Heart and Kidney Yang deficiency
With Heart and Kidney Yang deficiency, you’ve overstressed your body’s ability to recover from over-exertion and cold.
Key Learning Points
Why use acupuncture for sciatica?
Well, first, what is sciatica?
Sciatica is a painful nerve pain along the path of your sciatic nerve which runs from your low back sacral area down to your feet. In practice many pains down your leg from you bum are all called sciatica although not all go along your sciatic nerve.
Very often, sciatica comes with low backache but not always, and people often get back pain without sciatica.
Backpain is very common and one in two of us will get it sooner or later. Chinese medicine, especially acupuncture, works well, often very well.
The Path of the Sciatic Nerve
The sciatic nerve originates in the lumbosacral plexus, emerging from the spine between the fourth lumbar vertebra (L4) and the third sacral vertebra (S3). It then travels down through the buttocks and thigh, branching into the tibial and common peroneal nerves at the knee, which extend to the foot.
Sciatica pain can range from mild to severe. The following are typical descriptions:
You may wonder how acupuncture can help with these seemingly overwhelmingly physical causes, for example where a vertebra or spinal disc is pressing on the nerve.
And you are right. Acupuncture cannot help in EVERY case, but then, few treatments can guarantee success in every case.
Nevertheless, acupuncture repeatedly helps many people with sciatica. Either it appears to ‘cure’ it completely so that the pain no longer occurs, or it greatly improves the pain, making life much more manageable – with no need for powerful painkillers!
Some may wonder why painkillers are best avoided when they offer such a convenient solution.
Well … listen to people who take them! Depending on the medication you take, they can upset your digestion and reduce your energy and mental acuity, make you less certain of your movements, and mess with your sleep.
Some of the more powerful painkillers produce strange mental effects and dreams.
The effects are often unpleasant and anyway, they don’t always stop the pain!
Quite often your acupuncturist notices an imbalance between the two sides of your body, leading to a pulling on one side that dislodges a disc or vertebra. If that imbalance can be corrected the disc or vertebra often slips back into place, and the pain goes.
Acupuncture to correct or repair the piriformis helps when that is the cause.
What if the spinal canal is too narrow – stenosis? There are treatments to help the spine and its spinal nerve canal work better.
What if you’ve wrenched your back? Perhaps your dog suddenly bounded off, forgetting you were on the other end of the lead. If this had a twisting pulling ‘wrench’ it could have weakened an already susceptible condition if you aren’t as fit as you’d like!
Assuming you’re not someone who refutes the very idea that anything described as acupuncture can exist – in other words I don’t have to go into the whole background and the increasing amount of research, including on fascia, supporting it – let’s look at the theory.
Running down your back are three well-known acupuncture channels and another less known. All embrace the area of the sciatica nerve:
Of course, it’s probably along one of those already listed, but not always. There’s another nerve involved in your thigh and the acupuncture channels for that may need treatment too.
On the lateral side of your thigh runs your ‘Gallbladder’ channel.
On its medial surface is your ‘Liver’ channel
At the front there are two channels, your Stomach and Spleen channels.
Any of these could be affected too, especially if the pain runs down the front or side of your thigh.
From an acupuncture point of view, sciatica occurs usually when one of the above channels is ‘disturbed’ or ‘blocked’ and unable to let healthy Qi flow along it.
To explain, the idea in Chinese medicine is that everything is a form of Qi – life energy – which for health should flow smoothly along the channels. When Qi stops flowing smoothly, you get pain or weakness.
Importantly the opposite also applies: if someone is in pain and you can get the Qi moving again, the pain or weakness disappears.
The net of acupuncture channels covers both outside and inside of your body. Internal problems (such as depression, heart problems, indigestion and respiratory problems) can all be looked at from the point of view of the channel system, so are treatable with acupuncture. That doesn’t mean acupuncture, (ie with acupuncture needles) is all, ie is the only treatment, that is necessary!
That’s because the 3000 and more years of Chinese medicine has evolved many solutions to disease based on lifestyle, environment, weather, emotions and diet: this is the rich culture that comes with Chinese medicine.
In treating backache and sciatica, once it’s been diagnosed with Chinese medicine, there are often suggestions for DIY actions. Indeed, these can be so important that if you ignore them your treatment won’t work so well or for so long.
Some are obvious and you have probably worked them out for yourself! For example, often pain feels better from the application of warmth, say a warm bath, or a warm bean bag. What this tells your acupuncturist is that your problem is partly due to ‘Cold’. About ‘Cold’ Chinese medicine knows a good deal! (Read more about Cold here!)
If you ignore the question of warmth, and with bad backache still insist on sitting in a freezing bath, then Chinese medicine would say you are storing up trouble ahead for yourself, even if at the time the freezing water numbs the pain.
Here, if the originating cause of your backache/sciatica was from exposure to cold (such as from a cold draft of air), freezing the area will probably push the problem deeper.
That probably leads to poor blood circulation through the area, which leads to something called Blood Stasis. Look up Blood Stasis here – you’ll get an idea of its long-term consequences.
Why is this ‘Blood’ important? Because healthy blood circulation carries away injured tissue and brings nutritional blood to mend the damage. Freeze yourself, and your blood ‘gels’ and slows down. You notice this when your hands get frozen in cold weather and they become stiff and sore.
