Sports Acupuncture
and Injury Recovery…
Throw in the word acupuncture and most people quickly think of spa, leisure, and way of dealing with acute pain. Unlike the regular acupuncture, sports acupuncture focuses on the body’s anatomy, posture, movement patterns and trigger joints. The best acupuncturists in San Diego use sports acupuncture to ease pain and suppress inflammation associated with sports injuries.
Acupuncture in sports can expedite healing, increase the range of motion of an injured joint, and simultaneously improve muscle strength. With acupuncture, athletes can prevent and treat acute pain, spasms, and swelling. Sports acupuncture can also deal with risk factors associated with recurrent injuries.
Sources of Sports Injuries
Sports Injuries that Need Acupuncture
Acupuncture San Diego has experienced acupuncturists that deal with acute injuries such as sprain, spasms, and strains. Sprains involve ligaments while strains often affect muscles and tendons. Spasms cause muscles to tighten resulting in pain. Acupuncture can ease inflammatory response such as swelling around the injured area, redness or skin discoloration. Other challenges that athletes encounter include reduced range of motion of an injured joint and formation of scar tissue from prolonged inflammation. These challenges hamper an athlete from regaining joint mobility. Acupuncture can help ease inflammation associated with disk bulges.
The Benefits of Acupuncture for Sports
1. Relieves Pain and accelerates healing
Many people recognize and apply acupuncture for chronic pain. Athletes too can benefit from acupuncture when dealing with trauma. Instead of taking oral analgesics or shots to relieve pain, acupuncture offers a natural, drug-free alternative for management of pain. Acupuncture stimulates the brain to release endorphins. Endorphins (opioid-like neurotransmitter)reduce pain in the body. Endorphins act as the body’s natural pain reliever.The best thing about endorphins is that they provide a long-lasting effect.
Acupuncture helps accelerate the body’s healing process by reducing inflammation and boosting the immune system. Endorphins help reduce pain and swelling in the body. The neurotransmitter also creates a feeling of positivity and euphoria in the brain during acupuncture.
2. Enhance Performance and Endurance
Acupuncture increases blood circulation to specific parts of the body. This improved circulation aside from promoting faster healingboosts the performance of an athlete. It allows the sportsperson to perform optimally with minimized stress.Sports acupuncture strengthens the body of an athlete and restores internal balance. Tightening of muscles often occurs and aggravates due to poor circulation. Such muscles fatigue easily and stand a higher risk of injury than muscles that experience goodflow of blood. Acupuncture for sports improvescirculation to affected muscles thus enhancing the performance of an athlete.Proper bloodflow nourishes the muscle tissues and increases the elimination of lactic acid which causes fatigue.This not only encourages healthy tissues, but it also improves physical and mental endurance because your body feels good.
3. Strengthening and Restoring Body Tissues
Muscles and other tissues with poor blood circulation become easily fatigued and prone to injuries. If the problem prolongs,it can cause the tissues to degenerate. Proper blood flow due to acupuncture provides nourishment to prevent tissue from fatigue and tissue degeneration. It also contains the nutrients necessary for the body to rebuild degenerating muscles.
4. Physical Rehabilitation
Acupuncture San Diego use acupuncture for physical rehabilitation. Acupuncture is an essential part of sports physiotherapy. It deals with conditions such as strains, sprains, pain in the joint, back pain, neck pains,etc.
5. Improve Posture
Sports acupuncturists make use of soft tissue mobilization, assess athletesposture, and encourage stretches and exercises that correct or improve body posture. The method is pain-free and offers rapid results. Good posture allows the athlete to perform at their best and prevent injuries from recurring.