Hi. I’m Dr. Cynthia Clark, acupuncture physician, applied clinical nutritionist, creator of Energy Evolution and President of Longevity Wellness and let’s talk about sleep.

Over 60 percent of Americans have undiagnosed sleep disorders. What is a sleep disorder? It doesn’t mean only that you didn’t sleep at all last night.

If you’re missing one hour of sleep or more, then that’s considered lack of sleep, insomnia. That’s considered to be a health problem. One hour less sleep per night is a 20 percent increase in risk of motor vehicle accident and in fact, the day in America that we have the most motor vehicle accidents is right after our time change when everybody is sleep-deprived.

Some of the reasons that people find themselves waking up in the middle of the night are not just your typical run-of-the-mill stress or anxiety. That have to do with physical complaints. Pain after surgery and one of my favorites, gastroesophageal reflux disease.

So let’s talk about pain after surgery first. Specifically acupuncture significantly improves motor nerve conduction, velocity and amplitude and also promotes functional nerve repair. This is from Neural Regeneration Research, an article in 2015, and according to the Centers for Disease Control, smokers have lower survival rates after surgery and greater risks for complications.

So if you are a smoker and you’re considering surgery, then acupuncture is very effective at assisting with the cravings that go along with quitting smoking and with contributing to long term success. There is a much greater five-year or longer success rate when assisted with acupuncture.

Another one of the reasons people wake up in the middle of the night is from gastroesophageal reflux disease and according to a study in 2016, acupuncture was as effective and safer than pharmaceutical intervention for gastroesophageal reflux disease.

Now how often do you need to get acupuncture for these things? For GERD, it was every day for two weeks and then it drops down to twice a week for the next five weeks. For surgical intervention, the studies that are done vary by the type of surgery but it can be once to twice a week for 10 weeks.

So we would love to help you with your pain. We would love to help you with your GERD. We would love to help you with waking up in the middle of the night.

This is Dr. Cynthia Clark with Longevity Wellness and that’s good medicine.