My teacher would often say, “To resolve chronic conditions, you as an acupuncturist must identify and treat areas that are clinically silent.” What does this mean? Often times when a patient comes into our Flatiron NYC office, they have a certain complaint such as neck, back pain, joint pains, digestive issues, insomnia, etc. These conditions help us identify which areas of the body need to be treated. However, treating the areas or channels that are “shouting” and making lots of noise clinically will not always resolve chronic conditions.
As an acupuncturist in NYC, I have found this to be true. Often times, symptom improvement will occur rather quickly within 1-3 sessions, but with continued treatment, the patient may hit a plateau in their treatment progress. When this occurs, we need to re-examine the body and treat clinically silent areas. Sometimes this is easier said than done and other times the answers are very obvious.
Scar tissue is a prime example of pathology that may be clinically silent meaning that around the scar tissue itself, there may not be any pain or sensitivity. The patient may state that they had the surgery many years ago and haven’t noticed how the scar tissue is affecting them. Conversely, there are cases where patients have noticed after a surgical procedure their bodies haven’t quite been the same since. They may have pain and sensitivity around the adhesion or the incision sites may still be red although the surgeries occurred many years ago. In both cases, treating scar tissue will be significantly beneficial to the patient.
Scar tissue treatment is especially important when it is located in the abdomen. The abdomen is a very important area to keep open because all of the channels pass through this region as it connects to its respective organ. In addition, it will block channels that ascend or descend through that pathway.
If, for example, someone has knee pain which has been treated extensively with other modalities such as chiropractic, PT, or even previous acupuncture, yet significant scar tissue in the abdomen has not been addressed, and treatment progress has plateaued, it is very likely that the scar tissue adhesion is hindering circulation to the knee joint and the patient may benefit from releasing the scar adhesion.
At our Flatiron acupuncture clinic, I have seen scar tissue treatments dramatically improve conditions of pain, insomnia, and digestive disorders. Often times, when scar tissue adhesion is hindering the body from healing, treating it will result in a dramatic decrease in overall symptoms in addition to the main complaint. When a patient has multiple issues such as digestive problems, sleep problems in addition to pain, the system must be fully addressed in order to facilitate the body’s full healing response.
I have noticed with acupuncture that if a person has problems in the respiratory system such as asthma or allergies, digestive system including diarrhea, constipation, IBS, etc. and or problems with sleep, treatment with acupuncture may not be as effective in resolving pain until the whole system is treated. In many cases resolving scar tissue pathology may be the missing link that helps multiple illnesses simultaneously. If you feel scar tissue has resulted in pain or limited mobility, make an appointment to see our acupuncturist for evaluation.
