Traditional Chinese Medicine and the Treatment of Pain

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) treats a wide variety of ailments and disorders, but amongst the vast array of complaints TCM practitioners encounter, there is one that comes up perhaps more than any other… PAIN. Luckily for the patients who come in seeking relief from their bodily pain, TCM is one of the most effective methods of reducing and relieving pain symptoms without pharmaceuticals or opioids. In the wake of America’s opioid epidemic, the country’s leading medical facilities are recognizing a need for non-pharmacologic strategies able to be employed to decrease the public’s opioid dependence. Acupuncture has gained popularity as a powerful, evidence-based, safe, and cost-effective treatment modality able to meeting this need. Acupuncture and TCM are effective in the treatment of numerous types of pain conditions, including back pain, shoulder pain, knee pain, migraines and headaches, jaw pain, stomach aches, muscle strain, and plantar fasciitis. Furthermore, acupuncture’s cost-effectiveness can dramatically decrease health care expenditures, especially in a community setting.

Pain is a subjective, first-person experience. Each individual’s perception of and tolerance to pain differs, and each experience relies on several factors — how long has the individual been dealing with pain? What is the cause of the pain? What methods have been used to cope with the pain? And in what ways, if any, has the pain affected the individual’s quality of life? Sometimes pain can make sleep difficult, which can dramatically reduce the body’s abilities to tolerate pain. Sometimes a pain, that starts off as somewhat tolerable, persists for a long enough time, and causes enough constant grief for the individual, that the pain begins to affect the individual’s emotional health. Sometimes, the methods an individual utilizes in order to cope with the pain (pharmaceuticals, opioids, alcohol, over-eating, under-eating, etc.) can cause other problems that need to be addressed.

The treatment of pain in a TCM setting will analyze all aspects of an individual’s situation. We will examine the cause, the constitution, and the characteristics of the pain to create a thorough plan for alleviation, as well as best steps to prevent recurrence. Pain management treatments may include acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, Chinese Medical Massage, cupping therapy, electro-stimulation therapy or “e-stim” (the application of a pulsating electrical current to the acupuncture needles to further stimulate the acupuncture points), and/or GuaSha (skin scraping with massage tools to stimulate microcirculation of the soft tissue and increase blood flow). The combination of treatment modalities maximizes the ways in which the individual’s pain becomes manageable, if not reduced completely.