How can Oriental Medicine help my athletic performance?

Oriental medicine has been used for centuries to increase performance and heal injuries.  Martial arts schools in China as early as the sixth century BC were centers of this medicinal knowledge.  The study of trauma medicine was used to treat injuries such as sprains, muscle pulls, bruises from impact trauma, even dislocations and bone fractures.  This type of medicine came to be known as “Hit Medicine”, due to the injuries sustained while practicing martial arts.  Practitioners were skilled at using acupuncture, moxabustion, special massage and bodywork techniques, and external applications such as compresses and herbal liniments.  This tradition has been passed down throughout Asia to the present day.  In Japan, there is a special class of professional licensed therapists known as Judo-orthopedists, who still practice this tradition.  In addition to acupuncture and other therapies, Ed Antkowiak’s teacher was trained as a practitioner of this Japanese trauma medicine.

In modern times, professional and Olympic athletes have used these techniques to speed healing and enhance performance.  These techniques can be used to speed up post-operative healing as well as for less severe injuries. Professional basketball and football players, triathletes, and dancers have credited acupuncture and Oriental medicine with improving their performance, endurance, and reducing recovery time from injuries.

Whitfield Reeves, co-founder and past president of the National Sports Acupuncture Association, says “Acupuncture, as a specialty of sports medicine, can offer therapeutic modalities of treatment that can be of great assistance in the prevention and treatment of athletic injury.  Traditional Chinese medical theory can offer tremendous insight into the nature of the athlete as a whole, not just reducing the patient to an injury or ailment.”

Women athletes, as a group, can especially benefit from Oriental medicine’s holistic approach to sports medicine.  Health issues particular to women or common among women, such as menstrual dysfunction, connective tissue disorders, anemia, eating disorders and the effects of past eating disorders, depression, etc., can affect women’s athletic performance or predispose them to certain injuries.  Acupuncture and Oriental medicine can help by treating or effectively managing these conditions, freeing up energy and other resources which can then be channeled into improving performance.

For more information, please give me a call at (206) 632-5640, or email me at ed@hibikimedia.com (Click the envelope icon at the top right of this page)

Ed Antkowiak, L.Ac. - Seattle Acupuncture and Professional Education