many people seek out acupuncture to treat pain.  that is probably the number one problem that most of my patients have is some sort of pain somewhere in their body, and they have heard that acupuncture is good to treat pain.

well, they’re right.  acupuncture is excellent to treat musculoskeletal pain syndromes (basically pain in the muscles, bones, and joints).

how does acupuncture treat pain?  what is pain, in chinese medicine?  

according to chinese medicine, there are energetic pathways that traverse the body, from torso to hand, from hand to face, from face to feet, and from feet to torso, to recognize the major pathways.  whenever there is a blockage of energy (or Qi) in these pathways, the result is pain at the area of blockage.  the blockage could also be of Blood and would result in pain that is of a different quality than Qi blockage and hence, a different treatment strategy.

so the treatments are aimed at removing the blockage of energy.  

so how does one go about removing the blockage and restoring the energy flow?

there are a number of ways.  perhaps the most intuitive way is to needle the site of the pain.  personally i don’t start with this method for several reasons.  first, although it sounds intuitive, it is alot more difficult than you would think.  say you have a ‘knot’ in your neck.  that knot may actually be made up of hundreds of muscle fibers running mostly up and down but some slightly diagonal.  which ones are tight?  there’s no way to know.  and these muscle fibers are very much like fibers in that they are thin.  and perhaps only a few of the tight fibers are contributing to the pain.  this makes for a very difficult target.

needling the area of pain, i find, sends energy to the site of the needle.  it may move qi and you may feel something happening but you don’t know what, and you can’t find out what until the needle has been removed.  you cannot move whatever is in pain if there is a needle stuck in it.  

so you don’t know what effect the needle is having until you pull the needle out.  and what if there has been no change?  then you just wasted your time and your patients’ time and money.

what i like to do instead, and my patients are always surprised by this, is use points that are as far away from the area of pain as possible.  so for the back pain example, i would use points on the feet and head, or maybe the hand.

how do i know what points to do?  generally, what i find works for me is to find out specifically which meridian is affected.  where is the pain located?  if it’s on the low back, then it’s probably the urinary bladder meridian.  what points do i select?  the first and last points on the meridian.  in the case of the UB meridian, the first point is very close to the eye, so i like to use UB-2 instead, paired with UB-67.

another thing i like to do is use the wrist-ankle points.  basically, there are 6-acupuncture points around each ankle and wrist corresponding to the different organs.  if you put your heels together with your feet pointing out to the sides and draw a line from each point upwards, that is the zone of the body that point covers.  in the example of low back pain, i would use the UB ankle point with the tip of the needle pointing upwards. with the needles in place, i have the patient move the affected body part in ways that normally produce the pain.  this way, i can tell if the needles are doing their thing.

for lateral epicondylitis, or tennis elbow, i would use either the lung or large intestine meridian wrist point with the needle pointing up the arm.  or maybe both points, depending on exactly where the pain is.

using these two point selection schemes for pain has worked very well for my patients so far, and has immediate results.  patients leave my office with residual tightness in the area, but little to no pain.  after a few days, the tightness subsides.