Monica is a videographer and she mostly shoots documentaries. She just finished a project shooting the homeless in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, which meant she was up throughout the night, but her fatigue started way before this project.
Monica has experienced fatigue for years now. She wakes up bone tired and unmotivated and when nightfall comes, she actually perks up and can’t fall asleep until 2am. The first thing we did for Monica was saliva testing, an Adrenal Stress Index to be exact. To get a whole picture, we needed to see what her cortisol’s circadian rhythm was like. Cortisol should be highest in the morning and lowest in the middle of the night. If patients are having trouble waking or sleeping, this is a place we look to first. And sure enough, cortisol was a part of the problem, her levels were sky high at night, no wonder she couldn’t sleep. The other issue that we uncovered during our thorough intake was she hadn’t gotten her period in about 6 months, her resources were completely exhausted. When sleep no longer rejuvenates the body, patients operate on a deficit and at some point lose precious body fluids, including blood. Essentially, there’s a lack of nourishment in the body.
We supplemented her accordingly and gave her a Chinese herbal prescription. At Tao to Wellness, we have a full granular pharmacy, so we were able to customize this formula exactly to her needs. She also received acupuncture; twice a week in the beginning and since she was responding so well, we tapered that off to once a week relatively quickly. After her very first treatment, her sleep improved dramatically, but only lasted so long. That tells us, she was responding but her body wasn’t able to hold or sustain the session. With every two sessions, she gained another night of sleep. When four weeks passed, she was sleeping throughout the night and we were able to put her on maintenance of acupuncture every two weeks. Because she finally managed to sleep, we were able to put ‘resources’ back into her body and her energy increased. Her cycle also regulated itself and she started having periods again in two months.
Monica is now on maintenance, we see her about once a month for acupuncture, it’s her self care time and it has become a non-negotiable in her life. After that episode, she has become more familiar with her body and now knows when it’s starting to feel out of balance and what to do about it.
