By Winston Lee (Woo K Lee) KMD, Ph.D., L.Ac
As acupuncture doctors, what should we first determine when we meet a patient? Age, gender, specific symptoms, onset of symptoms, physical examination, and X-rays or MRI scans are also necessary.
These can be described as an investigation into the current symptoms. For these symptoms, we consider various treatment methods, including acupuncture, cupping, physical therapies, and herbal medicine prescriptions, to alleviate the patient’s discomfort. Naturally, if we treat them well, their symptoms will decrease. However, we have overlooked one thing here.
We need to consider the underlying cause of the current symptoms more deeply. If we fail to identify this, the patient will experience a recurrence, wasting time, money, and effort. For patients over 60-70 years old, the primary cause of most musculoskeletal pain can be attributed to degeneration.
However, for patients younger than that, there’s a crucial question we must ask. That is their ‘job’. If a patient’s symptoms arise from an injury sustained while working, they should naturally claim through workers’ compensation; however, in reality, there are countless cases where the reasoning or relationship is unclear.
Among the patients I’ve seen was a semi-truck driver. These drivers drive 8 hours a day, and it’s common for them to drive for several consecutive days, traveling between the West Coast and the East Coast.
Holding both hands on the steering wheel and focusing straight ahead for several hours puts a strain on the body. Due to the structure of our bodies, when driving, the weight of both arms is not directly connected to the spine but is directly transferred to the head via the scapulae and trapezius muscles. Even a small amount of weight, if concentrated in one place without moving for several hours, can surprisingly lead to cervical disc herniation.
A bodybuilder might get a cervical disc herniation when lifting a hundred pounds of barbell in 1-2 seconds. Still, even the weight of both arms, roughly 20 pounds, can put significant strain on the neck if constant downward pressure is applied for several hours.
Another patient was a man in his late 40s who was not currently doing strenuous work and exercised moderately. His weight wasn’t particularly heavy, and his job didn’t involve sitting and looking at a computer all day. Yet, the MRI results showed a lumbar disc herniation that had been progressing for a considerable time.
When I continued to ask about his past, he revealed that he had served in the Marine Corps for 7 years in his 20s and had often participated in marches during training as a mortar unit, carrying over 50 pounds of equipment, including a rifle and a military backpack, for dozens of miles. In such cases, it is natural that the intervertebral discs were damaged due to immense weight and continuous pressure. Therefore, it is evident that degeneration occurred much earlier than in others, leading to his current lumbar disc issues.
A woman in her 50s visited me, complaining that both her shoulders and arms hurt every Monday. She would almost recover by Thursday, only for the pain to return on Monday. She was a homemaker, and all her children had grown up and moved out early, so she didn’t do much cooking or cleaning.
She didn’t play golf or garden either. The twist here is that her pain was due to her weekly piano service at church. Not only did she play for just one hour during the Sunday service, but she also went early that morning to practice with the choir, played for two services at 9 AM and 11 AM, then had lunch, and practiced again with another choir. That’s why her shoulders hurt every Monday.
As such, the root reason for many patient symptoms is significantly connected to their jobs or activities. While it’s essential to listen carefully to the patient’s symptoms, actual professional medical practice involves a more holistic approach, which consists of finding the fundamental cause and correcting it.
