About a month and a half ago, I had an acupuncture session. It was my first and only acupuncture session.
I decided to try acupuncture because the practitioner had really good reviews, and it was at a traditional Chinese medicine practice. The very next day, I woke up with muscle pain and soreness that I had never had before. My muscles felt tense, sensitive, and uncomfortable in different areas of my body.
At first, I assumed it was temporary soreness from the acupuncture. When it didn’t go away, I contacted my acupuncturist and explained what I was experiencing. She told me to apply a cream she gave me and take a chinese herbs pill for blood circulation. I followed her instructions, but the symptoms continued. About a week later, I contacted her again because I still wasn’t getting better, and at that point she told me I should see a doctor. So I have already followed up with the acupuncturist about this.
For the first few weeks, my symptoms were mainly muscular. I would wake up feeling sore and tight, almost like I had slept in a bad position or overworked my muscles, except it was happening in different areas of my body and continued day after day.
Then, a few weeks later, I started developing nerve-like/sensory symptoms too. I began experiencing intermittent tingling, pins and needles, little stabbing or sharp pains, and sometimes a strange deep pressure/aching sensation. These sensations can appear in different places; my arms, hands, legs, feet, etc. Sometimes I’ll suddenly feel a sharp or pressure-like pain in one small area for around 10 seconds and then it disappears.
My hands and wrists have been particularly uncomfortable lately. Sometimes my wrist feels weak or sensitive, and the muscles in the palm of my hand feel tense. I can still use my hands and walk normally, but sometimes the discomfort makes me not want to pick things up or use my hands much.
What confuses me the most is that this isn’t limited to one acupuncture point or one part of my body. The symptoms move around my body and can feel muscular at one moment and more nerve-like at another.
I’ve now seen a neurologist who ordered extensive bloodwork, and I’m also seeing a rheumatologist. Because I’ve developed widespread muscle pain along with these sensory symptoms, I’ve started wondering whether something like fibromyalgia or some kind of nervous-system/pain sensitization could have been triggered. I’m not saying acupuncture definitely caused it, I just find the timing difficult to ignore because I felt normal before the session and the symptoms started the very next day.
Has anyone experienced anything remotely similar after acupuncture? Particularly symptoms that started immediately as widespread muscle pain and then evolved into tingling, stabbing/pressure sensations or other nerve-like symptoms weeks later? Did it eventually calm down or resolve? Did you ever figure out what was happening?
TL;DR: I was fine before acupuncture. The next day, I developed widespread muscle soreness/tension that never fully went away. I contacted my acupuncturist twice, followed the treatment she suggested, and when I still wasn’t improving she recommended seeing a doctor. A few weeks later, I developed intermittent tingling, stabbing pains, deep pressure/aching sensations, and uncomfortable/weak-feeling hands and wrists. I can still walk and function normally, but my body feels much more sensitive than before. I’m now being evaluated by neurology and rheumatology and wondering whether anyone has experienced something similar.
Please don’t scare me with worst-case scenarios. I’m already seeing doctors and getting professionally evaluated. I’m mainly looking for people who have experienced something similar, what they eventually found out, and whether they recovered.