Jeff Rippey

Usually, yes. Sinusitis, allergic rhinitis, and many other sinus issues tend to respond very well to acupuncture.

Usually, yes, acupuncture can help to bring high blood pressure down.

This isn't how acupuncture or Chinese medicine works. There is no one point or set of points for the treatment of any issue. Treatments are individualized and based on your specific case - i.e. why are *you* experiencing *this* ear pain.

Without seeing and diagnosing you, it's difficult to impossible to give you any point or points that might be useful in your situation.

If you'd like to try acupuncture or Chinese medicine, and for pain conditions this is an excellent choice, I suggest seeing a board certified, state licensed acupuncturist. You can go to NCCAOM.org and use their 'Find a Practitioner' lookup to find providers near you.

This isn't how acupuncture or Chinese medicine works. There is no one point or set of points for the treatment of any issue. Treatments are individualized and based on your specific case - i.e. why are *you* experiencing *this* headache/head pain.

Without seeing and diagnosing you, it's difficult to impossible to give you any point or points that might be useful in your situation.

If you'd like to try acupuncture or Chinese medicine, and for pain conditions this is an excellent choice, I suggest seeing a board certified, state licensed acupuncturist. You can go to NCCAOM.org and use their 'Find a Practitioner' lookup to find providers near you.

Every patient is a law unto themself. It's very difficult for any practitioner to say whether an issue like this might be brought to resolution - especially having never seen or evaluated you.

If you're a person who responds to acupuncture/Chinese medicine, then your situation can almost certainly be improved by someone trained in acupuncture/Chinese medicine. Whether or not that improvement is in line with your expectations is a whole other issue.

There are far too many variables in this question to provide any sort of definitive timeline. Why are you experiencing neck pain? How long has the pain persisted? Is the pain always focused in the same place in the neck or does it move around? Does the pain radiate up/down/into the shoulders/into the upper limbs? Do you have any recent imaging of the neck/upper back/shoulders? What does the pain feel like? Is the pain constant or does it come and go? If it comes and goes, what's likely to provoke the pain?

The neck can be a tricky area. There is a high degree of muscle and structural overlap with the upper back and shoulder. It's entirely possible that the pain you're feeling in the neck has its origin somewhere else in the upper back or shoulder.

It's also possible that you may be dealing with a degree of spinal stenosis/disk degeneration/bone spurs/arthritis in the cervical vertebrae. If this is the case, it doesn't make the situation impossible from an acupuncture perspective, but it does make things more complicated.

Then we have to factor in you as an individual. Statistically speaking, there's a 5% non-response rate for acupuncture. In simple terms, this means that about 5% of the population do not respond to acupuncture treatment. There's no test we can give to determine whether or not any prospective patient is in that 5% group, you have to try acupuncture and see what happens. The good news is 95% of people will respond, so odds are in your favor.

Inside the 95% group, people fall out on a spectrum. Some respond very quickly to treatment and some respond more slowly. Again, the only way to figure out whether you are going to respond fast or slow is to try acupuncture and see what happens.

Speaking very generally, a course of treatment is usually something like 8-12 treatments. I've had patients whose issue has resolved in as little as 1-2 treatments and I've had patients who took upwards of 15-20.

I've also had patients whose problem never goes away completely, but the issue will stay under control as long as they get treated on some schedule. Sometimes that's one treatment every 4-6 weeks and sometimes that's two or three treatments per year.

It's up to each patient to decide whether or not they can live with the uncertainty that surrounds an initial acupuncture treatment. I can usually tell where a patient is going to land in terms of total treatments and whether or not we're looking at maintenance by the third or fourth treatment. In order to get there, patients have to be willing to give me 3-4 sessions, though.

There are lots of things that can contribute to chronic fatigue, and there are several potential treatments for the issue. I'd have to know a lot more about you and your fatigue before I could make any concrete suggestions.

Some things you might consider:
Diet
Exercise
Acupuncture/Chinese medicine
Conventional medicine

Tinnitus is something of the holy grail in acupuncture. I've worked with several tinnitus patients. Very rarely do they make headway, and that's often after a lot of treatment.

If you're at the end of your rope in terms of treatment options, I'd give Chinese medicine/acupuncture a try.

Acupuncture, in the hands of a well trained practitioner, is excellent at loosening tight muscles.

There are a variety of potential treatments for insomnia. Over the counter sleep aids, prescription sleep aids, acupuncture/Chinese medicine, some types of meditation/mindfulness practices, lifestyle adjustment.

