I am new to acupuncture, having started going a month or so ago. A brief history: I fouled up my mid-back (thoracic spine area, right alongside and underneath my left shoulder blade) eleven years ago and have lived with pain ever since. I've always been an athlete that thought that pain was just part of the game but when I started waking up every morning because of the pain, I decided it was time to get help. Several years of physical therapy (if you need info on any of the places in the city, let me know, I've been to them all) including ART and electric stim, massage therapy, MRIs and X-Rays (nothing structural to explain it), and even cortisone shots. Nothing worked and I was being told that even surgery wasn't really an option for the type of injury I had. My ortho surgeon recommended Chris to me but he was in Europe when I first called, so I went to someone else. She was nice and it was very relaxing but I wasn't getting results.
Enter Chris. Super nice guy, flexible with appointment times, yada yada yada.... really all that matters to me is that he is a freaking genius with those skinny little needles. I'm pretty sure that he adapts the treatment to the kind of person shaking his hand and I think that he understood my frustration because there was no gentle first visit - he immediately found trigger points that caused massive releases in the affected area. Be forewarned: it can and does hurt and my injury is so old that I get a lot of lactic acid burn after the treatment. But Chris never pushes it too far and always seems to know how I am going to feel and what I can do to ease the post-treatment pain. Unlike the PT and massage folks who seemed to want to change my lifestyle habits, he is encouraging me to do all of the things that I would normally do, like lift, golf, ride a motorcycle, etc. He is still telling me to improve things like my posture, yes, but he also recognizes that I can only change so much at once without getting frustrated and giving up.
Anyway, diatribe is over. Go to Chris; simply put, he has gotten amazing results when I was ready to give up all hope. I'm not sure that I can offer a stronger recommendation for a practioner of any ilk. read more