Ananova:

A Chinese woman who complained of back pain turned out to have 10 small springs in her body.

"The muscles around the spine felt very tight, and as if they were pulling part, but I couldn't pinpoint the exact location of the pain," said Li, 47, of Yanji city.

Hospital doctors were initially baffled when an x-ray showed white spots along her spine, reports the Beijing Evening Post.

Chief surgeon Dr Jin said: "We took five small springs from her back, buried 1 to 1.5 cm under the skin. Some of them had grown together with the muscles, and rusted."

After the surgery, the hospital took a full body x-ray, and found another five springs in her waist, feet and the top of her head.

Li says the springs may have been planted into her body when she was nine-years-old to treat epilepsy.

"My family took me to a private clinic, and they used some treatment similar to acupuncture," she recalled.

Dr Jin says this could explain why all the springs are located at points used by acupuncturists.

But acupuncture expert Gao Pengxiang, director of the Traditional Medicine Department at Jilin University 2nd Hospital, insisted: "This does not belong to acupuncture."