Why is the acupuncture may help you for your neurological disorders?
1. regulating muscles’ tone and/or relaxing muscles
Acupuncture is stimulating somatic nerve system to reflex skeletal muscles/ligaments/tendons for restoring normal muscle tone (regulating muscle tone: for example, too much tight muscle to relax muscle and too lazy muscle to tight-up) , clearing muscle spasms, and relieving muscle cramps. Therefore, this mechanism can relieve 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 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 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 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 check your lower back by X-ray, CT, and MRI scans to find out what is wrong.
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, 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.
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. The acupuncture treatment may be one of efficient and effective therapies to treat this kind of problem.
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 inflammation of parotid gland when you had some occasions such as sleeping at cold place, standing long time with heavy cold windy area. 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.
Sciatica
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 swollen tissues jamming the median nerve. Eventually, there are unusual sensations such as tingling, pins and needles sensation, 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.