Anyone tried Dry Needling or Acupuncture for Pain or Neuropathy?

What is rams horn?

Cookiepic, I had one epidural spine injection that was done as a diagnostic procedure. It caused a new immediate sharp intense paraesthesia pain that was burning electric pain in the thumb and forefingers of my dominant hand. It calmed down the pre-existing pains caused by spinal cord compression for only a few days before they started returning. It took about 6 weeks for the paraesthesia to subside and then I was left with cold sensitivity in my hand for about a year and a half. I'm not doing that again. This isn't an FDA approved use of steroids as an injection in the spine, and it can be dangerous if done improperly. I may have had an inflammatory response to a component in the injection. This is also used to postpone spine surgeries and doesn't fix anything. A surgeon may not want to take a risk on a patient, and the spinal injection helps him avoid it. The steroid injected will also obscure the image on an MRI which takes about 6 weeks to resolve before a clean MRI image can be obtained.

You may want to seek other spine surgery opinions. While surgery is a last resort, it also is most successful when it is done before permanent damage occurs to the spinal cord or nerves. It all depends on how fast it is advancing and how stable or unstable your spine is, and what is the degree of compression of the nerves and spinal cord. I was at an increased risk of paralysis if I was in an accident with my spine in that condition. I also saw the amount of bone spurs pressing on the spinal cord double in 9 months time on subsequent MRIs. Your spine specialist should advise you on when the time is right for surgical intervention. You might get different answers from different surgeons as well as different ways to fix a problem. Whenever that time is right, make sure you have been seen by the surgeon you want to do the job. Sometimes they back out if there are too many complicating factors. Your choice of a surgeon can make a huge difference in your outcome. Make sure you are in good hands and ready when the time comes.

I didn't think cervical spine surgery with a frontal approach (ACDF) was that bad. It is a long recovery and mine was 3 months in a collar until fused, then some months of rehab because the neck muscles gets weak in a collar that long. I am glad I did the surgery and I was in constant pain before hand.

The distribution of pain is shaped like the horn or antler of a ram. This website has a good illustration of it. https://ccsbismarck.com/cervicogenicheadaches/

Thank you for the website. It was interesting to read.

Oh dear, Mikaylar, I’m so sorry you are suffering so. I am currently doing a 12 week series of 2x weekly acupuncture treatments. I think it has helped. My acupuncturist says acupuncture is a building process, thus the contract to do 12 weeks. Unfortunately I’ve been traveling about half the time so I can only go for 2 weeks on, then I’m gone 2 weeks.

In August, I had a sinus infection with frontal headaches for about 2 months (those sinus pressure headaches did finally go away). I hardly ever got headaches before this.

I originally started Acupunture for relief from 6 months of neck pain. After the sinus headaches went away, I started having another type of headache and head pain, which is worse when I bend over. This has been going on for about a month, starting the day I weaned myself off Gabapentin. I have degenerative disc disease with bone spurs and disc compression in my cervical spine. So these headaches may be related to my neck pain issues.

I’m hoping the acupuncture helps. I get home again on Sat for 2 more weeks of treatments. I was referred to a pain management doctor about 3 weeks ago, have yet to hear from them. Hopefully I will get in soon.

I hope we can both get relief because headaches and head pain are the pits!

I have read about cervicogenic headaches. How are you being treated? I have never had nausea or auras with my headaches so don’t think they are migraines, plus I just started having them with neck pain.

I’ve put off any injection in my cervical spine as well. I, like you, have done extensive research and relief does seem to be short lived. Has to be repeated, can cause worse pain, etc. all very scary.

I may try it anyway.

They did dry needling on my neck at PT - scapula area where the pain radiates down my back/shoulder from my neck. Didn’t seem to do much. Didn’t hurt though, worth a try.

I think I'm going to give it a try. I also have tinnitis in one ear and I've read if it's from your neck it could help with that. Did you have any mri done on your neck or just x-rays. Just wondering as l only had xray. Went 2 weeks ago to get an mri and lasted 15 minutes. Between the closed in area and neck discomfort l couldn't do it. I got strange feeling as l am fearful of getting vertigo which l had in Dec.

Hi, yes, I did have an MRI a few weeks ago. The last one I had was about 2 years ago when I had neck pain on the right side. It showed some further degeneration, but not much different. The interesting thing I found was the doctor writing the MRI report this time around was more thorough in his descriptions.

I had to beg my PCP to order the MRI. She wanted to send me to pain management first, then I would need a current MRI ordered from them before they could safely do any injections (I’m not sure about that), then wait for another appt, then wait for a procedure, lots of waiting, but that’s OK, I would love to not have any invasive procedures and get better with exercise! I finally convinced her to order an MRI when I said “wouldn’t it be better to know what is going on in my neck before we decide which specialist I should go to?”.

The pain on the right side of my neck (2 years ago) finally went away (thank you, God!) after a year of PT and doing the exercises faithfully. I continue to do the PT exercises and have gone again to PT this year for my left sided neck pain. Worse thing is I can’t drive very far because the seatbelt causes a big pain flare after about 20 minutes of driving.

The MRI of my cervical spine took 20 minutes. They only put my head/ upper chest inside the machine and I did visualization and counting backwards by 3’s to keep my mind off where I was.

I hope you can get some relief! Vertigo is hell, I had it for 1 day when I transitioned off Gabapentin and I hope I never feel that way again! Now I’m getting headaches that radiate up from my neck into the back of my head that get worse when I bend over. Strange. I also have Sjogrens auto-immune disease. Hard to know sometimes what’s causing what.

Had PT on my cervical neck after the nerve blocks did nothing.