Winston Lee L. Ac, Ph.D., KMD
We often see patients complaining of pain as if their eyes were falling out. Many patients have office jobs at banks, or jobs where they have to sit in front of a computer for a long time, such as architectural design or computer graphics, to concentrate on numbers and drawings. The neck is straight, and the back is hunched significantly. Because they are always watching the monitor with tiny fonts all day long, in this case, of course, the pain between the spine and blade and the stiffness of the neck and shoulder got worse at the same time. This pain rises the neck and leads to pain in the skull’s occipital and temporal bone. When the pain in the temporal bone gets worse, it eventually leads to the eyes, and the eyes seem to fall out, and there are cases of complaining that the eyes become sore and dry. In some cases, there are quite a few patients who go on a business trip and sleep with a new high pillow than usual, but their neck and shoulder muscles are tightened, and their eyes are sore as well.
In this case, its cause should be the spasm of the trapezius muscle and splenius capitis muscle. The trapezius muscle is rhombus-shaped, and that is the widest in the upper body. It starts at the upper part of the lumbar and cervical spine. And it spreads out in a fan shape with both shoulders. Splenius capitis muscle is a short muscle that extends from the top of the cervical vertebra to both sides of the occiput. When a problem occurs in these two muscles, it leads to shoulder pain and stiffness in the back of the head, and pain in both sides of the head, and eventually soreness of the eyeball, and dry eye syndrome are common.
It is good to relieve the pain of trigger points around the eyes, but finding the spot where the muscle fibers are tangled in the trapezius and splenius capitis muscles, which are more causative, and targeting them and relieving the spams with acupuncture, often shows a surprisingly rapid effect. If there is no other specific cause, the eyes become cool immediately after this acupuncture treatment. On the contrary, even though they are changing contact lenses or glasses, taking brain CT scans, seeing an ophthalmologist, and receiving eye drop prescriptions without thinking of this at all, I often saw cases where symptoms did not improve, and the cause was not found. Then this acupuncture technique shows great difference at once.
Suppose the patient has a white-collar job, and the patient’s job requires sitting in front of a computer for a long time, having a lot of mental stress, and having a sore eye or dry eye when the shoulders are often tightened. In that case, it is recommended to first check whether there are any problems with the trapezius and splenius capitis muscles before treating the eyes themselves. Most patients and even practitioners have no idea that the severe sore eye can be initiated by the muscle spasm, which is treated by acupuncture quickly.
Suppose your patient has some sore eye besides other major symptoms. In that case, I recommend you start to show instant improvement with treating the trapezius and splenius capitis muscle first of all. As I explained above, it’s not difficult to find the trigger point and do the acupuncture on the muscles if you’ve learned the myology and ashi acupuncture technique well. When the patients see the instant improvement with this simple technique, then they begin to trust you as a doctor. So you are now able to treat other symptoms of the patient without hurry.
