INTRODUCTION

Acupuncture can be used for treating both pain and non-pain symptoms. However, there is a basic difference in treatment between these two types of symptom. When using the Integrative Neuromuscular Acupoint System (INMAS) to treat pain, it is possible to predict the progress and determine the outcome of the treatment: for example: Are the symptoms presented by the patient treatable? If treatable, how many sessions will be needed? How long will the relief last? When treating non-pain symptoms, it is not possible to make such predictions. Thus, the progress and prognosis of treating non-pain symptoms with acupuncture are not so straightforward.

Why is acupuncture effective for such a variety of different disorders? Unlike pharmaceutical therapy, acupuncture employs the same principles to treat different symptoms and disorders. In other words, it does not correct or target the underlying cause of a particular symptom or disease, but activates a series of general physiologic mechanisms to accelerate self-healing of healable symptoms or diseases. These physiologic mechanisms ensure that acupuncture therapy can be used to treat any completely or partially self-healable pathophysiologic condition, and consequently this includes conditions that do not manifest symptoms of pain.

Nevertheless, as each symptom has its particular features and each patient presents his or her own personal expression of the symptom or disease, a practitioner needs to pay close attention to the individual features exhibited in each case. The general healing mechanism of acupuncture has to be invoked for the specific symptoms, and although this general healing process can be triggered at most locations of the body, it is by needling a specific acupoint that we purposefully inoculate the healing mechanism into specific tissues or at a specific location. This is the essence of what acupuncture practitioners do in treating pain symptoms: needling the painful soft tissues to bring the self-healing mechanism to particular injured locations. The same strategy, however, is used to treat non-pain symptoms, and the INMAS system of homeostatic acupoints (HAs), symptomatic acupoints (SAs), and paravertebral acupoints (PAs) is equally efficacious.

As we have described in Chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6, the HAs gradually become tender in a predictable pattern as the body’s homeostasis decreases, and our body manifests these acupoints to reflect its own pathophysiologic decline. The SAs pinpoint the particular nerves, muscles, and other soft tissues directly affected by the injury, and PAs are selected to assist the SAs. The PAs and SAs belong to the same spinal segment, and needling PAs relaxes the muscles and soft tissues and improves blood circulation at the location of the nerve root; this process helps to desensitize the sensitized nerve endings. Also, PAs are located closer to the autonomic ganglionic chain; clinical evidence has shown that needling PAs balances the mutual interaction between sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves.

In treating pain symptoms, it is very important to find the most effective SAs, and this is equally true when treating non-pain symptoms. The practitioner must locate the tender SAs generated by the diseased organ because of the viscerocutaneous reflex whereby the diseased organ is able to sensitize some of the peripheral nerve endings. When there is no pain, however, it is more difficult to find the SAs because some tender points are innervated by the spinal nerves from the same spinal segment as the diseased organ and other tender points may appear on the spinal nerves from other segments because of intersegmental communication inside the spinal cord.

Some diseases or diseased organs may not produce detectable tender acupoints on the body surface, especially at an early stage of the disease. In these cases, selecting proper PAs provides sound therapeutic results. For instance, PAs along vertebrae T1 to T7 should be selected for respiratory problems such as asthma and PAs along vertebrae T5 to T12 should be selected for stomach problems such as a gastric ulcer. Knowledge of segmental innervation of internal organs helps the practitioner to select the proper PAs (see Chapter 5).

In general, treating non-pain symptoms, including numbness or tingling, is more difficult than treating pain symptoms. For instance, when we treat a patient with infertility, we will either succeed or fail; partial success is not possible. Although when using INMAS for non-pain symptoms it is not possible to have the same degree of accuracy in prediction, the INMAS quantitative evaluation nonetheless provides useful guidance because it evaluates the healing potential of each patient. This chapter presents several non-pain disorders as examples of using INMAS for treating non-pain symptoms. The symptoms presented are a few samples selected by way of illustration. There is no doubt that INMAS will also be effective in evaluating and treating many more non-pain symptoms than we have described here.