Back Pain  
Therapeutic Methods 

If you're like four out of five American adults, you will experience some form of lower back pain during the next year. Maybe you'll feel it after sitting at your desk all day. Or you'll start to ache after a hard workout at the gym. Maybe you'll just wake up with it, or perhaps you'll feel a twinge when you bend down to pick something up off the floor.

Lower back pain in U.S. is ranked second only to headaches as the most frequent location of pain. After the common cold, it is the most disabling problem for working adults. Unfortunately, most people will come to an acupuncturist as a last resort to get rid of their pain.

Mainstream medicine can't really do anything for a patient. Your options are pain medication or surgery. Statistics show that only 60% of patients feel better after surgery. Sometimes because of the scar tissue from surgery, pain might actually get worse. For example, a person with a herniated disk in the lower lumber region might go for surgery to correct the disk that is hitting the sciatic nerve, which originates at the lumbar disk 2 area. The disk situation might be corrected, but because of bulky scar tissue now hitting the sciatic nerve, the pain might be worse.

For back pain due to injury, I would use hand manipulation and acupuncture. Sometimes a single needle point stimulation is effective to stop acute pain. I might insert a needle at a certain spot and ask the patient to gently move his back until the pain goes away. The points used are under the nose or on top of the hand. If the pain persists, I would ask the patient to lie down for acupuncture treatment on the whole body. I would also prescribe herbs to the patient.