Chinese Herbal Remedies to Combat Back Pain

Chinese medicine counts three major causes of low back pain: overuse, an invasion of Wind, Cold, and Damp, or weakness in your Kidney organ system, which governs your bones.

Chinese Herbs for Back Pain

To relieve overuse, Dr. Korngold prescribes strengthening herbs, for example, astragalus. To expell Wind, Damp, and Cold, he recommends such herbs as: Angelica pubescens (in Chinese, du huo), Clematis root, gentian root, Chaenomelis fruit, and cinnamon twig. Finally, to aid the Kidney, he suggests mistletoe, dry ginger, Eucomia, Dipsacus, and Drynaria.

Acupuncture for Back Pain

Both the United Nations World Health Organization and the U.S. National Institutes of Health endorse acupuncture for low-back pain. Why? Because several studies support it. For example, Chinese researchers treated half of a group of back-pain sufferers with acupuncture at all the points known to relieve back pain, while giving the rest acupuncture at only a few back-pain points. Both groups reported less pain shortly after treatment, but after 40 weeks, only 11 percent of few-points group reported improvement, while in the fully treated group, the figure was 58 percent.

Dr. Korngold recommends these helpful points:

• Kidney 7. On your inner leg, two humb width above the top of your ankle in the hollow between the muscle and your Achilles tendon.
• Liver 3. In the hollow behind and between your big toe and second toe.
• Spleen 6. On your inner leg four finger widths up from the top of your ankle bone, in the muscle just behind the edge of your shinbone (tibia).
• Bladder 40. When your leg slightly bent, the point is in the hollow of the crease between the two muscles at the back of your knee.
• Bladder 60. On your outer ankle, in the hollow between your ankle bone and your Achilles tendon.