If you suffer from PTSD, natural treatments may provide significant help and I encourage to to consider Remedial Massage as one possible approach. We can all learn from understanding PTSD and how to deal with the associated stress and anxiety – both physical and emotional. Massage for PSTD can offer some serious relief.

PTSD has become a common diagnosis in the last 10 years or so, originally associated with military service men and women who have returned from active duty. It is now a condition that covers a much broader definition and includes people from all walks of life – even children.

What Is PTSD?

PTSD results in the inability of the individual to appropriately deal with traumatic experiences which can have a profound negative influence in the way we perceive life and interact with the world around us. There can be a continuous presence of anxiety and dread with flashbacks. There are anger outbursts, severe anxiety, nightmares and lack of quality sleep, all of which make it very difficult to live a normal, productive and healthy life.

PTSD Natural Treatments

Recovery is certainly possible through a combination of meditative techniques, anti-anxiety treatment and at my clinic I have used herbal and homoeopathic medicine to help clients with varying degrees of PTSD. Interestingly, Remedial Massage Therapy can also play an important role in mitigating the pernicious effects of stress and anxiety – whether or not you suffer from PTSD or not.

One of the important physiological components of stress is the interaction between the hypothalamus, the pituitary and the adrenal glands and how well these three areas of the body work together determine your ability to cope with stress. Finding ways to bring balance here can go a long way towards reducing the effects of stress – Remedial Massage, nutritional and herbal medicine and homoeopathic medicine can all play a role.

Massage For PTSD

When the body is in a chronic state of health and cortisol levels are sky high, it is easy to reach a state of exhaustion and excess secretion of adrenaline allows the nervous system to be on high alert most of the time and this can lead to what we call adrenal exhaustion. Remedial Massage is able to slow down the release of adrenaline and reduce cortisol and this in turn leads to a deep state of relaxation. Many of you will have experienced this after one of my treatments – a feeling of peace and balance which is partly due to changes in your physiology.

The over-production of adrenaline keeps the muscles in a state of hypertonicity which can make you more vulnerable to injury, cramping and general discomfort in the muscles. Chronic elevated levels of cortisol also wear down the body’s immune system, making the individual even more predisposed to various disease processes. Remedial Massage reduces cortisol levels, reduces the tonicity of muscles, and improves blood circulation to deep muscle tissue. For example, researchers from the University Of Miami School of medicine found that levels of the stress hormone cortisol were lowered by as much as 53% following just one session of massage. Another study (1) done in 2015 by Pinar Rukiye and Afsar Fisun states: “The study results show that family caregivers for patients with cancer can benefit from back massage to improve state anxiety, cortisol level, blood pressure and heart rate, and sleep quality.”

Endless nights without sleep do no favours for helping relieve the ever-agitated state of an individual suffering from PTSD, hence, the need for techniques that promote a restful sleep. For many of us, sleep has been compromised either long term or short term and this negatively impacts our health.

Effective Remedial Massages can help alter the balance of neurochemicals in the brain, increasing expression of GABA (a key neurotransmitter for promoting restfulness) as well as releasing endorphins (which are key brain chemicals to combat the effect of excess adrenaline on the body).

Musculoskeletal Problems Cause Stress Response

Muscle aches and pains, joint restrictions, a stiff neck or sore lower back all lead to a stress response in the body. When you are having Remedial Massage Treatments, it is really important to address the underlying structural issues if you want to enjoy a deep sense of relaxation and relief. As a student Naturopath I was very fortunate to have excellent training in Body Work – for example we learnt many osteopathic approaches and covered detailed functional anatomy. All this means that when you have a treatment, I can help resolve underlying problems and this means more relaxation and relief for you and a better stress-reducing response.

Remedial Massage Lifts Your Self Esteem

Many sufferers of PTSD experience low levels of self-esteem. Finding ways to build up our self-confidence is something we all need to address in one way or another and effective Massage Therapy can go a long way towards ‘lifting our spirits’ which can be partly explained by positive physiological changes.

My Approach To Remedial Massage & Physical Therapies

I am asked all the time about my Body Work Treatments – at college we had 4 years of Body Work training covering basic Swedish massage to highly specialised techniques that gave me the ability to treat many types of musculoskeletal issues. Over my many years in practice I have found that people get the best results when underlying problems are addressed and so my treatments are geared towards this. There is no point loosening up a tight muscle in your back and ignoring the fact that your spine is a little out of alignment. With some gentle techniques, the spine can be mobilised and the muscles massaged and stretched resulting in a longer lasting relaxation of the muscles and a deeper feeling of relief and release. Also I do not ‘crack’ joints – there are other ways to address joint restrictions that can be just as effective if not more beneficial and result in longer lasting improvements.

