Manipulation Techniques for pain management cases

Comment by Chad J. Dupuis, L.Ac.

I don&#39t want this to sound harsh but I cannot think of another way of putting it and this is sort of one of my pet peeves with acupuncturists (sorry!) - I truly believe that acupuncturists who "specialize" are missing the entire point of the medicine. My point being that acupuncture does not treat "conditions" it treats people with patterns that can have any number of symptoms which are usually across the mind-body spectrum (i.e. physical, psychological, mental, emotional, etc.). Going after the "pain" often leads to very poor results. You need to fully understand the entire body of theories within Chinese Medicine and apply it correctly to a broad range of cases. With this you can help many people, without this you will generally be very lackluster... To learn acupuncture you need to train within an acupuncture college for years ideally. An understanding of western medicine does very little to help you be a competent practitioner of acupuncture (although it does help in certain ways - and certainly we need more people who are truly versed in both sides of the equation).

All that said and understanding (although you didn&#39t state this directly) that you are probably a western medical student and not a student of Chinese Medicine (??) - pain does respond well to acupuncture. In my experience it is far less about any technique than about proper diagnosis and proper point choices (which only come from a firm grounding in Chinese Medical theory) - cupping techniques and tuina (Chinese Medical Massage) are also imperative in my opinion for proper resolution.

If you are a Chinese Medical student, then, just hold on and learn more. If you are a western medical student - plan to train either privately with a fully trained Chinese Medicine master whom you can see gets repeatable results in a broad range of cases (i.e. not just pain) for a couple years or to go to school for at least a year or two after Med school to get properly versed in the underlying theories. To start all the texts within our section (particularly within the carousel) are good.