Acupuncture and massage go hand in hand

Acupuncture and massage in parallel are currently the optimal combined solution for external treatment of traditional Chinese medicine to intervene in chronic musculoskeletal problems and sub-health conditions. The effectiveness is about 37% higher than that of single therapy. This is the consensus reached by me and more than a dozen teachers and friends in the same industry after staying in a grassroots physical therapy center for 8 years and handling nearly 4,000 cases. The data is obtained from the follow-up cases collected by our center from 2020 to 2023. No paper has been published, but it is solid enough.

I just hired a programmer last week. He's 32 years old. He has a back-end, and the curvature of his cervical spine is straighter than my chopping board. His right hand has been numb for three months, and he can't even press a pen hard enough. He had had three separate acupuncture treatments before. He could raise his shoulder a little higher on the day after the treatment. The next day, he typed code for eight hours, and it still hurt. I also applied for a massage card, and my shoulders and neck were loosened almost two days after the massage. The numbness in my fingertips has not gone away at all. I first massaged him for 20 minutes, and slowly rubbed away the adhesive strips of the trapezius and levator scapulae muscles that were as hard as rubber bands, especially the tender point of the supraspinatus. The massage made him hiss and gasp, saying that the soreness ran down his arm to his fingertips. Then I stabbed Jiaji, Hegu, and Houxi on the neck, leaving the needle in for 20 minutes and roasting the TDP. When he left, he shook his hand and said that 70% of the numbness was gone immediately. He came here three times for treatment. Last week, he sent a message saying that he didn't feel numb again even after working overtime until ten o'clock.

This is not to say that single therapy is not good. In fact, there has always been a lot of controversy in the industry over the parallel use of the two.

Many old doctors of the traditional acupuncture school do not agree, saying that "acupuncture regulates qi, and massage disturbs qi." It is difficult to guide qi and blood to the lesion through acupuncture, and directly disperse the qi with just a touch of the hand, and the effect is half good. I had a consultation with Director Li of the Provincial Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic. He posted a note on the door of his clinic: "Please do not massage or massage the injection site within 4 hours after the injection." He said that a patient with low back pain went out after the injection. The family member accompanying the doctor squeezed his waist. The pain, which had been reduced to 2 points, jumped back to 6 points. It took a long time to recover. There are also meridian massage masters who have been working for 20 to 30 years. They feel that acupuncture is like "scratching an itch in the air". Adhesions and knots deep in the muscles can only be accurately located by touching with fingers. Just relying on needles can make a huge difference in the effect by half an inch. It is not as reliable as the work under the hands. I used to know an old man who opened a massage parlor for the blind. There was never an acupuncture box in the shop. He said, "I can tell where the problem is as soon as I touch it with my hands, so I can't use needles."

Both statements are reasonable. To put it bluntly, the applicable scenarios are different.

For example, for a patient with an acute lumbar sprain, the waist is so swollen and hard that it cannot be touched. If you insist on pressing it, the patient will jump up from the pain. At this time, the patient will be stabbed in Renzhong and Houxi first. During the acupuncture, the patient will be asked to slowly turn his waist. When the pain is reduced to a tolerable level, the misplaced small joints will be corrected using light techniques. The recovery speed will be at least twice as fast as acupuncture alone or bone setting alone. There are also those old cold-legged aunts with deformed knee joints. Acupuncture can partially eliminate the fluid accumulation in the joint cavity, but the muscles around the legs have atrophied and they still stagger when walking. At this time, combined with pressing the quadriceps and the tendon knots around Zusanli, the strength comes up, and the speed of walking steadily is faster than you can imagine. The latest clinical research has also shown that acupuncture regulates nerves and inflammation, while massage directly loosens muscle and fascial adhesions. The two action paths are different. When used together, it is equivalent to covering everything from the root to the surface.

Of course, it doesn’t work if you just use it. I’ve been through pitfalls myself. The year before last, I had an aunt who had a migraine. Her liver yang was elevated, and her eyes were swollen from the pain. I first pricked her head and temples, and when I was leaving the needles, I wanted to massage her shoulders and neck to relax her, but I couldn't control the force of the technique. As a result, she had a worse headache when I took out the needles. It was only later that she realized that the heavy techniques directed the qi and blood to the head. She was already angry, so didn't this mean adding fuel to the fire? Therefore, parallelism also pays attention to the order, the severity of the techniques, and the identification of symptoms. Not all situations are 1+1 greater than 2. If it is not done well, it will be counterproductive.

To put it bluntly, it's a bit like repairing an old clock. You just use tweezers to turn the gears (acupuncture), but the gears are stuck too tight and can't be turned. After two days of running, they still stop.； If you just use a screwdriver to pry the casing to loosen the spring (massage it), the gear deviation inside is not adjusted properly, and the running time is still inaccurate. The two of them worked together, first loosening the stuck area, and then adjusting the bite inside to make it durable.

There is no unified operating standard now. Some practitioners are accustomed to inserting acupuncture first and then massaging, some press acupuncture points to inject two acupuncture points to enhance stimulation, and others use acupuncture points while retaining the acupuncture points. Each has its own method. For us practitioners, there are not so many school disputes. Patients can suffer less and recover faster, which is better than anything else.