Alternative Medicine: Acupuncture

Yithian said:
With needles in both.
Click to expand...

img-thing


little_hellraiser.jpg
 
I'm glad to say that back troubles are unusual for me, but I will take a look at that link - thanks.
 
My ex once qualified for free acupuncture (it's a long story) so we both turned up at a room in Burton on Trent .. I wasn't expecting it but they offered it to me for free so I thought .. f**k it ! , why not ? and we were off ..

From memory, I had four spider leg thin needles in each ear, the seventh one going in was the only one that hurt a little and the lady doing it asked if I was a smoker, I was/am but I was underwhelmed by her reveal because smokers smell of cigarettes.

The session took half an hour, I was told it would seem time would pass quicker and that was the case .. my mobile went off at one moment and I nearly forgot I had these things in my ear.

I have to admit though, afterwards, I did feel more relaxed .. in a 'weight lifted off your shoulders' and 'walking on air' kind of way .. perhaps it works, perhaps it was a placebo effect or perhaps I was just relieved to have eight needles taken out of my head.
 
I did have acupuncture for a muscle spasm in the 'ahem' upper leg' It works, as the osteopath explained, as the body's own defence against something being stuck into it, is to relax the muscles around the are to facilitate the objects egress, like a splinter. So as a way of breaking a spasm, it's quite effective. It worked.
 
I have a book given to me by said in-law that explains the philosophical underpinnings of traditional medicine. the problem is that it's an English translation of a Korean translation of old-fashioned Chinese and is almost incomprehensible.
 
Coal said:
I did have acupuncture for a muscle spasm in the 'ahem' upper leg' It works, as the osteopath explained, as the body's own defence against something being stuck into it, is to relax the muscles around the are to facilitate the objects egress, like a splinter. So as a way of breaking a spasm, it's quite effective. It worked.
Click to expand...
Those spasms are, er, perfectly natural.
 
I've had acupuncture for specific fibro sites.

Have never felt them going in. There is def pain relief in areas of longstanding tension and pain.

Not saying why though..... but fewer painkillers for the next 3-7 days.
 
If anyone has any questions about dry needling I can pass them on to Mrs. Tribble. (She'll be taking another course in it soon so can draw upon her colleagues'/instructor's knowledge if she doesn't know)
 
Tribble said:
If anyone has any questions about dry needling I can pass them on to Mrs. Tribble. (She'll be taking another course in it soon so can draw upon her colleagues'/instructor's knowledge if she doesn't know)
Click to expand...

Does she practice on you?
 
and there was me, thinking dry needling was just really sarcastic teasing....well, you live and learn...
 
The exciting field of "battlefield acupuncture" involves training soldiers and medics to perform what amounts to a "theatrical placebo" involving jamming glorified thumbtacks into fellow soldiers' ears and leaving them there until they fall out.

The practice, which just keeps on expanding, is based on a handful of small, badly flawed studies. Meanwhile, the best evidence is that acupuncture itself performs no better than a placebo -- and that's the stuff that doesn't involve having a fellow soldier ineptly pierce your ear on the battlefront.

What could possibly go wrong?!

I could find no publications in the peer-reviewed medical literature to examine supporting it. Regarding the second claim, I looked up the actual study. (It’s what I do.) Let’s just say that the study is…underwhelming. Yes, it was a randomized controlled trial looking at 54 patients with acute sore throat. However, it was unblinded, a feature that renders any acupuncture trial pretty much worthless scientifically because it doesn’t account for placebo effects. Indeed, it’s a pragmatic trial. That means that the intent is to determine effectiveness under “real world” conditions; hence, no sham/placebo controls. In real medicine, pragmatic trials are used to assess the real world effectiveness of treatments already shown to be efficacious in randomized controlled clinical trials ...

https://boingboing.net/2017/03/29/weaponized-placebos.html
 
Frideswide said:
Have never felt them going in. There is def pain relief in areas of longstanding tension and pain.
Click to expand...
A few yeas back I had a few needles in the very top of the RHS gluteous max. to relieve a painful spasm. The osteopath said the principle is that the body's reaction to an object inserted into a muscle, is to the relax the muscle to allow the object to work its way out. so the needles simply provoke a reaction which relaxes the muscle breaking the pain-->spasm-->pain loop.

I'm sceptical about acupuncture in any woo-woo sense, but that made sense and it certainly worked. I suppose it might have been the placebo effect, but I wasn't expecting it to work.

Now if I feel a spasm coming on (stop it), I jam a finger knuckle into it and hold it as long as I can and then quickly remove it, which usually does the trick. The idea is to stretch the spasming muscle a little by holding pressure unit it tires a little and relaxes slightly. The sudden removal of the knuckle leaves the muscles relaxed which breaks the cycle. Once or twice Mrs Coal has used an elbow on the larger muscles in the lower back for me.

