Bring on the Needles – Back to the Acupuncturist

Soucre: Google images

I headed back to my acupuncturist yesterday to begin treatment on my left ITB issues.

You may remember that weeks before the Philly half marathon, my left leg decided to not play nice and to stave off my panic I started pulling out all the stops to keep the ITB and knee happy. One of the things I tried was acupuncture — I have used acupuncture in the past with great success in relieving migraines, helping to lower my blood pressure and, even for relief from bad bouts of hay fever. I figured why not see if a few carefully placed needles could help…and I believe it did. Was it the sole reason I got to the starting line feeling as good as I did? That’s hard to say, but I know in those final days leading up to the race, my leg felt much better after the treatments.

So fast forward to now – one of my goals for this year is to get through the year injury-free. To do that I believe there are a few things I need to do a better job of:

• strength training
• improving my range of motion/flexibility, and
• something I’m calling proactive self-care — doing a better job of taking care of my body, especially my legs in a proactive manner, instead of waiting until something goes wrong.

Acupuncture fall into that 3rd category. When I talked to my acupuncturist leading up to Philly, we discussed the on and off problems I’d been having all year. He explained that beyond pain management, acupuncture can be used to help decrease swelling and inflammation, as well as to increase range of motion. We discussed taking a proactive course of treatment to help treat the underlying conditions that may lead to my left leg flare-ups. Made sense to me – so once a week for 6 weeks I’ll be playing the part of human pincushion and then we’ll take a break so we can get a better sense of the lasting affects.

Have you ever tried acupuncture? What do you do to take care of your body?