Hudson Valley Acupuncture - Pain
Pain
The treatment of pain is the reason why most people seek acupuncture care. Why? Because, with the correct assessment and treatment, acupuncture is one of the most effective, efficient methods of managing and controlling pain.
Successful treatment begins with successful evaluation. For example, let's say you've come in with low back pain. After we discuss your medical history, I would then ask you to do some simple movements to observe lumbar movements to assess common muscle imbalances and/or pelvic rotations. I then would do some gentle manual muscle testing and orthopedic evaluations to determine the roots of your pain. Some questions I may ask my low back pain patients are:
- Which postures increase or decrease the symptoms? If sitting forward helps, but walking or standing aggravates, the pain is most likely coming from the facet joints.
- Is there pain when rising from a sitting position? If so, that is either an acute spasm or chronic ligamentous instability.
- Is there a catching pain with movement that improves during the day? That is a good indication of chronic degenerative disc disease.
- Pain with coughing or laughing?
- What activity caused the pain?
Once that is done, I often use the needles to treat the muscle Motor points as well as Trigger point release. I may also employ the application of heat, and cups.
On a daily basis, I treat pain due to postural deviations, decreased flexibility, degenerative joint/disc disease, neurological complications such as numbness and tingling and neuropathy, chronic and repetitive activities, and acute trauma.
Muscle tension and imbalance are involved in all pain cases. My mentor, Dan Zal discusses it all here.