I should say this can hurt...and I've a couple or three long-term recurring spasms the result of injuries to lower and upper back so I'm used to them and know when it might work to self-treat and when it's time to visit a professional osteopath.
 
It's not often one hears of acupuncture causing deeper injury, but it can happen ...
'Extremely Deep' Acupuncture Treatment Ends Up Piercing Patient's Lungs

An acupuncturist in New Zealand has accidentally pierced a young woman's lungs, after inserting needles in her shoulder region too deeply.

The 33-year-old patient was seeking treatment for an arm and wrist injury, which was causing pain on top of her shoulders and a shortness of breath. To treat her, the acupuncturist decided to place two needles in a nearby acupressure point, known as Jian Jing or Gallbladder 21 (GB21).

As the needles were going in, the young woman expressed pain, and later, she told the Health and Disability Commissioner that the insertions felt "extremely deep". Both needles were left in for half an hour, before they were then rotated and removed.

It was at this point that the patient felt a sudden onset of pain in her right chest and a shortness of breath. She told her acupuncturist she felt "stuffy" and she was having a strange and painful 'air' sensation around both her lungs.

The patient was sent home to rest up and take it easy, even though she was still feeling "very uncomfortable" at the end of treatment.

Later that night, the woman's husband took her to the hospital, where she was quickly referred to the emergency department. According to the New Zealand Herald, doctors here diagnosed the young woman with bilateral apical pneumothoraces, which is a lung collapse on both sides of the body, due to a top-side puncture.

In subsequent legal proceedings, it was ruled that the acupuncturist was to blame. The provider was in breach of health code, according to a commissioner, because they did not fully explain the risks to their client and they did not receive written consent. ...
Click to expand...

FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/extremely-deep-acupuncture-treatment-ends-up-piercing-patient-s-lung
 
EnolaGaia said:
It's not often one hears of acupuncture causing deeper injury, but it can happen ...


FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/extremely-deep-acupuncture-treatment-ends-up-piercing-patient-s-lung
Click to expand...

Mrs Tribble (who is trained in acupuncture) says you always have to be careful working with certain areas. Can be easy to puncture a lung if you don't pay attention. There was a case recently in which a middle-aged man died after acupuncture to the chest - it's suspected a needle pierced the heart sac.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/j...-akupunkturbehandling-nal-stacks-in-i-hjartat

Think the case is still ongoing.
 
In the past I have had treatment for lower pack pain with little success, though I persevered. More recently, I tried acupuncture again (a different practitioner) for a strained shoulder and all it did was exacerbate the situation.
As a result, I've come to the conclusion that I'm just not responsive to it. On the other hand, I know some who've had great success and relief after their treatment.
 
Many years ago my GP prescribed a course of visits to a chiropractor because of my long-term back pain. This was before my underlying illnesses were diagnosed.

The chiropractor did some acupuncture in my back... it was agony every time he took the needles out because my muscles were spasming so much holding onto the needles. I only went for the 6 sessions (as prescribed by the NHS of course) but it didn't do any good and I wasn't sorry when it ended.

He also 'manipulated' my back and neck with very severe, sudden movements (I don't know the term). I cringe at that, now that I have my HMS/EDS diagnosis because I don't think that was probably the best thing for me... in other words, I think it was probably quite dangerous. I know I left each session feeling worse than when I'd gone in!

So anytime 'acupuncture' or 'chiropractor' are mentioned I wince slightly. As others have said, it possibly works for some, but not all patients.

Certainly in my case it was only prescribed because they didn't know what else to do. A specific diagnosis might have been a better start.
 
