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.

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