In order to determine what's right for you, you'll need to try a few things or visit a few different providers and see which treatment works best.

Based on what you're describing, I have to ask a question in return: did you get this procedure done by a licensed and board certified acupuncturist or was this done by a chiropractor or physical therapist? I ask because it sounds like you received a trigger point type therapy on the muscles of your neck.

Experiences like this are precisely why, if you're planning to let someone stick needles in your body, you want that someone to be well trained in sticking needles in someone's body - chiropractors and physical therapists largely do not have the necessary level of training required to do this safely. That being said, this outcome is not on you - there isn't any reason the average person should need to be aware of the difference between a DC/PT and an LAc. Those practicing in the medical community should realize when they're outside of their primary training and refer appropriately. Unfortunately, when it comes to acupuncture and Chinese medicine, they often do not.

All that aside - is the dizziness a result of the needling? Probably, and especially so if you had no history of dizziness or vertigo prior to having this procedure done. My best guess is that the provider accidentally placed a needle too close to a nerve or put a different muscle into spasm which is now squeezing on a nerve. The sensation will likely go away in a couple of days - in other words this should not be permanent.

You can look on the internet for some neck stretches which may help to alleviate the issue in the interim. There are some other treatments that could help: massage, cupping or gua sha in the area, and acupuncture.

If you decide to try cupping, gua sha, or acupuncture, please make sure you're seeing an actual L.Ac. who has an NCCAOM national board certification. If you did happen to see an L.Ac. for the initial treatment, I'd do a couple of things:

1. Let them know what happened and what you're experiencing.

2. See what kind of thoughts they have about the issue and how to resolve it for you.

The other thing I'd do is look for an L.Ac. who treats distally/distant. Treating neck issues doesn't always require needles in the neck. Acupuncturists who specialize in treating distally will be able to address your neck problem by putting needles elsewhere on the body. This often reduces tension in the entire area, can make local needling much more effective, and reduces the odds of an adverse event like this occurring in the first place.

Question in return: when you say licensed professional, do you mean an L.Ac. or do you mean an MD/PT/DC? Acupuncture is currently in a very weird position in the west. We have L.Ac.'s who are generally well trained, but everyone else in the medical community seems to think that acupuncture's so easy even a caveman can do it. This causes problems, because the right thing to do if someone thinks acupuncture offers a decent remedy is to refer them to an an actual acupuncturist. Instead, folks often take a few hours of acupuncture or read a book, and think they can now do the same thing as someone with 3-5 years of graduate level education in Chinese medicine.

The point you're referring to on the hand is a fairly specific extra point from a completely different acupuncture system relative to classical Chinese medicine. So I'm going to assume you saw an L.Ac. in this case.

First off - if the sensation has persisted for more than a week or two then we're probably looking at some sort of nerve issue. The provider in question should have asked for feedback and re-positioned any needles causing the sensations you describe. I'd suggest a visit to your primary care provider. They'll evaluate your problem, but what you're wanting is a referral for a neurologic consult. We need to make sure the nerves in the hand are ok.

The other thing I'd suggest is to look around and find a different acupuncturist. See if you can find someone who practices either orthopedic acupuncture or acupuncture from a more neurologic perspective. These folks are going to be hard to find so you might have to call around a bit. If you're looking at websites, you want someone whose site is devoid of the common eastern mysticism type language. See if you can get a consult with someone like this, explain your case and see what they think. It's possible that acupuncture, correctly applied, can resolve this issue.

Based on what you're describing, I have to ask a question in return: did you get this procedure done by a licensed and board certified acupuncturist or was this done by a chiropractor or physical therapist? I ask because it sounds like you received a trigger point type therapy on the muscles of your neck.

Experiences like this are precisely why, if you're planning to let someone stick needles in your body, you want that someone to be well trained in sticking needles in someone's body - chiropractors and physical therapists largely do not have the necessary level of training required to do this safely. That being said, this outcome is not on you - there isn't any reason the average person should need to be aware of the difference between a DC/PT and an LAc. Those practicing in the medical community should realize when they're outside of their primary training and refer appropriately. Unfortunately, when it comes to acupuncture and Chinese medicine, they often do not.

All that aside - is the dizziness a result of the needling? Probably, and especially so if you had no history of dizziness or vertigo prior to having this procedure done. My best guess is that the provider accidentally placed a needle too close to a nerve or put a different muscle into spasm which is now squeezing on a nerve. The sensation will likely go away in a couple of days - in other words this should not be permanent.

