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Romeo (Unregistered Guest)
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 13:36: | |
Greetings all. I am a 3 rd year student of acupuncture. There is a question i'd like to ask about lower back pain. It is often that lower back pain results from weak ki. chi. Using k-3 (a major point to tonify the ki.) is supposed to strengthen the ki. thereby eliminate back pain. Practice, however, shows that this is not enough for this purpose. What do I miss here?
Romeo... |
Shmuel Halevi
| | Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 16:57: | |
Greetings Romeo and welcome to the forum. Lower back pain may be the result of many conditions. It is true that this symptom is often attributed to deficiency of K. qi in Chinese medicine, along with chronic pain of the knees, lassitude, fear of cold, dizziness, tinnitus, dribbling of urine and many other symptoms. Experience show however, that lower back pain may be also the result of slipped disc, osteoarthritis, muscular or skeletal injuries and more.
In the case of weak kidney Qi, the pain is chronic, may be with a tendency to acute flare-ups, and involve other classical kidney symptoms, some of which have been described above, along with specific pulse and tongue signs. When K. Qi is the cause, it is said to be unable to adequately nourish the muscles and tendons of the lower back, resulting in weak and painful lower back. In this case, you'll see patients unable to stand erect for a long time due to painful lower back or knees, a recurring bouts of backache, a backache that is usually relieved or feels much better with local heating, etc.
Treating deficiency of K. Qi by K-3 is good. It is a powerful and effective point for this purpose and may do the job. Yet, it is often not enough. You may need to build a comprehensive formula, depending on the exact nature of the deficiency that you diagnose. Is it a Yin predominant Qi deficiency ? a Yang deficiency ? Does it involve other organs as well, may be in relation to the five-phase energetics, or a Shao-Yin related….?
Even so, treating the K. Qi problem with success will not necessarily terminate the lower back pain problem – you are right about that. The K. Qi syndrome has rendered the lower back tissues undernourished, poorly circulated and painful. It is almost always needed to take care of the biao as well, if K. Qi xu is the ben. Thus, treating points such B-23, B-25, B-40 that possess a strong circulatory effect on the lower back, may complete the task satisfactorily.
On the other hand, if you have done only this, i.e., treating those local-effect-points and did not address the K. Qi xu problem satisfactorily, you may have this patient coming over and over for the same problem in the future…
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Low back pain and K-3