Back Pain, Back Pain and more Back Pain
One of the things I currently focus on is back pain and related disorders such as sciatica. Some statistics show that at least 50% of people have back pain of some sort. Actually it is quite easy to know. Go down the street and do a brief survey of 50 people and we should be able to arrive at some number. It is probably close, or may even be higher.
Recently I've been treating a lot of back pain and sciatica patients. Most of these patients are either physically active individuals or have physically demanding jobs. As a result, their back muscle and tendon structures become weakened over time. When muscle becomes fatigued it actually tenses up and gets irritated. All the surrounding structures become irritated too. When left unattended the problem can escalate to very painful levels. Sometimes the pain is above the pelvic bone, sometimes the pain if around the pelvic bone and sometimes the pain goes all the way down to the leg. Everybody is different.
A lot of patients are probably interested to know how effective acupuncture is for back pain. Based on my experience with patients, extraordinary circumstances aside, most patients walk out of my practice and return to their work in 4 visits. That is about 1.5 to 2 week period. The most severe patients, the ones who look like they have been hit by something massive, limping into my office or hunched as they slowly drag themselves in(or get dragged by someone), usually get stabilized at around 8 visits. But some of them respond unusually well to acupuncture, and can walk straight up after the 1st treatment, just like the patient I treated the other day.
The interesting thing I also see in some patients is that in the course of treating their problem, some of their other non-back pain related issues get resolved too. That is because in the process of treating back pain the acupuncture needles are actually simultaneously adjusting the entire body as well. So it is not surprising that one of my patients the other day told me that her digestion seems more stable while another one told me she didn't get her migraines during her period that month; and I hadn't even began to treat her migraines yet!