Pain Management
PAIN MANAGEMENT
Pain is a very common reason that clients visit Youngmee and Dahbin at Healing Tree. Pain is an important signal to let you know that it needs attention to heal the area, re-balance the bodies energy and blood flow, and strengthen or loosen the tissues.
Although it may seem like the pain has suddenly appeared overnight, pain actually occurs when the body has tried its best to heal itself, but the damage is too large to handle on its own, or it is gradually getting more and more damaged perhaps due to repeated movements or inadequate treatment when there was an injury to it in the past.
In Eastern medicine, the muscles are so over-worked or tight, that blood doesn't flow properly and stagnates, causing pain. As the muscles, tendons and ligaments continue to stiffen, it also presses on the nerves passing through the muscles which causes the body to register it as a painful sensation.
Pain may also be an indication that your original blood circulation is not very good, or your internal organs may be weaker than it should be and unable to support the body to heal efficiently and properly. This means that even if another person your age, your gender and your size does the same movements as you, you will not be experiencing the same pain issues because there is an internal imbalance which predisposes your body to become injured easily.
Panadol or Nurofen may seem like the easier and cheaper option, but if you really want to resolve what's going on inside your body to cause the pain, and care about your health in the future, Acupuncture is for you.
Common types of pain include:
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Headaches, migraines
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Back pain, slipped disc pain, bulging disc pain
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Neck pain, cervical spondylosis
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Shoulder pain, frozen shoulder
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Knee pain, knee arthritis, meniscus tear, cruciate ligament injury
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Elbow pain, tennis elblow, golfers elbow
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Wrist pain, carpal tunnel syndrome
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Period pain, endometriosis pain, abdominal pain
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Heel and foot pain, plantar fasciitis
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Arthritic pain
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Sciatic pain
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Jaw pain
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Nerve pain
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Post-operative pain
The Science Behind Acupuncture and Pain
While it is certain that there are so many other mechanisms as to how acupuncture works to relieve pain in humans (and animals!), as well as about how the human body works in general, so far, we are well aware of a few of them.
By now you probably know or have heard that acupuncture stimulates the nerves in the body upon insertion. A study has investigated the pathway in which the signals travel, and have mapped it all the way to the spinal cord, and then to the brain where the pain centres are finally deactivated (1).
Acupuncture stimulation also activates a number of the body's own opioids, and improves the brain's sensitivity to opioids (2). In addition, many other biochemicals involved with pain reduction have been found to be regulated or further released by acupuncture, including adenosine, GABA, ATP and substance P (3).
Instant pain relief using the gentle acupuncture treatments make acupuncture a very valuable tool in pain management. Not only that, but acupuncture is also proven to promote circulation in the vessels (4), which supports a key function of acupuncture in the frameworks of Eastern medicine, as well as relaxing or strengthening tissue structures to treat the cause of pain.
(1) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0361923007002729?via%3Dihub
(2) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811909005904?via%3Dihub
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