Acupuncture, an ancient treatment, has one patient coming back for more.
There I was in nothing but my briefs, lying on this table with 10 thin needles sticking in my lower back and one in the back of each knee. This is an experience that prompts a series of thoughts, not the least of which is: What am I doing here?
I decided to give acupuncture a try because nothing else seemed to ease my aching back, not my doctor’s painkillers or my chiropractor’s lecture about my posture or the stretches prescribed by my physical therapist or my rock-hard mattress.
I had no idea how acupuncture worked or how it could help, but I knew it was more than 2,000 years old. I knew it was becoming increasingly popular in the U.S. for a number of problems from toothaches to osteoarthritis. I heard that if I found a certified practitioner, it probably couldn’t make things worse.
As near as anyone can tell, my back problems involve ligaments and muscles. It has been like this for at least a decade. The pain is partly self-inflicted. I have always been addicted to exercise, at least four times a week, sore back or not. Essentially I am a middle-age man with a young man’s hobby and an old man’s back. I’ve gotten careful, but I won’t stop.
Once a year, for about three or four days at a time, I am paralyzed. My back locks up in angry spasms. I can move only in increments and only after carefully assessing whether it is worth it. I lie in bed and swallow so many pain pills that even “Oprah” begins to look complicated.
My back is stiff and sore the other 360-some days. But that’s just life, and I know I’m not alone.
I chose Long-Life Acupuncture because a friend’s mother had been treated there to try to improve her balance. I walked into the clinic, set up in a North Seattle house, one Monday morning and met Dr. Jianxin Huang, a friendly 42-year-old Chinese doctor who is a state-certified acupuncturist. He has been administering acupuncture for two decades and has been in practice in Seattle since leaving China in about 1989.
I filled out a long questionnaire about my back, diet and health history. There was nothing to report other than a sore back and that I drink too much coffee.
He took me into a small treatment room where he felt my pulse and looked at my tongue. Acupuncturists pay attention to the tongue’s color, size, texture and mucous buildup because it tells them about circulation and general health. Mine was your standard tongue.
Then he poked at my lower back, right on the spine. He said he felt a loose, possibly torn ligament–a supra-spinal ligament injury, he called it–that forces my lower back muscles to work overtime to make up the missing support. This meshed with what my doctor had been telling me.
Two minutes later, I was lying on a padded table. I stuck my face through a doughnut extension and let my arms rest down my sides with palms up.
Huang dabbed rubbing alcohol on several spots along my lower back, on and around the spine, and on the back of each knee. I wasn’t concerned about needles in my back, but the back of my knees?
One by one, Huang removed small, metallic, hair-width needles from their packages, tapping each about a half-inch into my skin. He tapped them in because it hurts less than slowly poking through the nerves of the skin. After inserting each needle, he would give it a little twist.
Most of the needles felt like bee stings, tweaking pain that quickly dissipated. My muscles grabbed in mini-spasms around some of the needles, but that faded too. There was a feeling of steady pressure, but it felt fine as long as I stayed still.
Getting stuck in the back of the knees was a whole different experience. Each needle sent a bolting sensation, like an electrical current, barreling down to my toes. Each leg flopped like a beached fish. A second later the sensation was gone.
“You OK?” he asked. No problem, I answered, unsure whether I was telling the truth.
He turned on a low-level electromagnetic lamp and placed it just above my back. It produced a pleasant warmth. I became drowsy and drifted off a time or two.
He returned about 30 or 40 minutes later, plucked the needles out and threw them away. I got dressed and stood there, trying to gauge how I felt. I was lightheaded and relaxed. I also felt distinct relief in my back as if the needles had somehow released the steady pressure that always weighs upon it. I felt like I was floating.
I felt great and a little suspicious.
“How does that work?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, laughing loudly.
Then he began talking about my energy and circulation and the body’s regenerative powers. Those bolts I felt in my legs represented my body’s energy, he said. I didn’t understand much of it, but I was eager to do it again.
Huang charges $65 per visit, but I quickly learned my health-care provider would pay for the treatment because he was on their list of preferred acupuncturists. I called my doctor and got a referral. From then on, each visit cost me $10.
I went straight to the health club and worked out as hard as I had in years, purposely pushing it, lifting weights, running, playing basketball. I felt great. More telling, I felt great the next day and the day after that.
I was stiff and sore again by Friday. I couldn’t wait for Monday morning and those needles.
Acupuncturists focus on specific points throughout the body that they believe tap into the 14 meridians. Each point, they say, has a predictable effect on the body.
When I complained that my neck and upper back were sore on one visit, needles were stuck in the back of my neck, between the shoulder blades and in the calves and ankles. I had 16 needles that time.
I went once a week for two months. For a while the pattern was immediate relief and about five pain-free days before my back would tighten up again. Even my sore days didn’t seem as bad as before. Eventually, the pain and stiffness disappeared.
