acupunture worked well for me

[chelios]

Hi, today's my first day on this site, and I've skimmed quite a bit of it. I wanted to post my success story with acupunture cause I'm surprised to see so little talk of it here.

My chronic prostatitis / chronic pelvic pain syndrome history is similar to a lot of people's I've read, I was in a lot of pain, sometimes sharp, sometimes low, always really annoying, I had trouble sleeping, was depressed, and saw many doctors and was prescribed the common stuff, Cipro, etc. The doctors didn't seem to be of much help and I was even told things like 'this problem always goes away,' (several times) which really isn't true. Eventually I was prescribed Codeine for the pain and I was quite happy that this seemed to work, my pain was gone and I could live a pretty normal life. This lasted about a year, and then either the Codeine lost its effect or more likely (at least I feel) was the because the pain-killer was masking the pain I was unable during this year to tell what things I was doing in my life that hurt my condition (like sitting).

Anyway this was disappointing, I tried a variety of other minor things, stretching, vitamins, etc, and eventually I decided to try acupunture. It was obvious immediately that something was at least changing, I experienced a great deal of muscle soreness and pain, but the doctor continued to assure me that this was normal. I went 5 times the first week, 3 times a week for the next 3 months, tapered down to 2 times a week for another 2 months. The actual improvements came slowly, lots of plateaus on improvements, and the muscle soreness faded, and this was costing a ton. Eventually I had to end the treatment cause I had to go up north for my summer job. My condition was still hurting a bit (much, much less) and the treatment wasn't finished so I figured it would begin to get worse, but much to my surprise when I stopped the acupunture and went to my job, the pain stopped too. Like no chronic pain. And this held for 4 months.

I ended up working and travelling for the next 6 months and like I said the progress I had made started eventually to reverse itself after about 4 months. But this is probally cause I didn't get any acupunture during this time to maintain the progress, nor finish the intial treatment to the satisfaction of the doctor. Anyway, now that my pain is back, it's still only 25% of what it was before the treatment.

Perhaps there are postings like mine somewhere, I didn't see any, but considering how amazing well this worked for me, I think back to my appointment with Nr. Nickels in Kingston ON who's supposed to be the expert in Canada on this condition, and I think why on earth wasn't this suggested to me? My mom suggested it. Also worth mentioning, I think my acupunturist was quite good and I don't know how much they vary in skill, he once told me that 2/3 of the acupunturists in Canada wouldn't even be good enough to be allowed to practice in China. He also said in China, I would be going to a urologist acupunturist who specializes in urology acupunture.

Also worth mentioning, is that I've really found sitting to be the worse annoyance of the condition and that during the treatment and till this day, I've actually eliminated it almost completely from my life, I stand on the subway and have a standing desk for my computer at work and at home. So this might be 1/2 of the reason I found acupunture to work for me.

If anyone has any questions, ask, I posted this cause I was surprised not to see anyone, (or the whole forum for that matter) excited about acupunture as a solution. Obviously everyone's different, and maybe this doesn't work for everyone, but it's worth a try (a damn expensive try though). I'm saving up right now to begin another course of treatment which should hopefully be shorter this time and get me back to where I was.

[Ddream]

When I first read your post, it occurred to me that your improvement was not from acupuncture but rather from the job change and avoiding sitting. Sometimes it is hard to tell if a treatment is helping due to the waxing/waning of this condition. If you continue to find that acupuncture helps you then stay with it.

[SickofCP]

I tried acupuncture earlier this year. Since it sounds like you are in Canada like I am, we may have seen the same guy. Dr. Chen in Mississauga, Ontario is a urologist and acupuncturist. Dr. Chen did a study with Dr. Nickel in Kingston that showed good results. I hear that Dr. Nickel believes strongly in the acupuncture approach and has someone locally in Kingston that was taught by Dr. Chen.

My personal experience was not as positive as yours, although I didn't do as many treatments as you did. I did twice a week for 6 weeks, as recommended by Dr. Chen.

Dr. Chen is very encouraging about how you are going to get better, and how you are getting better, even when you are not getting better. He takes a pain score before you start and tells you to fill it out based on your worst day in the last 2 weeks. I would imagine that he does not tell patients that when they fill it out at the end. Therefy skewing the results. Actually he said that he would send me a pain score at the end and never did. Probably because he knows it didn't work well for me.

Acupuncture may work for some, but I doubt it works for many. And if it does, it's an expensive process. In my opinion, most would be better off saving their money and going to see David Wise. For me the acupuncure was a complete waste of $1,200, and I felt very upset about that at the time.

You may consider that your new summer job (which may have been less stressful for you) was the real catalyst in your improvement. The fact that you had this dramatic improvement AFTER the treatment and not during makes me suspicious of that.

BTW, Dr. Chen thinks that PT is a complete waste of time. He talks a lot about your diet, but strangely. He said that foods that are hot in temperature (I clarified that he was not talking about hot as in spicy) are not good for CPPS.

