Acupuncture for Pain

San Francisco Pain Management

Our team of practitioners provide those in San Francisco and surrounding areas with acupuncture for pain management, helping you enjoy a life with less pain and greater functional movement. Our natural approach to pain treatment provides relief without the use of potentially harmful or addictive prescription pain medications. We use acupuncture, and when needed, massage, cupping, gua sha and herbal medicine to address back, neck, shoulder, or chronic pain.

Proper blood flow is essential for health in every cell, tissue, and organ in the body. Blood contains oxygen, nutrients, endorphins, hormones, immune cells, and all that heals your body. Acupuncture promotes blood flow throughout the body which helps alleviate back, shoulder, neck, knee, and other types of pain. Essentially, acupuncture addresses chronic pain through the nervous system. While this component of Chinese medicine is used for many issues and health conditions today, it has been known for its ability to reduce pain since the beginning.

Acupuncture might be best known for the treatment of pain, as there is a mountain of research to back up its efficacy. Acupuncture stimulates peripheral nerves in the skin, which relay messages to the brain, creating a cascade of physiological effects such as the blocking of pain receptors (the gate control theory of pain) and the increased release of neurotransmitters such as beta-endorphins, met-enkephalin and seratonin, all of which are effective in blocking pain. Recently, researchers at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey used functional MRI to prove that acupuncture decreased brain activity correlated with lowered pain perception in volunteers.

At Double Happiness Health, practitioners will listen to your concerns and take a full health history, we then evaluate your range of motion and reflexes, perform orthopedic tests as needed along with evaluating imaging reports and labs to determine the source of your pain. Our practitioners are trained in dry needling local trigger points as well as utilizing gentle distal meridian points to effectively reduce pain and increase function. Besides dry needling and meridian acupuncture, our strategies might include electro-acupuncture, gua sha, cupping, myofascial release as well as herbal, supplement, lifestyle and dietary recommendations.

Some of the common pain conditions we treat include:

  • Sciatica

  • Low back pain

  • Neck pain

  • Whiplash

  • Carpal tunnel

  • Repetitive strain injury

  • A/C joint shoulder pain

  • Rotator cuff injury

  • Frozen shoulder

  • Tennis elbow

  • Thoracic outlet syndrome

  • Carpal Tunnel syndrome

  • Plantar fasciitis

  • Bursitis

  • Rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis