Can Acupuncture Really Get Rid Of My Pain?
In short, yes.
Acupuncture has been used for thousands of years to promote healing and treat pain coming from injuries like sprains, strains, bruises, and even to help accelerate recovery from surgery. It can clear up tendonitis (tennis elbow, anyone?), trigger finger, and that achy thumb pain (if you’ve seen your doc about it, she/he may have diagnosed you with De Quervain’s tenosynovitis but you don’t have to know what it’s called to know how to help reverse it!)
It’s also great to help reduce chronic pain coming from arthritis, disc degeneration, sciatica, low back pain, neck pain, as well as pain from autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis.
Chinese medicine has a whole understanding of how acupuncture gets rid of pain that includes qi, blood, stagnation, etc. In the Western model we don’t have any such similar understanding BUT we do know the following:
Acupuncture needles have an anti-inflammatory effect on our body
Acupuncture is the number one therapy to release trigger points
The use of acupuncture needles stimulates endorphin release: these are our feel-good chemicals that put us into a deep state of relaxation while we’re laying on the treatment table
Adjunctive therapies like cupping stimulate blood flow, drive inflammatory chemicals out of our tissues, and help to relieve tight, sore muscles
See, pain is ultimately an inflammatory response. Usually it starts because there was some kind of damage to the tissues (this can be an injury like a fall or car accident, or due to repetitive micro-injuries from overuse or excessive pressure on joints and soft tissue that can lead to arthritis, joint and/or disc degeneration and tendonosis, which is the chronic version of tendonitis). You can think of inflammation as a waterfall of chemicals, and each one stimulates the release of a new inflammatory chemical. As the inflammation progresses it literally builds up in our tissues as more and more inflammatory chemicals are released. The result? One day you realize you’re living with chronic pain.
Acupuncture for pain is SUCH an effective tool because it clears and resets the inflammatory response naturally. I see lots of patients at Sanos Wellness who’ve been living with chronic pain for YEARS and are done managing it with Advil, Aleve, Tylenol, or opiates. I thank their docs who have the wisdom to encourage their patients to try alternative therapies like acupuncture for pain management because I’ve helped patient after patient reduce their dose of pain killers, or even get off them completely.
I always tell patients that they should expect a series of visits to fully help manage pain. Once we get their pain level down sufficiently, or gone completely, then we work together to create a maintenance schedule (often something like an acupuncture session once every 4-12 months).
Some folks need additional support for pain management: this is where diet and self care practices come in. I often put patients on an anti-inflammatory diet combined with home therapies to relieve tight muscles and move inflammation out of their tissues at home. I offer this as an adjunctive service to a traditional series of acupuncture sessions.