Pain in Dogs & Cats, Knee and Back Pain

Knee and back pain are the two most common problems I see in practice. Knee pain is caused by patella luxation, ruptured cruciate ligaments, partial ACL tears, osteoarthritis. Back pain is caused by any limb injury that throws the back out of alignment, hip dysplasia, lumbosacral stenosis, and disc disease. Dogs & cats also have back and knee pain if they have bone infection, Lyme’s Disease, or joint infections.

Among the pain-relieving approaches we provide these dogs & cats are conventional medications, warm, salt water swimming, massage, herbs, and acupuncture.

Just this month, another study showing the effectiveness of electroacupuncture in relieving back and knee pain was published in Brain Research by doctors & scientists from the Center for Integrative Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Maryland in the US and the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai Changzheng Hospital, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, 200001, P.R. China.

I use electroacupuncture (EA) on many of the painful dogs & cats. Like most acupuncturists, I’ve found that pets with chronic pain often respond best to low frequency EA (10 Hz). The benefit of low frequency electroacupuncture is what Meng, Li, Xin, et al showed in their research. They found that electroacupuncture of 10 Hz is even better than electroacupuncture at 100 Hz at producing opoids that relieve pain.

When we use electroacupuncture, we generate opoids within the dog & cat. The opoids bind receptors in the pet’s body and provide a natural pain relief. Thus, pets that cannot use NSAIDs such as Meloxicam or Rimadyl because of poor kidney function, bleeding ulcers, or because they have elevated liver enzymes can receive significant pain relief.

For details on this study, which was electronically published ahead of print publication, check Pub Med, PMID: 21872220, or go to the Aug 7, 2011, issue of Brain Research for the article:The effects of opioid receptor antagonists on electroacupuncture-produced anti-allodynia/hyperalgesia in rats with paclitaxel-evoked peripheral neuropathy. Meng X, Zhang Y, Li A, et al.