Some of my patients are high school athletes, including rowers, water polo players, swimmers, cyclists, figure skaters and several field sports including baseball, soccer and Ultimate. One fairly common symptom I often see with the Crew athletes is chronic low back pain.
Low Back Pain – An Acupuncturist’s Perspective
Often when I am assessing and treating a patient for back pain and dysfunction, I take into account the role of not just the Fascia and Fascial Trains that run throughout the body (a future Blog for sure), but also the Acupuncture meridians that run in those parts of the body. Much work has been done on understanding meridians, showing that they are low resistance pathways for the flow of electricity (Reichmanis et al 1975). Meridians have been conceptualized to be a primitive regulatory system that likely evolved long before the nervous system did (Manaka et al 1995). In fact, Meridians are the main channels of transmission in the continuous molecular fabric of the body. In fact, the molecular web is not just a mechanical structure but rather a vibratory body network. As such, it presents possibilities of “profound biological and clinical significance” (Oschman, Energy Medicine). But I digress. This week I have invited my colleague Claudia Weitkamper to talk about how acupuncture plays a role in helping low back pain. Claudia is a German-trained Naturopath and Nurse who practices as an Acupuncturist in the United States.
How and why Acupuncture helps Lower Back Pain:
Low Back Pain – A Nutritionist’s Perspective
This week, I invited our resident nutritionist and acupuncturist Srinika Narayan to give her perspective on the causes of low back pain:
Many people live with chronic low back pain. They have tried manual therapies such as acupuncture, chiropractic, physical therapy, or massage, but nothing has helped for any prolonged amount of time. Sometimes the back pain never even started with a significant injury. Could there be another reason for their pain besides physical misalignment, muscular tension, or strain?
The answer is yes. I have been discovering, through Nutritional Analysis, that many of these cases have underlying causes other than just musculoskeletal. If a person does not respond to acupuncture, or other types of bodywork, I know to look a bit deeper to find the root cause. The possibilities are numerous: from chemical or heavy metal burdens in the body, to active or past infections, or even from unhealed scars elsewhere on the body. Once these challenges are dealt with, the pain goes away. Let’s look at some of these possible culprits.
My back went out…
I love the work that I do. But it’s physical and can be quite strenuous. Even though I joke that my chiropractic diploma conveys immunity to both infectious diseases and physical ailments, life happens sometimes. In my case, this time it was my low back. I see it all the time clinically. That said, t’was a few days before Christmas, I bent down to get something, and boom, something didn’t feel right in my low back! I swear, one of these days I’m going to write a blues song: “my back went out and left me home alone” (think BB King, “The Thrill is Gone…”).
I stumbled through Monday and had to miss work Tuesday. We were hosting our Innate Chiropractic family & staff dinner that night, and I honestly didn’t know if I would be able to make it! The dinner was a celebration of the healer community that we have at Innate, and I really wanted to honor everyone who has worked so hard to make our center what it is. so it occurred to me, what if I use the practitioners to help me get better? What better way to appreciate their great work than to totally and completely depend on them for me to be able to literally get back on my feet? In three days, I saw five practitioners, and that was what it took for me to be able to get back to work and on the road to recovery!
Prolotherapy Phase 1
I had Prolotherapy done to my left shoulder this past Tuesday, I did this procedure at Hemwell Center for Orthopedic Regenerative Medicine in Alameda. Dr Donna Alderman is an Osteopath with a specialization in this form of intervention (for more information goto www.prolotherapy.com). My particular intervention involved the extraction of both blood and fat from my body (think mini-liposuction…a weird experience indeed!). They take the samples and spin them in order to extract the stem cells. This is what they inject around the damaged tissues. The actual procedure involved my moving my arm while Dr Alderman observed the tissues through a diagnostic ultrasound. She then injected the stem cells very specifically to damaged structures around the Rotator Cuff. This didn’t feel very good, but it was bearable. (By the way, this procedure is done with only minor local anesthesia!). [Read more…]