Mental Health
Stress? Anxiety? Depression?
Think of us as your mental health support team—we can use acupuncture, herbal medicine, and nutrition planning to help you de-stress and support your other mental healthcare needs. Our clinic is a sanctuary—calm, quiet, and confidential, the perfect place to start feeling better.
Benefits of a Holistic Approach to Mental Health
Mental health issues aren’t just mental but also express themselves as bodily symptoms. We can help you figure out how and where mental health issues impact you and minimize those effects. Treatments at Cherry Blossom Healing Arts can reduce stress, improve your sleep, increase your energy, and lift your mood.
If you’re working through anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues where you’re seeing a therapist, psychiatrist, or other healthcare provider, we can support their work with you. In consultation with these healthcare providers, we’ve helped patients combat the side effects of medication or reduce their pharmacological intake altogether.
Our Approach to Treating Mental Health Issues
Our acupuncturists utilize acupuncture, herbal medicine, and nutrition to treat the symptoms associated with mental health issues. This support works seamlessly with traditional mental health care and helps put you on a path to better mental health.
Acupuncture
Herbal Medicine
Nutrition
Supporting YOU During Stressful Times
Acupuncture for Mental Health
With stress, anxiety, or depression, you can also have a churning stomach, chest tightness, a low or increased appetite, shoulder or neck pain, headaches and migraines, and poor sleep. Acupuncture can treat these symptoms, releasing endorphins and balancing the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. This helps break the stress cycle—where mental health issues cause physical symptoms which aggravate the original mental health issue further.
Acupuncture helps to break the stress cycle.
Herbal medicine doesn’t sedate you, but nourishes your body to sleep naturally.
Herbal Medicine for Mental Health
Chinese herbal medicine is especially helpful for stress and insomnia. Our herbs are not sedatives or hypnotics, which will get you to sleep but leave the underlying issue unresolved. Instead, they help treat the deficiency pattern and nourish your body so it can get back to sleeping naturally and normally.
Nutrition for Mental Health
Food impacts our mental health—sometimes by what is eaten and sometimes by what isn’t. Poor nutrition is often part of the stress-symptom cycle, where stressful events mean poor or little nutrition, increasing the severity of symptoms, which then leads to even more stress. Taking concrete, feasible steps to improve nutrition can help break this cycle and reduce the symptoms associated with mental health issues.
Good nutrition helps reduce the severity of mental health symptoms.
We Listen to YOU!
Benefits of a Multi-Pronged Approach to Treating Mental Health
Whether you’ve got short-term, elevated stress, are under the care of a psychiatrist, or anything in between, we can help. Many of our patients take a multi-pronged approach to mental care, utilizing medications such as SSRIs, guidance from a therapist, or working with a psychiatrist while also getting treatment from our acupuncturists. We can help combat the side effects of medication, improve your mood by boosting endorphins, and help you figure out how to reduce stressors in your life.
Mental Health Issues We Can Help You With
Whether you are interested in improving your mental health or want us to treat it in conjunction with other physical symptoms, our acupuncturists can help improve your mental health. We regularly treat the following symptoms.
Anxiety
Anxiety is a root issue that turns into a variety of problems impacting your life. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, many physical symptoms are associated with anxiety, including:
- Low appetite
- Insomnia
- Heart palpitations
- Difficulty concentrating
- Dream-disturbed sleep (such as nightmares or other very odd dreams)
- The tendency to be easily startled
- Dry skin
- Dry hair
Acupuncture For Anxiety
Acupuncture fights anxiety and its symptoms by helping to balance the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Traditional Chinese Medicine refers to this as “calming the spirit (shen).” Researchers also think that acupuncture can help you switch off your fight-or-flight response. Acupuncture can also improve blood flow and decrease blood pressure. The collective result of these effects is that acupuncture can give you the space to get grounded, feel calm, and get your mental health back on track.
Can Acupuncture Help with Anxiety?
