Recommend a good acupuncturist?

[sbruce]

Can anyone recommend a Boston-area acupuncturist? I've got shoulder tendonitis that's painful and too slow to heal. (A MRI during the summer revealed no major rotator cuff tears -- just lots of little, inoperable ones.) I've never tried acupuncture so tell me, does it help with just pain or heal the injury?

Scott Bruce

[bob budd]

Never had accupuncture. Mainly if you are healing and experiencing pain issues accupuncture will mask the pain in place of drugs allowing you to work harder with less/no pain and not take drugs. If you are injured, you can do further damage as you can do when taking the drugs. In case you haven't exhausted your medical options I offer the following.

I have chronic shoulder issues. In my case it's impingement where calcification in the shoulder socket causes the rotator cuff et al to rub. Sometimes I feel it catch and/or rub. The joint is also somewhat loose and used to be able to get out of place where I had nearly full mobility but with pain, i.e. partial dislocation. I would to put my arm behind my back and reach upward to reorient things until I felt it pop back into place. This got old and I saw two doctors such that now I have a set of exercises I did for a year or so and do now and then when things are acting up.

My first "doctor" perscribed "pendulum exercises" which simply stretched the infrastructure, now I exercise the joint from various angles using light weight and rubber tubes. The best shoulder doctor in the area may be Mark Steiner (my second doctor), he is a nationally recognized orthopedic and expert on shoulders. I've seen him at Sports Medicine down the street from Newton-Wellesley hospital (where my son was born). If I ever have the joint cleaned (arthroscopically) he'd be the first one I'd go to but I don't want the 3-6 weeks down time when things are manageable.

The PT place that designed the exercises is on the west side of the reservoir on whatever Winter Street is called after you cross 128 heading west. Unfortunately, Ty left the practice midway through my visits so I can't offer a name though its been years and I'd expect ~100% turnover at that sort of place.

[Lbeale]

Hello Scott,

Acupuncture has worked great on my recent knee injury as well as back and neck pain. I highly reccommend David Cheng Muscular Therapy Group

1 Porter Square, Cambridge, MA 02140

(617) 864-8600--there is a Chinese woman acupuncturist who was trained as a doctor in China so she knows chinese herbs as well as acupuncture. Being trained in China as a physician/acupuncturist tends to be a more lengthy process than being trained in the US--David is a exercise physiologist who gives the best massage in Boston (MHO). If you find this Group expensive, you may want to try the Acupuncture School in Watertown where on certain nights they have a student clinic with faculty supervised treatment for not much money. If you need more information, feel free to email me--les