
Acupuncture Needle fears from a mechanic’s assistant – Bergen County and Ridgewood, NJ – True Story!
Here’s a true story. I had to bring my car in to my trusted mechanic at Tom’s auto shop in Bogota New Jersey. Tom is an old school type of guy. Being raised in a traditional Italian home, Tom projects a no nonsense type of guy. He is honest, a little tough, he sometimes rides me for the things I do to my car (all in jest of course)! I trust him because he will tell me straight out what my car (and personal) problems are! Thankfully, my car only needed oil change and a new rear side view mirror! I damaged it by hitting the back of it when getting too close to a traffic cone, left over at night. I was driving at night to Mount Vernon, I had inadvertently left my laptop at my account’s house. So when taking the drive up to him that night, I heard a whack and saw my right rearview mirror fold. I didn’t even notice the problem until the next day! In my defense, I was driving through a construction area, where the road narrowed to one lane, on a winding road, on the route to his house. Turns out, that I lost the backing to the mirror, so I wasn’t off the hook! Hence the need for a new mirror to replace the half broken mirror!
One of the mechanical assistants, is around 22 years old. He is very polite and meticulous in his work. We started talking and at some point during the conversation, he asked me point blank, “What kind of work do you do?”. I replied “ I work as an acupuncturist!” He responded, “You know I am suffering from some back pain.” I said “You should definitely see me about it”. I use acupuncture to increase blood flow to the muscles and nerve impulses to the nerves to shut down the pain being sent from your brain to your back muscles. He then leaned forward, and with a slight pause in his voice he asked “But you use needles, right?”
I had to ty to show him how small the needles were. Since I didn’t have any needles with me, I asked him if he had a small pin that was lying around. He did, and he showed me one. I showed him that the needle that acupuncturists use area about 20X smaller than that. He looked at me incredulously. He wasn’t buying it. When I explained it to him again he still couldn’t get that dumbfounded look off of his face. The kind of pained look you have right after you stub your toe but the pain hasn’t kicked in yet. After a few more seconds, he looked up at me, unhinged from his frozen stupor and said “weird” .
Needle fear is the single most common reason why more people don’t try acupuncture. My mechanic friend is not alone! But with a few facts many people’s eyes light up with enlightment and see that acupuncture needles are NOT the same as a hypodermic needle.
Acupuncture needles are very different from needles used for injections. Injection needles are hollow and are larger and thicker, because they allow fluid, like blood, to pass through them. They must punch out a hole in the skin. By contrast, acupuncture needles are much finer, smaller, and are solid, so they can easily pass through and into the skin.
