|
Anxiety/Depression Headaches Immune System Insomnia Pain Relief
Providing Treatment for Pain
For many of us living with some form of chronic pain is a part of our everyday life. When we take into account back pain, arthritis, repetitive stress injuries, and sports injuries we realize that the majority of us are often managing some sort of painful condition. Unfortunately, the help we receive when we visit our primary doctor is often minimal. We are usually given six weeks of non-steroidal anti-inflamitories and sent on our way. If that does mask our symptoms enough we are often shuffled straight to the surgeon for the most extreme and invasive type of treatment possible without any counseling as to our other options.
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) approaches the treatment of painful conditions in an entirely different way. TCM recognizes that there are many subtleties to the types of pain we experience and many reasons why our bodies are unable to heal themselves. Masking the symptoms is not enough. The pain will never truly go away until the tissue is healed and the underlying factor impairing the body's natural ability to heal is removed. This type of targeted and supportive care requires a very sophisticated system of diagnosis and specific treatment. TCM differentiates pain according to where in the body it is located, what type of pain is felt (sharp, dull, shooting, etc), what factors make it better or worse, and according to other imbalances in the patient's constitution. Through this very specific classification of the painful condition targeted and supportive care can be prescribed. The result is individualized treatment plans for the specific patient that often lead to dramatic and rapid reductions in their pain. Commonly used treatment modalities for pain are acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, bodywork, rehabilitative exercise, dietary modification, and relaxation techniques. Painful conditions, which often respond well to care are:
Low back pain
Rheumatoid arthritis
Osteo-arthritis
Chronic neck and shoulder pain
Carpal Tunnel
Repetitve Stress Injuries
Fibromyalgia
Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy or RSD
Ileo-Tibial Band Syndrome or IT Band pain
Plantar Fascitis
Athletic Injuries
Lateral and medial epicondylitis or Tennis Elbow
The research on the effectiveness of acupuncture in treating painful conditions is large and compelling. I have chosen a few studies, which highlight various conditions. An exhaustive search would be far too large for this website.
Article 1: Pragmatic randomized trial evaluating the clinical and economic effectiveness of acupuncture for chronic low back pain.
Article 2: Meta-analysis: acupunture for low back pain.
Article 3: Acupuncture for chronic low back pain in older patients.
Article 4: Acupuncture for patients with chronic back pain.
Article 5: Effects of acupuncture versus ultrasound in patients with impingement syndrome.
Article 6: Randomised trial of long term effects of acupuncture for shoulder pain.
Article 7: Effectiveness of acupuncture as adjunctive therapy in osteoarthritis of the knee.
Article 8: Improvement in fibromyalgia symptoms with acupuncture.
|
