There are many ways to adapt to injury and chronic pain. You can…

• Limit activity
• Favor the injury
• Rest more, do less
• Use pain relievers, medications, and anti-inflammatories

While these adaptations may temporarily dull the pain, they cost you productivity, sleep and can eventually begin to gnaw away at your health in general. Not to mention side effects such as weight gain, dependency on medications, stress, and inactivity.

Hard as it is to believe, chronic pain is often traced to a tight muscle and the subsequent structural fallout. Fortunately, a tight muscle is not difficult to correct.

A tight muscle is a bit of a con artist. You don’t even know you have been robbed until something is missing. As a subversive intruder, the tight muscle bypasses your early warning system. Over time you notice that you are not operating at top capacity & optimal efficiency. Then one day, there is pain and chronic tension and lack of range of motion. The tight muscle has intruded, affecting your structure, your function, and even your day.

What happens when your muscle is tight?

A tight muscle is actually a short & weak muscle. It doesn’t know how to relax and it tires quickly. It recovers slowly from exertion and contracts excessively. Ultimately, this short and weak muscle cannot generate the force needed to work properly and recruits other muscles in the neighborhood. The intruder has now set off the alarm system and you move to the next level, better known as chronic pain syndrome.

What does your tight muscle do?

Chronically tight muscles create strain, pain, and inflammation and will lead to compensatory patterns in your body. This is the set-up for trauma and injury, along with further pain, swelling, weakness, and reduced range of motion. Symptoms of numbness and tingling can follow due to nerve compression. Eventually, joint stress occurs that can lead to degenerative changes such as osteoarthritis, bone spur formation, chronic inflammation, and disc problems. The intruder has now invited the neighbors and the block party has begun.

Fix the pain by fixing the problem.
Using acupuncture to treat chronic pain activates your body’s inherent self-healing mechanisms. Tight muscles relax, blood flow increases, inflammation decreases, and proper function is restored. After an acupuncture therapy program, many clients report that their pain had diminished or vanished without unwanted side effects and they have significantly increased:

• Range of Motion
• Activity level
• Energy
• Sleep
• Sense of Well-Being

Call us at Old Pueblo Acupuncture to schedule a treatment. (520) 722.9101

We can help you break the pain cycle, accelerate recovery and regain your quality of life.

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In an official report, Acupuncture: Review and Analysis of Reports on Controlled Clinical Trials, the World Health Organization (WHO) has listed the following pain conditions that have been shown through controlled trials to be treated effectively by acupuncture:

• low back pain
• neck pain
• sciatica
• tennis elbow
• knee pain
• osteoarthritis
• shoulder pain
• sprains
• facial pain
• headache
• dental pain
• TMJ pain
• rheumatoid arthritis
• stroke

“ Living with chronic back and hip pain was an everyday occurrence for me but when the pain became too great to ignore, I sought out acupuncture. The treatments provided dramatic results and a welcomed relief after years of taking medications for my pain. Best of all, I am able to do the things that I love and don’t have to live with daily pain” – DB