“Where do you put acupuncture needles for knee pain?”

Go to acupuncture clinic .

Knees are fun to treat! Generally I needle around the knee joints, themselves, as well as other points on the arms, legs, hands, and feet. If a patient is post-op, I’ll wait to needle the knees until the tissue is stable.

Absolutely!

Each knee pain and its origin are not alike the treatment is therefore not a general or generic treatment.

A good acupuncture practitioner should know where and how to put needles at or around your knee to achieve good results. A couple of acupuncture sessions with massage and herbs would help a lot with your knee pain.

Acupuncture treats most knee pain very successfully. Acupuncture treatments are designed for the individual patient after personal evaluation of the patient and the condition. Needles can go near the problem or distal to the problem depending upon many factors that will be discussed at your appointment. Unfortunately, there isn't one answer about where needles are placed for knee pain since acupuncture treats the whole patient and we need to take into consideration the patient's constitution, if it was an injury or overuse or something else, and many other factors that can be discussed at your appointment. Fortunately, acupuncture has proven very effective in assisting with many painful knees. Thanks for asking!

Acupuncture is generally very good for any joint that is swollen, painful, or stiff, especially when the patient is on the younger side of 60. 

Between using acupuncture, possibly with electroacupuncture and possibly heat (in the form of moxibustion or heat lamp, etc.) and sometimes Chinese herbal formulas, many patients have very good results with numerous kinds of health conditions involving pain and immobility. Traditional Chinese medicine, of which acupuncture is part, is a vast science with many time-tested solutions and many varied ways to treat pain and discomfort. 

As acupuncture is a process and not a single event,  I suggest you try a Licensed Acupuncturist (L.Ac.) for 3 to 6 sessions for 2-3 weeks in succession to see if acupuncture might work for you. Hope this response answered some of the questions.  

Depends on the underlying cause.

Usually locally around the knee. It is also possible to use foot and shin.
Dr. Leila

The local points are around the knee. The distal points can be in the elbow, ear, scalp, face, hand, and feet depending upon the exact pain point and the doctor's habits.

The placement of acupuncture needles for knee pain really depends on the practitioner's style of treatment. Some prefer "local" needling, which places needles near the painful area. Others, like myself, prefer "distal" needling, which places needles in other areas of the body based on channel correspondence. For example, for right knee pain, I would needle the left elbow area and possibly also the left knee.

Cynthia Laprocina, L.Ac.

Yes it does. Thanks!

It depends on what type of pain, how long you’ve had the pain, and what the pain is caused by. However, generally the needles are placed in your opposite arm of the hurting knee and sometimes on the leg and knee.

Needles can be placed locally (around the knee) or distally (away from the knee) depending on the technique used. Needle placement is related to factors such as how long you have been having knee pain and others that you would provide to your acupuncturist during your initial visit.

First, I am sorry to hear you are having knee pain. Acupuncture treats both the root cause (underlying issues) and the branch (symptoms) of any condition or pain-related injury. Depending on the patient's presentation, acupuncture needles may be placed locally to the pain as well as distal points to support the treatment. If you would like to book a complimentary consultation to discuss your
concerns, please let me know. I am happy to answer any further questions.

Needles are mostly placed around the knees themselves, but may be added to other parts of the body as support.

There are many ways of treating knee pain. See licensed acupuncturists for your pain, please.

Myself, I would put them in the contralateral elbow, perhaps some in the opposite side knee as well, and perhaps some in the actual knee. But I would use various points to balance your whole system energy, which is the most important point.

Where the needles go depends on many factors - since Chinese medicine is a holistic medicine, and since energetic channels traverse the whole body, needles don't always go directly in the place where you have pain. Sometimes they go directly into the knee joints, but the can also be placed lower in the calves, in the feet and in the hands because the channels that affect knee pain (and a variety of underlying conditions that relate to knee pain) traverse these areas.

Ultimately, the answer is: it depends on you and your overall health picture, not just on the knee pain itself.

I hope this helps, keep the questions coming!

It depends, but often, your acupuncturist will place needles in the local area (in this case the knee), adjacent area (above and below the knee), and some in the distal areas (perhaps ankles, feet, or hands). This is to help with circulation and opening up the channels of energy flow throughout your body.

That all depends on why you're feeling the knee pain. You may have needles placed around your knees where you're feeling the pain, but needles may be placed throughout your entire body to help treat any imbalances that are causing the pain.

Usually put acupuncture needles around knee, especially put the pain area.

It depends on what's wrong with your knee and how the acupuncturist has been trained. Some will put needles in and around the knee, others might put them in the opposite elbow (and yes, that really does work). Some might put needles above or below the knee. There's no one treatment.

In the knee

I, and I'm sure other acupuncturists, get questions like this a lot. The problem here is that, as phrased, the question is essentially unanswerable. There is no one point or set of points that might always be utilized in knee pain - or any other pain for that matter.

From a channel perspective, there are 6 primary and 4 extraordinary channels crossing the knee. These all run in different locations and, if a channel pathology is at the root of the problem, an acupuncturist would need to be able to differentiate which channel is primarily affected. We do this two ways: 1. We'd need to know precisely where on/in the knee the patient is experiencing pain - is it medial, lateral, posterior, anterior, does it radiate or is it fixed, how does the patient experience the pain (sharp, dull, burning, electrical)? We'd also need to know what other symptoms the patient might be experiencing, even if it doesn't seem like those symptoms would be related to knee pain. 2. Sometimes joint pain is related to an internal organ pathology - in the case of the knee, the Chinese model would include things like kidney and spleen. In order to differentiate between these causes, again, a lot more information would be required.

Secondly, there are multiple systems of acupuncture that providers practice and they don't all approach problems like joint pain the same way. Some practitioners will put needles in the local area and some won't. Even if the patient provided their entire symptom list, along with a detailed anatomic picture of where they're experiencing the pain, there is no guarantee that any other provider would choose to utilize the points I might pick. Sometimes this means one of us will get a better result versus the other. Sometimes this means we both might get the same result for a patient's issue.

For people who've never tried acupuncture, it can relieve a bit of the anxiety of the unknown to have some idea where the needles might be placed before the appointment. I appreciate this fact because I've been there. Here's what I suggest - go to NCCAOM.org, use their 'Find a Practitioner' lookup and get a list of local board certified providers. Call around and see if any of them offer a free introductory consult. Usually this will be something like 30 minutes. Go in and talk to a few, let them see what your issue is, and get a feel for how each one might treat the problem.