Acupuncture

The week that followed my previous post consisted mainly of me lying in bed moaning like a dying warthog. Headaches from the third circle of hell. My temples screamed. The slightest facial expression made my jaw muscles clamp down so tightly I could hardly open my mouth. My teeth ached constantly, moving every couple of hours from one tooth or area to another just to keep me on my toes. My diet consisted entirely of soup and fruit smoothies, though even the soup made my teeth hurt. Vicodin and muscle relaxants would knock me out for a while, but it wouldn't be long before I was back in the inferno.

Then, last Thursday, I went to see an acupuncturist.

I'd tried this a few weeks earlier with a different practitioner, but the effects were minor at best. Then the guy tried to sell me on a weird enzyme-nutrition theory, so I didn't go back. This time I went to someone I'd seen seven years ago, for hip muscle spasms.

Having lived in Santa Cruz, CA for 9 years, I'm not a newbie. You can get treated by students at a local acupuncture school there for not very much money. I probably did 15 or 20 sessions altogether. The complaints I went in with were ones that probably nobody could do much about: chronic knee pain, most likely from a torn meniscus, and tinnitus (ringing in the ears) thanks to my previous life as a rock musician. The treatments didn't fix my problems, but I enjoyed them. Often I'd fall asleep on the table.

Two conflicting thoughts always run through my head when I do this. One is placebo, placebo, placebo. He's creating an atmosphere, reassuring me, pulling on the power of my desperation and my hope. And now I'm lying here relaxing for half an hour looking like a pincushion. Of course I'm going to feel better, but nothing's really happening. The other thought is this technique works directly on the nervous system. Western approaches treat nerves with drugs that affect the entire system all at once, but acupuncture acts on individual nerves related to specific sensations. Of course its effects are real.

This time, the effect was so dramatic that I simply can't believe it was placebo. I went into the office with a splitting headache, pain in my teeth, hurting so much I wanted to curl up and die. No bullshit, no explanation, no pep talk; Brodie just said let's see if we can get you feeling better and went to work. The first needle went into the top of my left foot, but I felt it mainly in my jaw. Most of the needles went into my hands and feet; a few into the sides of my head and my ear. This was a different pattern from what the other acupuncturist had tried (and I didn't feel much from his needles). I lay on the blissfully warm heated table for an hour, and all the tension and the pain simply melted away.

I left the office with no headache at all. Over the course of the day, the pain in my teeth gradually diminished. When I woke up the next morning that pain was gone, for the first time in 3.5 months — and it has not returned. Tension in my jaw muscles did continue, coming in waves lasting an hour or so. But though this got quite uncomfortable and distracting, it was not actually painful.

Felt the beginnings of a renewed headache on Monday, plus more jaw tension. Had another treatment and again, the next day was a very good day, no pain and much reduced jaw tension. I'll do this again a couple of times and see where it leads.

Now, I'm not a controlled experiment. Who knows if this would work the same way for you. I'm blasting away with every weapon I can think of, all at the same time, including muscle relaxants, ibuprofen (for inflammation), nortryptilene, self-hypnosis, etc., and so would you if you were me. But following the acupuncture I've tapered off the ibuprofen to just 4 pills a day, and mostly off the muscle relaxants too. No Vicodin, either.

Nothing else I've tried has been nearly so dramatic. It was, in a word, like magic.

While little is known about the mechanisms by which acupuncture may act, a review of neuroimaging research suggests that specific acupuncture points have distinct effects on cerebral activity in specific areas that are not otherwise predictable anatomically. — Lewith et al., in Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine: eCAM 2:3 (2005), 315-9.