A patient with the age of 30s came to my clinic for low back pain. Her low back hurt with bending forward and backward. She was also suffering from a severe headache from the back of her neck to the back of her left eye for 3 days. She took medication, but the headache didn’t get better. She had had a chronic headache since she was a child almost every day.
When I checked her body, she had a lot of painful points between shoulder blades and her left buttock. After removing all the painful points with 2 needles on her head and left low back, her headache was gone. After some touch-up treatment, I had her stand up and check her back. There was no pain in her low back with bending forward and backward. Since she had a headache in the back of her eye, I was planning to use another acupuncture point which was usually used for such a headache at the end of the treatment, but it was not necessary. I think that her headache comes from the tightness between her shoulder blades and continuous acupuncture treatment helps improve her chronic headache from her childhood.
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There are 2 types of chronic joint pain.
One is the joint pain coming from the injury in the joint. This is the case that acute joint pain becomes chronic joint pain. For example, after you sprained your ankle, pain in the ankle continues for more than a month though the pain goes up and down. Another is the joint pain gradually appearing without a specific injury in the joint. For example, the elbow has been painful even if you didn’t fall down or hit your elbow, or you didn’t play tennis or golf right before the pain started. Both types of chronic joint pain cause or are caused by blockage of energy flow in your body. The blockage of energy flow appears as a form of pressure-pain or tightness in the other part of the body and the joint itself. For example, when you have chronic knee pain, in most cases, there are pressure-pain or tightness in your low back and buttocks. In my practice, knee pain is sometimes improved by only releasing these pressure-pain or tightness without treating the knee itself because the knee pain is considered as caused by tightness of low back or hip joint. However, in the case of the joint pain coming from the injury in the joint, the joint is often necessary to be treated directly because this type of chronic joint pain often has the blockage of energy in the injured joint. Let me give you another example. In the case of elbow pain, treating pressure-pain or tightness between shoulder blades often improves elbow pain. That means tightness of the neck and shoulders causes the elbow pain and removing the blockage of energy flow appearing in this area leads to the healing of the elbow pain. In my acupuncture practice, I usually release the pressure-pain connected to the joint pain within the treatment. In the above elbow pain’s example, tender points between shoulder blades and around elbow disappear after the treatment. So surprisingly you should not feel tender on the points where were tender or painful before the treatment when I press the points again. I think this kind of instant result or phenomenon doesn’t happen other than acupuncture. I don’t say your joint pain will be fixed by one treatment, but I think you will feel improvement after every treatment.
Major causes of high blood pressure are:
(1) Overconsumption of salt When you take too much salt, the density of the salt in the blood goes up. To dilute the density, water in the blood increases, the pressure to the wall of the blood vessel increases and blood pressure goes up. (2) Contraction of the blood vessel The blood vessel loses the flexibility with unhealthy lifestyle habits like smoking or drinking, or aging, and becomes narrow. Since blood flows through the narrowed blood vessel, the blood pressure goes up. Let’s check the risk of high blood pressure How many clauses are applied to you?
If more than 4 clauses are applied, you need to be careful of high blood pressure. When you don’t eat breakfast, you feel stress of starving and that tightens the sympathetic nerve that controls the blood pressure. People who eat breakfast less than twice a week have 36 % more risk of brain bleeding, compared to people who eat breakfast every day. According to a data, sleeping for10 to 12 hours tends to cause obesity so that 6-7 hours sleep is recommended. Food effective to improve high blood pressure Try whichever you can do. (1) 20 pieces of peanuts with skin per day The skin of peanuts contains polyphenol which has the effect to expand the blood vessel. (2) A glass (200 ml) of 100 % grape juice 3 times a day 100 % grape juice also contains polyphenol so that if you drink it every day, lowering blood pressure is expected. (3) A table spoon (15 ml) of Vinegar every day Acetic acid contained in vinegar has the effect to expand the blood vessel and lowers blood pressure. You can drink watered-down vinegar and it is also effective to use a table spoon of vinegar for cooking. Exercises effective to lower blood pressure Shaking hands and feet (Fig. 1) Shaking hands and feet loosens the tension of the muscle, expands the blood vessel and is effective to lower blood pressure. It is effective to do this exercise for 1 minute 3 times a day, morning, noon and night. Pain is essential to us because pain is a warning signal. Pain informs us that there is imminent danger or abnormality and we need to avoid the danger.
For example, in the case that you step on a nail, you feel pain and step back quickly to prevent the nail from puncturing your foot more deeply. Therefore, this type of pain is on our side. When you injure somewhere in your body, our body transmits a signal of pain and causes inflammation including redness, heat, swelling and pain. This is considered as acute pain. If this pain signal continues for a long time, our nerve memorizes the pain and the pain becomes chronic even after the injury is cured. So it is important to control the pain at the beginning of the injury not to make the pain chronic. That is why it is okay to use painkiller (anti-inflammatory analgesics) or icing in the case of acute joint pain with severe pain. Why Painkiller should not be used for chronic pain? Because painkiller is not effective against chronic pain. Painkiller prevents the production of the substance to dilate the blood vessel and contracts the blood vessel, preventing the blood flow. Our body wants to provide a lot of blood to the diseased area to supply nutrition that improves the injury. But continuous use of painkiller prevents the improvement of blood flow and delays the cure. Therefore, painkiller is proper to be used for acute pain for a short period of time and should not be used for chronic pain. The same is true of cold patch (topical anti-inflammatory analgesics). |
IchiroThis Blog is for a memo of my clinical realizations, information about health I have learned recently and update information. Archives
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