Acupuncture and Low Back Pain

Whether your back pain is acute (sudden) or chronic, acupuncture can be  a great option to not only manage the pain, but get rid of it entirely.

Do one these areas in this image match an area of your pain?  These are some of the more common areas of acute and chronic pain.  The most common low back pain symptoms I see is patients that either trace their hands across the back, place their hands over their SI joint, or say they have pain that shoots down the leg.

So why is acupuncture a good route to try?  Acupuncture is such an effective tool for 2 reasons:

1: The needles themselves are able to reach the deeper musculature that is involved and release them; and;

2: Acupuncture utilizes the body as a whole, so will not only treat the area of pain, but the surrounding tissues that are either affected by that pain as well, or that may be contributing to the pain in the first place.

Often, low back pain, be it acute or chronic, stems from a weakened core.  Us Westerners sit a lot.  What this does is actually weaken our back muscles because we are hunched over and not utilizing those muscles to keep our backs straight.  What this means is that part of the issue is stemming from the musculature of the front, like our iliopsoas muscle that actually attaches to our lumbar spine on the front, pulling our spine forward and creating pain.  Acupuncture is able to correct this imbalance.