Acute Back Pain Case From Weight Lifting in Acupuncture

Pain control and sports injury case

Katie is an avid cross fit woman, she loves intense training.

One day, she was having weight lift over the shoulder and felt something wrong on the back, and that evening her back started hurting and couldn’t really sleep.

When I see her, the pain level was like 7-8.

Hard to bring the arm over the shoulder, but she was able to bend over.

Checking the whole back musculature as you see on the picture, left side muscles look much bigger than right and when I was palpating along the long muscles there are certain areas pain is more outstanding and centralized between two back bones. So there seems to be ligaments strain which holds two bones.

Hair thin needles were placed in different areas.

1.       Distal points: like upper trapezius and occipital, levator scapula muscles

2.       Local points: where most pain is and direct injury occurred. Intervertebral ligament and lower part of trapezius and erector spinae

Result: after about 10min, patient starts feeling the muscles on the back relaxing and 20 minutes later she started feeling sleepy and so comfortable.

When all the needles were taken out and she stood up and trying to lift shoulder up, she said, “the original pain went down about 60-70% but it feels kinda dull achy.”

Acupuncture well targeted will make your pain decrease and you sleepy and relax.

1.       Why sleepy and so relaxing; it stimulates your brain to secrete endorphin, which is natural opioid made by our body (natural painkiller)

2.       Why pain level decreases and sore inflamed muscle feels loose and less tender?

When the needle is inserted right on the injured soft tissues and muscles, more blood with T-cell will flow in and help to recover and abnormally contracted muscles will also relax down.

*the name, Katie(alias) is used for her privacy.

If you need help for you back pain, contact us at tao of medicine!