I was living in Hong Kong when I had a terrible bout of Carpal Tunnel. I first went to a Western doctor who recommended surgery to relieve the pressure on the nerve. Unfortunately the surgery is not guaranteed and can take 6 weeks to heal. Just for kicks I went to an accupuncture doctor. I did not believe in it at all, but it was cheap.
Anyway the doctor was an elderly gentlemen who didn't speak much English, but he checked me out by taking my pulse in a few places, blood pressure in a few places and checked a lot of reflexes. I was pretty impressed with the thoroughness of his examination and even more impressed when he took my arm (the one with the bad wrist), made some ink dot marks, and hammered in some needles (they were from a sealed plastic envelope). Hammered means he used the reflex tool to give each needle one tap. Amazingly I could feel that he was on a key spot when he put the needles in, 5 or 6 of them from my shoulder to my thumb.
He then hooked up some sort of electrical thing to the needles, felt like a sawtooth wave building up to an unpleasant but not painful peak. When he finished he then put me into neck traction for 20 minutes. My whole arm buzzed like crazy from the needles. Again, unpleasant but not painful.
He told me to come back in three days. I ran out of there, but by the next morning my wrist felt great. I skipped the apointment, but the pain started to come back in a few weeks so I went again. After three similiar treatments I was pain free. I brought a friend to translate on the second visit and found I had an inflamed nerve. The cure was to stimulate it with electricity to cause better blood flow to cure the imflammation, and the traction was to counteract the tendency of the nerve to shrink due to the stimulation.
What can I say. I have no idea how/why it worked, but it did. Cost me $26 dollars. Better to try anything before surgery.
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I was living in Hong Kong when I had a terrible bout of Carpal Tunnel. I first went to a Western doctor who recommended surgery to relieve the pressure on the nerve. Unfortunately the surgery is not guaranteed and can take 6 weeks to heal. Just for kicks I went to an accupuncture doctor. I did not believe in it at all, but it was cheap.
Anyway the doctor was an elderly gentlemen who didn't speak much English, but he checked me out by taking my pulse in a few places, blood pressure in a few places and checked a lot of reflexes. I was pretty impressed with the thoroughness of his examination and even more impressed when he took my arm (the one with the bad wrist), made some ink dot marks, and hammered in some needles (they were from a sealed plastic envelope). Hammered means he used the reflex tool to give each needle one tap. Amazingly I could feel that he was on a key spot when he put the needles in, 5 or 6 of them from my shoulder to my thumb.
He then hooked up some sort of electrical thing to the needles, felt like a sawtooth wave building up to an unpleasant but not painful peak. When he finished he then put me into neck traction for 20 minutes. My whole arm buzzed like crazy from the needles. Again, unpleasant but not painful.
He told me to come back in three days. I ran out of there, but by the next morning my wrist felt great. I skipped the apointment, but the pain started to come back in a few weeks so I went again. After three similiar treatments I was pain free. I brought a friend to translate on the second visit and found I had an inflamed nerve. The cure was to stimulate it with electricity to cause better blood flow to cure the imflammation, and the traction was to counteract the tendency of the nerve to shrink due to the stimulation.
What can I say. I have no idea how/why it worked, but it did. Cost me $26 dollars. Better to try anything before surgery.