My Personal Experience with Pain, Inflammation & Acupuncture

Recently I fell while doing box jumps. I fell backwards on my lumbar vertebrae, then it rippled up and I hit my cervical vertebrae on the ground. Experience has taught me what certain injuries feel like, so I knew nothing serious happened, except I was going to be in a lot of muscular pain in a short amount of time. I went down the list of Eastern and Western home remedies, and in 2 hours I was in pain by C7 T1 and my muscles were very stiff. Time for the needles... I obviously cannot needle my neck accurately and there was already too much inflammation in the area. This is a scenario I see often in the treatment room. Occasionally a patient will receive needles directly in the area they have pain. More often than not, needles are placed distally in another part of the body. This is to not add any more inflammation to the injured site as well as nourish the bones and tendons and muscles at the same time. With channel theory, an acupuncturist can use points along the channel of the injury to move the inflammation and move the pain. For my personal injury I needled myself in multiple points around my ankle and wrist that were chosen based on movement diagnostics, as well points along one of the Water meridians that is associated with the back. Those points were on the foot and the calf. I was in neck pain from a neck and back injury and not a single needle was placed there.

There are times when the injury site is treated and that is the beauty of Acupuncture. We treat the individual according to who they are.