At East Bay Acupuncture, we care about your quality of life. We work with adults and teenagers of all genders for a variety of conditions to provide holistic healing to help you feel better.  Today we’d like to discuss five ways acupuncture can help with acute and chronic pain. 

Acupuncture helps to decrease inflammation. It brings up fresh blood and fluid to the area of injury, which speeds up the healing process, helps break up scar tissue, and clean up stagnant fluid and debris. It is a method of supporting the body/mind systems in their own natural healing processes for a wide variety of symptoms and conditions. 

By inserting fine needles into specific spots to help the body heal itself, acupuncture practitioners are able to stimulate nerves and connective tissue resulting in profound effects on the nervous system, including regulation of key areas of the brain. The improved function results in the body producing its own natural chemicals involved in pain relief and the reduction of inflammation. 

For thousands of years, practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) have utilized acupuncture to treat a variety of ailments, including neck pain. During acupuncture treatment for neck pain, points of stimulation are determined based on a person’s symptoms, health history, prior treatments, and the cause of the pain. Neck pain caused by stress, an accident, or repetitive stress injury from sitting in front of a computer can be effectively and safely treated with acupuncture. 

Acupuncture helps relieve pain, release tight muscles, reduce inflammation and increase range of motion for a variety of shoulder problems. Rotator cuff injuries are prevalent among active people and athletes. Acupuncture is commonly used for musculoskeletal disorders; and is an excellent nonsurgical intervention for managing shoulder pain and dysfunction. 

Hip pain and sciatica can get in the way of your ability to function on a daily basis. Chronic hip pain can often be relieved with the help of acupuncture.  By increasing blood flow and circulation to the hip area, acupuncture encourages healing and a reduction in pain and swelling in the hip joint. Releasing tight muscles and increasing oxygen throughout the hip muscles and joints can help with arthritis, sciatica, and bursitis, among other causes of hip pain. 

Osteoarthritis is one of the most common causes of chronic knee pain. You also may have an injury of your ACL, patellar tendon, MCL or LCL. All types of knee pain can be treated with acupuncture, which is a cost-effective way to treat pain, inflammation and stiffness, with very little risk to the patient. Acupuncture is one of the treatments recommended for osteoarthritis knee pain in the national guidelines for physicians. 

Plantar fasciitis can be very painful, and affects daily living activities. If you wake up with stiffness in the arch of your foot that gets better once you move around, you may have plantar fasciitis. Acupuncture has been shown to significantly reduce pain levels with plantar fasciitis by targeting the local pain and surrounding muscles to give you lasting results. If you are in need of acupuncture care in the Oakland, CA area, reach out to East Bay Acupuncture!