When a Vero Beach sales executive who earns his living talking to people woke up one morning with half of his face paralyzed, he was understandably alarmed but hoped it was just a fluke and went about his work. During a routine call to one of his physician clients, the doctor took one look at him and determined it was Bell’s palsy.
Bell’s palsy is the sudden onset of facial paralysis or weakness, usually affecting only one side of the face. It can cause a drooping appearance, difficulty closing the eye on the affected side, drooling and altered taste.
While the cause is unknown, it is believed to result from inflammation and swelling of the facial nerve. Corticosteroids and antiviral medications are often prescribed to help speed up recovery and minimize long-term complications. In most cases it clears up within six months.
“I couldn’t possibly live with this for six months,” said the salesman, Mario Corbiciero. “In addition to the antiviral medications, I read that acupuncture is sometimes effective in expediting the recovery, so I called Ryan Padnuk, an acupuncture physician I met a physician’s meeting.
“I went in a skeptic but came out a believer,” he continued. “I had my first acupuncture on Friday and by Monday morning I started to get feeling back. After three more acupuncture treatments others were telling me I looked better. I continued the treatments and by the fifth week I am 99 percent better!”
Ryan Padnuk, owner of Vero Beach Healing + Acupuncture, had never even treated a patient for Bell’s Palsy before, but he knew that the principles of Chinese medicine combined with some behavior modifications should help.
“We started our session with a long conversation about what inflames the nervous system and how he personally responded to different situations,” Padnuk explained. “Our goal was to figure out what might be triggering this response. I use a framework that I call Lifestyle Medicine following the Chinese medicine model where we do not treat symptoms, but we treat patterns.
“One pattern will contain multiple symptoms so through good conversation we can constellate and understand what all these different ranges of symptoms are including psycho-emotional and spiritual levels. When I say spiritual, I mean the more subtle aspects of our human experience so that it is all constellated into a pattern. The treatment is a disruption or an intervention in that pattern to smooth out that pattern and get the ideal flow of energetics in the body.”
Typically, a patient will get treatment one to three times a week to make these disruptions.
Padnuk also teaches his patients how to make their own little micro-interventions within their 24-hour cycle that are in alignment with the principles of Chinese medicine. One of the key principles in Chinese medicine is that nothing comes from nowhere and everything happens from context.
“Our emotional world is a driving factor in our disease pattern,” Padnuk ascertained. “We know this intuitively, but we have been cultured in a way that has not made room for that. The neuroscience community knows that emotional pain and physical pain occur in the very same center of the brain.
“This is something that Chinese medicine has known for a long time in this incorporation of the psycho-spiritual- emotional component. It is all part of the healing process.”
After addressing the psychological aspect of Corbiciero’s condition, Padnuk proceeded with the physical acupuncture treatment.
Acupuncture, which has been practiced for more than 4,500 years, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, today involves inserting stainless-steel, hair-thin needles into specific areas of the body. The needles are inserted to a point that produces a sensation of pressure or ache and left in for 15 to 20 minutes. The acupuncturist chooses insertion points based on a complex network of energy flows.
“I lined the needles up closest to the nerve that was causing the paralysis,” Padnuk said. “Once the needles are inserted, the body knows what to do. Acupuncture helps shift us into a parasympathetic state of relaxation that helps promote the circulation of blood in that area and generates a healing response from the trauma of the needle.
“From an Eastern perspective it’s all about the flow of Qi (chee), our vital life force in the body.
We have these deep oceans of energic movement and pulse in the body and we have these rivers that flow in these unidirectional ways. They flow up, they flow down, they flow out and in. We also have streams and tributaries that run out to the surface of the skin. They are called extraordinary vessels. I selected extraordinary vessel points close to the nerves that help promote the ideal flow of energetics to the nerves in Mario’s face.”
Padnuk likened disrupted flow of energy to a fallen branch in a stream that eventually forms a dam and blocks the flow altogether. Acupuncture helps remove those branches to restore the natural flow of the stream.
“In Mario’s case I narrowed it down to specific steams and tributaries that ran up in the face so some of the needles were placed in his face,” Padnuk continued. “These points are entryways into the energetic streams. I use acupuncture needles to access the entryways and move the blockages disrupting our ideal flows.
“In doing so it cools inflamed areas, relieves pressure, and brings the patient into alignment with the regenerative oceans, rivers and streams flowing through the body. This is regenerative medicine allowing the body to heal itself.”
According to practitioners, acupuncture can be used to treat a wide range of ailments including acute and chronic pain, digestion, mental health, fatigue, inflammation and immune health, hormone balancing, weight management, and overall health for men and women.
Ryan S. Padnuk, AP, founder of Vero Beach Healing + Acupuncture, is a former lieutenant firefighter-paramedic, and a graduate of Stetson University and Atlantic Institute of Oriental Medicine. He is a board-certified acupuncture physician and herbalist. New patients are welcome at his office located at 3735 11th Circle, #100, Vero Beach. You can call 772-532-4153 to schedule an appointment.
