Kunitachi Ozawa Acupuncture Clinic.

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Case Reports

症例報告
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difficulty falling asleep at night after getting into bed... acupuncture case of skin tension

difficulty falling asleep at night after getting into bed... acupuncture case of skin tension

【female, 40s】

【female, 40s】

main symptoms/question

insomnia. she has been unable to sleep for about 2 hours after getting into bed at night.

she had stiff shoulders, headache, and dizziness. she went to a gynecologist because she thought she was going through menopause.

recently, she has been unable to sleep for about 2 hours after getting into bed. even when she does, her sleep is shallow, and she is not able to get rid of fatigue. anemia is also severe, and dizziness sometimes appears.

visual observation and palpation

from the time of interview, she had no energy, and her speech was weak. Her eyes looked vacant.

Skin tension was also strong, and palpation showed strong edema in the neck (especially in the lateral neck).

treatment

1st treatment: because of the strong skin tension, we used thin acupuncture needles (15mm, 0.12mm) to treat the skin tension and the shallow layer of muscles.

2nd treatment → during the first treatment, she slept better than ever before. she felt regret that she should have done the treatment earlier. the stiff shoulders remained. dizziness also remained. but it was good.

5th treatment: by this time, all the symptoms had almost disappeared. however, she felt a pleasant sensation of resetting her body by receiving acupuncture.

Summary

what is skin tension?

"skin tension" is often observed during observation and palpation.

although we often see "myxedema," which is swelling of the muscle itself, in most cases, when sympathetic nervous tension due to autonomic nervous system abnormalities is seen, the skin is often stiff.

the causes of skin stiffness are 1) stress and 2) lack of sleep.

lack of sleep leads to stress, which leads to lack of sleep, which leads to stress, which leads to lack of sleep, which leads to stress, which leads to a negative cycle. to break the negative cycle, it is clinically important to remove the skin tension as the first step of treatment.

by removing skin tension, the underlying muscles become more active, so for patients who are still new to acupuncture, it is often a good idea to loosen the skin tension first.

it is important to note that loosening the skin from the beginning may cause overstimulation.
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