TCM Challenges with Sympathetic Dominance and Limitations of Current Care

Without an understanding of the fight-flight response, many acupuncture practitioners exacerbate issues of sympathetic dominance in these cases. Once muscle tightness and rigidity have set in with an orthopedic case, many practitioners, including acupuncturists and clinicians performing trigger point dry needling, may find their treatments are not only ineffective in permanently resolving these conditions but also produce unnecessary pain. Resetting a motor point, (as done in acusport styles and practitioners of trigger point therapy), only provides a temporary solution because the underlying issue originates from more primitive regions of the brain and spinal cord. Directly resetting at the site of the muscle is ineffective until we restore proper vagal tone through flexion and contraction patterns in the body. [1] MDs and chiropractors who use prolotherapy often achieve better short-term results only because steroids and transdermal lidocaine provide a numbing effect to the local area, without ever addressing the underlying tissue spasticity, hence the need for repeat visits.

Heavy or painful styles of needling can unknowingly exacerbate symptoms due to PAIN. Pain is a reflex that is never integrated; painful needling triggers a pain reflex that is involuntary, leading to guarding and holding in the fascia. It re-triggers involuntary patterns of defense that distort the Qi dynamic, compounding sympathetic dominance. This is even more important in trauma cases where many clients exhibit heightened needle or myofascial sensitivity. As practitioners, we can unknowingly contribute to more trauma in clients by telling them it is good for them or adopting a "no pain, no gain" mentality, which is not helpful here. Pain is a vital life-saving defense that we would do well to avoid re-triggering in our clients. Full disclosure: in not understanding these pathways, in my own clinic, we unknowingly exacerbated problems with deeper styles of deep tissue work in patients with heightened spasticity pathways.

Additionally, it is important to understand that a polarity approach to the fight-flight response indicates that electrical stimulation may be contraindicated in patterns of spasticity due to compounding sympathetic dominance. All exogenous electric current in body tissue is yang by nature. Spasticity, as a form of yang dominance (with or without heat), means that we are potentially adding to the sympathetic derangement rather than restoring a parasympathetic state to harness neuroplasticity.