Acupuncture used in Sports Medicine

More and more athletes are using acupuncture to recover from sports related injuries. Read on to find out more.

http://www.healthcmi.com/Acupuncture-Continuing-Education-News/1211-acupuncture-helps-nba-star-chandler-parsons-to-victory

A is for Acupuncture

A lot has been written about what acupuncture is, why an acupuncturist puts needles where they do, and the conditions acupuncture can treat. But very little is written about the history of acupuncture and how it came to be the system of medicine that it is today.

It turns out that the earliest record of acupuncture may not be from China. In 1991 two hikers found a mummified body in the Otztal alps that’s thought to date back to 3300BC. The mummy, nicknamed Otzi, has tattoo marks on his body that many believe were used to mark acupuncture points. If that is the case, acupuncture dates back to the Copper Age of Europe.

However, the earliest agreed upon record of acupuncture does originate from China. The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine is a famous text that’s presented as a question and answer session between the Yellow Emperor and his ministers. It’s generally agreed that the text dates back to the Warring States Period (475 BC -- 221 BC).

By the 17th century interest in acupuncture had declined in favor of herbal medicine. This culminated in 1929 when acupuncture was outlawed in China. This was partially in response to the pneumonic plague of 1910 which resulted in a desire to embrace western medicine. The ban was ultimately unsuccessful as acupuncture continued to be practiced among “barefoot doctors” in rural areas of China. By 1949 Chairman Mao reinstated traditional forms of medicine as a way of ensuring the massive population had access to general healthcare.

Acupuncture made its way to the US via immigrants trained in practicing acupuncture. The first time it reached mainstream media however was when James Reston, a New York Times reporter, traveled to China in 1971. During that trip he needed to have an emergency appendectomy. The post op pain was treated with acupuncture. His account caused an increased interest in acupuncture. By 1975 the New England School of Acupuncture opened in the Boston area.

ABC's of Chinese Medicine

Over the next few months I’ve decided to write a series of blogposts about the ABC’s of acupuncture. Hopefully this will serve to answer some of the questions people have about acupuncture. If you have anything you want to know more about, let me know as I’m bound to run out of ideas by the time I get to the letter H.