What most people know about acupuncture is that it’s good in treating pain. Indeed, acupuncture is not only for treating internal organ imbalance and diseases, it is also very good in treating pain, especially chronic pain.

There was a patient who came to the clinic looking for a solution for her 14 year-old chronic neck pain. Her husband was a previous patient of mine, and was satisfied with the result after acupuncture, so he brought his wife over to me. The patient has had a dull pain in the left side of her neck and shoulders for the past 14 years. She went to many different western medicine doctors, acupuncturists, masseurs….but with no improvement. She saw how her husband had a satisfactory result with his problem after coming to me, and therefore she wanted to give it a try.

The style of acupuncture I perform is the traditional method. That is, I normally select remote acupuncture points for treatment instead of local points. So for the problem in her left neck and shoulder, I selected points on her right ankle. The patient was surprised because she had been to many acupuncturists before, but I was the only one who did not insert the needles in her left shoulder. Of course, during the session I had to answer her questions about how acupuncture works, but when I inserted the fifth needle, the original spot with the pain was gone!! Instead, the pain moved to a nearby location. What I did was follow the pain and selected another acupuncture point on her right ankle and inserted another needle. The pain disappeared again, but she started to have a mild headache. Whenever a new symptom pops up, I check the location of the new symptom and insert another needle to continue to strike the pain. It’s still in her right foot. This time, the headache disappeared and no new pains popped up. She was so happy because it’s been so long since she last experienced the feeling of having no pain!! And all of this happened right after I inserted the last needle in less than 5 minutes.

I tell her that the pain might come back a little bit later, but after about 5 to 10 times of treating, the pain will gradually become less and less and eventually it will disappear completely.

The result was so amazing for her, that she and her husband started to ask where can they learn acupuncture. That is the best compliment for me. Of course you can learn acupuncture skills in school, but it also takes a lot of practice and learning different styles of acupuncture to shape your own style of acupuncture. We do see how fast its results can be by this wonderful case, and I sincerely hope for those people who suffer from or know people who suffer from chronic pain to try acupuncture. It does not use any added chemicals, has no side effects, and is really efficient.