ACUPUNCTURE AND PAIN RELIEF
Acupuncture has been treating pain for several thousand years in China and other Asian countries. Many of the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) techniques for treating pain actually come from the martial arts. In old China martial arts beginners were required to learn simple healing techniques so that they could treat fighting partners they injured while, as well as fixing their own injuries.
Acupuncture treats many other issues so if you are not considering acupuncture for pain relief I invite you to read through the rest of this website to see if acupuncture may well address your specific health concerns.
In the United States it is estimated that typically 70 to 75 percent of acupuncture patients are looking for acupuncture for providing pain relief. Acupuncture works for many types of pain: chronic and acute pain, orthopedic pain, nerve pain, range of motion pain, migraines and headaches, and other pain typically related to muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Statistically 90 percent of pain treatments by acupuncturists are related to back pain or neck pain followed by shoulder pain, knee pain, ankle, feet, or hand pain as the most common ailments.
Back pain includes related sciatica and buttocks pain, both of which typically have positive pain relief outcomes from acupuncture treatments. One of the treatments that acupuncture excels at for relieving pain is finding and releasing trigger points in muscles such as the piriformis muscle which is pain that can mimic sciatica pain. Trigger points are taut, band-like nodules in muscles capable of aggravating pain.
Because acupuncture can be effective in pain relief the U.S. military has trained medics in Battlefield Acupuncture (BFA), a 5-needle placement in each external ear into specific auricular points to treat acute and chronic pain. This technique geared for military deployment has been adopted as a rapid, safe, and quick pain relief. The Department of Defense committed a Joint Incentive Fund for $5.4 million to train thousands of health care providers and validated the effectiveness of the BFA technique with many clinical trials. So one might says acupuncture for pain relief has come full circle from ancient Chinese martial artists and warriors to the modern American military.
