Acupuncture Services of Central NY

Upper back pain is a condition that I commonly treat in my acupuncture practice. Often this type of pain is related to occupational repetitive motion injuries. Dentists, teachers, hairdressers, and band directors have sought my help in addressing upper back pain. Sometimes this type of upper back pain is associated with a cervical disk nerve impingement that may also cause neck pain and pain radiating to the shoulder and down the arm. Stress related neck and shoulder tension may also be the culprit.

Usually my patients have already seen their physicians for diagnostic tests to determine the underlying cause of their upper back pain from a western medicine perspective. This is important to rule out the remote, yet critical possibility, that their pain is related to heart disease or a tumor causing the nerve impingement. When the pain is strictly a muscular-skeletal issue, it responds very well to acupuncture treatment.

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Posted by Joyce Marley at 04:16 AM | Master Tung Acupuncture for Upper Back Pain

Acupuncture can provide relief for both back pain and sciatic pain. I see it every day in my practice. Back strain and sciatic pain are quite common in pregnant women starting in the second trimester. As the baby grows, the weight distribution on the lumbar spine and sacroiliac joints, along with the associated muscles and tissues, changes quickly and drastically. Women may alter their posture to compensate for this change or fall into a habit of poor posture due to fatigue from carrying this new weight. At the same time, hormonal changes in the body are causing the ligaments in the pelvic area to relax and soften in preparation for labor and delivery. This can cause instability of the sacroiliac joints.

Western medicine offers very little help for this condition other than rest and seems to not take it too seriously, since the cause of the problem will go away in a few months. But for those working women who must continue to function until close to their due date, the pain can be quite unbearable. It can affect their ability to do their job and can interfere with getting a good night's sleep. Without relief, these women will be exhausted even before delivering and caring for a new infant. Fortunately, acupuncture is quite safe and effective in treating back pain and sciatic pain during pregnancy.

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Posted by Joyce Marley at 09:51 AM | Acupuncture for Pregnancy Sciatic Pain

Acupuncture treats almost any kind of pain, but I rarely get a patient who comes to me specifically for the treatment of tailbone pain. And this is a very common ailment. Slips and falls can result in fractures and bruises of the tailbone. Sometimes the tailbone can be irritated or injured during pregnancy from the position of the fetus or during a difficult labor and delivery.

So why don't people consider acupuncture for the treatment of tailbone pain? Is it because they are deathly afraid of where they think I will put the needles? Or is it because they have been silently suffering and told by their physicians that only time will heal?

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Posted by Joyce Marley at 08:27 PM | Acupuncture For Tailbone Pain

After reading “Battlefield Acupuncture for the Clinical Practitioner” by Dr. John Amaro, I just had to learn more about this technique. A little research led me to this great article by Dr. Richard Niemtzow himself. Dr. Niemtzow developed this new auricular therapy protocol in 2001. His article gives very specific step by step instructions, diagrams and photos for needle placement to achieve almost immediate pain relief.

I decided to try the technique on several of my patients who had been suffering from chronic pain. I have one patient in particular that I have been seeing for several months for severe back pain. Having been in an auto accident ten years previously, and having fractured several vertebrae, he had been making progress with some of my other acupuncture protocols for back pain. When I first met him his pain level was 8 on a scale of 10 most of the time. With weekly treatments, we were able to give him several days of complete pain relief after the treatment and when the pain returned, it rarely exceeded a 5 on a scale of 10. He had tried other therapies over the years with little relief and was very happy with this improvement. I, on the other hand, am always looking for new ways to relieve pain.

With Dr. Niemtzow's instructions in front of me, I inserted an ASP gold needle into the cingulate gyrus point on his left ear and told him to walk up and down the hallway for a few minutes. When he returned, I asked if he noticed a change in his pain level. With disappointment showing on his face, he said “no, not really”. As the instructions stated, I put a needle in the same point on the other ear. He stood to start down the hallway again and turned to me with a big smile on his face. “That's the ear! This is amazing!” he said. When he returned from his hallway stroll, his pain had decreased 60%. I inserted the other four points in that dominant ear and let him rest on the table for a half hour.

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Posted by Joyce Marley at 02:17 PM | Battlefield Acupuncture: A New Pain Therapy

Recently, I have received several requests for information on battlefield acupuncture, a term first used in 2001 by my friend and colleague Col. Richard Niemtzow, MD, PhD, who serves as a consultant for complementary and alternative medicine to the Surgeon General of the Air Force. I have served with him on the board of Directors of the Auriculotherapy Certification Institute.

It was recently announced that the U.S. Air Force will begin training physicians being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in a specific type of treatment. The treatment uses small needles in the skin of the ear to block pain in as few as five minutes and can last for several days or longer. The procedure was initially introduced in 2008 at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (LRMC), where it was applied to wounded service members and local patients for pain relief, with significant results. The hospital, located near Ramstein Air Base in Germany, is the largest and most modern U.S. military medical facility outside the United States.

