Does acupuncture hurt?

Many people never had acupuncture in their lives, and wondering the same questions:

Does acupuncture hurt?

Well, here I am to explain to you about the pain level of acupuncture.

First of all,

Should acupuncture hurt?

Well, acupuncture should not be painful.

In the dermis layer of skin, there are many sensory nerve endings, and these endings are responsible for pain sensation.

But the needle puncture through the dermis layer fast enough, there shouldn’t be any pain.

Why?

Because if the needle go though the skin fast enough, the sensory nerve endings are not stimulated. The damage is so quick that the nerve believe what happened was an illusion. It is fooled.

this is why the acupuncture shouldn’t be painful during the first insertion.

What should you feel during acupuncture? 

Or the rephrase the question:

Should there be any sensations? 

Yes, there should be.

Why? and What kind of sensation?

The following sensations are normal with acupuncture:

1. 酸–Soreness (like muscle sore after use)
2. 麻–Numbness and electrical shock
3. 胀–Pressure
4. 重–Heaviness

The feelings are very awkward, wired feeling, sometimes it is feeling you never have before.

Why we are looking for these sensations?

In TCM theories, these sensation indicate ‘Qi’ had arrived, and when ‘Qi’ flows in the meridians, disease will be treated and condition can be recovered.

Let’s talk about the anatomy and physiology

Soreness — could happen when the needle stimulation in the muscle tissues, allowing the tissue to get ride of garbage

Numbness — there are two type of numbness I discovered
1) you sit on your leg for an hour, your leg start to loss sensation
2) then you stand up and free up the blood flow, blood rushing into your leg, numbness with tingling

Electrical Shock — probably hit a nerve. you may feel the shock then your body part jumps

Pressure — bloating, pressure, or whatever you call it — this is the weirdest feeling you could feel in your body parts, so far I am not able to interpret what caused it, but surely there must be some explanation.

Heaviness — in TCM it means there are too much dampness (湿), but in anatomy, I believe it is muscle tissue

Why someone may feel pain during acupuncture?

The patient need to figure out if it is pain, or if it the weird feeling. Also, if the feeling travels down or up the body.

If it is just pain, not moving, then it means the ‘Qi’ is not flowing; if the ‘Qi’ doesn’t flow, the acupuncture wouldn’t be effective for this session.

Sometimes the pain are occuring because the needle hit a vein. Arteries will dodge away from needle, but vein will just cause pain. After removed the needle, this location may bleed a bit.

If the pain travels up or down along the meridians, to other parts of body, then the condition can be treated faster. Usually this is not pain, but one of the above weird feelings.

Should I tell my therapist about my feeling?

Yes. It is a very good idea to tell your therapist what you are feeling, and they will be able to adjust accordingly.

Basically, if an acupuncturist just insert a needle in your body and leave you, there was no feelings, then this treatment will not be very effective. 

Barb is an administrative staff, hard working on a stressful job, over 8 hours a day in front of computers for the past 15 years. She came to massage to relive her stress in her neck and shoulder, and her last massage was 4-5 years ago.

She had her massage, and she liked it.

“I should come a long time ago”

She said it is very comfortable and she really like it.

But a week later I got a call from her,

“I felt terrible the next day after the massage,
it was like beaten up by someone for the next three to four days.
But after that, I felt much better. “

When I asked her about the detail of the pain, it is like the pain after exercise too much.

Why does this happen?

Here is my answer to:

Why does it hurt after massage

Some masseuse are not trained, and they could use too much pressure on patients, causing bruises under the tissues. This is not the case I am talking about.

Assuming all massage therapist are well trained, they will not use excessive pressure on someone who is not able to take it. Therefore there shouldn’t be damage to tissues after treatment.

Why does it hurt?

Well, we need to take the entire treatment to the basic of Anatomy & Physiology of muscles, blood vessels, and other tissues.

Regular muscle tissues have arteries and veins run between muscle fibres. The arteries will bring nutrients and oxygen into the muscle tisues, muscle tissues use the nutrients and oxygen to work, and produce metabolic waste, such as lactic acid, cabonic acid, and veins take the waste away from the muscle tissues.

When a person who had undergone a long period of stress, especially the ones with very stressful work / life / school, and never had massage for at least 6 months, their muscles may be very tight, pinching on the arteries and veins. This causes a lot of metabolic waste build up. You probably know lactic acid is a by-product of lack of oxygen. when the arteries are not able to bring more oxygen to the tissues, lactic acid build up goes up in the muscle tissues; when the veins are blocked, these garbage can’t get out, potentially causing muscle soreness.

This person chose to do a very nice massage; the therapist not only release the tension of the muscle tissues, but also squeeze the garbage out of the muscle tissues.

