​I teach this exercise to my patients when I have found the tightness in the lower back muscles. The exercise is very easy and takes only 10 seconds and you don't need to do it multiple times. Once a day is enough. Please try this exercise after checking how tight your lower back muscles are according to the instruction. Please watch the following video for this exercise.

A woman with the age of 60s came to my clinic with pain and tingling sensation in her left inguinal area, low back, buttock and thigh.
 
4 weeks ago she had visited a doctor and had been diagnosed with shingles, and a week later she had visited another doctor and had been diagnosed with Meralgia Paresthetica. She had tried to cool, warm the area of the pain, apply CBD cream and take pain killers every 4 hours, but there had not been any improvement.
 
She was referred to my clinic by her niece who was my patient, but very skeptical about acupuncture.
 
Her symptom showed up when she lay on her side during sleep. After the first treatment, pain and tingling sensation in her left thigh disappeared and she could sleep on either side, but she seemed still skeptical and was thinking that it got better because one week had passed.
 
After the second treatment, pain and tingling sensation in her low back, buttock and inguinal area disappeared mostly as well. At this point, she seemed like trusting the effectiveness of acupuncture treatment.
 
I finished her third treatment telling her to come back for 2 more treatments to prevent reoccurrence.

​ Dangerous Low Back Pain
 
It is said that many of low back pains are caused by stiffness or scars of the muscles, but there is a dangerous low back pain caused by the compression of the nerve in the low back, which is a herniated (intervertebral) disc.
 
A herniated disc is the condition that the disc between bones in the low back, which called Intervertebral disc, bulges out and stimulates the nerve, causing low back pain or numbness in the leg (Fig. 1).
 
How to check whether your low back pain is caused by a herniated disc or not
 
(1) Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart (Fig. 2).
(2) Stand on tiptoe for 10 seconds.

If you stagger or your heels touch the ground within 10 seconds, you may have a herniated disc.
 
When the nerve from the back to the leg is disturbed by a herniated disc, the calf doesn’t have strength or feels numb, making difficult to stand on tiptoe stably.
 
Exercise to prevent a herniated disc
 
(1) Sit straight on a chair (Fig. 3).
(2) Bend your upper body forward slowly to more than 45 degrees and return to the original state (Fig. 4).
(3) Repeat 10 reps.

I had been feeling uncomfortable in my right hip joint, but I went out for running and stopped running after I ran 5 miles due to pain in my right hip joint.
 
The next day I felt pain in the hip joint only after a half mile walk and when I’m sitting or lying down, I felt pain in the inside of my right knee and lower leg, squeezing feeling in my right thigh, ankle and top of my right foot.
 
It is difficult to treat yourself because you can’t reach where the cause of the pain is or where you want to needle, especially when the symptom is on your back side. But since the condition was the same on the following day, I decided to start treating myself.
 
After self-acupuncture treatments of about twice a week for 1 month, there was no pain while sitting or lying down, and less pain when I walked, so I tried to run about 3 miles. While I was running, there was no pain so that I thought my hip joint got better, but the next day I couldn’t walk more than a half mile without pain.
 
Again I started treating myself. I continued self-treatment for 2 weeks, but this time my hip joint didn’t get better at all even though I did the same kind of treatments I had done before.
 
When I started to think that I should visit another acupuncturist, an idea came to my mind. I usually put the thinner side of a round-tip needle on an acupuncture point, but I came up with the idea of putting the thicker side of the round-tip needle on an acupuncture point, flipping the round-tip needle.
 
Then I touched an acupuncture point located on the side of my abdomen called GB26 with the thicker side of the round-tip needle, and moved my right hip joint. When I was touching the point with the thinner side, there was pain by moving the hip joint, but touching the point with the thicker side decreased the pain in the hip joint.
 
After that experience, I continued self-treatment, incorporating this method, and the pain in the hip joint gradually disappeared. 2 weeks later I tried to run again about 3 miles, but the pain in the hip joint didn’t happen. Then I tried 6 miles and 9 miles, but the pain didn’t come back.
 
As I mentioned at the beginning, self-treatment is difficult because what can be done on myself is very limited compared to the treatment for others, but it is a very good chance to find better way to treat a patient because I can try something I usually don’t do on my patients.

A patient with low back pain came to my clinic. Checking her pelvis, right side of her pelvis was higher toward the head. After loosening her low back and her right buttock with round-tip needles, I adjusted her pelvis to make the height the same. Right after the treatment, she felt better and when she came back for the next treatment, she didn’t have pain in her low back so that I focused on the other symptoms and didn’t add the treatment for low back pain.
 
She came back 2 days after her regular chiropractic treatment and she told me that her low back got worse after the chiropractic treatment. She was not able to bend her back backward due to pain. Checking her pelvis, her right pelvis was obviously higher vertically, in addition to being higher to the head. Same as before, I loosened her low back and buttock with round-tip needles and adjusted her pelvis to make the height the same both vertically and horizontally. After the treatment, she became able to bend her back backward without pain.
 
What did the chiropractor adjust?

​Cozy Acupuncture is located in Witch City Mall in Salem, MA, specializing in pain management such as knee pain, low back pain, sciatica, neck pain, shoulder pain, menstrual pain, etc.

