“I’ve tried everything else, can you help me?” 

As an acupuncturist I hear this a lot. These patients have been my greatest teachers. At the Cleveland Clinic Pain Management Dept., I saw patients from all across the US and abroad. Difficult or uncommon cases were business as usual there. If there were an easy cure for these patients, you’d never see them in your practice. But here you are . . . 

Another Great Imitator – Trigger Points, Pain and Dysfunction

I wrote earlier about Lyme Disease and its status as the Great Imitator in Medicine.  Lyme Disease mimics (or causes) many diseases, cutting across many medical specialties, thus complicating diagnosis and treatment.  Myofascial Trigger Points are the Great Imitators of Physical Medicine - that is, the symptoms associated with Myofascial Trigger Points (“TPs”) mimic many other medical ailments and, more often than not, are overlooked and untreated.  The good news is that Trigger Point Therapy is relatively easy to do for trained practitioners and often provides near immediate relief.  The bad news is that very few practitioners have thorough training in Trigger Point Therapy.   

Expel Pernicious Influences and Tonify the Righteous

Lyme Disease is a (mostly) tick-borne infection caused by a Borrelia spirochete, and is the most prolific, fastest growing vector disease in the US.  In fact, it is worldwide.  Other tick-borne diseases such as Bartonella and Babesia are also becoming epidemic and slowly making their way into the public consciousness.  Lyme Disease [LD] has become one of the major medical controversies of our time.  Much of the conventional medical establishment insists Lyme is easy to diagnose and treat (and if caught early, it often is).  A growing number of medical professionals treating patients suffering with Lyme Disease, have found that Lyme can be difficult to diagnose due to faulty testing, and that ordinary treatment often fails.  At the heart of the matter, one side insists there is no such thing as ‘Chronic’ Lyme and another side sees Chronic Lyme as self evident, well documented, and a most challenging adversary.  Whether you call it Post Treatment Lyme Syndrome or Chronic Lyme, no one with significant experience treating LD patients can deny that treatment failures do occur - often.

Chronic Denial

I left NY ten years ago to take a position at the Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Pain Management.  The Clinic has a reputation for taking on difficult cases from around the country, and overseas.  It’s not unusual to see unusual cases there. Even so, one of the common guiding statements in medicine is that “when you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras” – i.e. expect to see common disorders, not rare ones.  Still, there are many patients that fall between the cracks without benefit of a common or clear, meaningful diagnosis.  The level of discomfort, frustration, and fear in these patients is high.  They represent a failure in medicine.  Failure is an affront to the ego’s need to know and be in control – for both practitioner and patient.  We want our practitioners to have the answers, and, we want to believe there are solutions and fixes in our grasp.

It took me a couple years of working at the Clinic to realize that many of my more difficult patients – patients that were not getting better despite (or perhaps, due to) trying everything under the sun - were suffering, in part, from iatrogenic conditions.  “Iatrogenic” means medical issues that are caused by prescription drugs or medical procedures.

Hi and a quick greetings to my new blog.  This will be a vehicle for discussions about healing, acupuncture, medicine, politics of healthcare, enlightenment and the pursuit of feeling better, living better and getting better - the back to zero lifestyle . . . . both philosophical and practical.  We are not yet online, so . . . testing 123, testing 123, testing 123 check 12 12, check 12 12.. .. . see ya soon  . . . Tim