Why is the acupuncture may help you for your neurological disorders?
1. Regulating muscles’ tone and/or with relaxing muscles
Acupuncture is stimulating the somatic nerve system to reflex the skeletal muscles/ligaments/tendons for restoring the normal muscle tone (regulating muscle tone: for example, too much tight muscle to relax muscle and too lazy muscle to tight-up) , clearing the muscle spasms, and relieving the muscle cramps. Therefore, this mechanism can relieve the strong muscle spasm and/or cramp due to overuse, injuries, trauma, and accidents. This mechanism is very important to relieve your problems.
Muscles are very strong to make a trouble for jamming the nerves. If the muscles which are jammed the nerves are relaxed, the nerves which are jammed are relieved and the nerves’ pain will go away.
For example, many patients are presented at the clinic for the Sciatica which is meaning that the pain is travelling along the pathway of the Sciatic nerve. The Sciatic nerve is coming from L4, L5, S1, S2, S3 nerves from the lower back. The typical problems are the disc bulging out of the specific nerve exit of L4, L5, S1, S2, S3. So, I recommend my patients to investigate your lower back by X-ray, CT, and MRI scans to find out what is wrong via your doctor.
If you have severe problems such as the disc burst etc which might be needed with surgical operations, you might be asked the surgical operation from Doctor. If you don’t have severe problems, usually in case of the disc bulging out, your doctors ask you to have the physiotherapy, and/or the steroid injection, medications such as pain killer, anti-inflammatory medication, muscle relaxants etc. However, they sometimes may not help much.
You have to ask why the disc is bulging out.
Major issue is there are 3 layers muscles near the disc such as the superficial layer, the intermediate layer, deep layer muscles.
As I mentioned that mechanism of the nerve pain, the Sciatica is coming from nerve jamming from the disc bulging out. Why is the disc bulging out? Because the muscles around the disc are spasm due to over-use those muscles. If the muscles are spasm, the disc is bulging out and then the nerves are jammed. So what is the problem?
You have to clear the root problem. The acupuncturist with proper understanding of the patho-physiology and experiences might be helping you.
2. Clearing the inflammation
This is very important function of acupuncture. Acupuncture needles are made by the stainless steel which has a property of good conductivity of heat and electric current. When your local tissues are inflamed by any reasons, the inflammation can cause to develop heat, redness, and swelling on local tissues, called as the inflammatory reactions. Therefore, those inflammatory reaction can cause the inflammatory pain, because the inflammatory pain refers to the increased sensitivity of perception and emotional response to noxious stimuli, that arises from an inflammatory reaction associated with tissue damage (Layne-Stuart and Carpenter, 2022). Under normal conditions, acute inflammation is a protective response by the body to tissue damage or infection, potentially leading to the perception of pain while damaged tissues are being cleared and repaired (Muley et al., 2016). Inflammatory pain can serve as a reminder of a recent injury to prevent re-injury and thereby achieve quick recovery. In general, inflammation management effectively relieves inflammatory pain due to the reduced stimulation of nerves following the resolution of inflammation. However, the chronic inflammation can lead to adverse pain because inflammatory mediators act on pain-sensitive nerve endings by decreasing the thresholds of neuronal excitability and increasing the sensitivity of firing rates, thereby causing peripheral and central sensitization (Prescott and Ratté, 2017)( http://Zhang YH, Adamo D, Liu H, Wang Q, Wu W, Zheng YL, Wang XQ. Editorial: Inflammatory pain: mechanisms, assessment, and intervention. Front Mol Neurosci. 2023 Sep 28;16:1286215. doi: 10.3389/fnmol.2023.1286215. PMID: 37840770; PMCID: PMC10569336.)
When the practitioner put the needles at the inflamed area, the needle
Skin is insulator, so it can’t clear heat naturally, because our body needs the constant temperature 36.5C degree for the biochemical reactions. So, it is good function protecting our body.
However, if our body has the inflammation, it is not good. Because, the heat from the inflammation couldn’t get it off.
Acupuncture needle can go to the area of inflamed area after penetrating skin and then withdraw the inflamed heat from the problem area to outside of the body and dispersing the heat. Therefore, your acupuncturist may ask you to stay for a while for relieving the inflamed heat. Furthermore, when acupuncture needles are taken out from body, needles can make holes on inflamed area for a while, and then extracellular fluid can escape from area of inflammation. Those escaped fluid can cause relief of pressure on the inflamed area. Those mechanism can do clearing inflammation.(Note) Skin is insulator to keep warm our body, however, skin doesn’t help to relieve inflamed heat from inside of body.
Bell’s Palsy
Bell’s Palsy is distressful disease which is one side of face is dropped and numb feeling and/or pain with inability to control the affected side of facial muscles. It is “a type of facial paralysis that results in a temporary inability to control the facial muscles on the affected side of the face.[1] Symptoms can vary from mild to severe.[1] They may include muscle twitching, weakness, or total loss of the ability to move one, and in rare cases, both sides of the face.[1] Other symptoms include drooping of the eyelid, a change in taste, and pain around the ear.”
