Pain is really stressful events. You are suffering pain.
What is pain? Pain is natural mechanism of body to let you know for protecting yourself from any dangers, and/or accidental injuries. It is as like alarm to let you know for protecting house from any intruder or burglary. Therefore, it is protecting system of our body from any dangers.
Pain is “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage”(IASP definition of pain https://www.iasp-pain.org/publications/iasp-news/iasp-announces-revised-definition-of-pain/).
In medical diagnosis, pain is regarded as a symptom of an underlying condition such as fractured and/or cracked bone, any inflammation, ulcer, and cancer.
Pain motivates us to withdraw from damaging situations, to prevent further damage from damaging situations, and to protect a damaged body part while it heals, and to avoid similar situation in the future.
Most of pain resolves once harmful stimulus is removed and the body has healed, but it may persist despite removal of harmful stimulus and apparent healing of the body.
BACK PAIN
This phase is coming from the ABC news “Back pain is the leading cause of disability and lost productivity in Australia and globally.”(https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-08/price-of-pain-doctors-medical-billing-investigation-four-corners/103675900)
It is terrible experience if you have the back pain especially at the low back. The reason why is that low back is affecting the whole body. Because we start to be walking with upright posture since we are very young when we are such as one year old. Low back has to support the lower body weight and the middle and upper body weight.
Again, it is coming from ABC news article.
“Professor Harris says MRI scans pick up abnormalities in most people aged over 40.”
He said that “The more things you find, the more likely it is that you’ll end up with somebody wanting to treat or correct that abnormality — even though correcting that abnormality might not help the patient because it might not be associated with their pain.”(https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-08/price-of-pain-doctors-medical-billing-investigation-four-corners/103675900)
So, we might be thinking where the pain is coming from for proper diagnosis of the pain. It might be coming from the muscular such as muscles, tendons, ligaments, joint capsules, and bursa. It might be coming from joint such as facet joints, disc. Also it might be coming from the inflammation of local muscles, nerves, and joints.
Phantom pain
Phantom pain is even if the pathological organ/body parts were removed, patients are feeling same pain as before pathological organ/body parts were removed.
Clinically, we saw few cases of phantom pain.
In a case, a patient is coming to clinic for abdominal pain after cholecystectomy which is the gallbladder removal surgery. After surgery, patient is still complaining pain. Even though doctors are checking, surgery is good and no problem at all.
The reason why patients would feel phantom pain is even if the pathological organ/body parts were removed, your brain memory is not cleared yet. Therefore, your brain thought that pathological organ/parts were still there.
Treatments are resetting brain memory, which is there is not any more pathological organ/body parts.
Acupuncture may help you with this kind of pain you have.
Neuritis
Neuritis is meaning inflammation of nerve. It can be peripheral nerve inflammation. What is peripheral nerve system? It is “a network of 43 pairs of motor and sensory nerves that connect the brain and spinal cord (the central nervous system) to the entire human body. These nerves control the functions of sensation, movement and motor coordination. They are fragile and can be damaged easily.” Usually, when you had an experience with fractured bone and/or cracked bone, your doctors concerned your bone fractures and cracks for surgeries and plaster repairing bone.
However, when you had damages of bones, you also might be damaged your soft tissues such as muscles, ligaments, tendons, joint capsules, blood vessels and nerves.
Neuritis may also induce pain such as burning sensation. It is really unpleasant experience. It is coming from nerve injuries, which is it can be due to inflammation due to infection such as shingles, insect bites and/or injuries such as fracture of bones and cracks of bones.
Acupuncture may reduce inflammation of nerves. Acupuncture may help you recovering from nerve damages.
Neuralgia
Quite common neuralgia is trigeminal nerve neuralgia and/or the facial nerve neuralgia.
It is very painful experience from trigeminal neuralgia. It can be coming from the inflammtions ot the infections such as Shingles, Teeth damage, COVID-19, Flu, Common Cold, etc. It is sometimes very difficult to treat those patients.
The recent article(Alfaifi A, Sultan AS, Montelongo-Jauregui D, Meiller TF, Jabra-Rizk MA. Long-Term Post-COVID-19 Associated Oral Inflammatory Sequelae. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2022 Mar 2;12:831744. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2022.831744. PMID: 35310855; PMCID: PMC8924417.) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8924417/ is mentioned about the salivary glands affected by COVID-19 ” The salivary glands were recently reported to be a potential target for SARS-CoV-2 infection due to the demonstrated expression of ACE2/transmembrane serine proteases 2 (TMPRSS2) receptor in salivary glands epithelial cells (Pascolo et al., 2020; Corchuelo and Ulloa, 2020; da Silva Pedrosa et al., 2021; Tsuchiya, 2021).”
First of all, I want to rule out any teeth problems. So, I asked the patients whether to see the doctors and/or the dentists for any investigations or not. If not, I’ll ask the patients to see the doctors and/or the dentists. Even though they couldn’t find out any problems, I’ll check any problems.
Recently, the typical problems from my clinic are the inflammation of the Parotid Gland which may affect the nerves of the facial nerve and the mandibular branches of the trigeminal nerve.
The parotid gland is a salivary gland to relieve the saliva to the mouth at the around ear lobe of both side of lateral face. As you can see at above diagram, the parotid branches of the trigeminal nerve which is communicating with the facial nerve and the facial nerve are embedded in the parotid gland. If your parotid gland is inflammed, the nerves may be inflammed.
Therefore, the inflammed nerve may be causing the pain along the pathway of that nerves. Furthermor, some of patients are presenting the dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and inability towalk without suport from other people.
The acupuncture treatment may help you those symtoms.
Peripheral Neuropathy
Peripheral neuropathy means that the outside nerves of brain and/or spinal cords are casuing the pain such as pain, numbness, pins and needle sensations, and weakness. However, the major concern is the pain. Usually, the patients are complaining about the lower leg and/or foot. Most of the patients had been in their doctor’s clinic for investiging their peripheral neuropathy and they are suffering for years. Usually , they are precripted with the medications of pain killer, anti-inflammatory medications, muscle relaxants, anti-depressants, anti-seizure medications, etc. Even if they are continuously taking those medications, they are still experencing the pains. That is why they are looking for other solutions.
As one of acupuncturist, I couldn’t guarantee your result from acupuncture treatments. I may help you.
From my daily practice, when the patients of periphral neuropathy are visiting by themselves and/or referring from their friends, family members, they are suffering for long times such as a few years.
If their problem is long problem called as the chronic condition, it is usually taking times to clear that problem. Because the area of problem is not simple and not small area. As like bush fire, when the fire in bush is starting, it may be small fire to extinguish easily. But if that fire is not extingusihed at the early stage, the fire is spreading to the other areas. The area of fire is getting wider and bigger area. So, it is taking time to extingusish the fire than the initial stage of fire state. That kind of logic can be applied to your problem.