EXPERT
Jeff Rippey
Acupuncturist
- Saint Joseph, MO
- Colorado School of Traditional Chinese Medicine
- Accepting new patients
Why It's Hard To Tell Patients Where Needles Might Be Placed
I've been answering questions on this site for a couple of years now. There's been a recent trend towards acupressure questions which I addressed in my first blog post. Generally,...
Why It's Difficult to Answer Acupressure/Pressure Point Questions
As part of this site, patients have the capability of asking questions of practitioners and subject matter experts. Recently I’ve been seeing a lot of questions that take the...
Is herniated disc pain for life?
Acupuncture has a long track record of success with this sort of pain. I just saw an article stating the WHO now recommends acupuncture over most interventions when it comes to managing back pain.
There are lots of topical ointments, creams, and patches you can try. Sometimes these can offer relief, though it'll probably be temporary.
Occasionally medication (over the counter or prescription) can help. I don't often run into cases where they help a lot.
Using traction - either a traction table at a chiropractor or PT office or an inversion table can sometimes provide relief.
PT exercises can sometimes help.
What helps with ear ringing?
The most common cause of ringing in the ears is repeated exposure to loud noises (earphones, concerts, car stereos, firearms, airplanes, heavy construction equipment, etc.) This type of noise causes cumulative, irreversible damage to the structure of the inner ear responsible for detecting and transmitting sound. Once the damage has accumulated to a certain point, hearing loss and tinnitus result. Getting hearing aids may help a bit, but it's not going away.
In my experience, the second most common cause is excessive tension in the jaw and neck. Usually this is associated with TMJ, TMD, and/or grinding the teeth at night. Dealing with whatever is causing this (usually stress) and getting the muscles to relax will improve any ringing, but it rarely goes away completely.
I don't like to dissuade people from trying to improve their situation, but tinnitus is extremely difficult to treat.
How can I get rid of ankle arthritis pain?
Going to a physical therapist for exercises, though, would be a good idea. You need to keep the ankle moving despite the pain or discomfort.
Topicals like BenGay, IcyHot, Aspercreme, or topical Voltaren (diclofenac). Can help. Sometimes herbal topicals like arnica, frankincense, or CBD can help.
Over the counter ibuprofen or aleve are sometimes useful. Prescription pain relievers can sometimes be useful.
What helps with insomnia?
Fixing your sleep hygiene can make a big difference. Light in the blue spectrum can fool your brain into thinking it's morning. Devices like phones, tablets, computers, and televisions all emit light in this range. Using devices like this at or close to bedtime can make you brain think it's time to get up and can cause or exacerbate insomnia. Better to read a book or do something else that helps your brain to calm down and indicates to your body it's time to sleep.
Eating too much just prior to bed can cause stomach/GI discomfort, making it difficult to get in a comfortable position and fall to sleep. A light snack prior to bedtime is ok, a full meal should be avoided.
Acupuncture and Chinese medicine have an excellent track record in treating insomnia (though sleep hygiene is still important and will still need to be addressed).
Sometimes having some white noise in the room helps. Either a small fan or a white noise generating machine can help people fall to sleep.
Over the counter sleep aids like melatonin or diphenhydramine (benadryl) can sometimes help folks get to sleep.
Prescription sleep aids can often help. It's important to note that prescription sleep aids often have side-effects, can cause daytime drowsiness, and are sometimes addictive.
If you have anxiety that is preventing sleep, addressing the anxiety issues either through prescription medication, therapy, Chinese medicine, or all three can often improve the situation.
What helps with bloating?
This could be a food sensitivity, it could be some sort of loss of function in the GI system due to an issue in the stomach/small intestine/large intestine, it could be function loss in the GI system due to pinched nerve in the spine, and that's probably just scratching the surface.
Your best bet is to visit your primary care provider and let them do some testing to see if you can get to the root cause of the problem. Once you know why you're bloated, then you can figure out what might be the best treatment.
Can back hernia pain go away with treatments?
Yes, treatment with acupuncture or physical therapy or both can often help relieve the pain associated with a herniated disk.
Can a kidney infection go away without medications?
Kidney infection isn't something to fool around with. Left untreated, this type of infection can lead to sepsis and result in death. If you have a kidney infection, get on antibiotics, please.
Can a spine hernia be fixed?
For the most part, spinal disks do not have dedicated blood supply. Because they don't have dedicated blood supply, it's very difficult for them to heal and they are very slow to heal. In my experience, outside of surgery (which is really only cleaning things up), there isn't a lot that can be done to the disk.
Pain that you may be experiencing can sometimes be managed, but a lot is going to depend on how the herniation is impacting nerve structures.
How can I ease ankle arthritis pain?
Even though it's painful, it's important to keep the joint moving and/or stay active.
Can hyperthyroidism be treated without medications?
Can ankle pain be fixed naturally?
My suggestion would be to start with either your primary care provider or an orthopedic specialist. Get some imaging and an evaluation of your ankle. If the images and eval give us a concrete cause for the pain, then we're in a much better position to set expectations around what can and cannot be done as well as what treatment modality is going to give you the best potential outcome.
What medications help with high blood pressure?
This is something that you need to work out with your primary care provider.
Can a sinus infection be fixed without medications?
Can drug addiction be fixed without medications?
Without knowing the specifics (i.e. what drugs are involved), it's difficult to know whether the issue could be managed without prescription medication. There are acupuncture techniques which can help a person deal with addictive behaviors, but drugs like meth and cocaine do not typically respond well to this type of intervention.
The best approach is often a combination of prescription medication combined with therapy and other non-medication type therapies like acupuncture.
What treatments help with ankle mobility?
What helps with chicken pox?
Can anxiety be fixed naturally?
Can bronchitis be fixed naturally?
If this is more along the lines of chronic bronchitis, there are still things you can to do minimize the impact on your life. Staying away from smoke, minimizing your exposure to air pollutants, and using acupuncture/herbal medicine/OTC meds to help clear mucus and dilate the bronchi.
Can anxiety go away?
As to whether anxiety can go away on it's own, again, sometimes. Most of the time you're going to have to expend some effort to understand what causes the anxious feelings to arise and why anger is your response to those feelings. Therapy is an excellent place to explore these issues.
Acupuncture and Chinese medicine can support therapy and help to manage things by down regulating your central nervous system.
In time, you can probably reduce the overhead in terms of anxiety and develop strategies for managing break through anxiety and anger.