Because there are no acupuncture-drug interactions, acupuncture is a safe option for those who are taking antidepressants. Acupuncture can help reduce symptoms resulting from anxiety, leaving you feeling grounded and boosting your other strategies for dealing with anxiety. Acupuncture is also helpful in situations where you are unable to take medications, such as pregnancy. When antidepressants or other medications aren’t an option, acupuncture is a safe, natural, and effective alternative to reduce your anxiety.
Herbal Medicine For Anxiety
Chinese herbal medicine is an excellent complement to acupuncture for the treatment of anxiety. Herbs are especially good for treating physiological symptoms associated with anxiety. Many herbs are vasodilators, which can help lower blood pressure. Herbs can also address the insomnia and heart palpitations, which often come with anxiety. Some herbs are adaptogens—which can help the body handle stress on a cellular level. These herbs are great for both short and long-term mental and physical stress.
Nutrition for Anxiety
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, good nutrition is grounding. It allows you to focus and think clearly. In TCM, many anxiety-related symptoms are diagnosed as deficiencies (which have similar symptoms to anemia). The severity of these problems can be reduced through adding red or iron-rich foods to the diet, such as red beets, raspberries, cherries, red meat, or dark leafy greens.
Depression
We know that depression affects more than just your mood—it also impacts your physical body and your overall health. Our acupuncturists can be a part of your recovery plan by working on the emotional and physical symptoms of depression. By reducing symptoms such as chronic pain, low appetite, and fatigue, we can help you reclaim your life.
Acupuncture For Depression
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, depression is commonly associated with qi- and yang-deficiency patterns. These patterns manifest as fatigue, somnolence (constant sleepiness), irritability, GI problems, spontaneous sweating, and back or neck pain. Acupuncture can treat these deficiency patterns to reduce the severity of depression and help your recovery.
Sometimes, it works the opposite way: chronic pain or another chronic health condition can lead to depression. The prospect of always being in pain, or having to deal with a health issue that will never go away, can be a wrecking ball for mental health. Acupuncture can help reduce the severity of these symptoms and restore hope that the condition can be managed.
Can Acupuncture Help With Depression?
Yes! Our acupuncturists can work with you to improve your mood, focus, and sleep, while reducing your fatigue and pain. Your acupuncturist will help nourish your organs and calm your spirit to alleviate stress and depression. For patients with chronic pain, offering relief from that pain is a big first step in improving mental health.
Herbal Medicine For Depression
Chinese herbs tackle depression from several directions. First, they’re helpful in nourishing the body to combat the deficiency pattern and work on the root issue. Second, our formulas can include herbs that uplift mood, such as He Huan Pi (“everybody happy bark”). These herbs can help kickstart your mental health recovery while the root issue is being treated.
Nutrition for Depression
Nutrition can provide a steadying influence on poor mental health. When feeling sad, overwhelmed, or depressed, regular meals can easily get forgotten. This exacerbates other health conditions in the body, which makes you feel even worse.
We can help you stop that cycle with suggestions for how to have regular meals with whole foods. Whole foods can be anti-inflammatory and reduce pain, leaving you better able to work on your mental health.
Stress
Stress is a feeling of emotional tension which can often lead to physical symptoms. It can be caused by almost any change from your normal routine. In small doses, stress can be helpful. When stress becomes continuous, the autonomic nervous system ramps up our body’s fight-or-flight response. This response, over time, negatively affects the body and can lead to a variety of diseases. Our acupuncturists can help your body respond to stress in the best way possible using acupuncture and herbal medicine.
Acupuncture For Stress
Acupuncture effectively deals with the physiological roots of stress. It balances the nervous system and takes you out of fight-or-flight mode. It lowers cortisol levels and helps you relax. Acupuncture also helps other symptoms of chronic stress, such as insomnia and depression. Over time, the effects can become preventative—many patients report that they manage stress in their lives better with regular acupuncture treatment.
Can Acupuncture Help With Stress?
Yes! In addition to the physiological effects of balancing the nervous system and lowering cortisol levels, our acupuncture treatments are calm, relaxing, and grounding. They’re an hour of time for you to simply let go, put your phone down, and do nothing but focus on feeling better.
