Amazing! New Zealand has got 7 golden, 6 Silver, and 7 Bronze medals on 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games!
Cheers for all Kiwi athletes!
It’s an Olympic season, and also a sports season.
As a wellness clinic, here I bring some small tips to deal with the common injuries during the sports.
How to prevent or avoid sports injury?
1. Warm up
Stretch before and after you play sports or exercise
2. Keep healthy
Keep in good condition before doing sport
3. Keep hydrated
Drinking plenty water before, during, and after playing sports
How to deal with sport injury?
—->R.I.C.E.
1. Rest.
A day or two of rest (sometimes need more days) may help with your recovery from the injury. For injuries affecting legs, knees, or ankles, you may need to use crutches to avoid second injury or take pressures on them.
2. Ice.
Put ice on your injury. That will help reduce the pain and swelling.
Apply ice to the affected area for 15 to 20 minutes every four hours.
Crushed ice is best for ice packs because you can manipulate it cover the injury.
3. Compression.
Keeping pressure on the injury will also help with swelling and reduce blooding. It will also provide additional support.
An elastic medical-grade bandage works best. Wrap the bandage tight, but not so tight that it cuts off the circulation to the area.
4. Elevation.
Propping up the affected area will help you rest your injury properly. It will also help reduce swelling. Be sure to prop up the area so it’s higher than your heart.
How can acupuncture help with the sport injury?
1. Pain relief
Acupuncture needles can be placed where the injury occurred in the muscle or tissue, and also the surrounding areas or other acu points related to the affected part.
Their insertion provides a minor trauma to the skin, which stimulates the production of pain relieving signals both locally at the trauma site, and at the brain and spinal cord level. Chemicals such as endorphins and opioids are released and pain feedback channels from the pain source to the brain are blocked so that the level of pain perceived by the brain is reduce. But acupuncture use a similar theories in a more natural way.
2. Inflammation reduction
The microtrauma of needle insertion also stimulates an natural anti-inflammatory response by releasing chemicals that cause vasodilation (blood vessel dilation) and vascular permeability (this allows greater flow of chemicals through the vessels). These physiological responses allow the removal of inflammatory mediators from the injury site, and the enhancement of healing mediators to the area.
3. Trigger point release
In addition to promoting anti-inflammatory and analgesic mechanisms, acupuncture can also be used to address areas of muscle tension called trigger points. When a small number of muscle fibers in an area contract excessively, trigger points (also called muscle knots) appear. Direct acupuncture at the trigger point will only cause mechanical damage to the contracted muscle fibers to promote relaxation. It also stimulates blood flow and the delivery of oxygen and nutrients through vasodilation, and reduces elevated electrical activity in muscles, allowing them to relax.
Summary
Lots of cases showed some potential of acupuncture in the treatment of various types of sports injuries, beyond pain control in musculoskeletal disorders.
In addition, this blog hope to provide an alternative treatment options for sport players when they need deal with injuries. The acupuncture can become a natural, effective and safe clinical applications for all athletes.
Reference:
https://familydoctor.org/common-sports-injuries/
<https://www.sportsinjurybulletin.com/acupuncture-for-sports-injuries/>
