Melanie’s acupuncture story

Melanie has been a client of mine for years. I have always enjoyed our health and diet discussions during her monthly visits. She is an avid reader about diet and how it affects the body. She is a fit, thirty-something mother of three wonderful boys.

 

Melanie has always had some problems with breakouts—generally around her mouth and chin area. Through the years, I have cautioned her to keep her cell phone away from her face. She is on the phone all day long and as you might guess, resting the phone on your face can and will cause problems—eventually if not immediately.

Melanie has pared down the amount of sugar in her diet, yet her problems persist. Something else you need to know about Melanie: she has never had a normal menstrual cycle. This is a very important key to this story. As with so many bodily functions, menstruation is a clue to a woman’s health. If you are not menstruating, or your cycle is abnormal, it is your body warning you that something is out of balance.

Because of her monthly irregularities, for years I have encouraged Melanie to start getting regular acupuncture treatments. This is exactly the kind of imbalance that I believe acupuncture is so proficient at helping to normalize. When the hormones are out of whack, it can and does throw off so many of our body’s normal cycles. This keeps us from being in a balanced state of health; this keeps us from enjoying our daily lives.

Years ago I moved from Dallas to Chicago to open another skin care salon. When I would return for my quarterly trips to Dallas, Melanie was always on my schedule. On one of my Big D visits and having not seen Melanie for over 5 months, I was pleased to see her skin had made an obvious improvement. Melanie told me that she finally committed to experimenting with acupuncture and had been going regularly for the past year. Well, not so regularly as you will find out.

She started to go and saw improvements in her skin and also in her menstrual cycle; things did seem to be changing for the better. But then life took over, and Melanie was unable to keep her regular appointments with her acupuncturist. Over the past summer, she hardly went for treatment and finally fell off the wagon completely. What she noticed was surprising to her, but is what convinced her to start up again. Melanie noticed, once she wasn’t getting acupuncture treatments, that her period was becoming nonexistent again and her skin problems were also returning. She hadn’t given much credence to the whole alternative treatment course she had begun months earlier. But now, the evidence of how beneficial the treatments had been was in.

Melanie once again began getting regular acupuncture treatments, but this time she was more dedicated to not missing any appointments and going as prescribed by her acupuncturist. She saw and felt undeniable results after this second go-round with acupuncture. Melanie insists it is acupuncture alone that has regulated her menstrual cycle and therefore, finally, helped to clear up her persistent skin problems.

For more information, see:

• Acupuncture explained
• Why you want to get Acupuncture
• Wholistic or Holistic: However you spell it—make the healthy choice