Jeff Rippey

Please see this blog post: https://www.findatopdoc.com/Expert/81225813-Jeff-Rippey/Why-It-s-Difficult-to-Answer-Acupressure-Pressure-Point-Questions

Please see this blog post: https://www.findatopdoc.com/Expert/81225813-Jeff-Rippey/Why-It-s-Difficult-to-Answer-Acupressure-Pressure-Point-Questions

Please see this blog post: https://www.findatopdoc.com/Expert/81225813-Jeff-Rippey/Why-It-s-Difficult-to-Answer-Acupressure-Pressure-Point-Questions

There are too many missing variables to your question for me to provide any sort of accurate answer. What condition are you trying to treat? How long has this issue persisted? What have you already tried? Have you seen a licensed practitioner of Chinese medicine and gotten a Chinese diagnosis for your issue? How good are you at locating acupuncture points? I've seen acupuncturists get fairly good results for patients with acute issues (i.e., the patient has been experiencing the issue for 3 months or less) with an acupuncture pen. I've seen acupuncturists who've successfully trained a patient to maintain their treatment results using an acupuncture pen. Do I think acupuncture pens work? Yes. Do I think an untrained person can order a pen and resolve a long-standing problem? No. If you're interested in trying Chinese medicine, go to NCCAOM.org, use their "Find a Practitioner" look up, and visit a board certified and state licensed practitioner near you.

Acupressure? I don't know, I don't use it a lot because it's a distant second to acupuncture in terms of patient comfort, time to relief, and the length of time relief persists.

For acupuncture patients, I usually tell them to give it at least 3 treatments before they decide it isn't working for them. I'd expect acupressure to be double that or better (6 or more treatments). In my experience, pressure techniques simply aren't as effective as needles.

Generally, no, you can't overdo it. In China acupuncture is often applied multiple days in a row and sometimes applied multiple times in a day. Acupuncture needles are solid and aren't introducing any substances to the body.

Where a patient can sometimes run into problems is with local bruising. This can render the area too tender for repeated acupressure and is one of the reasons acupuncture (using needles) is often much better tolerated - it's way more comfortable particularly in repeated treatment.

Yes, acupuncture is safe for diabetics. The place where you need to be careful is with moxibustion. Moxa is an herb that practitioners of Chinese medicine burn either on the end of the needle, in a 'cigar' that is used to warm the skin, or directly on the skin.

It's the direct version that can sometimes cause problems for diabetics, particularly if they've developed diabetic neuropathy. In the US, we don't want to cause a burn or blister the skin through the application of moxa. Normally practitioners will ask for a lot of feedback from the patient so they can understand the person's heat tolerance and back off if things are warming up too much. This is a problem for someone with neuropathy or diabetic neuropathy as they may be insensitive to the heat.

Most licensed acupuncturists will avoid moxa, especially direct moxa, on neuropathy patients. However, Chinese medicine is one of those weird cases where patients aren't always seeing a provider who went to school specifically for Chinese medicine - there are chiropractors and physical therapists who often try to perform 'acupuncture like' services with little to no training. As long as you're seeing a nationally board certified and state licensed acupuncturist (someone with an L.Ac./R.Ac. state credential and either a Dipl Ac or Dipl OM national credential), and you tell them in advance that you have diabetes and/or neuropathy then you should be fine.

It depends on what's causing the sinus issue. If you have allergies, chronic infection or chronic congestion, then yes, acupuncture can often be extremely helpful. If there's some structural abnormality due to a previous fracture or nasal polyps, then no, acupuncture won't be particularly helpful.

If you haven't already, I'd suggest either visiting your primary care physician or an ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat) specialist. If they can rule out polyps or structural issues, then acupuncture would be a very good choice.

Acupuncture can help neuropathy, including diabetic neuropathy. In my experience, acupuncture provides relief faster when the patient's blood sugar is fairly well under control. If the blood sugar isn't well controlled, then it sometimes takes a lot longer to provide any relief.

I don't know, I don't use a lot of acupressure. In my experience, and the feedback I get from patients who've tried both acupressure and acupuncture seems to line up with my observations, acupressure is, at best, a distant second to acupuncture in terms of time to symptom relief and duration of relief from symptoms. Most folks also find acupuncture to be a great deal more comfortable than acupressure.

