When your back aches, every movement feels like an ordeal. With this chronic type of pain, even taking a simple breath may send spasms spiraling through your body. Needless to say, the quality of your daily life is impaired severely.

Centuries-Old Eastern Medicine Treatment

If you are suffering from agonizing back pain, you may be ready to explore acupuncture, an alternative treatment that many consider highly effective. After an introduction to this centuries-old practice in Eastern medicine, back-pain sufferers have finally experienced otherwise elusive pain relief. To promote healing and treat injury and disease, acupuncture involves the insertion of needles into well defined sites on the body, referred to as meridian pathways.

Stimulation of Body’s Natural Painkillers

Acupuncture prompts the nervous system to release beneficial chemicals in the muscles, spinal cord, and brain. The stimulation of nerves, muscles and connective tissue activates the body’s natural painkillers and increases blood flow. As a result, the perception of pain is altered.

Increased Healing Abilities and More

Some of the benefits of acupuncture include the following:

• Improved energy and biochemical balance

• Increased natural healing abilities

• Promotion of physical and emotional well-being

• Prevention of illness

The number of acupuncture treatments required varies among patients, depending on each person’s condition. A couple of treatments per week for an extended period may be needed for patients to experience back-pain relief. A few visits or a handful of treatments may help prevent recurrences in others.

Respected Organizations Endorse Technique

After controlled trials, The World Health Organization has recognized the use of acupuncture as an effective treatment for low-back pain and many other conditions including the following:

• Headaches

• Knee and neck pain

• Muscular disorders

• Sciatica

• Sprains

Several reports have supported the use of acupuncture for back-pain relief. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services refers to clinical practice guidelines, which the American Pain Society and the American College of Physicians released in 2007. Acupuncture is described as “one of several complementary and alternative medicine therapies physicians should consider when patients with chronic low-back pain do not respond to conventional treatment.” At Non-Surgical Orthopaedics, Dr. Arnold J. Weil has extensive acupuncture training for musculoskeletal and other conditions. For more information about acupuncture, please call our office at 770-421-1420.