[chelios]

Hi, yes I did switch a major aspect of my life at the time of improvement I admit, but the reason I felt that it had been the acupunture was that I flew to friends place a week prior to starting the new job. And I just did normal activities, a little bit of sitting - watching TV, walking around town, and it was during this week that the little bit of remaining pain seemed to clear up and that lasted long into the summer. I had had very painful prostatitis for 2.5 years and it was all of sudden gone. I had never since getting the condition, even experienced moderate pain (or a week without) -it had always been really bad, and now it seemed pretty much normal. This was the 3rd year I'd left school for this same job, same time of year-(it's treeplanting by the way)- and in years previous there'd never been a change or improvement. But yeah, treeplanting doesn't have much sitting, but I still feel the acupunture played a major role, cause the pain just wasn't there anymore. And I don't think it was the airplane ride that fixed it.

I felt, and still do, that the acupunture itself disturbs the prostate (cause it's supposed to), but then when you're weened off it, or I guess just drop it after a fair while as I did, that's when the results (for me at least) are more apparent. Again, I'm just making up what I felt happened, I don't know for sure. The doctor never spoke great english and I never got sastifactory explanations...

I saw a doctor in London, ON, Dr. Cheung, but I just read the Dr. Nickel study that you'd mentioned being apart. That is too bad it didn't work for you, my doctor sounds much like yours as in he was very confident and sure the treatment would work (and I wasn't always so sure or confident). But you feel the results of the study are skewed, that is too bad, did no others get dramatic improvements??

[SickofCP]

I find it strange that nobody else posts about acupuncture success, given the success that these guys say that they are having. I think you are the first to post about success with this, and admittedly it did not last. We're your symptoms completely gone? As in entirely asymptomatic?

I'm very skeptical about acupuncture after my experience.

[Guest]

I actually have posted about my GREAT success with acupuncture before on this forum. It is unequivocal that acupunture has been mostly responsible for my almost complete recovery. I had tried the normal routines of anti-biotics, pain killers, etc., with relatively no effect. I was referred to an acupunturist (who is a medical doctor) who treated me almost at the beginning of the onset of my symptoms, which started about a year ago. Immediately after my first treatment, I was no longer in severe pain. In fact, I was not in any pain at all, which was in and of itself remarkable. I continued on with acupunture, and have improved over the course of the year. The symptoms would return throughout this time, either due to stress, certain foods unbeknownst to me that would cause flair-ups, or specific exercises that would do the same. According to Easter philosophy, disease or illness occurs when there are imbalances in the body. Acupunture attempts to restore those imbalances my placing needles on certain points on the various meridian lines that connect to the organs throughout your body. What's nice about acupunture is that even though it might not address the specific causes of chronic prostatitis / chronic pelvic pain syndrome directly (we really do not know what they are exactly anyway) it will definitely put your body in the best position to heal, which it naturally wants to do regardless. I would highly recommend the book called The Web has no Weaver by Kaptchuk that gives not only a great overview, but has documented studies acknowledged by Western science that show that acupunture has had great results in treating various medical conditions, including CPPS.

In addition, I also highly recommend yoga. This has also been instrumental in my recovery as well. But, if I am in pain due to a flair, no amout of yoga can lessen the pain to the extent to which an acupunture treatment can. I know for sure that acupunture has been more instrumental in my recovery, but once my body started to heal more, yoga really opened my tight muscles up, which has further strengthened the healing process.

If anyone who lives in New York needs an acupunturist, let me know and I can recommend my doctor.
rob

[webslave]

Click on this link to buy the book.

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http://lookinside2-images.amazon.com/Qf ... 9Yr1OSWqj7

[chelios]

Hi, regarding the question about whether my symptons were completely gone? I'd like to say yes, but maybe some very minor ones still were present, I simply forgot about my condition during this time, I didn't notice anything at night which is when it had always bothered me the most. But I was still paranoid of sitting, and avoided it as much as I could, but when I did go to a movie, or restaurant there were no ill-effects afterwards. So basically I guess I never really pushed my luck with the condition to test it, but didn't notice any symptons either, which was great.

I will definately post in a few months time my results of 2nd treatment, my hope eventually is that once the condition is stabilized the treatments will be needed much less, 2 times a month for maintence or something which isn't too bad. My acupunturist spoke of 'curing' me, I don't really believe that, I think I'll need fine-tuning ever once in awhile.

I'm surprised to hear that the acupunturist you went to (and being used by Dr. Nickel) only had you going twice a week. It took me 2-3 months before I was allowed to drop down to twice weekly, and then 3 weeks later when I complained of pain, he put it back to 3 days for a single week, and then back to 2. Although if you didn't get any positive results, it probably doesn't work for you.

It was obvious for me right away that it was it going to do something for my body. When I first started, I was so stiff I could barely walk and needed a ride home although it was a 15 minute walk from my home. Laughing hurt too. In retrospect I think a lot of my prostate pain was from tension in my muscles (I dealt very very poorly mentally with prostatitis and was very stressed out for 2.5 years, hardly sleeping, crying, angry and upset). The acupunture eventually seemed to release this tension from me -mentally & physically. Perhaps in my case of prostatitis - the tension was the only problem I had, and other people have different complications that acupunture can't solve. Who knows? It was also the first sign of progress I'd had, so I relaxed for the first time too. There's a lot of variables as to why it may of worked for me. I'm glad someone else posted of success with acupunture, I was starting to think I was crazy. Hope this info has been useful to some.