I've been an RN for almost 20 years.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

30. I agree. Sometimes natural things work, and sometimes prescription medication works

It makes me nuts when I hear people defend medications as if these worked all the time, which is not only wrong, but medications sometimes not only don't work, but they do harm, and kill.

I had developed trigeminal neuralgia after having dental work. I thought I was going to go insane, the pain was so intense that I couldn't think, couldn't function, couldn't anything. I've never before experienced pain that horrible. Prescription pain medication helped only a little bit, but it would return to the excrutiating intensity, and I'd end up having to swallow more prescription medication, which made me sick to my stomach, and never helped it long term. Then I drove past an acupuncture clinic in Miami, and thought I'd give acupuncture a try as a last resort, but imagining that it, like the prescription medication, would not work. Boy was I surprised. From the 1st treatment it began to work, and I haven't had trigeminal neuralgia since. Placebo effect it was not, since I was one of those people who had been convinced by allopathic medicine proponents that if a treatment doesn't come from an M.D., it's pure quackery. Yet it did work, which is why I no longer think that way.

Having had the experience with the trigeminal neuralgia, I subsequently tried it for back pain, and although it did not eliminate it completely, it did help it a lot.