One of the pain specialists at LRMC personally experienced a 25 percent increased range of motion and a 50 percent reduction in pain for chronic shoulder and upper back pain he had endured for several years. As a result of his outstanding success, this pain specialist recruited his most challenging patients, for whom traditional pain treatment had offered limited relief. Within minutes of the needles being inserted, many said their pain was reduced by up to 75 percent. A 25 percent reduction would be considered a success with traditional pain medications.

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Posted by Joyce Marley at 08:47 PM | Battlefield Acupuncture for the Clinical Practitioner By John Amaro, L.Ac, DC

One of the most common ailments that brings a new patient to my office is sciatic pain. Master Tung acupuncture points for sciatic pain give me amazing results. And I give my thanks to Dr. Richard Tan for first introducing them to me. The primary points used for sciatic regardless of the meridian(s) effected on the leg are Linggu and Dabai. These two points are located on the Large Intestine channel.

The points are needled on the hand opposite to the sciatic pain. Linggu is needled first. It is located proximal to LI4 anterior to the border of the junction between the first and second metacarpal bones. Dabai is located at LI3, but needled closer to the bone.

Being located on the yangming meridian, rich in qi and blood, these points have a very powerful effect to regulate qi and blood. These two points are used in Master Tung's acupuncture system for many conditions, but they are almost indispensable in my practice to treat opposite lumbar pain and sciatica.

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Posted by Joyce Marley at 10:58 AM | Master Tung Acupuncture Points for Sciatic Pain

When I was a first year student in my TCM training, in my enthusiasm and eagerness to apply what I was learning to my future patients, I would approach my professors and say, for example, “can Chinese medicine treat fibromyalgia?” Or, “can Chinese medicine treat multiple sclerosis?” Every time, I would get the same response - “what are the signs and symptoms?”

We are talking about a system of medicine that has been around for thousands of years. There really is no frame of reference in Chinese medicine to the Western disease labels that have evolved in modern times. Chinese medicine will always look at everything going on in the body and determine an imbalance of yin and yang, Qi and Blood. In fact, there is a very famous saying in Chinese medicine - “one disease, many treatments...many diseases, one treatment.”

What I love about “The Treatment of Modern Western Medical Diseases with Chinese Medicine”, co-authored by Bob Flaws and Philippe Sionneau, is the detailed analysis of 72 different Western medicine labels and all the patterns of imbalance that are usually associated with them in Chinese medicine. For each of the diseases there is information on the Western etiology, treatment and prognosis. And then a detailed analysis of the disease mechanisms from a Chinese medicine aspect. Acupuncture and herbal treatments are suggested based on pattern discrimination. Summary remarks address the prognosis from a Chinese medicine point of view.

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Posted by Joyce Marley at 05:23 AM | What Does Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine Treat?

I read the following article by Dr. Amaro quite a while ago, but as a practitioner his message has stuck with me. Often, my new patients will start off our initial consultation with the words, "you are my last hope", because they have been everywhere and tried everything prior to giving acupuncture a chance. The beauty of Chinese medicine is that it looks at everything going on in the body - both physical and emotional - to arrive at a treatment plan. Addressing constipation to treat back pain can be key for many patients when nothing else has worked. Dr. Amaro's complete acupuncture point prescription for constipation referred to later in the article is: Ren 12, 5 and 4, SP16, ST25, 38, 40, GB34, LI2, 4, and BL25 and 42.

“The frog in the well---knows not of the great ocean”!
November 17, 2003
By: John A. Amaro D.C., FIAMA, Dipl.Ac.(IAMA)(NCCAOM), L.Ac.

In the early 70’s when acupuncture was first being introduced to the United States through numerous media reports, the medical profession was less than accepting of this seemingly strange healing art. The first time I had ever heard the statement “The frog in the well knows not of the great ocean” was an angered Chinese response to the American scientific and medical communities allegations of “fraud, quackery and hypnosis regarding acupuncture. Since that time I have used this saying often whenever I respond to someone exhibiting what may be described as “tunnel vision” or the unwillingness to investigate a matter further than what is on the surface.

Since I am personally involved with both acupuncture and chiropractic which unfortunately are two professions which are often very misunderstood by both the public and the medical profession, I have uttered my sentiments about the frog many many times.

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Posted by Joyce Marley at 04:18 AM | Acupuncture for Back Pain with Constipation

Low back (lumbar) pain has been reported to be one of the most common conditions for which millions of sufferers worldwide seek medical attention. It has numerous causes and can never be lumped into one specific category. The same is true for treatment. There are numerous treatments available, of which chiropractic and acupuncture have reputedly demonstrated their effectiveness for the majority of low back pain syndromes. The most important item in treatment is to achieve a successful level of pain reduction, followed by correction and stabilization of the condition. Most low back pain suffers will wholeheartedly agree that pain relief is paramount, as quickly as possible.

