I'm going to try something new this week. I'm going through an anonymous case study.  This should help illustrate a little bit about how an acupuncturist decides to treat a patient.  Also what a patient can expect from a successful acupuncture course of treatment.  If this goes well, I will do more of these in the future.

Presentation of Chief Complaints

Anne is Female, age 44.  She is married with a teenage daughter. She is also a small business owner, which is rewarding but stressful. Her husband also has a very stressful job.

She came for acupuncture because she has frequent headaches. Each one lasting a few weeks at a time.  Triggered by stress, it starts with tension in the left shoulder, then rises up and over her head to just behind the left eye.  The pain is frequently a mild ache, but sometimes it is sharp and shooting and can climb as high as an 8 out of 10 on the pain scale.  She has had success for this condition in the past with regular acupuncture.

Practitioner’s Analysis

At first glance her pattern has 2 key features.  One, is it’s location.  It travels along the back of the neck and up over the head. In acupuncture cal call this area the (UB) Urinary Bladder channel.  It starts at the eye, runs up over the head, then down the back all the way to the pinky toe on each side. I want to pick points that will move energy on this channel.

The second feature, is that the headaches are worse with stress. This connects to the Liver and Gall Bladder channels. The liver regulates qi flow throughout the body and the Gallbladder channel is the yin/yang pair of the liver. Signs point to there being an excess blockage of the qi in these channels, so I want to activate these also.

Treatment Strategy - Points Based on Channel and Function

I want to treat the qi stagnation in the UB channel by stimulating points at the other end of the channel.  So I chose UB points on the left foot and ankle.  (The left UB channel starts at the inner part of the left eye, goes up and over the head, down the back, all the way down the back of the leg, and to the left ankle and pinky toe.

For Liver/Gall Bladder excess, I did distal (far) points on those channels.  Liver points on the foot, and gallbladder points on foot and lower leg.  These points help regulate the circulation of qi.  The Gallbladder meridian also goes all the way up to and around the side of the head.  So we can further target the specific area where the headaches happen.

I also use some “empirical” points, or points great for general conditions.  For example, LI 4 on the hand is good for any headaches.  To start with, we don’t use too many “local” points, because we want to drain excess qi from those areas.  But they might be useful later on.

Expected Outcome

Stimulating these points on these channels should help remove the blockage in the flow of energy through the head, and improve the headaches.  We are doing treatments once per week.  We expect to see less pain in the area of the headache, and its origin in the left shoulder.  Severity and frequency of the sharp and shooting episodes should be reduced, and follow-up treatments every few weeks between episodes, should prevent future episodes.  I can also show some points that she can do self acupressure at home when in need of relief.

Does this help demystify acupuncture treatments a little bit? Do you have a condition that you'd like to know if acupuncture can help? Comment below.

Contact:

Community Zen Acupuncture

Commack, NY

(934) 221-7111

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#Acupuncture

#Headaches