Please read the blog post at this link:

https://www.findatopdoc.com/Expert/81225813-Jeff-Rippey/Why-It-s-Difficult-to-Answer-Acupressure-Pressure-Point-Questions

The simplest answer to your question is: it helps to relieve them.

It's complicated to explain everything that acupuncture might be doing when considering its mechanism of action in a condition like headache. We have lots of studies looking at biochemical changes as a result of receiving acupuncture in a wide variety of conditions. The problem is: from the standpoint of conventional science/medicine, biochemistry is often the only consideration.

Studies show acupuncture exerting a wide range of effects from altering muscle tone of internal organs, dilating blood vessels and bronchi, stimulating smooth muscle contraction in the GI tract, releasing endogenous opiate peptides, up-regulating mu-receptors in the brain, regulating neurotransmitters involved in the propagation of sensory/pain signaling, changing the way the brain processes sensory/pain signaling, regulating insulin and other digestive hormones, regulating sex hormones, down regulating the immune system via interaction with prostaglandins and interleukins, and probably dozens of other documented effects that I'm not remembering right now.

Does biochemistry account for all these effects? Maybe, maybe not.

Is it the case the acupuncture is always stimulating all these effects? We don't know.

Western science is based largely on reductionism and, as far as I'm aware, there has been no study performed that documents whether or not all potential effects are always part and parcel with an acupuncture treatment. In some ways, executing a study like this would be breaking core study methodology.

So, given all that, what can we say? We can say, with a great deal of confidence, that acupuncture has an excellent track record in pain management and this includes more neurologic type issues like headache and migraine. At least one researcher has gone on record stating that if acupuncture were a pharmaceutical, given the current state of evidence, we'd have to say that acupuncture works and has effect beyond placebo.

We can also say that acupuncture, when performed by a board certified and state licensed acupuncturist, is extremely safe with a very low incidence of either side-effect or adverse event.

Interesting. Without having more information, any answer would be a complete guess on my part. Here's what I think...

I Googled 'acupuncture slippers' because I'd never heard of them before. Assuming the images I found are similar to what you have, it appears that these are designed mostly to stimulate the soles of the feet. That gives us two possibilities for what might have happened - one is a more physiologic explanation and the other is a more Chinese approach.

1. Unlike the presentation in most anatomy and physiology texts, the musculoskeletal system is highly integrated and overlapping. These overlaps are sometimes referred to as myofascial chains or myofascial slings. There is a chain of overlapping muscle and connective tissue that starts on the sole of the foot, extends via the achilles up the calf, transitions into the hamstrings on the posterior thigh, crosses the buttock on the glutes, extends up the back via the spinal erectors and quadratus lumborum, ending at the posterior shoulder in the upper latissimus dorsi. Excess tension anywhere along this chain can cause pain or radiating pain at any other point along the chain. If the slippers caused the plantar fascia of the foot to tighten or changed the way you stand/walk such that there was uneven compensation on one side of the body, then back pain (or pain at any point along that posterior chain) could have developed as a result.

2. In Chinese medical theory, the kidney, due largely to its position in the body, is thought to control the lower back. Low back pain with certain presentation is thus often treated via acupuncture points located on the kidney channel. The first point on the kidney channel is located on the sole, just behind the ball of the foot. Excess stimulation of this point could lead to a kidney deficiency situation resulting in low back pain.

Acupuncture and Chinese medicine are much more complicated than most people want to believe. Sometimes products like this are fine for consumer use and sometimes, depending on the person, they may be exactly the wrong thing.

The quickest way to resolve your problem is either to see a good massage therapist and have them work the entire posterior chain from the sole of the foot to the back of the shoulder or find a licensed acupuncturist in your area, explain to them what happened, and let them put your system back in to proper balance.

I've had a few cases where patients came in complaining they felt like they were coming down with "something". I treated according to their Chinese diagnostic pattern, and they had no further symptoms. Were they on the cusp of the flu? I don't know.

My general rule here is if a patient is feeling like they're in the very early stages of something - feeling flushed, slight fatigue, that gritty feeling in their eyes - then they should come in for an evaluation and treatment. If they definitely have something - fever or alternating fever and chill, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, joint pain, cough, running nose, etc. - then they should stay home, drink plenty of fluids and come see me in a couple of weeks.

