Marcia Mueller, L.Ac.
Exercising is good for your health, but if you participate in sports long enough or hard enough it's likely that at some point you will be injured. Whether these injuries are minor aches and pains or more serious sprains or breaks, being an athlete one of your primary goals is to get back to your sport as soon as possible. That's where acupuncture can help. It can be used as the primary treatment or as an adjunct to other treatments, i.e., surgery, chiropractic, massage or physical therapy. In either case acupuncture can relieve the pain, decrease swelling, increase the range of motion and speed the healing process so you'll be back participating in your sport sooner.
"How does acupuncture work?" I think that is the question I am asked the most and I always have the dilemma of responding either with the Chinese theory or the Western medical theory. For most of us in the west, the Chinese theory is suspect because it is not based on scientific principles and anatomy. However, the Western explanation does not account for all of the proven effects of acupuncture.
The Chinese theory holds that a "vital energy" or qi (pronounced chee) flows through channels in the body. I liken these channels to streets and highways. When an injury occurs the qi can't flow in its normal manner, just as when a car wreck occurs traffic is impeded. Acupuncture acts to restore the proper flow of qi in the channels, like a tow truck helps to clear the street therefore getting traffic moving again. However we don't really know why inserting thin needles at specific points in the body can do this. That's were Western research has some but not all the answers. For instance it has been found that acupuncture causes endorphins, our natural pain killing chemicals, to be released. This helps explain why acupuncture works so well on pain, but it fails to explain why acupuncture can help with nausea, something that the National Institutes of Health has said that acupuncture is effective in treating. A Chinese doctor quoted in Parade Magazine perhaps sums it up best, "Why should we spend time, money and resources just to convince Western doctors of something we've used successfully for thousands of years?"
"Does it just address the pain or can it also heal the injury?" That's another question that I am asked a lot. Acupuncture does both. As an example, say you sprain you ankle. Of course you'll want to do the normal first aid things for it, but if you add acupuncture your healing time will be decreased and you'll be back participating in your sport a lot faster. Using acupuncture we can get the qi flowing again thereby decreasing both the swelling and the pain. Another way to look at it is that by getting the qi moving we allow the body's own healing mechanisms to work faster.
You don't have to be injured to enjoy the benefits of acupuncture. As the saying
goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This spring and summer
I treated two men who were training for the Canadian Ironman. Neither were injured,
but with the intensity of their training they definitely were prime candidates
for injury. By having regular acupuncture treatments both remained injury free
and successfully completed the 140 mile race. So whether you have an injury
or you want to prevent one from occurring acupuncture might be something that
can help. Feel free to contact me and we can assess if acupuncture can help
you.
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