Glad to see your doing better. I would still highly reccomend that you give acupuncture a second try. I reccomend that you visit a fully trained acupuncturists in your area. In some states acupuncturists are allowed to also perform acupuncture injection thearpy which is also very effective for pain relief and a many more medical conditions. I know that you will see a major difference in the treatment from a real acupuncturist as opposed to someone with a couple of hundred hours of training or no training at all.

Acupuncture and oriental medicine (TCM) is a complete medical system capable of treating almost anything. Scientific studies are greater in numbers now. Just check out pubmed.gov which has many scientific articles on acunpuncture and its effectiveness.

For the average person TCM can seem strange with how it explains disease. Remember that a lot of terminology in TCM may seem strange but it has many of the same meanings as western medicine but just with a different name. You will find a growing number of MD’s in support of acupuncture and oriental medicine due to that TCM has the same methology but with a different means to treat a condition.

One thing I would like to point out is that acupuncture has been around for over 3000 years. I do not think it would have lasted that long if there was not something to it. It provides real alternatives to condiitons that are not responding to conventional treatment. I also believe that if a person included TCM in there care earlier to complement conventional treatment then many conditions would respond better.

If you ever get a chance please read the book “Between Heaven and Earth” it is a wonderful book that answers a lot of questions with regards to Acupuncture and TCM

Good luck my friend and I hope that you find peace in your road to recovery.

In Health,
YinTang

BTW, I am largely OK now. I saw several additional doctors, all of them MDs. The most recent doctor indicated that my condition (which you can see at the links at the bottom of this comment) is “gray hair of the spine.” My spine looks a lot like the spines of most people my age (52).

I will comment further because this sort of thing affects so many people, Basically, I’m taking Naproxen each day and my condition has stabilized. I even played a bit of racquetball. It is amazing to me that I can function normally because the pain was so incredibly severe in prior months.

My surgeons both discouraged surgery, and both suggested that I put off surgery until/unless things flame up again or if I start experiencing weakness or numbness. They both indicated that many of these pinched nerve conditions resolve on their own. Mine did. If I’m lucky the pain will stay away.

The surgeon I saw most recently said that “vigorous physical activity” is the best thing, NOT living a sedentary life. Therefore, I’m working hard to stay in shape and I’m actually pushing my neck through some stretches.

I bought a home traction device (for $25) and it seems to have helped. I’ve used it only a few times in the past two months.

I feel very good and very lucky that the pain mostly gone (though some days, it is . . . well . . . painful). Having that pain made me much more tuned to the problems of all of those people out there with chronic pain. It can interfere with your life greatly. It can get you depressed and it can even wreck your life.

BTW, Here’s the traction device I bought. http://www.sitincomfort.com/ovtrsetcetrt.html I’ve only used it a couple of times, but I do think it helped. It was only $25 and it does the same thing that the physical therapists were doing for $200 per visit (much of that NOT covered by my insurer, somehow … though that is a separate story). It looks rather silly and I felt silly using it (my kids chuckle). But it actually did help.

http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/03/06/hey-theres-a-skeleton-inside-my-body/

http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/04/08/getting-jabbed-with-a-hypodermic-needle-sometimes-makes-my-body-faint/

But there is one problem here, from what I see on the photo the acupuncture peformed was not only performed incorrectly but it also carried the risk of endangering the patients life via pneumothorax. The points shown in the photo are backshu points as well as other points. The needling technique was done perpendicular which is a very big no no with points in this area. The correct needling method would of been transverse oblique.

This is the problem with allowing other professions not just chiropractor to perform acupuncture with little or no training. Now that is not to take anything away from chiroprator as I do like them and have friends who are chiropractors. But acupuncture should be performed by Licensed acupuncturists who have gone to the complete 4 years of trainnig not only with acupuncture but also oriental medicine. If I knew I could add spinal manipulatioin to my scope with only a couple of hundred hours of training I would have to decline to do so as that is not enough training to perform it correctly as you should go to 4 years of chiropactic school if you want to perfrom spinal manipulation.

My dad once siad that if you need a plumber you would not call an electrician. So the same should be if you want acupuncture you should not see another doctor that is not fully trained.

If I were an expert witness to the above photo in a pnuemothrorax case I would have to say that from what I see it is clearly malpractice on the part of the person treating

Thats my two cents

Consider looking into whether you might have trigger points that are causing your pain and mis-alignment. Trigger points are basically little contraction knots in the muscle fibers that shorten the muscle, interfere with range of motion, strength and cause pain (including referring pain to areas away from the point itself.). Bad ergonomics can perpetuate them.

I’ve had all sorts of muscular pain and trigger point therapy (not general massage) is the only thing that seems to have reliable results for me. There’s a great book by Clair Davies called The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook, and by using that as a reference I’ve been able to manage without much professional intervention.