It depends on what has caused your illness. Normally this time of year we'd be talking about cold/flu but we have an extra variable right now in COVID.

My general rule is: if a patient feels like they're at the very beginning stages of some illness - feeling flushed, slight fatigue, that gritty feeling in their eyes - they should come in for an evaluation and treatment. If they have developed definite symptoms - fever or alternating fever and chills, fatigue, muscle or joint aches, cough, running nose, and so on - they need to stay home, rest and get plenty of fluids. Cold, flu and COVID are all caused by viral infection - there is no antibiotic which will clear that up and, so long as a patient is fairly healthy, these illnesses rarely cause issues, and typically clear up on their own in a couple of weeks.

The word 'cure' in a medical context takes on a very specific meaning and is, technically, regulated by the FDA. In that sense, no, no treatment outside FDA approved treatments 'cure' anything. I don't use a lot of acupressure. In my experience, it doesn't compare favorably to acupuncture in terms of time to relief of symptoms or the duration of relief from symptoms. Can acupuncture relieve symptoms? Yes. In fact, there's a lot of science behind acupuncture's use in a wide variety of health conditions.

How long acupuncture/acupressure might take to work is dependent on a lot of factors, not the least of which is the skill of the person applying acupuncture/acupressure for your issue.

I don't use a lot of acupressure for the simple fact that, in my experience, it's not nearly as good as acupuncture at getting results quickly or getting results that persist for more than a few hours. People 18 or under can sometimes be a different story, but they tend to respond to acupuncture much more quickly too.

My general rule of thumb for acupuncture patients is to give me at least 3 treatments before they decide acupuncture is/is not working for them. Depending on the specific case and any complications, that can sometimes be more like 5 treatments. For acupressure, a person could be looking at double or more - I don't know because I've never used acupressure alone to resolve someone's health issue.

Well, acupuncture points really work. There's a great deal of science supporting acupuncture's use in a wide variety of conditions. Most pragmatic studies comparing acupuncture against conventional treatments (usually pharmaceuticals) show acupuncture being at least as good as prescription medications across many conditions. Usually those studies also show minimal side effects/adverse events for acupuncture relative to medication.
Is acupressure as good as acupuncture? In my opinion, no, it isn't.

Acupuncture promotes the parasympathetic side of the autonomic nervous system. This is the system that acts in opposition to the sympathetic or 'fight or flight' portion of the autonomic system.

The parasympathetic system has a variety of physiological effects which act in the aggregate to calm someone down, promote proper digestion and absorption of food, and several other biological activities generally associated with being in a more relaxed state.

It depends on why, from the perspective of Chinese medicine, the patient is experiencing anxiety.

As someone who practices Chinese medicine, I see these types of questions a lot. If a patient has never had acupuncture before and is a little nervous about the needles, it may be somewhat calming to be able to walk in to a first appointment with at least an approximate idea of where needles might go - I understand this.

The problem is acupuncture and Chinese medicine don't technically treat any western diagnosis/disease state. The Chinese system has its own diagnostic methods and ways of categorizing health issues. This system is based on a method of systematic correspondences which have been built up over literally thousands of years of repeated observations. On top of this, it's a system that functions more from the perspective of systems theory rather than the reductionism utilized by western biology and conventional medicine.

What that means is: someone who practices Chinese medicine (and understands what they're doing) is going to need the full presentation of your health, not just one small slice that may be causing a symptom. Often what is considered a single issue from the context of conventional medicine breaks out to several potential categories on the Chinese side, and the thing that discriminates one Chinese diagnosis from another, for your issue, could be a symptom that you or your MD don't think are related.

The language of acupuncture and acupuncture point function is directly tied to the language of Chinese diagnostics. In other words different diagnostic categories have different core treatments. Without knowing what diagnostic category your particular issue falls in to, I cannot tell you with any certainty what points might be effective in your case.

Think about it this way: if you slipped and fell hurting your hand/arm/wrist badly enough that function was impaired, would you expect a doctor/urgent care/ER to diagnose and treat it as a broken bone without taking an x-ray? If the answer to that question is 'no', then we shouldn't expect practitioners of Chinese medicine to provide acupuncture or herbal treatments without going through their diagnostic procedure.