Acupuncture for Leg Pain

A case study…

After seeing many patients over the years I’ve seen most things. However, a few months ago I had an interesting case I hadn’t seen before which perfectly represents the critical importance of figuring out “why.”

A fifty year old man came in who had a 50% tear in his right Peroneus Longus tendon. This happens to be an important tendon in the lateral (outer) side of his lower leg. He explained to me that over the last 18 months he had seen 6 different doctors, and it was a surgeon that referred him to me hoping I might be able to help repair his tendon to avoid a difficult surgery.

How acupuncture can help prevent surgery

He was in fantastic physical shape and was a runner, bicyclist, hiker, and he did a lot of winter snow skiing.

When he came into my clinic he rolled up his pant leg to show me an extremely swollen leg, with a large, rock hard lump five inches above his ankle bone with a diameter of 4 inches.

His injury was so severe he had stopped all physical activity.

I asked how it happened, thinking there must have been some type of traumatic injury because this is a very strange place to have a problem. He stated he had not sustained any type of injury to that leg that he could remember.

This particular injury was probably one of the most difficult to figure out “why.”

In fact it took seeing him two more times before I completely figured out what was happening. As I watched him walk back and forth in my clinic I realized that he was significantly twisting his heal inwardly, (and not a slight twist) with a slight rotation of his right leg, creating a vector of pressure midway up the outside of his lower leg.

We corrected his heal with bracing that we had to create because it did not specifically exist.

Then I treated him with acupuncture to rid his leg of the swelling and scar tissue. Immediately he started feeling better. After two months of treatment he is back to biking, and three mile walks on flat ground.

I am now having him start to push his conditioning as I am finishing up his final treatments.