Sports Injury

The difference between sports injuries and common pains is that the athlete usually wants to be pain-free, but also wants to be able to perform physically at a high level. Acupuncture treatment is great for this purpose because not only does it take care of the pain, but it can also improve the circulation and strength of the injured area. With the proper exercise during acupuncture treatment, the athletes could achieve faster recovery time compared to getting the treatment of physical therapy treatment only.

There are different types of injuries. Based on the physical depth of them, the injuries can be categorized as related to bones, ligaments, tendons, muscles, fascia, skins, or even nerves. For distal acupuncture, the acupoints chosen for treatment are far away from the injured area, so the patient can do rehab exercise while having an acupuncture session. With proper insertion depths of the acupuncture needles on the distal acupoints, the injured spot (whether it’s bone, ligament, tendon, muscle, fascia, or skin) can be treated with great results.

Pain Management

There are pain receptors throughout the body. People feel pain whenever these receptors get stimulated. However, there are many sources or depths of pain, such as skin, fascia, muscle, tendon, ligament, and bones. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the methodology for getting rid of pain is simple and straightforward. There is an old saying “不通則痛”, which means the pain will occur whenever the qi (energy) is blocked. So, making the energy flow smoothly in the body is the key to reducing or removing the pain.

How do we exactly reduce the pain? As the meridians interconnect the whole body from organs to the skin, we can choose proper acupoints to smooth out the qi blockage. When the blockage is removed, the problem area will be more relaxed and the circulation will be better. For example, the acupoint SI3 on Small Intestine meridian can take care of headache or neck pain around the vertebrae. Many tough chronic headaches or migraines could be resolved by stimulating this acupoint.

In our clinic, I treat many tough cases with success. Some of them are shown below:

• Headaches & Migraines (top of the head, temple, behind the eyes, back of the head, neck, etc.)

• Shoulder pain (frozen shoulder, injury, muscle tear, calcium in the shoulder, misaligned bones, etc.)

• Pain from the vertebrae (cervical, thoracic, lumbar, misalignment, degeneration, sciatica, arthritis, etc.)

• Elbow (tennis elbow, misaligned bones, injury, etc.)

• Wrist (injury, misaligned wrist bones, De Quervain’s disease, etc.)

• Hand and fingers (injury, trigger finger, dislocated bones, neuropathy, etc.)

• Knee pain (arthritis, bone to bone, ligament, meniscus, etc.)

• Ankle (injury, torn ligament, misaligned bones, etc.)

• Foot and toes (gout, injury, misaligned or dislocated bones, bunion, neuropathy, etc.)

• Stomach or abdomen ache

• Rib pain or fractured rib

• Hip pain

• Pain all over the body

• Night Pains