How Acupuncture Can Help You Recover from Sports Injuries
Strained muscles, sprained ankles, and other sports injuries can keep you on the sidelines much longer than you'd like. If you aren't healing as quickly as you'd hoped or are looking for a natural way to treat sports injuries, acupuncture offers a safe, effective alternative to traditional western medicine.
7 Benefits of Acupuncture
Acupuncture is one of several traditional Chinese medicine treatments aimed at restoring your body's natural healing capabilities, easing pain, and promoting healing. Treatments restore balance to your body and prevent stagnation of Qi, a lifeforce essential for good mental and physical health. Ultra-thin needles inserted into the skin at specific acupoints break up Qi blockages during treatments, allowing healing to occur.
Whether you hurt your elbow serving a tennis ball or strained a muscle dunking a basketball game, acupuncture offers these benefits:
- Pain Relief: Acupuncture eases aches and pain by activating your body's pain relief system. Treatments stimulate the release of endorphins and serotonin. These hormones help reduce pain naturally.
- Reduced Inflammation and Stiffness. Inflammation is an important part of the healing process after an injury. Unfortunately, lingering inflammation can cause swelling, pain, and stiffness. Acupuncture triggers an anti-inflammatory response that relieves these symptoms.
- Improved Blood Circulation. After an injury, your body increases production of healing white blood cells in your blood and sends these important cells to the damaged tissues. Your blood also contains oxygen and nutrients that help you heal. Improving circulation boosts your body's natural ability to repair damage and speeds healing.
- Relaxed Muscles. Muscle stiffness, spasms, and trigger points (hard knots) in muscles worsen pain and reduce flexibility and range of motion. Acupuncture treatments relax tight muscles, decrease the involuntary muscle contractions that cause spasms, and loosen tight muscle fibers that cause trigger points.
- Enhanced Balance. Muscle issues, like spasms and tight muscles, can lead to imbalances that slow recovery. Treating these issues with acupuncture keeps your muscles properly balanced, making it easier to maintain your balance when reaching for a fly ball or running over uneven terrain.
- Stress Reduction. Are you feeling stressed about your slow return to normal? Stress can delay wound healing, according to a 2011 review article published in Immunology and Allergy Clinics of North America. Serotonin and endorphins released during acupuncture treatment calms the mind and reduces stress and anxiety, in addition to easing pain.
- Better Sleep. Your body repairs damaged tissues while you sleep. Unfortunately, sleeping well can be difficult when you're in pain or worried about your injury. The pain and stress relief effects of acupuncture could help you fall asleep and avoid waking up in the middle of the night.
Types of Injuries That Can Be Improved with Acupuncture Treatment
Acupuncture is a good treatment option alone or when combined with traditional treatments if you have one of these injuries:
- Achilles Tendonitis
- Tennis or Golfer's Elbow
- Hamstring Strain
- Rotator Cuff Injury
- IT Band Syndrome
- Groin Pull
- Sprained Ligaments
- Shin Splints
- Plantar Fasciitis
- Strained Muscles
- Chronic Joint Pain
Although more research needs to be conducted on the benefits of acupuncture for sports injuries, several existing studies have shown the treatment to be effective. Acupuncture eases the pain of ankle sprain injuries, according to a systematic review published in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine in 2020.
Acupuncture significantly relieved pain compared to the rest, ice, compression, elevation (RICE) method. The review noted that combining acupuncture with other Chinese medicine treatments might be more effective in increasing the cure rate, relieving ankle pain, and decreasing the duration of pain.
A research study published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology in 2023 noted the effectiveness of tendon acupuncture in increasing the blood volume of treated and non-treated tendons. Increased blood flow promotes healing and helps prevent tendon degeneration.
Ready to try acupuncture for your sports injury? Contact our office to schedule a visit with the acupuncturist.
Sources:
NCBI: Immunology and Allergy Clinics of North America:The Impact of Psychological Stress on Wound Healing: Methods and Mechanisms, 2/2011
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3052954/
European Journal of Applied Physiology: Effects of Acupuncture and Acupressure of the Acupoint Compared to the Tendon on the Blood Circulation of Human Tendon In Vivo, 7/15/2023
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-023-05277-2
Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Efficacy and Safety of Acupuncture Therapy for Patients with Acute Ankle Sprain: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials, 10/16/2020
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7585670/
Outside: Does Acupuncture Help With Sports Injuries? Experts Weigh In, 10/20/2023