Courtesy of Cascade Lineback
Cascade Lineback was a healthy, active college student when, out of nowhere, sharp pains began periodically shooting through her lower back. She hadn’t fallen or been in an accident and was baffled as to what could be causing it.
At her college health clinic in Flagstaff, Ariz., an X-ray showed nothing amiss. She was treated with painkillers and given a recommendation for physical therapy. Lineback had no idea that would be the beginning of what would become a nearly decade-long journey to determine the source of her pain and find her way back to health—one that would ultimately lead her to acupuncture and other complementary therapies.
Lineback didn’t expect that acupuncture, a form of Chinese medicine that’s gaining acceptance by Western doctors and coverage by insurers, would get her back on track. For six years, beginning when she was 21, she’d seen several doctors and used a variety of prescription and over-the-counter drugs to get her through her flare-ups. Still, no one had been able to identify the source of her pain. The drugs worked, but made her drowsy. One of the medications she used, Vioxx, was pulled from the market over concerns that it raised the risk of heart attack and stroke. All were temporary fixes, though. The pain inevitably returned, and frequency of her flare-ups increased from once every six months to multiple times a month, sometimes for weeks at a time.
The pain became so excruciating during a trip to England in the winter of 2008 that when Lineback returned she decided she needed to try an alternative approach. She turned to naturopathic medicine, which can blend diet, exercise and therapies such as acupuncture to help the body to heal itself. “I wasn’t sure about acupuncture—I was a little bit skeptical,” says Lineback, now 29. “[But] my attitude was, ‘I’m not going to knock it until I’ve tried it.’”
Acupuncture treatment is based on the theory that pain is caused by the stagnation of qi (pronounced “chee”), or energy, that flows through the blood or along 12 pathways in the body called meridians. By stimulating points along those meridians using thin, metal needles, acupuncture can restore the energy flow, says Eric Martin, a licensed acupuncturist who treates Lineback. It may help reduce pain by triggering nerve signals that tell the brain not to feel it, and by shifting people out of “fight or flight” modes that can make pain worse and into “rest and response” states in which the nerves are calmer. "From a Western standpoint, we don’t know exactly why it works, and that’s what frustrates a lot of doctors," says Martin.
Still, acupuncture has been shown to ease the symptoms of depression, insomnia, colitis, PMS and infertility, among other conditions, according to the World Health Organization. And research has found it to be affective treatment for pain too, including pain related to arthritis, headaches, sciatica and pain from dental and surgical procedures. For a simple injury such as a muscle sprain, a patient might get anywhere from one to 10 treatments, while someone with a more complicated problem, like Lineback's, might need longer treatment.
In January 2009, Lineback visited the Bastyr Center for Natural Health in Seattle. There, an X-ray of her lower back—plus a review of her medical history that included two eye infections and a positive test for a gene called HLA-B27—led to a tentative diagnosis of a form of rheumatoid arthritis called ankylosing spondylitis (AS). The condition is caused by inflammation where ligaments attach to bones; the HLA-B27 gene is associated with the disease, though not everyone with the gene has AS. It was the first time someone had hit upon the root of Lineback’s pain in the eight years she’d been suffering. “It’s not a diagnosis you want to receive, but it’s been helpful to know what I’m dealing with and have a name for it,” Lineback says.
That February, she began twice-weekly appointments with Martin. Her pain was so excruciating that even walking from the waiting room to his office was an ordeal; so was getting up onto the table for treatment. Though squeamish, Lineback allowed Martin to insert the acupuncture needles in her ears (still her least favorite spot for treatment), wrists, forearms, elbows, calves, ankles and the backs of her knees. Those spots are thought to be connected to the back and can help reduce inflammation and support healthy digestion. Then she’d lie in his darkened office for 20 minutes, letting the needles work their magic.
By her third treatment, Lineback says she felt a difference. “The place I notice the biggest contrast is in simple, everyday things,” she says. “You don’t think about running a marathon. Something you do think about is lying down, going to sleep, and feeling comfortable.”
Gradually, Lineback reduced her treatments to once a week, then once every two weeks. She hasn’t suffered a flare-up since February, when she also started twice-monthly injections of a medication commonly prescribed for arthritis patients, and today, she’s down to monthly acupuncture sessions. “My flare-ups happen less often now and they are less acute,” she says.
In fact, despite her diagnosis, Lineback, now a Spanish teacher in Kirkland, Wash., says she’s never felt healthier. She is now experimenting with taking the medication once a month, and hopes to eventually only use it if she suffers a relapse. “The progress isn’t perfect and the diagnosis is something I’ll have to consider the rest of my life, but I’d rather do this than just take a prescription pain killer for the rest of my life.”
Lineback's not alone. Some 38 percent of U.S. adults and 12 percent of children used complementary or alternative treatments in 2007, according to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). An estimated 3.1 million adults used acupuncture the previous year (the most recent for which data was available). Acupuncture is just one of a host of complementary or alternative medical therapies that are used alone or in combination with conventional medicine such as drugs or surgery. Other non-conventional treatments include meditation, massage, chiropractice, aromatherapy and herbal supplements. Lineback has incorporated supplements and dietary changes too.
In addition to acupuncture, Lineback is taking steps to quiet down her gut (the idea being that inflammation in the gut may affect inflammation in her back). She’s cut out eggs, refined sugars, gluten, wheat and dairy from her diet and is taking a medicine chest-full of supplements that may fight pain and ease digestion. By staying active with yoga, swimming, and hiking, her back feels stretched out and loose. And while it’s tough to parse out which of those behaviors accounts for her wellbeing, Lineback says she’s now an acupuncture convert—despite the expense of treatment (while her insurance covers some of it, she estimates having spent about $620 in out-of-pocket costs on her first year of acupuncture).
“They used to say, ‘enjoy your treatment,’ and I thought, ‘they’re crazy,’ but now I can feel relaxed in that situation,” Lineback says. “I don’t completely understand how it helps, but it helps. If going to have acupuncture done once or twice a month is what I need to do the rest of my life, I’m signed up.”
Have you ever used alternative medicine to cope with chronic pain? Chime in below!
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