Back pain is becoming more and more common within our society and there are several reasons for this. Within Chinese Medicine, all pain is caused by stagnation of energy, blood, or body fluids. Muscles are able to move energy (qi) and blood by contracting and relaxing.

In the past when our society was more manual this happened naturally in our daily living and working. Nowadays most people work at a desk and/ or spend a lot of time sitting in cars. At home we sit in soft chairs for hours in front of the television and have our houses designed so that we rarely have to stretch above head high. However muscles are designed to work. They are designed to contract and relax through a range of movement.

If only a small part of a muscle range of movement is used, then over time muscles shorten and tighten. Stretching muscles will move energy and blood and prevent pain (which, as I have said, is caused by stagnation of qi and blood). If we do not use our muscles fully then they will tighten up. This tightness prevents Qi and blood from moving through the muscle. In time this lack of movement within the muscle will lead to further stiffness. Whilst this stiffness is not a problem it will make the muscle more vulnerable to spasm.

When a strain is put upon these muscles they go into spasm, in some cases this will occur even when the strain is relatively minor such as bending forward to wash your hair or too clean your teeth. In our culture that is unused to manual work it is easy to see that any manual activity such as gardening, DIY and so forth can trigger spasm in tight muscles.

What can acupuncture offer in the treatment of back pain?

Acupuncture works on the principle of moving Qi and blood using needles, they stimulate areas that are particularly congested. Acupuncture is very effective at treating back pain. During an acupuncture treatment I massage and palpate to find the most painful areas that are causing the pain and then treat it. I will then look to see what acupuncture channels have been affected and then treat further along the channel to stimulate the movement of qi and blood away from the affected area. Acupuncture works very well and the results are often immediate.

One word of warning.... don't expect everything to be better after one treatment! Most often patients come to see me then their back problem is particularly bad, i.e. they can hardly move! There is often muscle spasm after doing some activity. As I have already mentioned, muscles that are shortened and tightened over the years due to our sedentary lifestyle will be prone to muscle spasm. Fortunately acupuncture is excellent at removing muscle spasm, however the patient will always be vulnerable to this type of back pain unless the back is treated to get it in better condition. It is very rare to see an acute back problem.

All back problems that I see in the clinic are acute on chronic, that is to say, there is a history of back pain and the patient comes to see me when is a particularly painful. Many patients will come for treatment until they are pain free again and then stop treatment. This is fine. However the pain will return sometime in the future. This is fine provided that the patient is aware of this and gets it treated immediately. It may be one month later, six months, or years. The longer the duration between back pain flare-ups, the better.
Of course, not all back pain is musculoskeletal. There are more serious conditions such as ankylosing spondolysis or fibromyalgia that cause back pain. Saying this, the vast majority of back pain is musculoskeletal and responds very well with acupuncture. Other conditions may also respond with acupuncture but treatment may be more prolonged.