Welcome to the Healing Bird Acupuncture Newsletter! Once a month, I’ll be sending out helpful tips, like seasonal advice, recipes, acu point information, exercises, and meditation tips.
I’m happy to announce you can now book appointments online at www.healingbird.com. Reminder emails will be sent out 48 hours prior to your appointment.
Seasonal advice Quite a few people in my clinic are experiencing flu/colds. Here are some ideas for boosting your immune system to prevent sickness or recover quickly. Do you know one of the worst things for immune system? Stress. Rest and sleep are a great mechanism to help your immune system.
70-80% of your immune system is in the lining of your gut. Keeping your digestion strong is a brilliant way to support your immune health. Bone broth is a nice way to use nutrient and mineral rich food that is easily digestible to support digestion. The recipe below is modified from Alton Brown’s recipe. Alton skims off the fat from the top but I eat a high fat diet (brain food) and I like the taste, so I leave the fat in the broth. I recommend using organic bones for this broth products. In general, organic animal products help reduce inflammation in our bodies. While non-organic conventional meats increase inflammation and inflammation linked disease in our bodies.
I add vinegar to help dissolve the bone and release more minerals into the broth. I’ll make 4-5 batches of broth from the same bones, adding fresh veggies, herbs, and vinegar to each batch. This takes a lot of tuperware and it encourages me to cook with broth. I store extra in the freezer. The last batches are the strongest because the bones are really releasing a lot of their mineral goodness.
Recipe Bone broth
Leftover organic bones, cartilage, and meat bits 1 large onion, quartered 2 carrots, peeled and cut in 1/2 2 ribs celery, cut in 1/2 1 leek, white part only, cut in 1/2 lengthwise 5 sprigs fresh thyme 5 sprigs fresh parsley with stems 2 bay leaves 5 or 6 peppercorns 2 whole cloves garlic, peeled 6-8 cups cold water 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
Cook all the ingredients in a slow cooker for about 8 hours, strain the broth. Reserve the bones, toss the veggies and herbs, and repeat to make 4-5 batches of broth.
Enjoy in soups and substitute for water when cooking rice, congee, or anything else.
Acu point to help flu/colds San Jiao 5 Chinese Name: Wai Guan (English translation: Outer Pass) Action: relieves flu/colds, benefits the ears, alleviates pain Location: On the dorsal aspect of the forearm, 3 fingers length above the transverse crease of the wrist between the ulna and radius.
Press on the point for 30 second intervals. Enough pressure to activate the point but not enough to bruise.
Exercise To help regulate your immune system, massage your spleen and liver by making circles with your palms on the right and left side at the bottom of your rib cage. Massage for a couple minutes on each side.
Meditation There are many studies demonstrating how effective meditation is for healing and harmonizing your immune system.
Over the holidays, my younger brother told me this story. In his college English course, the teacher required everybody to sit and meditate for 5 minutes at the beginning of class. I’d guess all the students were new to meditation. The teacher was pretty strict about silence and within a few classes, the noise makers had dropped the course. At the two week mark, the professor gave a survey to see how many wanted to continue the 5 minute meditation. The results—100% of the students wanted to keep the meditation. This story showed me how good the students must have felt during those 5 minutes to want to continue.
If you are new to meditating, here is a simple way to start. Carve out 5 minutes of your day. Sit quietly and notice what you notice. If you are feeling brave, scan your entire body and see what you are experiencing at that moment.
Feel free to let me know how it goes for you.
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If you have questions or comments, please give me a shout.
Hope everyone is well and Happy New Year! Dr. Heather Bird
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