Acupuncture is best known for providing pain relief. Generally, Pain is broken into two categories for treatment: acute and chronic. Acupuncture can help you find pain relief by doing the following:
- Reducing inflammation
- Improving blood flow to speed healing
- Relieving muscle spasms
- Enhancing mobility and restoring strength
- Releasing your beta-endorphins to minimize pain
Acute Pain Relief with Acupuncture
Acute pain often comes from some sort of accident or injury, is sudden in onset, and often includes some kind of redness, swelling, tenderness, and/or inability to use the affected area. In these cases, it’s usually ideal to use acupuncture for muscle pain treatment to relieve muscle pain associated with accidents and injuries.
Muscle soreness, chronic low back pain, tension headaches, myofascial pain (and resulting myofascial pain syndrome), muscle tension, shoulder pain, tense muscles, and even immune system issues can result from these types of traumatic injury. Through dry needling manual acupuncture methods, our acupuncture group has experience knowing which acupuncture points to target to relieve muscle pain through Traditional Chinese Medicine. Trigger point acupuncture for pain relief might work for you.
Solstice Natural Health can treat acute pain that is the result of:
- Motor Vehicle Accident
- Workplace accident
- Sports Injury
- Post-surgical Pain
- Pain related to Childbirth
Treatments for acute pain are often done close together and may include exercise recommendations and instructions for the use of topical herbs and/or liniments. All treatment plans are custom and tailored to your needs. Insurance billing is available.
Acupuncture for Chronic Pain Relief
Chronic pain is any pain that persists for weeks, months, or even years. Chronic pain relates to injury (the injury heals, but the pain persists) or comes from a complex internal or unknown source. In 1997, the National Institutes of Health officially recognized acupuncture as an effectual pain treatment.
One problem many patients face is they’re referred to just one common treatment method for muscle pain, so they don’t see a significant difference in pain reduction. Patients often see reduced muscle pain when targeting myofascial trigger points and inserting needles into specific points on various muscles. Our acupuncture needling may help patients of all ages, including elderly patients, and we use hair-thin needles to create a relaxing process.
If you’re experiencing chronic lower back pain, myofascial pain, neck pain, or more, I recommend you give this type of trigger point treatment a try. Chinese medicine can help you reduce muscle tension and improve the energy flow in your body, rebalancing it and bringing good health.
For patients living in or near Portland, I commonly treat the following types of common forms of chronic pain and related symptoms with acupuncture:
- Headache and Migraine
- Arthritis
- Carpal Tunnel
- Fibromyalgia
- Low Back Pain
- Neck Pain
- Joint Pain
- TMJ Pain
- Myofascial trigger point pain
- Painful Menses
- Nerve Pain
- Chronic Neck Pain
- Tendonitis
- Widespread Muscle Pain or pain of specific muscle groups and muscle fibers
Treatment plans for chronic pain often include acupuncture, herbal medicine, nutritional therapy, mind-body therapy (such as meditation), and stretching exercises to aid the affected muscles and increase pain reduction. I also refer to trusted chiropractors, physical therapists, or DOs when necessary, as acupuncture for muscle pain treatment may work best in conjunction with physical therapy and pain medicine. A combination of therapies can often reduce muscle pain.
Many patients report that a combination of pain medications, Traditional Chinese medicine, and physical therapy can reduce chronic pain in their tender points and general muscle pain, helping their energy flow and leaving them in good health. Current evidence suggests Chinese medicine is an ideal complement to traditional Western therapy and medicine — and it’s a standard treatment that’s been around for centuries, targeting specific points that cause pain to reduce muscle pain.
Many insurance plans cover acupuncture treatment for pain-related issues. We are happy to check your benefits on your behalf. To discover how we can use acupuncture for muscle pain, please contact me or call (503)442-1205 for your free consultation.
