Growing pains: how do they manifest themselves?
During growth spurts, between 3 and 6 years old, then often between 8 and 12 years old, your child may complain of pain. Usually deaf during the day when the child is active, they are louder in the evening and at night, and can last for several hours.
Most often they are on both legs (especially the tibia) and look like strong cramps. Their cause is not identified. However, they are very painful for the child. To soothe them, massages and heat, even analgesics are necessary. Fortunately, these growing pains often go away as they came. They are characterized in Chinese medicine as yang-type pain.
Acupuncture is often found to be effective in relieving them.
To soothe the growing pains, the acupuncturist will stimulate the yin by stitching at different points on the hand and leg, below the knee, as well as at the ankles, to balance yin and yang.
“My son has been ill since he was a baby: chronic sinusitis, reflux, pulmonary infections… and now vitiligo with, each time, treatment with cortisone. With all this, he developed great anxiety. To appease him, we turned to acupuncture. When he was little, the doctor did not sting. He used small beads at the acupuncture points, which he fixed with a bandage. Since he was 10/11 years old, he has been using needles. My son has an average of one acupuncture session every one and a half months, and he is feeling a lot better. “
Berengere, mother of Clément, 12 years old.
The expert’s opinion
“In babies, there is no question of a needle! The acupuncturist uses a sesame seed or a tiny metal ball that he applies with a band-aid to the acupuncture point. For older children, the needles are very small, and we don’t leave them on the skin. ”
Dr Jean-Pierre Laurens, acupuncturist, Director of the Ming Tao acupuncture school