Interestingly, I have quite some patients are coming to the clinic recently, who are complaining about parotid gland such as pains, Bell’s palsy, sinusitis, and tinnitus. I asked patients about any particular reasons to develop those problems. They’re not recalling reasons. When I asked about bedroom, they are telling me that they are opening windows or using ceiling fans at night in their bedrooms. I understand they’re needed fresh air at night. When I asked them why they are opening windows, they’re telling me for fresh air. However, during the night, outside air is changing quickly and temperature 🌡️ is going down with wind. Even there is slightly opening window, cold wind is blowing inside bedroom and affecting their face especially at side of exposure to air, leading to temperature down and making infection of that side of face, leading to inflammation of that face. Some patients are complaining about pain, numbness, Bell’s palsy, tinnitus, sinusitis. Please shut all windows at night in your bedroom. You can get fresh air from gap below doors and others. Weather is not good at the moment. Please keep warm and prevent any infection. Take care by yourself.
Usually, problem is coming from the inflammation of parotid gland when you had some occasions such as sleeping at cold place, standing long time with heavy cold windy area due to the infection such as bacteria and/or virus. Those inflammation of parotid gland are leading to heat, swollen, tender, redness at local area. If swollen parotid gland is jamming part of facial nerve, you feel tingling sensations of face according to facial nerve distribution. And if facial nerve is jammed totally, you will feel numbness and weakness of facial muscles, furthermore, dropping your lips and eye lids, leading to imbalanced face such as one side of lip is down and other side of lip is going up, and eyelid can’t open properly.
Treatment is clearing inflammation of facial nerve pathway to make facial nerve acting properly. Early treatment is always getting good results quickly. If you are coming to the clinic for treatment at later stage, there is your inflammation getting degeneration which is calcification (bony tissue deposit to local area) and hard. Later-on, your facial nerve may be irreversible to back to normal state. In that case, it is very hard, taking long time to recover to back to normal state even if you have treatments.
I have a case of Bell’s Palsy. Suddenly when he woke up in the morning, he had one side of face dropping, can’t drink water properly. So, he had been his doctor, and he has medication, but after few weeks, he didn’t get any better. Finally, he came to the clinic for help.
I am treating him 3 times a week for several weeks and few weeks for 2 times a week. Eventually, his face was returned to normal. He is quite happy about the result. Always early treatments bring good results quickly.
Dizziness
Dizziness or Giddy is quite commonly seeing in the daily practice. Interestingly, most of the patients had been in doctors for investigating his/her problem. Usually, they are saying that their ears are nothing wrong. From the clinical experiences, those patients are suffering the long time inflammation of the particular nerve called as ‘Vestubular nerve inflammation(Vestubular neuritis)’. If the Vestubular nerve is inflamed, it may be affecting the inlamed nerve is sending the wrong signal to the brain, who is feeling the dizziness with nausea, vomiting, and walking difficulty without help. Why is the vestubular nerve inflamed? As you can see above anatomy, the vestubular nerve is located beside of the facial nerve. The facial nerve is coming from the brain and coming out below the external ear, eventually, innervating the face.
When you were infected by COVID19 virus, Influenza, Common Cold, even though the vaccination sometimes, the Parotid Gland sometimes were inflamed. If the Parotid gland is inflamed, showing such as the signs and symptom with red, hot, tight, swollen, lumpy, the facial nerve inside the Parotid gland is also inflamed.
Sciatica
Sciatica is the pain is a shooting pain from the lower back to the lower leg and/or foot. It is uncomfortable and really jamming nerve, leading to the daily activity.
Piriformis Syndrome
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Carpal tunnel syndrome is sometimes seen at daily practice. Carpal tunnel syndrome is the median nerve is jammed for many reasons. As you can see in the attached picture, yellow lines are nerve going to fingers. For the many reasons, Flexor retinaculum called as transverse carpal ligament are inflamed and/or surrounding tendon sheaths of flexor muscles are inflamed, leading to the swollen tissues jamming the median nerve.
Eventually, there are unusual sensations such as tingling, pins and needles sensation, have to shake the hand, upside movement of the hand, and the numbness feeling of fingers.
Conventional medicine is doing conduction tests for confirming diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome. And there is an option such as a surgical procedure which is opening carpal tunnel and scalping surrounding tissues of the median nerve. Acupuncture may be one of the options you may choose. What I am doing is trying to reduce inflammation at the carpal tunnel surrounding tissues of the median nerve and then returning normal tissues back. Therefore, there may be no jamming of the median nerve.
However, it takes times, depending upon the status such as the acute or the chronic stage. Some patients are reporting the good results with a few treatments, and other patients might be taking times with more number of treatments than the usual number of treatments.
Your acupuncture practitioner might be letting you know how long and/or how many sessions you might be required after the assessment of your conditions.
Peripheral neuropathy
Peripheral neuropathy is quite common presentation in the daily practice. Especially, most of patients are complaining about the lower leg and foot pain. When I checked the patients, I found out that most of the patients had been for a while suffering the certain degree of lower back problem. Interestingly, most of them didn’t complain the pain of the lower back. However, when I palpated their lower back region, I found out that most of them had some problem at the lower back region.
Anyhow, the Sciatic nerve( L4, L5, S1, S2, S3) and the Femoral nerve(L2, L3, L4) are coming from the lower back. So, if you have any jamming of those mentioned nerves, you’ll have the peripheral neuropathy on the lower leg, upper leg, and foot.
If you removed the jamming of those nerves, the peripheral neuropathy will be gone.