This section is explaining frequently asked questions in clinics.
Why do I have past pain after treatments?
During treatments. lots of patients might be noticed past pain.
As you can see side of picture, onion has shells. Most of outside shell is recent injury. Deep inside of shell is representative of old injury. After you are treated recent injury, you might be feeling old injuries.
Why am I sensitive to acupuncture needles?
Human body has millions nerve ending on skin. Those nerve endings are picking up lots of information to your brain for preventing damage of your body. Anyhow, even though an acupuncture needle is very sharp and thin, usually 0.20~ 0.25 mm(shaft size) and tip is sharpened with special machine, your acupuncturist couldn’t avoid puncturing those nerve endings. However, some patients are more and less sensitive than other patients.
How long do I need treatments?
Many patients area sking this question. We recommend you that you need to clear/treat your problem until you can manage yourself. For rule of thumb, we thought that you can manage your pain when your level of pain is below 3 out of 10(initial pain when you start treatments).
And you might have many areas of pain.
For example, if you want to catch fishes in a pond, how do you catch fishes without fishing net?
Answer is you need to take water off from pond until you can catch fishes with hands.
If water of pond is too many or pond is big, it takes time to get water off from pond.
Therefore, same principle is able to apply to your treatments. For example, you have low back pain at sacrum area after you lifted heavy things such as big pots 6 months ago. Since then, you felt pain, however, you are not treated properly. At first time, you are injured at sacrum area. Injured area is weak, so you are not much using those area. Eventually, other areas surrounding sacrum area is getting working hard. Other areas are also getting damaged and weak. Later on, another areas are also getting damaged and weak. So you have three areas damaged.
For example, you had five areas to be needed treatments as above diagram.Treatment is until you can manage your problem by yourself. When you are treated, your practitioner treat you the first painful area. Therefore, you would have most beneficial from treatment. After that, your practitioner would like to treat you the second painful area.
Can I stretch during treatment?
Most of patients are asking about stretching during treatments. My recommendation is you should wait until your treatments are finished.
The reason is that you don’t know where is muscle spasmed and when your muscles are spasmed, muscles are very strong and powerful, therefore, it is very hard to stretch spasmed muscle. And when you stretch, you are stretching weak area, for example, musculo-tendonous junction. Therefore, you have another damaged area. So you have to wait until all problems are gone and healed. After all muscles are normal tone and healed, you can stretch without any damages.
Early treatment always better for saving time and pain
If you are injured your back as an example, most of patients doesn’t come to clinic for help. They are coming to clinic later when they are feeling more painful than before at the point of area of pain and severity. The mechanism of spreading of pain is as follows.
If you are damaged one area, you feel the pain on local area, however, damaged area is weak than other area. That area isn’t working properly. So other surrounding area might be working harder than before injury. Eventually, overused areas are getting damaged. First damaged area is getting wider than first time damage. Finally you got two damaged areas. If you don’t get treatment properly, two damaged areas are weak and not functioning properly, so now surrounding other areas are overworking and getting damaged, for example, four areas are damaged.
Therefore, if you are coming to clinic for help earlier, it is always good for you.
Recycling of Needles
Recycling of needles are past history. There is no any more recycling of needles more than 20 years ago. All needles to use is pre-sterilised, and single time using needles. You don’t need to worry about cross infection between peoples. After needles were used, they are disposed immediately.
Every professionals have their own diseases
For examples, pianists have carpal tunnel syndrome than normal people. Because they are using fingers more than usual.
Dentists also complainted low back pain
If I have some pain after treatment, is it normal, even if I had no pain before?
Many patients are asking above question. When a patient came for her shoulder problem of restrictions of movement such as abduction and flexion, her problem has been for a while.
When I checked her shoulder, her rotator cuffs, especially her infraspinatus muscle, was very hard and tight. Her infraspinatus was showing muscle spasms with scar tissues.
When you are over-using your muscles, muscles might be damaging such as tearing micro fibre of muscles, leading to inflammation of muscle, that inflammation irritates local nerve, causing muscle spasms. Also muscle itself makes muscle spasms for protecting by themselves.
Muscle is very strong. So it is very hard to relax muscle by stretching, massage, pressing.
When you are stretching muscle or using muscle with ignoring problems, muscle itself is very strong, so you can’t stretch muscle and you are stretching weak areas than muscle such as musculotendonous junction, leading to another damage at another area. Therefore , problem is getting wider area than first damaged area.
As you can see above diagram, inflammation is getting to degeneration with time going on, degeneration is meaning scar tissue formation. Scar tissue has no nerve and no blood vessel, and it is pulling local tissue. Therefore, you don’t feel any pain at all, and you feel just numbness and tight feeling from surrounding tissues.
When patients get treatment, treatment helps your tissues going to reverse processing from degeneration state to inflammation state. That meaning is scar tissue is changing to inflammation tissue which has nerve and blood vessel due to regeneration process.
Therefore, patient can feel pain back as before you have when tissue is inflammation state.
Pain Threshold
Everyone has different pain threshold.
Above diagram is showing 2 kinds of pain threshold. Patient 1 is high pain threshold than patient 2. You can test your pain threshold by using some stimulus to your skin. Patient 2 can feel pain easily when stimulus is getting higher than patient 1.
In clinic, some patient are easily feeling pain when they have any damage of their body. So these patients are able to protect by themselves from further damage by looking for treatment. However, these patient group are sensitive when they have acupuncture treatment. Acupuncture treatment is using acupuncture needles. Acupuncture needles are very sharp, thin, and smooth. And skin of human body has very small nerve ending, so we can’t see it.
Why do I have pain at another area, even though I feel better at original painful area? It looks like that pains are moving around.
You might have pains at several areas, however, human body designed that it lets you know only first painful area.
When I get treatment, why do I have some emotion feel such as sadness, tearing, etc?
It is quite normal. Most of patients are noticed that emotions are coming back with acupuncture treatments.
Private Health Fund Rebate
If you joined private health funds, you can get rebates from your health funds. We installed HICAPS in clinic. Therefore, you can claim your rebate of private health funds immediately after treatments. Most of private health funds are joined to HICAPS. You can find out those private health funds joined to HICAPS as web page https://www.hicaps.com.au/private_health_insurers.
The amount of rebate is depended upon your contract with your private health funds. Therefore, we don’t know how much you will get rebates. However, HICAPS terminal will let you know how much you would get rebates. Usually, calendar year is used for rebatable time period. After 31 December every year at 01 January, your full available rebate amount is restored.
After you claimed your rebate, we’ll issue you receipt for your evidence of claim.
Please ask your private health funds about your rebates, if you have any inquiries.
Payment Options
EFTPOS Facility
We hava a EFTPOS facility. Therefore, you can pay by card on spot after treatments by Paywave and/or insert card.
Cash
We prefer card payments instead of cash. However, we accept cash as well as your convenience.
Also you can accept credit card payment via phone with your card details.