If you are suffering from low back pain, give a try to Cozy Acupuncture.
​
Call today to set up your appointment: 617-584-8703
Book now Online

Suhas
​While playing basketball I pulled my periformis (the muscle that moves your leg laterally) that resulted in it clamping down on the sciatica nerve.  The pain was continuous and I could only manage a couple hours of sleep before I had to remain standing the rest of the night, staring out the window.  I had never pursued acupuncture before but I was willing to try anything.  I’d already missed four days of work, visited my doctor, a chiropractor and gone to the ER.  Nothing short of Vicodin provided relief and that was more medication than i wanted to undergo.  Out of options, I decided to give acupuncture a try even though I had no experience with it.  Ichiro at Cozy Acupuncture was able to take me same-day

I was amazed to feel relieved of 90% of the pain after the first treatment.  I felt so good I started on some yard work.  That ended in about ten minutes when an awkward movement sent me crawling back to the couch.  I went back the next day and this time remembered to take it easy afterwards.   I learned that acupuncture is very effective in reducing pain but the underlying healing process will take its time.  Treatment took about 3 weeks and about 8 sessions.  It was of great benefit in helping me get through my day.  Ichiro explained the principles and tools of acupuncture and was very respectful with instructions and contact during treatments.  He was very good at isolating and treating pain points as well as identifying areas that needed treatment that I hadn’t pointed out.  In my experience, acupuncture is highly preferable to medications and their assorted side effects.  I would highly recommend Ichiro for acupuncture treatment especially if you haven’t experienced acupuncture before.  

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​If you are suffering from sciatica even after you have tried various things, we’re here to help! Cozy Acupuncture in Salem, MA specializes in Pain Management.
 
Call today to set up your appointment: 617-584-8703
Book now Online

​Overview
 
The patient is a man with the age of 40s.
 
When he played basketball 3 weeks ago, he felt pain in his right buttock. He started to feel pain from his right buttock to the outside of his lower leg a week ago, went to ER and took prescribed medicine, but the pain didn’t go away so that he visited my acupuncture clinic.
 
The pain at the time of standing walking gradually disappeared. He had severe pain appearing especially around the outside of his right lower leg while he is sleeping, but it  disappeared after 6th treatment.
 
Remaining tightness around his right buttock and the back of his right thigh disappeared after 9th treatment, so the course of acupuncture treatment for the sciatica from his right buttocks to his right lower leg ended at 10th treatment.
 
Acupuncture Treatment
 
The treatment is based on Individual Treatment for Adult.
 
There was weakness in his Liver energy, so I strengthened his Liver energy by using Liver points on his leg.
 
Painful points with pressure were located on his right buttock, around IT band and on Gall bladder and Stomach meridians on his right lower leg.

The number of painful points with pressure gradually decreased and it also became gradually easier to remove those painful points.
 
I only used distal points with round-tip needles to remove the painful points with pressure.
 
As a home therapy, I marked 2-3 points and had him put a penny or aluminum foil on the points for 30-45 minutes every night.
 
Discussion
 
After the first treatment, he felt a little better so that when he went back home, he did gardening and the condition got worse.
 
Before starting the first treatment, I explained him to be careful at the beginning of treatments, but it was not enough. It is understandable that you want to do something more when you feel okay to do that, but that can make the symptom worse and the time of healing longer.
 
But since then, he didn’t do anything making the symptom worse, visited my clinic for follow-up treatments as I instructed and got better as I expected.

 Acute Sciatica (Self-treatment)
 
I have a kind of chronic low back pain, so after a long flight, I had acute low back pain a few times.
 
This time when I woke up, I felt pain in my left low back to left buttock. That made me difficult to bend forward and make posture to wash my face in the sink. When I stood up and bent forward a little, I felt achy in my right SI joint and squeezing pain around right greater trochanter (left hip and buttock). I could walk, though the sacrum area felt achy.
 
Day 1

It is difficult to treat your own low back because the access is limited. That means it is difficult to bring both hands to the low back to find a point and insert a needle.
 
First I decided that I would attach a press tack needle, which was a very short needle (1 mm) with sticker, at a tight point in my left low back (around left Bladder 25) and spent a day.
 
Unfortunately it didn’t improve the condition. I think that is because it is very difficult to insert the tip of the needle on an accurate point where improves the energy flow of the low back on your own.
 
Day 2

I didn’t do anything, expecting my low back would get better naturally, though it wouldn’t happen.
 
Day 3

​Despite expecting my low back would get better, when I got up in the morning, it got worse and the pain was also radiating to the back of my thigh. It became so-called sciatica.
 
Actually I was a little scared, thinking I would need to ask another acupuncturist for a treatment, but instead I decided to treat my back seriously.
 
Obviously it is difficult to treat my low back lying down, so I treated myself sitting down and standing up.
 
I gave up treating my low back and buttocks directly and I couldn’t use points on my legs because I couldn’t bend forward, so I decided to use points on my head to treat low back.
 
I put my left hand on left SI joint where I felt achy and tried to find a good point which released the achiness in the back of my head using my right hand. To confirm whether the point I found was releasing the pain or not, I sit down and stood up repeatedly and once I found a good point to release the pain, I inserted a needle at the point.
 
I repeated the same method for pain in the left buttock, around grater trochanter and in the back of thigh. Then I retained 4 needles on my head. That made it much easier to stand up and sit down without pain, but I noticed that some uncomfortable feeling or achy feeling moved to somewhere I didn’t have any pain before such as the inside of my left thigh or left side of my torso.
 
At this point I realized that I hadn’t done the root treatment which harmonized whole body. After I used a point on Gall bladder (GB 40) to harmonize Spleen energy, the uncomfortable feeling disappeared.
 
After this self-treatment, there was still a little bit of achy feeling on left SI joint with a certain movement, but I was able to move more quickly without pain and bend forward or make the posture to wash my face in the sink without difficulty.