MALE PELVIC PAIN
Written by Chris Eddy - Chinese Medicine Practitioner
Prostadynia, Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome (CPPS), Non-Bacterial Prostatitis, Epididymitis….
Who cares what it’s called right!? Just take the pain away!
I'll get right to the point. For the last 15 years I have been seeing more and more men in my clinic with this issue. About 5 years ago, I decided to really explore this pain condition, and find out why it is so stubborn and difficult to treat. I really wanted to know what was out there in terms of western medication and my profession, acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine.
After seeing just over 50 patients with, lets call it CPPS, I realized that Urologists were just as frustrated as these patients. There just aren’t a lot of solutions offered within the profession. There are pain medications, antibiotics, steroids, botox, physiotherapy, which can all offer results in certain situations, but then you get the guys that don’t respond. Then what can you do?
This is the point that 80% of patients come to see me. Tried everything, nothing worked long term. A few days/weeks of relief and then back to the beginning.
So what can I offer?
Basically acupuncture, herbs and experience.
Why choose me?
The difference between me and the average acupuncturist, is that I have dedicated years of work just to male pelvic pain. I have literally spent thousands of dollars in further education, thousands of hours reading, and almost 100 male patients now, seeing results.
Why do acupuncture? It’s not scientifically validated?
I understand, it’s not an everyday thing, it’s not ‘out there’ in the media and some scientists ignore it. It looks painful. How can a needle do anything? So I'm not going to try to defend acupuncture, if you don’t believe in it, that’s no problem. The proof is in the experience. Rather than point you to thousands of research papers, I'll tell you how I explain it to patients…
Basically, humans run on a microcurrent of electricity. For example, if your heart skips beats, they put a pacemaker on your heart, which runs on a battery and sets the rhythm. The heart keeps time and pumps with electricity. Nerves conduct with chemical gradients and electricity. We are conductive. So when you put a steel needle in the skin at a specific area, it creates an electric potential. The brain perceives this, and we can see in fMRI scans, that when you put an acupuncture needle in the skin, different points light up different areas. When this area of the brain lights up, it can be prompted to send a signal to somewhere else in the body. Such as the pelvis.
So basically we are lighting up areas of the brain, to tell certain areas of the body to relax, turn down the pain response and get more blood flow.
Does everyone get better?
No. I don’t believe anyone has 100% success with any health condition. There are too many variables with health. Definitely most men that see me get lasting pain relief. Some it seems to be complete, others, the pain is lowered enough to get on with life again.
What happens in a session?
An initial consultation is 1 hour. I take a detailed history, then a short initial treatment to get things going. I will go through your health history, and come up with a plan in terms of exercise, diet, stress management etc. I will also offer you powdered herbs to make the treatment stronger. After that, I usually see men weekly, and results take 2-3 weeks to see a change and maybe 4-8 weeks to see a big change.
If you’re interested, please feel free to contact me, I am easy to talk to and I see this issue frequently in clinic.
If you would like to book an appointment with Chris you can call the clinic on (03) 5429 3610 or book online by clicking the link below.