Follow up on patient with Severe Thoracic Spine Pain

This is the follow up on a patient I posted on earlier here.

When the patient came in for a follow up visit, his pain was at a 5 level (5 out of 10.) He had had another episode of severe spasm the day before requiring Dilaudid. But it had resolved on its own. He thinks that the acupuncture is helping to quell the severe spasms.

I tried doing cupping on his back since it can be helpful when muscle tightness is involved, but it ended up aggravating after about 10 minutes. So the cups came off.

His readings, again, showed a decrease in the stress response( values follow.) The whole idea is to be able to “balance” his system, reduce his stress there by increase his pain threshold. From there we can reduce his medications and get him moving again with a gentle stretching and exercise plan.

His reading for 60 to 360 seconds, and 360 to 660 seconds.

LFR/HFR- .76 and .24

SD1/SD2- .52 and .56 (not much change, granted)

Sample entropy 1.67 and 1.88

(Brief primer: LFR/HFR stands for Low Frequency/High Frequency HRV. If this decreases, it is interpreted to mean that the stress response in decreased. So decrease in LFR/HFR=decreased stress. The other measure SD1/Sd2, is a nonlinear method, if this ratio increases =decreased stress.)

(For more info on my practice, please click here, for information about stress and acupuncture please click here.)