Cluster Headaches: Acupuncture Case History

 

This is the case study of a patient with cluster headaches.  When he came in to see me, he was still suffering from daily chronic headaches, but not the severe cluster type.  He had excellent results with Acupuncture and his headaches diminished in intensity.  He also tried some other treatment modalities at the same time.
The questions I’m actively investigating are

1. How does the patient’s nervous system respond to the subtle stressor of needling?
2. How does the patient’s stress level respond after needling on the table?
3. How does the patient’s stress level respond over time?

1. –>The dark blue column is the patient’s response to needling. In the first three treatments he had a robust response to needling.  On two occasions, there was too much artifact to use the baseline or needling data (8.5.15, 8.18.15)
2.–> The patient doesn’t have an ideal stress response during treatment, but it’s pretty good. We do see a decrease in general during treatment.
3.–>The patient’s stress level decreases over time fairly dramatically.
Referring to the previous blog post using trigeminal innervation, though I used other classic acupuncture points on the feet and hands,  I needled each of the three branches of the trigeminal nerve sort of by accident.

I needled yin tang (between the brows) stimulating the ophthalmic branch, the cymba concha area of the ear stimulating the mandibular branch, and bitong, stimulating the maxillary branch.
So good result, anatomically justified, and a pretty picture too.