Your acupuncturist will look out for one of those syndromes listed above, because he’ll need to treat them, or tell you what to do about them.
But he’s an acupuncturist so he’ll also be using the acupuncture channels. The first thing he’ll want to know, and test, is on which channels you are getting pain or discomfort.
… a bit more on those syndromes …
These causes disrupt the movement of your Qi along your acupuncture channels. The job of the acupuncturist is to get that Qi moving again!
He or she can do this many ways. Some treat via acupuncture points along the affected channels, and this is often very effective, but some acupuncture systems use points on the opposite side of the body from the affected side: also very effective – I’ve often used it!
Also, there are good ways to treat the pain caused by Blood stasis by releasing a few drops of blood, if you know what you are doing and where to do it.
If Cold or Damp forms part of the diagnosis, there are many acupuncture points for these, often with moxibustion.
Often, acupuncturists use both points on or near the lumbosacral area plus points further along the channel(s) concerned.
If stress forms part of the picture, or if there was wrenching which twisted the body, we may use points on other channels to get things back into balance.
From this we diagnose which acupuncture channels are affected and what internal or external events or habits may be contributing to your sciatica.
Then from our knowledge of the acupuncture channels and the theory of Chinese medicine we can decide what treatment to do, and in what order. Probably we’ll also have an idea of how many treatments you will need.
Depending on how interested you are, we will explain our thinking, and if you would like treatment we’ll arrange a time to start, or time allowing, start immediately.
We may make suggestions for diet or movement exercises – for example.
So if you thought everyone with sciatica got the same treatment, you were wrong! Everyone gets treatment individualised to his or her particular needs.
The following describes a treatment that did not use the usual acupuncture channels!
Stay in Touch!
No spam, only notifications about new articles and updates.
Book a Video consultation if you want to know more about your symptoms
The treatment was tailored specifically for one particular patient, although I have since had other fairly similar patients.
It is not that different for others where the underlying problem is not along the channels on the back and buttocks. It differs from the traditional acupuncture points commonly recommended in well-regarded texts like The Practice of Chinese Medicine. Instead, I based the treatment entirely on my diagnosis, informed by the patient’s unique background and symptoms.
The patient, a woman in her sixties, experienced severe pain down the back of her left leg following a sudden, forceful twist to her right shoulder. The pain was incapacitating, radiating from her left buttock to her knee and down her lower leg along the shinbone. Even light touch along the affected areas caused significant discomfort. She walked with difficulty and had been taking a combination of medications, including Co-codamol (a painkiller), Naproxen (an anti-inflammatory), Amitriptyline (an antidepressant), Aspirin and Atorvastatin for stroke prevention, and Tamoxifen as a cancer preventative.
Her medical history was important: many years before she came to see me she’d had a stroke, and some years later she had a mastectomy followed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
This history was key to understanding her current state. The pain along the front of her knee and shin aligned with the Stomach acupuncture channel, which also runs through the chest area where her mastectomy occurred.
I diagnosed a weakness in her Stomach channel.
This channel does not pass along the sciatica nerve pathway, because it runs down the front of the body. But it has a “divergent” pathway which connects with the Heart. This, combined with her history of circulatory issues (stroke), indicated an underlying deficiency that made her left side more vulnerable to further injury.
(One may add that Cancer often occurs where there has been a big emotional shock. Big shocks affect the Heart in Chinese medicine.)
To explain this, I used an analogy: imagine a major road eroded by a storm, blocking traffic and allowing debris to accumulate. Similarly, the weakened Stomach channel had become “blocked,” accumulating tension and susceptibility to strain over time.
The treatment aimed to “clear the path” along the Stomach channel, release tension in her ligaments, and strengthen the channel overall. This approach included:
I also did some minor bloodletting to alleviate signs of Blood Stasis in her sacral region, which I hoped would also benefit her heart and circulation given the Stomach channel’s divergent branch to the Heart.
At her second appointment, three days later, she reported a dramatic improvement. The knee and leg pain were gone, she no longer required painkillers, and only an occasional twinge in her buttock remained. She even brought her partner, hoping I could treat him too.
Could an orthodox approach from the textbook have worked? Possibly. But in this case, the tailored treatment addressed the underlying imbalance, allowing the two sides of her body to realign, relieving pressure on the sciatic nerve. By re-establishing the proper flow within her Stomach channel, her body had the support to heal itself.
You could say that the sciatica was the latest ‘display’ of the imbalance following her stroke and mastectomy.
She will probably need occasional follow-up treatments to maintain balance and strengthen the Stomach channel, perhaps every few months. (That’s because surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy in the area will have been drying and heating, destroying the original structure, making it more yin deficient. Acupuncture can help alleviate this.)
However, my experience of this kind of cause is that the patient often doesn’t return for treatment until the sciatica re-asserts itself.
If so, do please use the box at the bottom of this page. We’ll reply as soon as we can.
With Heart and Kidney Yang deficiency, you’ve overstressed your body’s ability to recover from over-exertion and cold.
Why You get Nervous Stomach Anxiety and How to Handle It. Acupuncture has great ways to help.
Subscribe to the Newsletter
If you are interested in understanding how Traditional Chinese Medicine can improve your life sign up to my newsletter for the latest updates.
Subscribe to the Newsletter
If you are interested in understanding how Traditional Chinese Medicine can improve your life sign up to my newsletter for the latest updates.