The skin is the largest organ in the body and is often a reflection of our systemic health. When we observe how the skin reacts to stressors we can often catch chronic or even potentially serious issues early. The most common issues people face include acne, bug bites, cold sores, eczema, hives, ringworm, rashes, psoriasis and shingles. Many of us suffer from these common skin issues that can range from an inconvenience to something demanding enough to consume or interfere with our daily lives.
At Everspring Health, we’ll look at the health of your skin and any history you might have with a skin condition. Based on your diagnosis, we can make a plan that will seek to reduce symptoms and address any underlying systemic cause. Stress, diet and sleep will be the prime elements of an effective lifestyle focused medical program as well as a specific nutritional program to target the primary symptoms.
We often use therapies such as acupuncture and massage to help address systemic issues and help with the body’s normal system regulation. Since each case is unique, each treatment will be specifically tailored to you and your needs. Dermatological conditions are often the hardest to treat because of the daily commitment needed to support the healing process. We will educate you about these demands but it is important to understand that if these issue have been chronic for sometime it make take some time to appropriate repair the tissue not just eliminate the symptoms.
Arthritis is a general term for conditions that include painful, swollen and/or stiff joints as primary symptoms. There are more than one hundred classifications of arthritis, including osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, arthritis due to infection or chemical agents, temporomandibular joint syndrome (TMJ), juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis and gout.
Osteoarthritis
Osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis, is classified as a degenerative (aka wear and tear) joint disease characterized by the deterioration of cartilage within the joints. While osteoarthritis can damage any joint in your body, the disorder most commonly affects joints in your hands, neck, lower back, knees and hips. Osteoarthritis symptoms often develop slowly and worsen over time. Signs and symptoms include: pain, tenderness, stiffness, loss of flexibility or range of motion, grating or grinding sensation and bone spurs
Rheumatoid Arthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory disorder that typically affects the joints in our hands and feet. Rheumatoid causes painful swelling in the lining of the joints that can eventually result in damage to the bone and joint deformity.
RA is considered an autoimmune disorder, which occurs when your immune system mistakenly attacks our own body tissues. In addition to causing joint problems, rheumatoid arthritis sometimes can also lead to inflammation in other organs of the body — such as the skin, eyes, lungs and blood vessels.
At Everspring Health, we start by learning about you and your relationship with arthritis. What is your pain like – is it sharp, dull, achey, constant, short-lived? Do you experience stiffness or swelling? Is it different in heat versus cold weather, or does it change with different seasons? We gather as much information as we can, so that we can develop a strategy to treat your unique symptoms and ideally dissolve the underlying cause.
Based on whether you are experiencing inflammation or a lack of circulation, we can use acupuncture and massage to either calm inflamed areas or to increase circulation. We fully examine lifestyle habits (stress, diet, and sleep); changing a pro-inflammatory diet, or increasing nutrition components that repair arthritic tissue, can reduce pain. We educate you on how joints work, and how to maintain them over time, as well as incorporate herbal therapy, functional medicine (vitamins/minerals), and current primary care to give you the best relief possible, while boosting your overall health and wellbeing.