How Many Acupuncture Visits for Treating Lower Back Pain?
How many acupuncture visits for treating lower back pain? isa common question asked by me for many back-pain sufferers that come seekinghelp in my acupuncture office in Ridgewood New Jersey.
There are several factors that go into answering thequestion of “how many acupuncture visits for treating lower back pain?
What is the Cause of lower back pain? -Disc or muscle?
Severe pain caused by a disc herniation for example requires more acupuncture treatments to successfully reduce and eliminate pain than say a back-spasm situation. The cause of the back pain is a major factor in determining how many visits you will need.
Is the lower back pain only affecting the muscles or is itaffecting the disc. 85% of pain episodes are due to muscles ligaments andarthritis only a small percentage of patients have herniated disc and even asmaller percentage that require surgery according to most orthopedic doctors.
However, the more that is involved in your back pain, the longerit can take to treat the problem. Disc problems can take longer than musclespasm as a general rule.
How long have you had the back pain?
If you have a history of your back “going out” or if youdeveloped back pain only once with no history of back pain in the past, it canmake a difference between the amounts of acupuncture treatments needed. Generally, people with a history of lower backpain, may need more treatments. This canhappen if there are years of chronic spasm set in place in the muscles so themuscles have a “memory” of spasm that has taken years to develop. This is why thepain gets aggravated more easily. The history of back pain makes the pain morechronic and therefore possibly needing more treatment than a fresh short-livedinjury. These lower back pain types typically have had aggravation of theirlower back pain “going” out from time to time, sometimes horrifically, to thepoint where medication and even cortisone injections were employed in thetreatment of the pain.
Does anything help alleviate your back pain?
Listening to what triggers your back pain and whatalleviates back pain in the intake. People whose back pain is worse withstanding can have more nerve like problems. Numbness and shooting like sciaticapains mean the nerves are affected, not just the muscles.
Also are there any positions or remedies that alleviate the problem at all. Things that can alleviate back pain show that the back is more amenable to acupuncture and need fewer visits. This points to a more minor type of a back-pain problem than those that do not get alleviated with any remedies.
Positive tests on a Physical Examination
During an initial evaluation of your lower back pain, I checkthe nerves using special orthopedic tests that hone in on specific nerves,reflex testing, and muscle testing. If any of these tests replicate the pain,then we can pin point the problem. Ialso look for spastic tight muscles that cause you to say “ow” or flinch inpain. We are looking to find out much of the problem is a muscle problem, anerve problem, or a disc problem or a combination of all three. Taking the timeto go through these non-invasive movements of your body gives me a lot of databefore any treatment is started. It can help me answer the question “how manyvisits” because it uncovers what is actually causing the pain? Spastic muscles?Disc? Nerve? People with no positives on any of these orthopedic tests may showa more minor type of back pain and thus need less care than those who get moreof these examination movements coming up with more responses and triggering ofpain.
Severity ofPain
Generally speaking, HowMany Acupuncture Visits for treating Lower Back Pain?, we must factor in theseverity of the back pain. If your pain is severe, I mean mind-numbing and seriouslyinterfering with your life, then more acupuncture is needed to treat this atthe onset. This is important in initially controlling the pain. Treating two orthree or even four times a week for 2 weeks, initially, can really double yourresponse. It is important to treat more frequently at first, so as to get thepain down from 100% to a 60-80% in those first two weeks. If that can be donethen acupuncture can be reduced to twice a week to get the pain reduction thatyou are really looking for.
Rate of Response
Another way we can gauge how many acupuncture visits youneed to treat your lower back pain, is based on your rate of response totreatment. If you are responding quickly, regardless of the cause of the pain,then you will need fewer treatments than if you responded more slowly. Thissounds simplistic, but the proof is in the pudding and is extremely helpful in determiningyour rate of response and the best way is to find out how fast or how slow yourrate of response is. This can help the acupuncturist gauge how many visits youwill need after the “trial run” is over.
If you are not responding at all, which means you are seeingno pain relief whatsoever, more testing should be done to see if you have astructural problem that is compressing the nerve such as degenerative discdisease or severe spinal stenosis. Acupuncture needles can overcome pain, reduceswelling on the nerve. Acupuncture cannot help work around a structural problemthat needs to be fixed surgically. This last case is rarer than most bodypains.
Pain Re-aggravation!
Finally, we need to find out what you are doing to aggravateyour pain. Do you constantly engage in your workout routine that aggravatesyour lower back? Lack of stretching your back. Sitting or standing for long periods at yourjob can shorten muscles and create spasms to the lower back? What otherrepetitive motions are you doing that could be damaging and hurting your back.Uncovering what you are doing to aggravate your back also factors into thenumber of visits you will need. I had a body builder come in for lower backpain. He was obviously worsening his lower back pain with the weight liftingbut he could not seem to give it up. I told him, he can be treatedsuccessfully, but he would have to stop squatting and deadlifts for a while. Herefused. This simply meant we were going to do a lot of relief work, until hecould stop those exercises. Treatment for him was obviously longer as a result.
Getting enough acupuncture treatments to do the job
Finally, an overlooked factor in treating back pain is getting enough acupuncture to do the job. If your pain is above a 5 out of 10 and the pain occurs on a daily basis getting treated 3 to 5 times a week is way better and more effective than treating only once a week. You will get the best results from acupuncture if you don’t wait for the pain to reassert itself to the same levels. This requires more frequent treatment at first and as the pain dies down, less treatment later. The key to successfully treating the lower back pain is to treat regularly and consistently so we can get the body’s natural anti-inflammatories into the back area. And we need to do this regularly, to get pain levels down fast. If you committed to two to four weeks of consistent acupuncture which means three times a week, you will more than double your results. People who try “a session” are really not helping their backs. The acupuncture needles, signal to the brain to enhance blood flow to the lower back to pump your body’s natural anti-inflammatories in the area repair the local area, reducing the pain. Treating more frequently at first will help you to need less treatment later on. It is the frequency of treatments that can quite down pain more significantly than sporadic treatments. The momentum of treatments causes the pain to be treated more effectively.
To answer the question, How many acupuncture visits for treating lower back pain? you have to weigh in on the factors mentioned above.
Pain is a strong motivator to get people to try things they normally wouldn’t have considered doing in the past. But when you are desperate for some relief, you start to think out of the box. If you are suffering from pain and you would like to try a more natural, non-drug approach, feel free to call me or email me to see if I can be of help to you. Stop living with your pain and get pain-free. I look forward to speaking with you. If you’d like a consultation, we can set up a consultation to see if this is a good fit for you. Call now at 201-444-7150 or email me at integrativeacupuncturecenter@gmail.com.