08 JUL 2020
Acupuncture treatment for pain
Neck, shoulder, and lower back pain are some of the most common diseases from outpatient acupuncture.
Case Study 1:
One day, a young Korean male walked in with his belt. His body was presented in S-shaped when he walked, his expression showed extremely painful. He explained that he had strained his waist four days ago and stayed in a Korean hospital for four days. He was discharged from the hospital without recovery. He came to see if acupuncture could help him.
After the diagnosis, I wrote down a treatment plan, explained to him that the sensation from acupuncture treatment may be strong, and asked him to bear with me for a few seconds, but I promised to complete the treatment within 15 minutes. After the acupuncture session was finished, I asked him to get up and move his body. At that time, he was still afraid to move, after I reassured him, he got up and walked back and forth with a long-lost smile on his face. I asked him how much pain was relieved? He replied 70% recovered and asked if the needle was coated with medicine. When he left, he went home happily without wearing his belt. Subsequent consultation on the next day, he said that the pain was more relieved when he returned home. After another acupuncture session, the treatment ended.
Case Study 2:
The second example is an aunt with heel pain. She had a pain in the heel for five days. She soaked her feet in hot water at home to relieve her pain but it did not work. She was afraid that acupuncture on the footboard would be painful so she did not go for the treatment in the first place. In order to prevent acupuncture at her foot, I found a reflection on her head. After the needle was inserted, she was asked to walk back and forth barefoot around a minute. She surprisingly told me that she felt no more pain at the foot. I asked her to walk for another 20 minutes before removing the needle. These are just two cases out of many cases. Such cases are performed every day in the acupuncture clinic.
Acupuncture does have an immediate effect to solve the patient’s pain and restore their normal life as soon as possible!
Why can acupuncture relieve pain?
Chinese medicine believes that people have a holistic nature. The pain in one place is caused by the imbalance of yin and yang, so it is not only a problem with the pain. The doctor will combine four diagnostic techniques, analyze the cause, check the local musculoskeletal system to determine the best acupuncture treatment plan in order to make the body restore the balance, and the pain will disappear naturally.
Modern research on acupuncture can raise the pain threshold of the central nervous system. Low-frequency and high-frequency electro-acupuncture stimulation can produce Beta-endorphin, enkephalin, endomorphin, and dynorphin to produce analgesic effects. A multinational study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and published in Archives of Internal Medicine found that acupuncture is better than placebo treatment and general standard treatment for patients with osteoarthritis, migraine, and chronic back, shoulder, and neck pain. A study published in “Lancet” by the University of Berlin in Germany also found that patients with osteoarthritis had significantly improved pain relief and joint function after 8 weeks of acupuncture treatment.
In terms of pain, the predominant diseases of acupuncture treatment include headache, neck stiffness, acute, and chronic low back pain, neck and shoulder pain, frozen shoulder, heel pain, knee pain, tennis elbow, facial pain (trigeminal neuralgia), facial paralysis and so on.
Each treatment effect of acupuncture depends on the patient’s physical condition and the severity of the disease. Generally speaking, young people recover faster than the elderly, and the severity of the disease is directly proportional to the duration of treatment. Acupuncture sensation includes soreness, numbness, fullness, warm, cold, itching, twitching, electric sensation are all normal reactions. Compared with medical treatment, acupuncture treatment does not have side effects and the effect is faster and more durable.
Authored by Consultant Physician MORISE
