Leech for Pain: How Leech Therapy Can Transform Your Pain Management

The ancient science of leech therapy — just now brought to medicine — provides a different kind of painkiller. Because of the leeche’s free strength, the medicine soothes all hurt. Leech therapy can be used for long-term and short-term injuries – both of which will come with your pain medicine. Let’s see then how this old cure actually works and why it’s getting on so well in the new medicine era. 

Understanding Leech Therapy  

Leech therapy or hirudotherapy uses top-grade leeches to manage several diseases. These crawling, suffocating faeces cling to the body and drink blood, but they also make a drug cocktail. The most infamous of these molecules they release is hirudin, an anticoagulant that dissolves blood clots. Leeches also release a chemicals that anaesthetise the wound and make patients unconscious. 

Leech Therapy Is Used To Lower Pain? 

Leech therapy does something different. Leeches’ saliva first contains anti-inflammatory enzymes that reduce swelling and pain in the wound. This then may reduce the tension placed on nerves and tissue, which reduces the pain. Then there’s the hirudin, that increases circulation, and things recover and become less painful. 

In osteoarthritis patients, for instance, joint pain often arises because the joints become swollen and blood doesn’t circulate. Leeches turn this around by bringing more blood to the area and decreasing inflammation, and therefore also taking away the pain. Leech therapy is also faster and painless in a surgery or a wound. 

Leech Therapy For Chronic Pain: Does It Work? 

Chronic pain – from arthritis to fibromyalgia to migraines – is especially intractable. There are many ways in which leech therapy can make a patient better with chronic pain. It is normal, for one thing – that is, without the side-effects of drug analgesics. Also, it is minimally invasive and a perfect alternative or addition to other treatments such as physical therapy or acupuncture. 

The second is that leech therapy stays with you. Most patients feel relief from pain during the long-term treatment, and it makes life much easier. Because it is a painkiller, both for the symptoms but also the root cause of pain. 

What Is Included in a Leech Therapy Consultation? 

You will be billed for leech therapy if you have to learn what it is. A doctor first gets you diagnosed and tells you what to treat. The medicated leeches are applied around the swelling. The leeches then eat back and get on with it which takes 30-60 minutes. 

It might be painful to you but because they are anaesthetised through naturopathic methods they don’t hurt too much. They remove the leeches when they have been fed and were trimmed and numb. You’ll have mild bleeding and swelling the first day after the procedure, which should subside in two hours. 

Safety and Side Effects  

Leech therapy is pretty safe when performed by an appropriately qualified person. But there are dangers and side-effects to every medical procedure. These typical side effects are scabs, swelling, and itching in the patch. There are no more serious issues like infection or allergies that is not usual but should be checked by your doctor.