Asymmetry Tells A Lot Of Your Patient’s Lifestyle and Even Prognosis Of The Current Symptom
By Winston Lee L. Ac, Ph.D., KMD
Most of my patients complained of neck or back pain while working at a pain management acupuncture clinic. Every day, I have seen several new patients, given counseling, diagnosed, explained the treatment, and prescribed herbal medicine with acupuncture.
Over the years, I have come to know that the shape of the face has a significant relationship between the patient’s pain and physical condition. Everyone’s eyes are slightly different on the left and right, and the nose is also slightly crooked. However, in general, I learned from experience that patients with almost symmetrical faces recover relatively quickly when receiving treatment, and there are not many cases of recurrence afterward. Whereas if the left eye is larger and the right eye is smaller, the nostril is larger on one side, or the lower teeth are biased to one side when the mouth is opened, it is a case of broken left-right symmetry of the face. Even with prolonged treatment, these patients’ prognosis usually tends to be very slow, and they return to the hospital for later relapse.
I hope that the doctor reading this article will look at his or her face in the mirror at least once. It is easiest to check the eyes, nose, and mouth are balanced and that both shoulders and clavicles are levels. The imbalance is attributed to poor posture and lack of exercise for at least five years. Anyone can have a slight imbalance between the left and right, but the asymmetry of the face that anyone can see at a glance means the imbalance of the entire body, so it is necessary to actively adjust the spine. In my experience, the skeleton of the human body was not completely fixed until the early 20s, so it is not easy for the imbalance at a young age to come to the face even if the person has a bad lifestyle and posture. However, after that age, even a small ignorance in taking care of their body immediately causes disorders in the entire body and changes the face.
If the patient has almost no pain in their neck or back, but only their face is turned to one side, the doctor should recommend them to balance their body as soon as possible. Even if they are fine now, there is a potential problem with their body, so even a little overdoing such as taking care of a baby, or starting to learn a golf swing intensively, would cause serious pain or illness later.
Just because the patient’s face has been turned to the left, starting from today on, sleeping on the right side and chewing food only with the right teeth is a hasty idea. The human body is not as simple as a seesaw or Lego, and I have seen countless cases where patients judge themselves and try to correct them and then aggravate them into bigger problems. Some walking and light jogging for at least 2 ~ 3 months can help and could fix the slight imbalance of the body. However, if there is a significant imbalance and it results in chronic neck pain or back pain has started already, it isn’t easy to improve it quickly with their efforts. In this case, doctors should figure out the reason for the imbalance after an X-ray of the spine, give them intensive treatment and restore it to a normal state.
