Acupuncture For Back Pain

We all experience aches, pains, and twinges from time to time, but one of the most common issues that can crop up is back pain - particularly lower back pain. Typically, symptoms will resolve themselves on their own within a couple of weeks, but they can last longer or prove to be recurrent, which can be particularly distressing.

There are various at-home treatments you can try to address your back pain, everything from staying as active as you can and taking anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen, as well as trying out specific exercises and stretches to ease your pain.

However, if you’ve exhausted all these possibilities and still find that you’re in a lot of discomfort, you might want to consider going for an acupuncture session to see if that can help.

How can acupuncture help with back pain?

Acupuncture is an ancient form of Chinese medicine and it has long been a popular go-to option for addressing back pain.

The treatment itself involves inserting tiny hair-thin needles into the body at different pressure points to help restore balance and harmony, thereby reducing your pain and tackling your symptoms at the source.

There are various acupuncture pressure points that your clinician will target if you’re experiencing lower back pain, including the backs of the knees, the lower back, the feet, the hands, the hips and the stomach. For upper back pain, the pressure points include the upper back, shoulders, neck and head.

It’s thought that these treatments help address back pain by stimulating the nervous system and releasing pain-relieving chemicals around the brain, muscles and spinal cord.

As effective as the practice is for this kind of pain, note that it’s unlikely that a single session will help resolve your symptoms and it’s likely that you’ll need to book in for a series of treatments in order to provide you with long-lasting relief. 

You may want to consider booking in weekly sessions at first until you start to see a difference and then you can consider spacing them out a bit more.

There’s certainly no reason why you need to live with the pain you’re experiencing so if you are in discomfort and aren’t sure what to do, acupuncture could be the answer you’ve been looking for.

Here at Acuwellness, I adopt an integrated approach to the practice, combining traditional Chinese medicine techniques with other styles like massage, meditation, moxibustion and cupping. If you’d like to find out more, get in touch with me today.