You can look on the internet for some neck stretches which may help to alleviate the issue in the interim. There are some other treatments that could help: massage, cupping or gua sha in the area, and acupuncture.

If you decide to try cupping, gua sha, or acupuncture, please make sure you're seeing an actual L.Ac. who has an NCCAOM national board certification. If you did happen to see an L.Ac. for the initial treatment, I'd do a couple of things:

1. Let them know what happened and what you're experiencing.

2. See what kind of thoughts they have about the issue and how to resolve it for you.

The other thing I'd do is look for an L.Ac. who treats distally/distant. Treating neck issues doesn't always require needles in the neck. Acupuncturists who specialize in treating distally will be able to address your neck problem by putting needles elsewhere on the body. This often reduces tension in the entire area, can make local needling much more effective, and reduces the odds of an adverse event like this occurring in the first place.

Usually, yes. Acupuncture can be an excellent treatment for most post-stroke issues. The trick to getting a good outcome is to start treatment as soon as possible. There is a window of time in which acupuncture can be very effective. Once outside that window, acupuncture's usefulness diminishes rapidly.

There are quite a few things that can cause spasm, the first two that come to mind are injury and electrolyte imbalance.

The treatment for injury isn't the same as the treatment for electrolyte imbalance, so knowing why you're experiencing the spasm is going to be critical for determining how to treat it.

If the spasm is the result of some sort of injury then things like acupuncture, physical therapy, stretching, or prescription muscle relaxers can bring relief.

If the spasm is a result of electrolyte imbalance, the treatments listed above may provide temporary relief. To really tackle the problem though, you will need to address your diet or add some sort of vitamin/mineral supplementation.

This is a question I get a lot. To be honest, it's a fair question for prospective patients to ask. The honest answer is: it depends.

Some folks will say that chronic injury requires 1 month of treatment for every year a patient has had the issue. I think most decent acupuncturists will have things headed in a good direction long before this point, but let's use this rule of thumb as a sort of upper bound. So, inside of this, what are we looking at?

Studies show that about 5% of the population do not respond to acupuncture. That means there is a 95% chance any given person will respond to acupuncture. In my experience, that 95% group breaks out along a spectrum of fast responders to slow responders.

Some people can tell a difference in their pain after the first few needles are in. These folks tend to require less overall treatment and, if we end up in a maintenance situation, have a very wide maintenance window - often months.

Some people don't notice much of a difference in their pain until after 2-3 treatments. These folks tend to require more overall treatment and, if we end up in a maintenance situation, have a very narrow maintenance window - often a few weeks.

As far as I'm aware, no one has yet figured out how to determine, prior to treatment, if any given individual is in the 5% or the 95% nor have we figured out how to determine, prior to treatment, if someone is a fast or slow responder. The only way to answer those questions is to try acupuncture and see what happens - keeping in mind that it may take 2-3 treatments to know with any certainty.

Sometimes, yes, acupuncture can help recover from nerve damage. How much acupuncture can help is going to depend heavily on how much damage there is and what caused it in the first place.

Time can also be a factor. In my experience, when dealing with nerve or neurologic issues, the sooner treatment is started the more likely the patient will experience a desirable outcome.

Usually, yes, acupuncture can be very helpful in stroke recovery. Timing can be critical, your friend will want to start treatment as soon as possible. In my experience, starting treatment more than 6-8 weeks out from a stroke leads to less than ideal outcomes in terms of regaining lost function.

Are the headaches stress related? If you're female, do they track with your cycle? Do you have any history of neck/upper back injury? Are these headaches something relatively new or is this something you've been dealing with for some time? Have you had a neurology consult or a head CT/x-ray?

As you can see, there are a lot of potential causes for chronic headache. Without knowing why *you* are experiencing this pain, it's difficult to provide any guidance around what you should or should not do.

My best suggestion is to make an appointment with either your primary care provider or with an NCCAOM board certified acupuncturist. Let them evaluate you and your issue, they'll then be in a better place to provide helpful information.

If you have chronic headache or migraine, it is sometimes good to start with a neurology consult just to make sure we're not dealing with something fairly serious. After that, you have a few options:

1. Acupuncture has an excellent track record with pain, including headache and migraine. Go to NCCAOM.org and use their 'Find a Practitioner' lookup to get a list of licensed and board certified providers near you.

2. Your primary care provider may be able to offer prescription medication which can help.

3. A pain management specialist may be able offer prescription medication or outpatient procedures that may help.