Keep Your Kids Calm, Cool & Connected This Summer

Fire Element Acupressure + Essential Oil Combo

Take matters into your own hands this blazing hot season. Summer is the Fire season and as such is full of fun, fun, fun and countless opportunities for expansive joy; however, as we all know, sometimes it can be just too much for a kid's still-developing nervous system to handle in a regulated way. From the Chinese medicine perspective, it is possible to experience more joy or excitement than you know what to do with :-). When this happens, our kids usually let us know by offloading with the following symptoms and overstimulated behaviors: hyperactivity, anxiety, meltdowns, running too hot in general, low blood sugar, and/or trouble sleeping due to an inability to calm their brain and body enough to allow for sleep to take over.

Keep your kids calm, cool, and connected this summer with these two Fire-regulating acupressure points. Remember, we don't always need to use needles (or "taps" as we call them in the office) to treat your kiddos. Acupressure is a simple yet effective tool to help support a child's nervous system. You can do these points alone or combine with the recommended essential oils to enhance the calming effect. Check out this easy treatment you can perform on your children (or yourself for that matter):

Treatment: 

• Rub one drop of Geranium or Neroli essential oil on each of the acupressure points pictured below
• Press and rub in a circular motion for 30 seconds to 1 minute
• Repeat as needed to calm the mind and cool an agitated Heart

FAQ: 

• What do I mean by "Fire regulating"? 
  • Summer is the season of the Fire element in Chinese medicine. This means that the energy of the season corresponds to the qualities of Fire, including both the delicious, exuberant aspects as well as a propensity to burn out of control. Keep your kids in the chill & happy zone with acupressure, as well as plenty of healthy food, adequate fluids, and downtime to balance the fun.
• Why Geranium and Neroli?
  • Both of these oil are calming and Heart (and thus Fire) regulating. They specifically ease stress and anxiety while enhancing the natural state of the Heart = joy. 
• What can I expect to see post treatment? 
  • Acupressure generally induces a relaxed state of being, and the functions of these points should help your child to balance the heat of excitement with the need for mental and physical rest and recuperation. Repeat a few times a day for best results.

View fullsize

Acupressure points for Fire regulation during summer:

Heart 3 - located on the inner aspect of the elbow, in the soft spot between the bony protrusion and the tendons in the middle of the elbow crease

This point calls upon the balancing nature of Water to counteract excessive Fire in the body, thus calming the spirit and cooling excess heat.

Pericardium 6 - located in the middle of the inner aspect of the forearm, about two finger-widths (your child's fingers) above the wrist crease

This point protects the Heart and calms a wide range of emotional dysregulation.

Elemental Family Focus on Immunity, Part 2: Do You Know Where 80% of Your Immune System Lives?

Welcome back to immune prep central! Part 2 of our series is about the relationship between your immune system and your digestive system.

The phrase “immune system” might conjure up an assortment of connotations from your high school biology days: bacteria and viruses, innate and acquired, antibody and antigen, and so on.  The science-y talk ends here, but the point is there is an even more salient fact about your immune system that most of us haven’t been taught. One of the most important predictors of your immune function is already within you and can have either a hugely beneficial or a dramatically negative influence on your ability to fight off illness.

Okay people, drumroll please: 70-90% of your immune system actually resides in your GUT. Your gut is host to your body’s largest population of immune cells, and the proper functioning of those cells relies on a remarkable, and largely uncharted, community of trillions of bacterial cells, known collectively as the microbiome. Those coils upon coils of small intestine house all of the intestinal bacteria that play an essential role in doing the digesting that we are oh so familiar with, but it turns out that the small intestine is the site of the majority of your immune response as well.

Your microbiome is a vast, diverse, and unique assortment of a multitude of strains of bacteria and other organisms, that essentially make you, you! Turns out, you are so much more than just what you eat. The microbiome consists of a mix of both helpful and opportunistic bacteria. The microbiome is truly a new frontier within us that is only beginning to be explored, categorized, and understood, with incredible and exciting ramifications for health conditions in a wide range of categories, from auto-immune conditions to ADHD to depression.

Probiotics are all the rage in the health-o-sphere these days, and for good reason. Probiotics comprise the good guys in your microbiome. Although the majority of them live in your digestive tract, probiotics exert a significant influence well beyond your belly. Probiotics are the key players in overall wellness and maintaining a balanced, healthy system. They rule the roost in three essential realms of your wellbeing: digestion, immunity, and brain function.

To go a little more in depth, here are just a few reasons why probiotics are such an integral part of your immune system:

• If you think of your gut microbiome as a garden, then the probiotics are the flowers and the opportunistic bacteria are the weeds. The more flowers there are, the less room there is for weeds to grow. The flowers protect your gut by crowding out the weeds and preventing them from sticking to the gut lining.

