Sports Medicine & Acupuncture
Sports Medicine is a branch of medicine that deals with physical fitness, treatment and prevention of injuries related to sports and exercise. Many professional sports now have a Sports Medicine Team to look after their players. The team can include a medical practitioner, physiotherapist, massage therapist, chiropractor and as well now, a team acupuncturist.
Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine has been used for many centuries in China and practitioners have gained much experience in the treatment of injuries and the rehabilitation of injured people. In ancient times in China, the monasteries had kung fu as part of their training and then with the training of kung fu came injuries. Over the centuries, Chinese medicine physicians continually developed acupuncture treatment techniques to improve the results. Herbal medicines were used externally as well as medicines were taken internally as a pill or tincture to help accelerate the healing and rejuvenation. A well known and commonly used external formulae known as Zheng Gu Shui is readily available.
Injuries such as back sprain, pulled hamstring, tennis elbow, infraspinatous tear of the shoulder, hematoma, Achilles sprain, knee ligament tears and so forth have all been successfully treated by Chinese medicine physicians over the centuries.
Other aspects of Chinese medicine such as moxibustion, cupping, gua sha and tui na are also utilized in the rehabilitation of injured patients. Combining all these different modalities of Chinese medicine has proven to greatly enhance results and hence proven so popular with sports medicine.
Acupuncture in particular has been researched in the western world over the past 30 years and there have been numerous studies validating the effectiveness of acupuncture in injury rehabilitation. In fact, the World Health Organization, in an official report, Acupuncture: Review and Analysis of Reports and Controlled Clinical Trials, has listed and confirmed the following sports injuries to be effectively treated by acupuncture.
◾Low back pain
◾Neck pain
◾Sciatica
◾Tennis elbow
◾Knee pains
◾Sprains