Acupuncture for Numbness

ByStef Cordes & Lisa Baird
In the foreground, a practitioner treating a patient with a needle in the forehead, in the background, another practiioner viewed from behind with a red blanket under one arm. Two other sleeping patients also in the background.

Acupuncture is well-known as a treatment for pain, but less so as a treatment for numbness. Numbness is most often caused by damage, irritation or compression of nerves, and while it’s perhaps not as distressing as extreme pain, it can still interfere with someone’s ability to function and enjoy their life. Chronic numbness in your foot after a bad bout of sciatica can make it hard to walk, even after the sciatic pain is gone. Numbness in your face after dental surgery can feel extremely weird and interfere with eating. Numb hands and fingers from compression in the spine or wrists can keep people up at night as well as interfere with daily tasks involving the hands. We’ve seen acupuncture be very effective for treating all these kinds of numbness and more.

Acupuncture is excellent for shifting the body into rest-and-digest mode, which is the mode the body does repair in. It is also very effective for increasing circulation, which can soothe nerves and increase blood flow to numb areas, and also help nerves to slowly repair damage. In cases of chronic numbness we generally need to give a course of 6-12 treatments or more to get results, but we’ve seen acute cases of numbness (after surgery, for example) clear up with much fewer treatments.

If you have questions about how community acupuncture can help you with numbness, please get in touch.

In the foreground, a practitioner treating a patient with a needle in the forehead, in the background, another practiioner viewed from behind with a red blanket under one arm. Two other sleeping patients also in the background.

Similar Posts

A practitioner setting needles into a patient's knee with a supply cart and three other sleeping patients in the background.

Help for Inflammation

Inflammation is a natural reaction to physical trauma or injury, and a key part of the immune response to heal wounds and fight infection. Unregulated or “out-of-control” inflammation, however, can contribute to serious health problems. Fortunately, acupuncture can treat both body-wide inflammation including allergic responses (asthma, sinusitis, and colitis for example) as well as more local inflammation like tendonitis or a sprain that just isn’t getting better.

A person in a surgical mask and red hoodie give acupuncture treatment to someone with long dark hair and a grey mask while they lean back in a recliner covered in a yellow sheet.

How to Tell That Acupuncture Is Working Even Though You’re Still in Pain

We see many people in intense, long-term chronic pain. Some of these people get immediate and dramatic relief, but it’s much more common for regular treatment to slowly chip away at an issues that are chronic. And sometimes progress is less straightforward. How do you tell if acupuncture is working even though you’re still in pain? Here are some questions to ask yourself:

A row of three people reclining in lazyboys, covered with red blankets, with a practitioner seated on a stool glancing down at an acupuncture needle in her hand.

Community Acupuncture for Nightmares

Acupuncture is great at treating stress, anxiety, and the impacts of trauma, and whether they are causing, aggravating or are the result of nightmares, acupuncture will likely help. We have treated numerous people for their bad dreams and usually see the nightmares get significantly less frequent, less severe, or even disappear completely.

A person in a surgical mask and red hoodie give acupuncture treatment to someone with long dark hair and a grey mask while they lean back in a recliner covered in a yellow sheet.

Seasonal Allergies

At GCA we have quite a few regular patients who come for a cluster of treatments once a year, sometime between April and October, during their allergy season. Sometimes the relief is immediate, but if the allergies are really bad, it usually takes a few treatments for someone to feel substantially better.

A black and white line drawing of the back of the legs, showing the nerves that travel along the back of the legs, with the sciatic nerve shown in red.

Sciatica

Sciatica can cause a frightening amount of pain and/or numbness and lower leg weakness, but most people recover from sciatica within a few days or weeks without lasting damage. We have seen community acupuncture offer considerable pain relief for people suffering from acute and chronic cases of sciatica.