Inflammation is a word that we generally associate with redness, pain, and downright discomfort. It may not be our favourite thing, but inflammation is actually a process that our body undergoes in order to encourage healing and restoration. So what happens when the inflammation has went down, but pain is still present? If you’re healing from an injury, acupuncture can help through stimulating your body to release pain relieving hormones and encouraging blood flow to the affected area. Acupuncture is a process of using inflammation to heal injuries!
Again, when we talk about inflammation, we tend to think of the negatives first: redness, swelling, pain, heat, and loss of function. Inflammation is commonly associated with injuries to the muscles or joints, but it can also used to describe certain internal dysfunctions. For the purpose of this article, we will focus on physical injuries.
Imagine you are out for a run when suddenly you trip and fall. Instantly, you feel red hot pain in your ankle, your hip, and maybe even your shoulder depending on how you have landed. Moments later, you notice your ankle is swelling up to match the diameter of your calf muscle and you have trouble putting weight on it as you hobble back to your car. Your body has entered an acute inflammatory response cascade.
In acute inflammatory responses, the body is actually doing its job and these symptoms that you experience are very positive signals that healing is occurring. So what happens when it’s now a week or a month later and the swelling is gone but you are still experiencing pain or loss of function in the affected area?
It might not have crossed your mind to use acupuncture to help encourage healing from an inflammatory injury. It is through an inflammation reaction too that acupuncture can help. Acupuncture techniques use minimal micro-trauma that reactivates your body’s immune response responsible for the release of your natural pain relieving hormones while simultaneously increasing blood flow to the area to promote further healing. This (immune) reaction not only triggers a local effect to the injured tissues, but also (a systemic) anti-inflammatory effect through the whole body that can last two to three days, healing tissues throughout the body.
There is a common Traditional Chinese Medicine saying that translates to “if there is free flow, there is no pain; if there is no free flow, there is pain”. This means that without proper blood and qi (flow of energy around and through the body) circulation in the body, pain will be present. By using acupuncture we can help to encourage your body to heal itself through regulation of qi and blood flow to decrease and eliminate pain from new and old injuries.
You can book an acupuncture appointment with me by clicking here, or by calling the clinic at 403-452-0029.