Herbal Medicine For Stress
Stress is often made worse by symptoms that it causes, something we call the “stress cycle.” Herbal medicine can help deal with these symptoms, such as insomnia or fatigue. Like acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine can also help your body deal with stress on a physical level. We can use herbs that can help you feel calm and alert and ready to handle whatever comes your way. We also can add adaptogens to your formula that help your body manage stress on a cellular level.
Nutrition and Stress
Stress can take up mental space and push out other things that are important. Nutrition is one of those things that often gets tossed aside when you’re feeling stressed out. Our acupuncturists will work with you to develop meals and strategies to keep your nutritional intake balanced and timely. This will allow your body the best chance to deal with the symptoms of stress and for you to be more resilient to stressful situations.
Insomnia
Insomnia is when you have trouble sleeping. This can be difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking too early. Stress, anxiety, and worry can all lead to insomnia. Because these are all common concerns for Washingtonians, our acupuncturists treat insomnia all the time.
Good sleep is the foundation of good health. When you sleep better, everything feels better. Our acupuncturists know how to help you get the rest you need.
Acupuncture For Insomnia
Acupuncture can help reduce the impact mental health issues have on sleep. By reducing the physiological reactions stress produces, acupuncture can help you to sleep better. There can also be physiological issues not related to mental health that can cause insomnia—such as heartburn, frequent urination, chronic pain, or hypertension—that acupuncture can help with. A bonus is better sleep! Whether your issue is falling asleep, staying asleep, or interrupted sleep—acupuncture can support you to get the rest you need.
Can Acupuncture Help Insomnia?
Yes! Most patients find that their sleep improves with regular acupuncture treatment. Acupuncture nourishes blood and helps improve circulation while also calming the mind. Acupuncture can help you both fall asleep and stay asleep. Other health problems that interrupt sleep can often be treated with acupuncture, too, helping you to sleep the whole night and wake up energized.
Chinese Herbal Medicine For Insomnia
Our herbal formulas are customized to your diagnosis, whether that’s a physical condition causing insomnia or stress, anxiety, and worry. Our herbal formulas treat the root pattern causing the insomnia, helping solve the problem. They don’t just “knock you out” but help your body heal properly and remember how to sleep. With this nourishment, you can start to sleep normally again.
Insomnia and Nutrition
Everyone has their own unique type of insomnia. Our acupuncturists will identify what pattern is causing your insomnia and will give you nutrition guidelines to help your body have the nutritional foundation for quality, deep sleep. They’ll focus not just on what you eat but when you eat. Changes to your diet can yield deeper, healthier sleep.
Your Acupuncture Treatment Plan
Your journey to better health begins before you step through our doors. You'll be able to easily schedule an appointment online as well as fill out your health history form before you arrive at our office—maximizing conversational and treatment time with your acupuncturist.
At your first appointment, your acupuncturist will discuss your health history, get input from you on what your treatment goals are, and develop a treatment plan. They'll then treat you using whatever services are best suited to your specific symptoms.
Although plans vary depending on the patient, most typically run for four weeks. At the end of your first visit, your acupuncturist will give you a written treatment plan. At subsequent visits, you'll discuss your symptoms and whether they've improved, regressed, or stayed the same. Your acupuncturist will adjust the treatment plan based on your input and their ongoing diagnosis of your condition.
When your main complaint is resolved, you can reduce treatment or work on another symptom. Still thinking it over? Take a look at our Testimonials page to see what other patients are saying.
There Is No Good Health Without Mental Health
Our acupuncturists know how to support you through a variety of mental health issues and are excellent adjuncts to your other mental health care professionals. No matter where you’re at with your mental health, our acupuncturists can help.
To get started head to our booking page and schedule your first appointment. If you’d like us to check your insurance benefits, we’d be happy to take care of that for you. We are in-network with CareFirst/BlueCross and Aetna.
Be well,
The Cherry Blossom Team
