As an acupuncturist, I see a lot of conditions (and patients) that Western medicine can not offer help to.  One of my recent patients came to me with shingles on her face.  The region covered went from the entire area under the left eye, all the way down the cheek to the area above the upper lip going right to themidline .  She also had pain inside of her mouth and to her tongue.  The pain was burning and severe.  The area affected was red and angry looking.  Her doctor had told her she should expect the pain to last from 3 months to up to a year.  Other than that there was not much that he could offer to work on the pain.

The first treatment I took a relatively conservative approach.  I wanted to get her some relief from the pain.  My main objective was to gauge her response to acupuncture as well as to give her hope.  With that said I did not intend to use any smoke and mirrors or sleight of hand.  No power of suggestion, just her body healing itself.  I explained to her that I would be pressing distal points and they should act like switches to prompt her body toheal in specific areas.

I started with the inside of her mouth.  I pressed several points before getting marked improvement with SP3 and SP4 on the L side.  This resolved a lot of the discomfort inside her mouth, but therewas still residual pain.  To address the upper part of her mouth, as well as the area above her upper lip, i pressed LI1 and LI2 on the L hand.  This did not do much, but then I remembered the LI meridian crosses the face.  Upon palpation on her R hand, the paindecreased by about 90%.  There was still pain along the lower part of her mouth, and I addressed that using L ST41, and ST42.

The pain she ahd on her cheek responded very well to ST44 and 45.  She had some pain on the inner canthus and BL67 knocked that out.  she still had some pain on the lateral part of her cheek.  SI1 and SI2 resolved that.  the pain on the lateral part of her eye was addressed with GB40 and GB44.

By the time all of the needles were in she ahd numbness and tingling in her face, but barely any pain remained.  I left the needled in situ for approximately 1/2 hour.  After removing the needles, I placed seeds on the points I believed clinically most important and we set an appointment for the next morning.

She returned and had pain the next day, but it was less severe.  I put needles into some of the points I know to be effective and nothing happened.  I pulled the needles, and then found each of the points through palpation and testing, and then inserted.  THEN they were effective, the palpation and verification helped to activate the points.

After doing treatment 3x a week for 2 weeks the pain was greatly diminished and it was holding very well.

At this point I switched to using SUJOK.  I am not sure why i waited this long, but when I used the Sujok, the treatment went to the next level.  I used a reduce ST dry/agony treatment (as the remaining pain was mostly along the ST meridian).  On palpation of the points on her fingers, the pain was greatly diminished.  After insertion of the 4 needles, she said there was no pain, except a little on the lateral part of her cheek.  I inserted a needle in the correspondence point on her thumb, and there was no remaining pain.  On follow up, there was no pain.  This seemed to be the treatment to get it to stick.

Currently she is doing great.  It has been a month and she feels great and looking at her there is no redness, and unless you knew that just 1 month ago shehad a case of shingles that required 2 week in the hospital.

in health,

Chris