Acupuncture and back pain
Back pain is becoming more and more common within our society and there are several reasons for this. Within Chinese Medicine, all pain is caused by stagnation of energy, blood, or body fluids. Muscles are able to move energy (qi) and blood by contracting and relaxing.In the past when our society was more manual this happened naturally in our daily living and working. Nowadays most people work at a desk and/ or spend a lot of time sitting in cars. At home we sit in soft chairs for hours in front of the television and have our houses designed so that we rarely have to stretch above head high. However muscles are designed to work. They are designed to contract and relax through a range of movement.
If only a small part of a muscle range of movement is used, then over time muscles shorten and tighten. Stretching muscles will move energy and blood and prevent pain (which, as I have said, is caused by stagnation of qi and blood). If we do not use our muscles fully then they will tighten up. This tightness prevents Qi and blood from moving through the muscle. In time this lack of movement within the muscle will lead to further stiffness. Whilst this stiffness is not a problem it will make the muscle more vulnerable to spasm.
When a strain is put upon these muscles they go into spasm, in some cases this will occur even when the strain is relatively minor such as bending forward to wash your hair or too clean your teeth. In our culture that is unused to manual work it is easy to see that any manual activity such as gardening, DIY and so forth can trigger spasm in tight muscles.