In my almost four decades of acupuncture and chiropractic practice, I have seen thousands of cases of low back pain that have been successfully treated. It was the very rare individual who had to be referred for surgery. However, there are some for which this may be the only viable solution. The vast majority of cases, regardless of the specific cause, have experienced significant pain relief in a very short period of time with the administration of a specialized acupuncture formula. In many cases, pain relief was considerable before chiropractic and/or physiotherapy procedures could be implemented. The procedure is by no means a cure-all for every lumbar pain syndrome, but has proven the test of time in countless cases. It does not do what chiropractic does regarding structure, nor does it do what physical therapy, soft-tissue treatment, physiotherapy, therapeutic massage and other non-invasive procedures can do to strengthen muscles, ligaments or tendons. Its primary application is for early pain relief.

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Posted by Joyce Marley at 06:32 AM | Ultimate Low Back Pain Acupuncture Formula By John Amaro, L.Ac, D.C.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is holographic in nature. The human body is seen as a microcosm of the world around us. And, more importantly from the perspective of an acupuncturist, each part of the body is also a microcosm, representing the whole body. Many acupuncture micro-systems have evolved around this concept. Auricular acupuncture is probably the best known micro-system. The whole body is mapped on the ear by superimposing the inverted fetus in the womb. Other micro-systems have been identified on the foot, hand, nose, lips, iris, tongue, scalp, teeth and every long bone of the body. My most successful acupuncture treatments have been the result of applying this knowledge. So I was thrilled to come across information on the Abdominal Acupuncture (AA) system – a relatively new Chinese micro-system developed about 25 years ago in China by Dr. Bo Zhiyun.

Abdominal Acupuncture believes that all parts of the body can be treated by focusing a gentle acupuncture treatment on the abdomen. Standard meridian points are used in conjunction with newly identified points. Needling is very superficial and painless. Therapeutic points are mapped on the abdomen by superimposing the image of a turtle over the abdomen with its center on the naval (Ren 8), its head at the epigastrium (Ren 12) and its tail or coccyx at Ren 3. Kidney meridian points are added to treat spinal problems. ST-24 treats disorders of the shoulder and arm. ST-26 treats disorders of the hip and leg. And new points are mapped in relation to these points to treat knee, elbow, hand and foot problems.

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Posted by Joyce Marley at 07:57 AM | Abdominal Acupuncture for Back Pain

Here is a demonstration of Chinese medicine cupping to treat low back pain - performed by the author of “Traditional Chinese Medicine Cupping Therapy”, Ilkay Zihni Chirali. In this video, he is using cups made of glass. Glass cups are probably the most commonly used in this country because they are easy to sterilize and it is easy to see the strength of the suction when applied to the patients skin. In China, bamboo cups are very common because they are inexpensive, but they have some disadvantages. They have sharp edges, break down easily and can be a greater risk for cross-infection.

In both cases, the technique of obtaining suction is the same. A cotton ball is soaked in alcohol and lit. This is used to heat the inside of the cup which removes the oxygen and creates a vacuum. When the cup is placed on the patient, the skin is drawn up into the cup. By placing the cup over an injured area, stagnant blood and toxins are brought to the surface allowing fresh blood to nourish the injured site. Often the skin will be left with circular bruises that may last up to two weeks.

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Posted by Joyce Marley at 05:32 AM | Cupping Therapy For Lower Back Pain

Cupping Therapy has been an integral part of Chinese medicine for thousands of years and continues to be incorporated into treatments today. This book by Ilkay Zihni Chitali is an excellent resource for the practitioner of Chinese medicine. Mr. Chitali provides details for ten different cupping methods. For each method he explains the technique itself in detail along with valuable illustrations.
Examples are given for conditions that may benefit from that particular technique. Half of the book (almost 100 pages) is devoted to specific treatment protocols for common ailments. Cupping instructions are given along with acupuncture points, moxibustion and herbal remedies. Case studies accompany each section.

Several techniques may be used with children and he specifically notes the difference in cupping duration and technique that should be applied for each age group.

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Posted by Joyce Marley at 07:13 AM | Traditional Chinese Medicine Cupping Therapy

The World Health Organization has recognized over 40 common health problems that acupuncture can effectively treat. Most people are aware that acupuncture treats pain, but many do not know the wide range of painful conditions that are commonly improved with acupuncture. Acupuncture treats pain anywhere in the body, including but not limited to: back pain, frozen shoulder, carpal tunnel syndrome, TMJ, trigeminal neuralgia, arthritis, fibromyalgia, sciatica, plantar fasciitis, shingles pain and migraines.

But acupuncture can also treat digestive disorders such as nausea, acid reflux and irritable bowel syndrome. It is commonly used to treat asthma and sinus problems. Acupuncture is very powerful to treat gynecological problems including PMS, menopausal symptoms, endometriosis and even infertility.

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