I may as well give my experience of alternative medicine. After years of stress I had a major physical breakdown, which resulted in three major problems: a chronic back problem, tendonitis in one ankle, and a horrendous attack of conjunctivitis (something I had controlled for years using a traditional remedy referred to by Edgar Cayce). Blood tests and painkillers didn't help. My doctor's response to my having hurt my back was, "I'm sorry to hear that," as she held open her surgery door. A specialist who studied the X rays of my ankle seemed unable to figure out what was wrong. He walked out of the room as I was trying to explain my symptoms. He came back in and I just managed to tell him where the pain was, whereupon he beamed and thrust his finger into that place... The painkilling cream he prescribed worked fine for a few weeks, until my ankle began bleeding from multiple sites. A Moorfields outstation expert, after a long session of tests, told me that my left eye had few tears in it and my right none at all. "Nothing can be done about it," she declared confidently. The eye drops that were supposed to help dried up after ten minutes.
By chance I came upon a Chinese herbal shop in Edgware, and amongst a list of the conditions that could be treated was conjunctivitis. But the herbs were expensive and I was unemployable. I agonised over it for a week then thought I had nothing to lose. The consultation took about one minute, a look at my tongue and taking my pulse was enough. The doctor said I had been under stress and it had damaged my liver, which was responsible for producing tears. She asked if I felt stiff in the mornings and I said yes (I could hardly move about for an hour after getting up). I had only mentioned my eye problem, so I was impressed and agreed to buy a week's supply of herbs.
Took them home and cooked up a cupfull -- tasted like a mixture of mud and boot polish. Then I spent the evening at my neighbour's place, where, despite the thick haze of cigarette smoke, my eyes didn't feel as bad as usual. When I went home I looked in the mirror. My right eye looked weird. There were lots of odd reflections in it. Suddenly I realised that there was moisture in the eye, first time for maybe 12 years...
So I stuck with the herbs and got better over the next year.
My fiancee told me one day that I should try healing for my back. She said there was a group who visited our area (Pinner) every week. I said I would try it and did nothing, being rather sceptical of such things. But she made an appointment for me and along I went. And the first session seemed to have immediate effect. So I carried on going there weekly. One day -- I have told this story quite a few times -- a new healer gave me a tough and vigorous back massage, right where it hurt (lower back). When I opened my eyes at the end I asked her about it and she denied she'd even touched my back. Sitting down afterwards I noticed that the chairs all had enclosed backs, so it was indeed impossible to touch anyone in that position.
Another thing that happened frequently was the sensation (with another healer whom I subsequently went to because he had his own healing room at his house) of someone pressing their fingers into the point between my big toe and the next toe. If I opened my eyes the sensation vanished. This must have happened 30 or 40 times.
I now had a new Chinese doctor, a very advanced lady who was expert in both Chinese and Western medicine, and she kept advising me to have acupuncture on my ankle. I was a bit wimpy and the idea of having needles shoved into a sensitive spot did not appeal. But I agreed.
The process worked unbelievably well. Within about 3-4 weeks the pain had all but vanished and the previously grey and unhealthy ankle was covered with huge arteries -- in fact she said continuing would be risky as the arteries might get too big. But I had noticed something interesting. Besides the 4 or 5 needles she put in my ankle she always pushed one into the space between the big toe and the second toe. Just the same place that the mystery fingers targeted during my healing sessions. I asked why she did that and she explained it was on the major acupuncture meridian.
She was always claiming that Chinese medicine was the result of systematic observation and experimentation over centuries but I became sceptical. They used around 300 different herbs, from various parts of possibly thousands of plants and trees, and that would have required more than centuries of testing. Wouldn't many of the herbs have poisoned or killed off the patients? Another thing was that sometimes she would push a needle in, then hesitate, pull it out and reposition it. When I asked her why she did this, she admitted that she "just knew" when it had missed the meridian.
So I am in no doubt that both acupuncture and healing do indeed work, in my case much better than Western medicine, and that there are probably connections between the two. My herbal doctor has now retired, but she told me that if she had a traumatic injury or a known disease, she would use Western treatments; if a systemic problem, she would use the herbs.
 
Thie newly published research from a randomized clinical trial indicates acupuncture was effective in treating a particular type of persistent indigestion.
Scientific Study Shows Acupuncture May Be Effective for Easing Indigestion Symptoms

A 4-week course of acupuncture increased self-reported relief and improvement of symptoms for patients with a subtype of indigestion known as postprandial distress syndrome (PDS). The effects of acupuncture persisted through the 12-week follow-up without symptom relapse or rebound. Findings from a randomized clinical trial are published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

PDS, a condition characterized by bothersome early fullness after eating and upper abdominal bloating, places a substantial burden on the health care system because of its high prevalence in a relatively young patient population and the chronic relapsing nature of its symptoms. The condition is reported to have a great negative effect on health-related quality of life, which makes finding an effective treatment imperative. Previous studies on acupuncture have been limited by the small number of participants and poor study quality.

Researchers from the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine randomly assigned 278 Chinese patients with PDS to 12 sessions of acupuncture or sham acupuncture over 4 weeks and then compared the proportion of patients in each group who reported “extreme improvement” or “improvement” in their stomach symptoms as well as the proportion of patients who experienced complete resolution of their symptoms. They found that a significantly higher proportion of patients in the acupuncture group experienced overall improvement or elimination of their symptoms than in the sham acupuncture group. The improvement was sustained for at least 12 weeks after the final acupuncture treatment and there were no serious adverse events among the study patients.
Click to expand...

SOURCE: https://scitechdaily.com/scientific...be-effective-for-easing-indigestion-symptoms/

Overview of Published Study:
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M19-2880
 
My last Osteopath had been taught 10 Acupuncture techniques but only used 3 regularly that were tried and trusted. He explained that he could relax my neck muscles with massage within 3 minutes or with needles within10 seconds, by knowing which nerves to stimulate. I let him proceed with some fiercely long needles which were stuck into the back of my head, there is very little flesh on my skull so yes I could feel them. In fact I didn't notice when he took them out, the unpleasant sensation persisted - but it undoubtedly did whatever it was meant to do. Even my GP at the time was happy to prescribe Acupuncture as a treatment for troublesome nerves.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top