Whenever a patient asks about the effectiveness of acupuncture in treating post-operative pain, I think about Richard Nixon, the New York Times, and China. While it may seem random, we actually have Richard Nixon to thank for the widespread use of acupuncture in the United States, and it all began with an emergency surgery.
During his presidency, Nixon reached out to China, a country with whom the United States had frosty relations. He was planning to visit China, and his advance team went there to work out the details for the visit. A member of the press corps, James Reston, who wrote for the New York 
Times, went to China to cover the excitement surrounding the upcoming meeting. However, Reston came down with a case of appendicitis and had to have emergency surgery in Beijing. While he was recovering, Reston was given acupuncture for post-surgical pain, and later wrote about his experience in the New York Times. Reston’s article came to President Nixon’s attention, and as a result, the US began to sponsor doctors to visit China and learn about acupuncture and Chinese medicine.
Nixon’s initiative after his visit to China in 1971 is considered the event that opened the gates to the use of acupuncture in the United States. Doctors began to study acupuncture treatments, and Western scientists initiated studies on its effectiveness. Today, almost 50 years later, we’re confronted with a crisis caused by over prescribing and overuse of opioid medications, which claims over a hundred lives in the United States every day. In slowing the tide of this emergency, the role of acupuncture may be more important than ever.
A common starting point for opioid addiction is surgery. Ninety percent of patients receive opioids after surgery, and ten percent of those patients will use these drugs long term. However, as a way to reduce opioid use post-operatively, health care providers are looking for drug-free ways to control pain. In addition, the majority of patients want alternatives to opioids. One of those alternative options is the use of acupuncture.
In 2016, researchers conducted a review of studies on the effectiveness of acupuncture in treating post-operative pain. They concluded that patients who were treated with acupuncture post-operatively had significantly less pain and used less opioid analgesics on the first day after surgery than those who didn’t have acupuncture.
Scientists have determined that acupuncture is effective for treating pain in a number of ways. It increases the circulation of opioid-like neurotransmitters in your brain. Acupuncture decreases inflammation locally, where the needles have been placed. Additionally, it’s theorized that the slight traumas that the needles create close nerve gates which prevent pain sensations from traveling to the brain.
In the clinic, we see a number of patients who are recovering from surgery. In addition to dealing with pain, they are often seeking treatment to regain their energy, decrease inflammation, restore their range of motion, and speed the healing process in general. Through the use of acupuncture combined with electric stimulation, Chinese herbs, heat therapy, and dietary recommendation, we are able to develop a treatment plan that can effectively help them speed up the recovery process.
Your tendons are bands of thick and fibrous tissue that holds your muscles to your bones. Tendons are strong and able to withstand heavy loads, but they can become injured and painful. Tendon injuries are frequently misunderstood and frustrating to deal with, both for the patient and their practitioner. One reason these injuries are so difficult is that they seem to take forever to heal. However, a second reason is that tendon injuries are often improperly diagnosed and treated.
Whiplash causes 
Fibromyalgia isn’t considered to be an inflammatory condition, nor is it rheumatic. While the symptoms fluctuate from day to day, it doesn’t tend to get worse over time or cause physical degeneration. While diagnosing Fibromyalgia can be complicated, it’s primarily based on pain and/or tenderness at specific points on the body.
headache, and ending with the feeling of a shadow headache, or feeling completely depleted. Many migraine sufferers can identify triggers that set off their headaches, such as scents, foods, dehydration, low blood sugar, stress, and even the resolution of stress. Interestingly a large percentage of people report suffering from migraines on the weekends—a time when the stress of the week has lifted. Sometimes a combination of factors may set off your migraine, which makes it more difficult to pinpoint the exact trigger.
In Chinese medicine, a sinus infection is always considered to be a kind of blockage, as in Western biomedicine. However, the Chinese make a little more distinction when it comes to diagnosing and determining how to treat this condition. At the most superficial level, sinusitis always involves a diagnosis of phlegm, but there’s usually more to the picture than that. Phlegm plus cold often presents as stuffy and clogged sinuses, but not necessarily an infection. In this case, you would not be running a fever, and if you are able to blow your nose, the phlegm is likely to be clear or white. Phlegm plus heat is a straight up sinus infection. The mucous will be yellow or green, you are likely to feel like you’ve been hit by a bus, and in many cases you may be running a fever.
Some people are more prone to developing Gout than others. Risk factors for this painful condition include having a family history of Gout, being overweight, being over the age of 45, and having other health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or renal disease. In Western biomedicine, the first line of treatment for Gout is dealing with the pain through the use of NSAID’s such as ibuprofen. However, if you suffer from frequent attacks of Gout, there are other medications available to help stabilize the levels of uric acid in your body.
A couple of years into my cold weather running craziness, I began to struggle with shortness of breath. Whenever I was physically active, regardless of the temperature outside, I felt like I had an elephant sitting on my chest. To make a long story short I had developed exercise-induced asthma. It was my body’s way of telling me to lighten up on my lungs and ditch the icy workouts.
So why does a rib injury hurt so much? First, because so many things are attached to your ribs—muscles, tendons, cartilage, ligaments, and fascia. And second, all of those body parts that are attached to your ribs move when you breathe, laugh, sneeze, or blow your nose. Like a bellows or an accordion, your rib cage expands and contracts every time you breathe, and when your ribs are injured every breath is painful.
example, rashes that are very red are associated with some kind of heat in your body; pale or light rashes are considered cold, and those that are blistered or moist would be diagnosed as damp. The bad news is that you can have a combination of these, such as shingles in which the rash is very red, itchy, and blistered. In that case, you would be diagnosed with a combination of wind, damp and heat. Frequently rashes can be treated with Chinese medicine through a combination of acupuncture, and herbs.