Pregnancy can be a wonderful time but some common complaints during pregnancy can make you feel less than fabulous.

Acupuncture is safe and effective for a range of conditions during pregnancy including:

• nausea and morning sickness
• swelling of feet and ankles
• stress and anxiety
• haemorrhoids
• muscle aches and pains
• fatigue
• constipation

To ensure the best possible labour and birthing experience, it is advised to seek acupuncture from around the 35-36 week of pregnancy. Treatments are given once a week to assist in softening the cervix to ensure easier labouring, as well as encouraging the appropriate hormonal cascades to engage.

Speak to your acupuncturist about what can be done for breech presentations; the use of acupressure and other non pharmaceutical interventions for pain relief during labour; how to avoid long labour times, and partner preparation.

Labour and Birth

Research shows that being prepared for your labour has a significant impact on reducing the rate of medical interventions during labour, including forceps use, epidural and caesarean section.

It’s great that we have the availability and option for medical interventions if and when we need them, however more often than not we don’t need them.

Preparation encourages self confidence, reduces feelings of stress and increases a sense of empowerment and the likelihood that you will have a positive birthing experience. It gives you a greater understanding of you and your capacities.

Being prepared can include having a birth plan, and having a clear idea about what you want in the birthing suite.

Every birth is unique, and sometimes the best made plans will go astray, but it is good to have a sense of how you would like your experience to unfold, if only so there is time spent considering what is right for you.

Speak to your acupuncturist about what can be done for breech presentations; the use of acupressure and other non pharmaceutical interventions for pain relief during labour; how to avoid long labour times, and partner preparation.

Adrenal Insufficiency

Acupuncture can be a very useful, non pharmacological intervention for adrenal insufficiency and its associated symptoms.

Stress is one of those small words that encompass many things, it is different for everyone and will manifest in unique ways according to the individual.

Most of us realise that stress and its effects are a part of many of our signs and symptoms. As well, it is so often cited by health professionals as a precursor to, or indeed a reason for illness, that it has become a kind of mantra. And yet because it is so seemingly pervasive, it is overlooked and understated. It becomes a noise in the background of sound that blends into our lives and slowly strangles our proper rest, relaxation and tranquillity such that we hardly notice until our symptoms appear.

It is vital to our overall health and well being that we properly rejuvenate with the restorative quality of sleep, restful moments of quiet and periods of time of being unstimulated, doing nothing so we can come back to being. If not, our kidneys and their functioning suffer.

The kidneys in oriental medicine theory and diagnostics are associated with the appropriate development and maturation of the individual, fertility and reproduction, cardiovascular heath and ageing well.