Conditions Causing Pain

Pain can have negative ripple effects and all areas of your life. Mood, energy, productivity, weight, exercise, and so much more. This is why it is important to find effective and holistic pain management solutions to treat your pain, so you can get back to your life again. When pain can't be treated and resolved it is important to find solutions that keep you functional in your life. We do this using a unique combination of physical therapy, acupuncture, botanical medicine, nutrition, and pharmaceutical medications. This integrative medicine approach is safe an sustainable so patients can function in their life without too many side effects. 

  • Arthritis
    • Degenerative Arthritis or Osteoarthritis- Osteoarthritis is a condition that occurs from wear and tear of the cushioning and fluid in and around the joints. It can occur in any joint but seems to have more of an affinity to joints that are weight bearing, like hips, knees, and spine. Traditional treatment approaches for this condition focus on treating the inflammation and pain involved. The chronic use of Tylenol or Ibuprofen can and does have side effects that can be as serious as the osteoarthritis itself. For this reason we seek to find less invasive integrative medicine treatments for the pain and inflammation. It is important to first verify that the pain you are experiencing is a result of osteoarthritis. In some cases back and neck pain can be a result of tight muscles and not degenerative disc disease. In the case when discs are involved, physical therapy can be used to reduce or eliminate the pain.
    • Rheumatic Arthritis or Rheumatoid Arthritis- This type of arthritis is cause by an autoimmune dysfunction in the body. Autoimmune conditions occur when your immune cells start to attack the joint tissue in your body. The reason some people get autoimmune diseases is not clearly understood. However we do know that when an autoimmune disease is present there is an excess of inflammation as the immune cells are the attack. The general goal then is to reduce the inflammation without suppressing the immune system to make you venerable to infection and cancer. IN many case we find that the foods our patients are eating are triggers for the immune system attacks. In these cases, when the foods triggers are eliminated the autoimmune condition is reduced greatly.
  • Back pain- There are numerous types and sources of back pain. Like any effective treatment, the key is knowing what we are treating. When the focus is on acupuncture only your acupuncture physician will evaluate you using TCM principals. Through this process they will determine if the source of your pain is from chi or blood stagnation. These two terms refer to how the energy in your body is being processed. Through your evaluation your acupuncturist will determine which points will best treat your condition.

Your integrative medicine physician will use acupuncture in conjunction with physical assessment to determine any mechanical reasons for the pain such as: poor posture, over or under developed muscles, tissue damage, tendinitis, tendinosis, etc. In conjunction with this your integrative doctor might prescribe acupuncture, physical therapy, nutritional changes, pharmaceutical medicines, and botanical medicine.

  • Neck Pain- Neck pain sometimes starts with a kink in our neck when we wake and sometimes we have chronic neck pain and headaches. There reason we get neck pain could be from something as simple as poor sleeping habits or poor posture at your work desk.
  • Shoulder Pain- most shoulder pain occurs as a result of strain or sprain to the ligaments or tendons around the shoulder joint itself. this occurs because the shoulder is a relatively unstable joint compared to the other joints in the body. As the rotator cuff muscles and tendons become weak and this venerability is even more greatly exposed. Without fluid movements within the joint, inflammation and pain occurs. The inflammation in the tendons, is know as impingement syndrome. The treatment for such shoulder pain will be to reduce the inflammation with a combination of acupuncture, herbal, medicine, and trigger point injections. Once the inflammation is controlled, physical therapy can start to rebuild the muscles and tendons that stabilize the shoulder joint. This is just one example of treating shoulder pain. However there are many other reasons for shoulder pain.
  • Shingles- Shingles is a condition cause by the same virus that causes chicken pox. This virus is in the herpes family and know as varicella-zoster. It is a re-emergence of the chicken pox virus from the nerve root. Once you have chicken pox your body will fight off the virus where it will lie dormant in the nerve roots (near the spine). During times of high stress or poor immune function, the virus can be reactivated as it goes unchecked from your immune system. The result is shingles, a painful clustering of blisters and burning rash that runs along the distribution of the nerve. When treated promptly, symptoms usually resolve within 7-10 days. However for some the pain from the outbreak lingers for months or even years. This is know as post herpetic neuralgia or nerve pain resulting from the herpes. Acupuncture, nutrition, and immune enhancing treatments are effective for both the initial outbreak and the lingering post herpetic neuralgia. Your integrative doctor will likely start you on a course of antiviral medications use these in conjunction with the holistic shingles treatments.
  • Fibromyalgia- Fibromyalgia is a condition that effects multiple areas of the body with the most apparent being the musculoskeletal system. While the muscles and joints are usually the central focus in these patients, it is now thought that the main source of the dysfunction is coming from the central nervous system. Still, there is no one theory that explains the symptoms and treatment for fibromyalgia relief. With that in mind, your phoenix holistic doctor will focus on you as an individual and tailor the treatments to you. Some patients have extreme fatigue in combination with the pain. They often benefit from IV nutrient therapy and hormone balancing. Your integrative phoenix doctor may want to run a test to see if you have elevated levels of antibodies to Ebstein barr virus, which is thought to be linked to chronic fatigue and sometimes fibromyalgia too.

Because there is not one cause and so many different causes and treatments that contribute to fibromyalgia and fibromyalgia relief. It is important to take a global and individual approach for fibromyalgia relief o be effective. For example, too little exercise, excess stress, sleep difficulties, nutrient deficiencies, and viral infections all contribute to the symptoms of fibromyalgia. However, generally speaking there will be a few main causes for your fibromyalgia symptoms. By focusing our attention on one or two causes and correcting those, we can make broad improvements and get fibromyalgia relief. Once this is are addressed further improvements can be made addressing the other areas of concern.

 

Serving Phoenix, Scottsdale, Fountain Hills, Mesa, Tempe, Paradise Valley, Cave Creek, Carefree and more. 


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