Holistic Health Associates | Stress and Pain Management

One of the most common issues I treat in the clinic is pain. Acupuncture has become famous for its ability to treat pain. More and more patients are coming in to acupuncture because their doctor has told them that acupuncture may help with their pain management. Acupuncture has become mainstream for pain relief.

What is acupunctureʼs secret? Unlike modern medicine acupuncture is a holistic medicine which means that it sees the patient not simply as a “knee pain” or “low back pain.” It sees the person as a whole and the pain in context of the personʼs life. It is not uncommon for me to ask about how a person sits, or sleeps, what they eat or how they think when looking for the best solution to a personʼs pain. Sometimes shoulder pain is more then just shoulder pain.

Mrs D came in to acupuncture for shoulder pain. Over the course of the last two years she has not been able to raise her arm higher then her shoulder and has had signiﬁcant pain in the area. During the initial consultation I took a detailed history and found that Mrs D had signiﬁcant stress from home and work. During the initial treatment I not only treated her shoulder pain but did a speciﬁc treatment that would help her cope with stress and feel more ease. Immediately after the treatment she was able to raise her arm above her head with little to no pain, something she couldnʼt do for the last two years. This was by all accounts a great start.

So, I told her what I tell all of my patients. What you are experiencing now is a window of freedom. Youʼll feel less pain, have more range of motion and can do things you havenʼt been able to do in a long time. This is wonderful, but what is most important to do is to pay attention. What you may ﬁnd is that your window of freedom may begin to close. The pain may begin to return and your range of motion may decrease over the next week. When you feel this happening you have to pay attention to what is going on around you. Keep your mind open, the change can come from something physical that you did, something that you eat or stress. Just pay attention.

Mrs D was a star patient because she paid attention. The next week when she came in for her second treatment and told me about her shoulder. She said that during the week her shoulder was great, but. There were a couple times when she found that she couldnʼt raise her arm above her shoulder. She stopped and noticed that she was very stressed. Instead of panicking and thinking that the treatment didnʼt work, she began to take some calming breaths. Lo and behold, she was able to raise her arm all
the way up again! We now both knew that stress was a major factor contributing to her shoulder pain and range of motion.

After hearing Debbieʼs story the next logical question would be “how can stress do such a thing?” When stressed we become physically tense. The tension has a nasty habit of honing in on our weaker and compromised parts. An old injury, a repetitive strain, or a recent trauma such as a back injury from a car accident all make juicy targets for our stress to clamp down on and live in.

We may have very good physical reasons to have a pain, but that should never rule out the fact that stress can be a signiﬁcant complication. In fact, I would say that stress is one of the major reasons why
we often donʼt fully recover from old injuries. Once injured the stress response keeps the area tight, inﬂamed and doesnʼt let the free ﬂow of blood and lymph in to the muscle to fully heal the injury. In light of this the saying “heʼs a pain in my neck” can take on a whole new meaning!

What this leads to is not just a way of freeing the body from pain, but also better understanding our lives. For instance Mrs D is now looking closely at how she needs to shift her relationship to her stressors. If her stress is affecting her shoulder then we can assume that it is having other affects in her body. All of which are important for her health. Her shoulder has become the canary in the mine. Itʼs a warning to her that sheʼs under stress and needs to address something in her life. In this way we can totally transform the idea of pain into a way of knowing about who we are and what we need to
do, for our health.