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Innovative Treatment with Acupuncture
Let Valerie Hanna help you! Valerie will take the time to understand your unique health needs and develop a treatment plan just for you. Valerie uses innovative but gentle treatments to help you and your family members find relief from a variety of conditions, such as:
- Asthma, respiratory allergies, and food sensitivities
- Skin disorders and rashes
- Digestive problems
- Stress, anxiety, and depression
- Bed wetting and behavior problems in children
- ADHD and autism in children
She is trained to combine the effectiveness of several different healing tools, including acupuncture, acupressure, hair and saliva testing, and NAET— a method to alleviate allergies and sensitivities.
Your whole family is welcome. Valerie has experience in working with both adults and children. Her treatments are gentle and well-tolerated by even the youngest of children. Her highest priority is to uncover the source of your ailment and to develop an effective strategy for long-term health.
Call (320) 583-0105 today for a free over the phone consultation to learn how Valerie can help you! She is located in Minnetonka, Minnesota. Click here for more contact details.
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Acupuncture is a healing method that involves the insertion of very fine needles through your skin at specific points on your body. It’s considered to be an important part of the healing system of Chinese medicine, and has been effectively used for thousands of years.
Despite its ancient roots, modern researchers have discovered that acupuncture has a number of physiological effects on the human body. Scientists have found that:
-Acupuncture can reduce inflammation significantly in the areas where needles have been placed.
-Being treated with acupuncture can alter your brain chemistry in several ways. It can increase the circulation of feel-good neurotransmitters called endorphins; it can ramp up your body’s own pain control system; and it helps to block pain signals traveling to your brain.
-Acupuncture also works to increase circulation throughout your body—an important part of the healing process.
-It can help to balance your hormones; both reproductive hormones as well as those that become out of balance when you become stressed.
-Acupuncture also works to boost immunity and maintain a healthy immune system.
What to Expect
During an acupuncture appointment, Valerie will spend time with you to establish a diagnosis and develop a treatment strategy. She will then insert acupuncture needles into selected points on your body. You will then relax the needles retained for 20-30 minutes, after which time the needles will be removed. Most people describe feeling very relaxed after their acupuncture appointment.
The needles used in an acupuncture treatment are different than those used for injections or blood draws. Acupuncture needles are sterile, used only once, and disposable. What they are not is hollow, as nothing is passed into your body during a treatment. This means that the needles used are much smaller, and therefore produce less sensation than a needle.
Cupping therapy involves the placement of glass or plastic cups in which a vacuum has been created onto the surface of your skin. The vacuum creates suction within the cups, which can be fairly strong or weak, depending on your therapeutic need. Cupping does its work like a reverse massage, in which a massage heals by pushing on your muscles and tissue, but cupping heals by pulling.
Cupping works as a healing therapy in a number of ways:
-The pulling motion of cupping helps to separate sticky connective tissue, which is the culprit behind muscle knots, tight muscles, and muscle soreness.
-Cupping opens the pores in the area that’s been treated, allowing toxins to be released from your body.
-Cupping loosens tight muscles and speeds healing in pulled or overused muscles.
-Circulation is increased in the areas that have been cupped, allowing healing nutrients and oxygen to flow more freely to speed the healing process.
What to Expect
Most frequently, cups are applied to your back and shoulders, but may be used on areas such as your arms, legs, and upper chest. There are two methods of creating a vacuum in the cups. One is through the use of a pump, which pulls the air out of cups that have been placed on your skin. The other method is to light a cotton ball soaked in alcohol and place it in the cup until the air has been used up, then the flame is removed and the cup is quickly placed on your skin.
The cups are usually left in place for 10 to 15 minutes. Most people feel the cups pulling, but don’t describe it as painful. At the end of the treatment, the cups are removed. It’s important to note that the suction created by cupping breaks the small capillaries underneath, leaving what looks like a large round bruise. These marks resolve in about a week, but if you have an important event and don’t want marks, you may want to postpone cupping for another time.
Moxabustion is a way to speed healing and relieve pain through the use of heat. In Chinese medicine, one way to warm your body is through the use of a technique called moxabustion. The most common form of moxabustion involves the burning of an herb, artemesia vulgaris, which has been rolled into a long cigar-like stick. Moxabustion is very warming and has a penetrating smell. It works by:
-Warming your body. Many health conditions are aggravated by being cold or exposure to cold and damp weather. The warming and penetrating qualities of moxabustion help warm cold and achy joints and warm your body to the core.
-The warming nature of moxabustion also increases circulation to the areas where it has been applied. The increase in circulation speeds the healing process by bringing healing nutrients and oxygen to the affected area.
What to Expect
A treatment with moxabustion involves warming one or more areas on your body with a moxa stick. The stick is lit on one end and allowed to warm up. Your practitioner will hold the lit end near of the stick near the area to be treated, moving the stick nearer and further away from your skin with a slow pecking motion. The lit moxa stick will never touch your skin directly. The lit moxa stick has a strong, penetrating smell that’s not unpleasant.
Depending on the condition that your practitioner is treating, moxabustion may be applied to a specific joint, an area of pain, or one or more acupuncture points. A moxabustion treatment may take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes.
NAET is a healing system developed to treat and eliminate allergies and sensitivities, including food sensitivities. NAET is short for Nambudripad’s Allergy Elimination Techniques, and combines elements of allopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic, kinesiology, and nutrition.
Diagnosis is arrived at through muscle testing, called applied kinesiology. It’s based on the concept that your body exhibits a neuromuscular weakness when it’s exposed to an allergen or toxin. In Western medicine, the same information might be determined through skin patch tests, in which your body is also reacting to the offending allergen.
What to Expect
During a NAET treatment, your practitioner stimulates pressure points along your spine from the neck to the sacrum while you’re holding a suspected allergen. Muscle weakness indicates that your body is reacting negatively to the allergen. Once an allergen has been detected, acupressure points are then massaged or acupuncture needles may be inserted for 20 minutes to stabilize the treatment. At the end of your treatment, a strong muscle when retested shows that the allergy has been eliminated. For the most effective results, the substance must then be completely avoided for 25 hours following your treatment. Allergens are treated and cleared one at a time in a specific sequence, so dealing with multiple allergies may require a series of treatments.
Valerie Hanna
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Valerie understands how challenging it can be when coping with debilitating ailments or instances when traditional medical treatments leave patients with few answers. We work to find the source of ailments for long-term health.
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