Did you search for acupuncture in Clinton Hill? Acupuncture can be helpful for managing your knee arthritis symptoms.

In our last blog, we explained what acupuncture is and how it can be used to address a wide variety of painful conditions throughout the body.  When a physical therapist considers it to be appropriate, they will recommend that acupuncture be combined with several other interventions, with the goal of bringing about the greatest benefits for each patient.  One group of patients that may stand to improve from a course of acupuncture is those who have knee osteoarthritis.

Osteoarthritis (OA), sometimes called wear-and-tear arthritis, is a condition in which the natural cushioning between joints—cartilage—gradually wears away.  Over time, this causes the bones of these joints to rub more closely against one another because there is less shock-absorbing cartilage.  Once this happens, individuals with knee OA will begin to experience symptoms like pain, stiffness, swelling, a feeling of warmth and a decreased ability to move the knees normally.

OA is the most common form of arthritis, and although it can occur in any joint in the body, it’s seen more often in the hips and knees than anywhere else.  Knee OA can also occur at any age, but the risk for developing it increases with older age because the body loses its ability to heal the damaged cartilage.  This is why about 10% of men and 13% of women over the age of 60 have knee OA.  Being obese or overweight also increases the chances of developing knee OA, since the additional weight puts added pressure on the knees and accelerates the damage to cartilage.

Unfortunately, there is no cure for knee OA, but treatments like physical therapy can be used to reduce symptoms and help patients function better in their everyday lives.  In some cases, a physical therapist might find it appropriate to combine physical therapy interventions like stretching and strengthening exercises with acupuncture.  Many studies have pointed out the various benefits of acupuncture for alleviating painful symptoms, and the same goes for knee OA.  According to a study from 2013:

As a summary of the current available research, acupuncture can be considered one of the more effective physical treatments for alleviating knee OA pain in the short-term.

So if you’re dealing with knee OA, a treatment program combining acupuncture with or without physical therapy may be the right approach for your condition.  Our expertly trained clinicians can perform a full-scale evaluation and determine what’s best for you, so that you can start moving without pain once again.

Click here for our contact information.  We have a clinic right here in Clinton Hill for you.

Are you looking for acupuncture in Bedford Stuyvesant? If other treatments fail to reduce your neck pain, you may want to consider acupuncture.

If you’ve been following our past two blogs, by now you should be aware of just how effective acupuncture can be for patients who are in pain.  Neck pain is one of the most prevalent of all painful conditions, and there’s a strong that chance you have personally dealt with it at some point. As you might expect, acupuncture may once again provide the solution to this problem, especially for patients who don’t respond to other treatments.

Neck pain is considered the third most common cause of long lasting (chronic) pain after back pain and headaches.  At any given point in time, about 12% of adult females and 9% of adult males are dealing with neck pain, and its overall prevalence in today’s working population is approximately 45%.

Most cases of neck pain result from a muscle strain or sprain in the neck or areas that support it, although other issues may also be responsible.  Some of the most common causes of neck pain include sleeping on your neck wrong, sitting or standing for prolonged periods with bad posture, spending too much time performing repetitive movements, and carrying a heavy backpack, purse or briefcase.  Neck pain can also develop from conditions like osteoarthritis, a herniated disc or spinal stenosis, or from sudden injuries that may cause whiplash or other problems in the neck.

People with this condition most commonly experience pain that often gets worse from holding the head in place or lifting it for long periods, muscle tightness and spasms, a decreased ability to move rotate the neck, and headaches.  For some people, neck pain is also accompanied by upper back or shoulder pain, and pain in the shoulder may actually be referred from the neck.

There are numerous treatments available for neck pain, but some patients have tried many of them and still don’t improve.  This is where acupuncture comes in.  As with other conditions, a physical therapist may suggest trying acupuncture combined with physical therapy for patients that fail to get better with other treatments.  Many studies have shown that acupuncture is in fact effective for various conditions that cause neck pain, like whiplash, ankylosing spondylosis and cervical spondylosis.  In one recent study, researchers concluded:

Patients in the abdominal acupuncture group also exhibited significantly greater improvements in intensity of neck pain and a few quality-of-life measures than those in the sham abdominal acupuncture group, without any serious adverse events.

CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that abdominal acupuncture is an effective alternative treatment for neck pain.

While there’s no guarantee that acupuncture is necessarily right for you, this study and many others show that it is certainly beneficial for many patients.

So if you’re dealing with nagging neck pain that just won’t seem to subside, call or come by and ask our acupuncturist if this treatment is right treatment for you.

Click here for contact information for any of our practices.

Did you do a search for acupuncture Fort Greene?  If so, please read about our integrated treatment approach that is successful with so many of our patients.  Working together, we can provide you with a better treatment result and acupuncture just may be what you need.

Acupuncture is a professional service that can help you recover from a variety of painful conditions.

Every time a patient enters a clinic, the job of every physical therapist is to accurately diagnose their condition and determine the best course of treatment to help them improve.  While this usually focuses on various exercises and movement-based treatments performed by the therapist or patient, in some cases other interventions may be needed as well, like acupuncture.

One of the advantages of receiving treatment here a Park Sports Physical Therapy is that we provide an integrated approach to the treatment of our patients.  If a patient requests or needs acupuncture, we can bring in one of our licensed acupuncturists to help right away.

Why Acupuncture?

Acupuncture is an ancient therapy that originated in China more than 3,000 years ago and was introduced to the U.S. in the 1970s. Since then, acupuncture has become quite popular, as more than 14 million Americans have tried it by now.  Many of these individuals do so after other treatments and therapies have failed, especially individuals with chronic (long-lasting) pain.  Chronic pain is one of the many ailments acupuncture has been found to be effective for, while others includes headaches, tennis elbow, osteoarthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, low back pain, and strains and sprains.

So, how does acupuncture actually work? Here’s a brief summary:

• According to Chinese traditional medicine, there are more than 2,000 acupuncture points throughout the body, through which energy (or “chi”) must pass through freely for good health; disruptions in chi lead to illness
• These acupuncture points connect with 20 meridian points, or pathways, which help conduct the chi throughout the body
• The meridian points happen to coincide with trigger points, which are spots on the body where pain radiates away from the center of when pressed
• During a session, a trained acupuncturist will insert anywhere from 1-20 hair-thin needles into these points for 15-30 minutes, in efforts to correct or maintain the normal flow of chi and address the imbalances in the body
• In addition, acupuncture has been found to affect other systems of the body; it may release hormones and pain-killing chemicals called endorphins, and help cells from the immune system fight infection and inflammation

Perhaps the biggest reason acupuncture has grown in popularity is that so many patients experience benefits from it, which is also reflected in the research conducted on the topic.  According to one recent study:

Acupuncture is effective, safe, and cost-effective for treating several chronic pain conditions when performed by well-trained healthcare professionals.

Acupuncture is not for everyone.  The advantage of working with our experienced clinicians is that we can offer you the option if you are interested or if we feel it will be of benefit to you.  If you have a long-term issue that’s not responding to other therapies, it may be worth considering.  Rather than doing a search for acupuncture Fort Greene again, please consider contacting us.  We have an excellent reputation and would like to show you how we can help.

Contact us today for more information about acupuncture and to decide if it’s right for your condition.