If you are in Sydney, you’re most welcome to have a remedial Massage treatment at my clinic. Check out my Remedial Massage Page, at my website.

References:

(1) Asian Pac J Cancer,16 (18), 8127-33 2015. Back Massage to Decrease State Anxiety, Cortisol Level, Blood Prsessure, Heart Rate and Increase Sleep Quality in Family Caregivers of Patients With Cancer: A Randomised Controlled Trial. Rukiye Pinar 1 , Fisun Afsar

The outbreak of Corrona virus has certainly given us all a bit of wake up call. In this article I want to share with you how to make sure you are being pro-active and taking steps toward keeping your self well and minimising chances of infection. Of course, what I will talk about here can be applied to all types of infections but when there is an outbreak this Corrona virus, it helps us to focus of the essential strategies we can take.

Common sense that is going to be the key ingredient – something you will not find in a bottle of supplements! If you want to be doing the best for your immune system and your health in general please do not underestimate these tried and tested approaches.

Supplements May Be Doing You Harm

You see if you’re depending on echinacea, zinc and other supplements or tonics in order keep well or stop your self being infected, then something is wrong! I’m sorry to say, you may be actually missing the point. Nothing wrong with good tonic medicines, this but it must be on the basis of a lifestyle that is conducive to maximising your health. Otherwise you can be masking underlying issues that may be having a deleterious affect on your health.

In a nut shell, if you are taking echinacea and multivitamins for example, to ‘keep you going’ and enabling you to burn the candle at both ends, then you are doing your self harm. Eventually something has to give. You are not addressing the very thing that is going to predispose you to becoming ill. This is why we see people suddenly crash with a dreadful flu or infection for example. This is exactly the sort of scenario that might make you more susceptible to developing Corrona virus symptoms as your immunity lowered and your vulnerability increased.

Without sounding simplistic or even condescending, we need to make sure we are exercising a good dose of common sense in this regard! And this includes hand washing – see the WHO infographic.

Corrona Virus Symptoms

The Corrona virus symptoms can appear between 2-4 days after exposure. There Can be Fever, Cough, Shortness of breath and trouble breathing. The intensity can be mild to sever and tragically may result in death. According to the Mayoclinc it has been seen that people with the most severe cases are the elderly and people with pre-existing illnesses. The symptoms are not that uncommon, so any hint of them you need to be super-vigilant and pro-active. When there is an outbreak like Corrona, we can’t be complacent.

Fever, Cough, Shortness of Breath, Trouble Breathing

Treating Current Health Issues

When ever there is an outbreak of a disease it is a poignant reminder that we need to be mindful a out the way are currently treating our health. Regardless of what it is, how you treat something is going to have an overall effect on your health. For example if you are regularly suffering migraines and taking some sort of pharmaceutical or herbal pain relief, then you are not really addressing the underlying cause of the migraine. The reason for your dis-ease is going to still be there and you will not be as healthy as you might otherwise be able to.

Now of course the way you treat a condition and whether you consider it to be treating the cause or not, is going to be based on your particular definition of illness and disease and this is a topic for another day. Suffice to say that we need to be mindful to treat underlying causes of our pre-existing conditions and not just treat them symptomatically.

Now you may like to take a look at my article  Natural Cure For Bird Flu? , as we were faced with similar situation now – looking for ways to protect ourselves form virulent infections (and of course other infections in general)

Prophylactic Emotional Health

Yes, that’s right. Your emotional health is a prophylactic, helping you to keep healthy and minimise the risk of illness. We all know, for example, that stress will lower your immunity. It is so important that when there is an infection going around – whatever it is – that we find ways to make sure our emotional balance is good – and stress if just one example. Anger, depression, low self esteem will all affect our physiology and in turn can, make us more susceptible to illness.

Now in my clinic I use homoeopathic, herbal or nutritional medicines to help support our emotional being. But the main pint here is that you just don’t ignore it. Find ways to nourish your emotional being and to move towards having a sense of peace, balance or well-being. I know it isn’t always easy or straight forward, but ads long as you are on the right track. There are times it is beneficial to seek help form your health care provider.

So as you can see there is a lot of common sense here, encouraging you to address in very practical ways, ways that can help improve your health in powerful ways and in turn help you to be less vulnerable to infections.

Naturopathic Help

For those of you who want to take a further step, please be in touch with me at my clinic and I would love to help you with some Naturopathic or homoeopathic interventions. We can orgainse an appointment – on site, phone, skype or zoom.

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Pictures:

Image: Gerd Altmann, Pixabay.coronavirus-4817439_1920
Infographic:Reduce your risk of corronavirus infection. WHO