Sports medicine acupuncture (aka orthopedic acupuncture) is a style of acupuncture that focuses on pain and injury. Specifically, injuries due to trauma or overuse syndromes involving the musculoskeletal system.  Advanced training by senior acupuncturists is helping to excel our understanding and skill in treating sports and orthopedic injuries. Acupuncturists who are properly trained have a higher level of assessment and diagnosis of musculoskeletal pain as well as a wider range of needling techniques including many integrative Eastern and Western approaches to treatment.

Acupuncture points are used to bring balance to muscle tone, by relaxing hypertonic or contracted tissue and by “turning on” inhibited muscles. Precise needling techniques are used to improve tissue repair at the site of injury by minimizing scar formation, re-vascularizing fibrotic tissue and clearing excess swelling. Injuries that are treated with acupuncture have a faster healing time, less scar tissue formation and better range of motion recovery than those that are not.

Sports medicine acupuncture is truly on the cutting edge of sports medicine and orthopedic intervention. Many high level athletes are now discovering the techniques of health and healing that martial arts masters of centuries past have long employed. In addition to having advanced skills at treating injury, the Chinese medicine practitioner is also able to address the overall health of a patient by identifying constitutional, lifestyle and nutritional factors that impact healing.

As a self professed movement nerd, it is my personal goal to look deeper and understand the biomechanics and movement habits that made way for an injury or pain pattern. Identifying blind spots in movement patterns, uncovering with mobility restrictions and improving body awareness are goals I work to achieve with every patient.