” session today.

Stay safe, stay well, stay home.

No explanation of acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) would be complete without an introduction to yin and yang. This Daoist concept is at the root of all our theory. The taijitu, the yin yang symbol, shows how the two halves together make a whole, how each flows into the other and how each contains a seed of the other.

Yin and yang are opposites that balance one another but truly they only exist relative to one another. One thing is more yin than another or more yang than another. Yin is usually associated with items that are dark, still and cold. Yang is usually associated with items that are bright, warm and in motion. Here are some common pairings and how they divide into yin and yang.

Yin	Yang
Dark	Light
Rest	Activity
Female	Male
Below	Above
Cold	Hot
Night	Day
Winter	Summer

In TCM diagnosis we look to see whether a person has “normal” levels of yin and yang. A normal amount of yang but not enough yin is known as a yin deficiency. Someone else may have a normal amount of yin but not enough yang and have a yang deficiency. On the other hand they may have too much yin or yang – an excess.

If someone often feels cold then we need to determine is this due to yang deficiency or yin excess. The treatment varies depending on whether we need to tonify (build up) yang or disperse (reduce) yin.

More than that, this yin and yang effect can vary from one TCM organ to another, one body part to another etc. At the heart of all acupuncture is bringing about a better balance of the yin and yang to address patterns of disharmony. As acupuncturists we can do this by inserting needles into meridian points to tonify or reduce energy. Another way to balance the yin and yang however, is through diet. Food energetics can be used to add and subtract yin and yang.

Now that you’ve had an introduction to yin and yang, you may want to know how you can be brought back into better balance. If so, then please book your free “can telehealth help me” session today.

Stay safe, stay well, stay home.

South Scarborough Acupuncture now has telehealth appointments available! Initially we just have our  free 15 min “can telehealth help me” session for new clients. Full length appointments will also be added very soon. Existing clients (current or previous) can book a full length follow up appointment by contacting Sara direct (email or text 07865 593972 to book).

The free telehealth session is an excellent way to try out the IT and check that it works for you. You will need access to a computer/tablet or smartphone and a reasonable internet connection.

Take a look at this article here if you’d like to know more about the type of diagnosis and treatment you can expect from a telehealth appointment.

How long is a telehealth appointment?

Our free “can telehealth help me” session is 15min.

If you decide to go ahead a book a full telehealth session, then your initial appointment is 60min. In advance of the appointment you will receive an extensive questionnaire to complete. The more information you can give in your answers, the more accurately I will be able to diagnose and assess your condition. We will then be able to concentrate more fully on treatment during the actual consultation. For example, discussing diet advice, demonstrating exercises or the application of ears seeds and/or acupressure freckles etc. If the questionnaire is incomplete, then part of our consultation will be to go back to questions that remained unanswered or provided insufficient detail.

Follow up appointments are 40min. They are a little shorter than the initial appointment, as more background information has been collected by this point.

In addition to the scheduled time for our virtual consultation, there will also be “homework” for both of us. I will continue to update my diagnosis as we progress and to research and identify treatment options appropriate for you. You will have self-care activities to complete. These may include dietary changes, breathing exercises, acupressure massage, all tailored for you specifically.

How much does a telehealth appointment cost?

Our “can telehealth help me” session is free! However, please note that if you book a free session and fail to attend online at the appointed time, you will be charged for any future session.

Our initial telehealth consultation will usually cost £50. While the Stay At Home policy remains in place, this will be discounted to £40.

Follow up telehealth consultations will usually cost £40. While the Stay At Home policy remains in place, they will be discounted to £30.

Book your free “can telehealth help me” session today to find out more about how we can help you back to better health.

Stay safe, stay well, stay home.

I gave a little introduction to food energetics back in this post. Today we’re going to look more specifically at the food energetics of ginger.

As we’ve already seen, different foods can be either heating or cooling. There are also degrees of heat and we say that some foods are warm and others hot. Ginger root, used fresh, is considered to be warming, possibly tending towards hot. You will usually find this sort of ginger in the fresh fruit and vegetable aisles in the supermarket. Dried ginger on the other hand, is a powder and is definitely considered to be hot. You will usually find dried ginger to go in your spice rack, on the condiments and spices aisle.

In TCM terms, ginger helps to release the exterior and disperse cold. It promotes qi circulation and it has strong effects on the Lung, Spleen and Stomach. All of which combines to indicate that ginger is helpful for treating:

• common cold symptoms
• cough
• nausea
• digestive problems

In cooking, ginger root is often associated with asian cuisine and indeed it’s great added to stir fry. There are plenty of other ways to add ginger to your food though, from soups to marinades to baked goods. There is even a simple recipe for ginger tea here.

Ginger is generally fairly safe to use. If you already know from your acupuncturist that you have full heat or yin deficiency then ginger may be too warming for you if you use it too regularly. Similarly if you have a peptic ulcer or are taking anticoagulant drugs, then you should take extra care and only use infrequently.

If you’d like to understand whether the food energetics of ginger could improve your health or if you may do better to avoid it, then please get in touch (email me or text me on 07865 593972) to book a telehealth appointment.

Stay safe, stay well, stay home.