acupuncture needles should be relatively imperceptible; most people experience only a mild dull aching sensation, or a slight tingling feeling like a very weak electric shock. In some styles of practice, especially that used by many Chinese practitioners, there is a more vigorous manipulation of the needle to produce a much more significant dull ache, but many people barely feel anything, especially since the advent of guide tubes for insertion of needles which dull the sensations in the area
in essence, the only pain which occurs beyond this can be a direct insertion into or very close to a nerve, or tangling the needle in muscle fibre. In either case, we always tell our members to remove the needle immediately, and indeed, if a patient tells you to stop, then you stop - to continue would certainly invite censure by the BAcC and possibly be construed as an assault.
We suspect that what has happened here is that someone has used a fairly large gauge of needle, which many musculo-skeletal acupuncture treatments use, and that it has been inserted quite vigorously into a muscle or nerve. The effects which you have experienced afterwards we would categorise as ‘needle shock’, a form of shock which creates the kinds of sensations which you have and which is like the delayed shock someone experiences after an accident.
There is a more subtle point here, as well, which rests on our belief that using acupuncture as an adjunct to orthodox medical or physiotherapy treatment is fine, as long as the practitioner is aware of the possible reactions which we would anticipate from using the same specific points in our tradition. It may be a different theory of treatment, but the needles still go in the same places. There is a point, for example, near the elbow which is used for treating tennis elbow but which can also, in our system, cause a sharp and immediate fall in blood pressure. If someone with a tendency to postural hypotension had this treatment they might faint. We have long argued that just as we have studied western medicine well enough to know when to refer someone to conventional care, conventional heathcare professionals have a duty of care to be aware of the cautions which inform our work in traditional Chinese medicine.
This is all very well, but what do you do? We think that you would still probably benefit from acupuncture treatment, because chronic back pain has been shown by reliable research to be benefit from acupuncture, but you should raise with the practitioner both the fact that you have had such unpleasant reactions to treatment, and the fact that you would reserve to right in future to tell him or her to stop as soon as you say so. It is important that you feel that you control the situation. If the practitioner does not agree, find someone else! If they do agree, and still carry on as before, report them to their regulator.