Great blog, BTW

I switched over to my GP, who took lots of x-rays and said that I had mild osteoarthritis in my neck. That doesn’t really tell me why it all started hurting; after all, 2 months ago, I presumably had a similar cervical spine, yet no pain. He offered physical therapy and that’s probably the route I’ll pursue if the pain doesn’t subside more.

It was an interesting adventure to go to a chiropractor to get acupuncture. Maybe it works for some people, but not for me.

Speaking of which, I would bet the effectiveness of Erich’s treatment has a whole lot more to do with the stretching he’s doing than with the accupuncture.

As regards chiropractors in general, I know one person (a family friend now in her 50s) who has spent a lifetime with permanent and severe spinal deformity because her parents took her (as a child) to a chiropractor instead of to a ‘real’ doctor. I know another person — a close relative — who nearly died last summer from a life-threatening spinal infection because a chiropractor utterly failed to recognize the seriousness of the condition. In my opinion, most chiropractors aren’t just quacks, they are a danger to the community. Mostly, they appear to rely on the placebo effect and basic physical therapy (stretching, light exercise, massage, etc.)

By contrast, I’ve had excellent results from physical therapists, on three different occasions I can think of. No, that’s not a statistically significant sampling, but a perfect track record is not insignificant, either. In each case, my physical therapists were able to clearly explain what was wrong, as well as the rationale behind their treatment plan. I’ve yet to hear *any* chiropractic patient report that they received any sort of clear explanation of anything.

I’ve been in pain since, oh, the last 17 years or so. Mild scoliosis made worse by public school phys-ed “posture classes” finally took its toll. Vigorous spinal manipulation by one chiropractor brought me tons of relief, but required regular visits for years. I tried two different chiropractors in my new town who both used much more gentle maneuvers, including electrical muscle stimulation similar to what you’re getting, but without the needles. Didn’t work. I was so desperate, I was willing to sit two hours each way in the car to get an adjustment from my old doctor, then I got a recommendation for an orthopedist. He wasn’t on my insurance (few decent doctors are, sadly) but he gave me a good discount for paying cash, and really spent a lot of time with me for that. He sent me to a physical therapist who really knew what he was doing, and he explained his philosophy, “The chiropractor wants to keep seeing you every week for the rest of your life. When you’re done here, I never want to see you again.” The exercises I got were specific to my pain, and strengthened the supportive muscles front and back, and if I keep them up, I’m pain-free. If I lapse, a few days back on the exercises and I’m better again. So, IMHO, keep up the search for a good ortho/PT team while you’re getting relief from the acupuncture. They are out there, just hidden away among the mediocre ones.

I gave that up after a couple of years because my right shoulder got a bad case of “mouse shoulder”. So I got a chair that lets my arm rest on the chair arm as I use the mouse (conveniently just beyond the end of the arm). I also got a special narrow keyboard that has full size keys, all of them, but not those wide, blank areas between the sections. That way, my mouse isn’t so far to the right. I’ve used this same keyboard now for at least 10 years. Here’s it’s image, and where I got it:

This keyboard predates Windows, so there are no Windows (or Mac) specific keys. I use ctl-esc for the window key.

Bad ergonomics is the leading cause of strain injuries. It also would be so easy to remedy, if only they taught body mechanics in “physical education” classes. But it is not too late to learn.

Ben: I haven’t actually been riding my bike much at all over the past month. It’s been a series of problems: bitter cold or ice on the ground or cold rain or need for the car because I need to drop the kids at school or go to court in a suit that day. It has occurred to me that, perhaps, the lack of that exercise might be exacerbating the problem. For that reason (and for ecological reasons) I need to get peddling more often.

I am trying to get exercise in other ways though. For instance, we have a NordicTrak at home.

Also, if (when!) this pain resolves, I could point to another potential cause–over the last few days I’ve been making use of a thin pillow that allows me to move around while sitting. Clever and simple device. Check it out. http://www.backvitalizer.com/main.php

I realize that I’m probably trying to do this all wrong. Perhaps I should be figuring out how to NOT sit in front of a computer so many hours per day. One way to do that would be to retire, but that would mean starving my children at this point in my career. Or maybe I could change careers and give up the blog, but I’m unusually lucky to enjoy these two activities to the extent that they aren’t just things I do–they ARE a part of me. I would not be able to say that about some other phases of my life. I’m stuck sitting in front of the monitor if I want to do the things I’m doing. But thanks, Ben, for the reminder about monitor height. I’ve raised my monitors at work by about 3″ and it feels better. I’ve also raised the height of the monitor at home.

Given all of this attention to my pain (as much as it does sometimes hurt and distract), it just isn’t anything compared to the pain felt by many people going through chronic intense pain where there might not be a real and affordable escape. As I said, I’m feeling lucky.

That said, this post might segue nicely into other bits of advice for avoiding the kind of pains that occur when someone spends far too many statue-like hours in front of a computer monitor, day after day.