Arteries will be able to bring more nutrients and oxygen to tissues — a good thing

But the vein can’t keep up on the sudden excessive amount of metabolic waste in the blood stream.

The accumulation of lactic acid and suddenly released into blood stream is very similar to the exercise pain. When you exercise in an anerobic exercise, you will create a lot of lactic acid, which could turn out to be very painful in the next few days. This is the same type of pain these patients experienced.

How to prevent it?

You can easily prevent it by take warm shower and drink a lot of warm water, to allow the blood circulation to take the metabolic waste out of your body.

Why warm? Warm water will dialate blood vessels and allow the blood flow easier.

If you have pain after your massage, it is best to ask your therapist right away. 

Shoulder pain

Yang is an University of Waterloo student came to my clinic. His complain was shoulder pain.

Most of his time at school is to sit in front of computer. His pain is at the base of his neck, between neck and shoulder.

This is a very common issue for students. In addition, I find the computer engineers, accountants, and many other professionals have the same issue.

When they come to me, the most common Questions always are:
1. why does it hurt?
2. How can I make it better?

Well, I will try to explain it by Anatomy & Physiology and Chinese Medical theories, also, I will give some tips of self-treatment.

Anatomy & Physiology

There are some information about spine curvature for proper posture. This is a very important reason that we shall take considerations. However, this is not my focus for this conversation.

Most of the times, pain is from the muscles, the spinal curvature is not the immediate concerns at the time.

There are two muscles involved: Upper trapezius muscle and levator scapulae muscle.

These two major posterior neck muscles attach to the base of the scull and the upper part of scapular. Their functions include extend the neck (bend backward), rotate the neck to the side (turn head to one side), as well as lifting the shoulder up (shrug shoulders).

As a normal posture, the levator scapulae and upper trapezius muscles shall be in their neutral state; meaning they are not lengthened, nor should be contracted.

However, when you sit there for 8 hours a day 5 days a week, without a proper posture, either slouching in the chair, or have your hands on the keyboard too high, your shoulders are elevated. This means that your upper trapezius muscle and levator scapular muscles are shortened, for the time been.

If the muscles are shortened and contracted for prolonged period of time, they may have reduced blood flow. A contracted muscle will require more blood supply; however, reduced blood flow will cause the muscle complain to the brain: I am hurting in the shoulder.

Chinese Medicine

The Chinese Medicine always involves two concepts:
Excessive
Deficiencies

In this case, both excessive and deficiencies may occur.

For example, people may experience pain in the upper back between the shoulder blades, that is Qi deficiency. They may experience lack of energy, easily tired, and feeling of pain.

Since Qi is not able to move the blood and other matters in the body, they may also experience blood stasis (c-blood stops flowing properly) and Qi stageration (Qi stop flowing properly).

When the Qi and c-blood are stuck, it causes pain.

This is what happened.

At the end, they always feel better when they have a wonderful treatment of massage and acupuncture.

Bonus Tips: What you can do by yourself

There are always some stretches you can do to relax the muscles.

1. Pause your work every 30-40min, walk around, move around your neck (rotate, flex, and extend), move around your shoulder
2. Stretch both Upper Trapezius muscle and Levator Scapulae muscles on both side

To stretch these two muscles, you need to rotate your head to left side (or right side) 45 degree, put your left (right) arm over your head, relax your arm and allow your left (right) arm to drop by gravity.

Variations:
1. to stretch upper trapezius muscle, you can keep the right (left) arm straight by its side, and you will feel the upper trapeziusm muscle been stretched;
2. to stretch levator scapulae muscle, you can just put your right (left) hand at your right (left) waist, more like give your shoulder point a little lift, then you will feel the middle angle of your scapular been stretched

(images on the production)

Wish you all have a wonderful healthy work and study!!! 😃

Acupuncture & menstruation

Traditional Chinese Medical Acupuncture can help menstruation

Menstruation -- also called periods

Normal part of a women's monthly cycle

Vaginal bleeding every 28-32 days, last 3-7 days

Many women experience the following undesired symptoms:

Abdominal cramps

Lower back pain

Bloating and sore breast

Mood swing, been irritable

Headache

Fatigue

Menstruation is a normal part of women's regular monthly life. They hate it, but had to live with it. 

However, many women can't tolerate the pathological symtoms accompanied with menstruation.

Well, you may not know this, but 

Acupuncture can help to reduce undesired menstruation symptoms!

Acupuncture can help:

• reduce abdominal cramps
• reduce lower back pain
• reduce bloating and sore in breasts
• help irritability and ease on the mood swing
• reduce headache
• help on the fatigue

When you come to acupuncture, you will expect acupuncture on your

• lower legs
• lower abdominal
• lumbar and sacral low back

Think about it -- how much you can tolerate your undesired symtoms?