• As explained earlier in the post, your gut is host to your body’s largest population of immune cells. Probiotics serve to amplify and enhance the immune activity at these sites.

• Probiotics act as an immune barrier in the gut, only allowing certain things to pass into the bloodstream, and blocking illness-causing pathogens.

How do you know if you need to take probiotics? Well, most of us do. What type and for how long will vary widely, but if you have ever taken an antibiotic (and I mean ever in your life), then you probably want to explore getting on a probiotic.

My recommended brands for general immune and digestive health, and the ones I carry in my office are:

• For infants – Klaire Labs Infant Probiotic (powder) or Metagenics Ultraflora Baby (drops)
• For toddlers and older children – Metagenics UltraFlora Children's (chewable) (or one of the above infant products if your toddler isn't into chewables)
• For teens and adults – Klaire Labs Therbiotic Complete or Metagenics UltraFlora Spectrum (capsules)

If you are interested in learning more about your microbiome, here are two very worthwhile links to check out:

1) Super informative article by Michael Pollan about the microbiome:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/say-hello-to-the-100-trillion-bacteria-that-make-up-your-microbiome.html?pagewanted=all

2) Great slideshow about the microbiome:

http://discovermagazine.com/galleries/zen-photo/m/microbiome

(Featured image courtesy of probiotics.org)

Thanks for reading and please be sure to check out Part 1 of the series here: http://elementalfamily.com/fall-focus-on-immunity-preparatory-medicine/. We'd love to have you join our virtual Elemental Family to stay in the loop with these types of posts in the future! You can opt-in on the home page here: http://elementalfamily.com.

Elemental Family Focus on Immunity, Part 1: Preparatory Medicine

This post is the first in our Elemental Family Focus on Immunity series, where I will be touching on various aspects of supporting and preparing the immune system for the upcoming cold and flu season…

Happy end of summer, friends! This is a special time in our house because my daughter is starting kindergarten this fall! How the heck did that happen? Just the thought fills me with a myriad of conflicting emotions: excitement for all of the new and enriching experiences ahead of her, sadness for the inevitable passage of time that starting school really brings home, and, to be totally honest, a fair amount of trepidation at all of the germs that are awaiting her in a school environment.

As a practitioner who treats both children and adults, I certainly deal with a fair share of germy-ness, but it feels different when I know I won’t be there to make sure my daughter washes her hands before she eats or doesn’t accidentally use someone else’s cup, and so on. In the hopes of tempering my anticipatory germaphobia, we’ve recently started a simple and straightforward immune boosting regimen in my house. Cold and flu season is just around the corner, and Chinese medicine truly shines in its preparatory approach to illness.

Preparatory medicine is a unique approach to supporting immunity and it differs in one significant aspect from preventive medicine. Preventive medicine is a buzzword in our ever-evolving healthcare landscape and is focused on early screening, counseling, and other interventions to detect and prevent disease. This is an invaluable practice, especially when it comes to serious and life-threatening illness.

Preparatory medicine, on the other hand, is more applicable to the day-to-day illnesses that I see on a regular basis in my clinic, and that many of you parents are more than used to dealing with: coughs, colds, fevers, tummy upset, etc. Preparatory medicine offers the perspective that building immunity is a developmental process. Successfully fighting these types of illnesses contributes positively to the complexity of a flexible and robust immune system.

Trust me, as a parent this is a very challenging concept to keep in my brain. No one wants to see their child or partner, or self for that matter, feeling icky and down for the count. It is lousy for sure, but it can help to remember that much of our immune system is acquired over time, so with each illness the body really does get smarter and stronger.

So, what does preparatory medicine look like?

•   Thinking ahead to the next challenge on the horizon, be it seasonal or developmental
• Supporting your unique adaptive style to ensure as smooth a transition as possible into the next stage: for my daughter this meant preparing her both emotionally and physically for the transition into school
• Treating the body in preparation of that next challenge, ie starting immune prep well before cold season hits or prepping the body for spring allergy season during wintertime

Now that we have set the appropriate expectations around getting sick, we can move into tools for HOW to prepare the body! Over the next few posts, we will cover dietary, supplement, lifestyle, and wellness massage recommendations.

Halloween Doesn't Have to be SUGARY Scary!

The sugariest day of the year is right around the corner. This post offers fun and yummy non-candy treats for all the cute pumpkin faces who ring your doorbell this Friday night...

I have plenty of childhood Halloween memories that revolve around seemingly endless amounts of candy, but the fact of the matter is that sugar has a hugely negative impact on immunity and overall health. I believe that the body can tolerate almost anything when used in moderation, but Halloween is not exactly the most moderate sugary experience for most kids. Here are some easy ways to mitigate all the sugar floating around this Oct 31.

Halloween Treat Ideas that Aren't Scary (1)