Why is acupuncture an added insurance benefit only for people who can afford it? Including it as an Essential benefit means it becomes mainstream and covered. It lowers overall health costs by avoiding drugs and surgery, augments recovery when you use western medicine. Why is it only for the well to do? You can change this! And we are going to need every one of my friends and all of your friends too! We need 100,000 signatures in 2 weeks, so follow this link to sign a letter to the US Secretary of Health, Share this, and watch what the people's medicine can do!
Please click the hyperlink below and send a letter to Congress recommending acupuncture as a service that should be considered as a"essential health benefit" for all Americans.
Its just a few clicks!
http://aaaom.rallycongress.com/5247/acupuncture-as-an-essential-health-benefit/?m=2190942
Acupuncture as an Essential Health Benefit
The Doctor Is In Meditation
Check out the article that I was interviewed for in Elevation Outdoors Magazine! Its about the use of "alternative" therapies to treat athletes/ active people.
The Doctor Is In Meditation
By CHRIS KASSAR on SEPTEMBER 5, 2011
... On an early winter ascent in 1981, Steve Ilg, a sponsored rock and ice climber, made a move on the east face of Longs Peak that unearthed a stone slab the size of an office desk. He and the chunk, already loose due to continuous freeze-thaw action on the Diamond, plummeted 60 feet to the earth where they landed… with a splash. The water bottles attached to Ilg’s pack cushioned his fall. “My climbing partner said that when I hit, a burst of water exploded instead of me. I guess those bottles are why I’m alive,” says the 48-year-old Ilg, shrugging his shoulders. “But what really saved me––what allowed me to continue to pursue my outdoor passions––were yoga, bodywork, meditation and my breath.”
Ilg fractured his spine and “tore, twisted and shocked my pelvis into a state of absolute dysfunction.” Doctors dismissed the possibility that he would ever participate in sports again because the nerve impingement and disc damage was so severe. They recommended a series of surgeries, but made no promises of a full recovery. “They basically told me that I would have to be satisfied with a more sedentary life,” Ilg remembers. “But I knew there had to be a better way.”
Ilg, who had been studying yoga in Boulder (in addition to reaching champion level status as a runner, skier and bodybuilder), decided against the surgeries. He also dropped out of physical therapy after only one session, opting instead for his own combination of visualization, meditation, breath work and yoga. He was able to walk again within one month, returning to big walls in six. Between then and now, he has won 200 championships in over 23 sports. In addition, he has dedicated his life to helping other athletes heal and perform through a holistic approach that combines yoga, meditation and nutrition with cardio and strength training.
“For me, self-healing quickly became synonymous with self-transformation,” he says. “I still sustain rigorous practices in yoga and meditation, and perform at an even higher level than before my fall.”
Ilg may be an extreme example in terms of his unusual athletic prowess and the brutal injury he sustained, but the therapies he used to heal himself 30 years ago are gaining popularity today. By definition, complementary and alternative therapies (CAM) entail a spectrum of ancient to new-age approaches that are not part of conventional Western medicine. A study by the National Institute of Health estimates that approximately 40 percent of American adults now use some form of CAM. Acupuncture, deep breathing exercises, massage therapy, meditation, naturopathy and yoga all increased in use among adults according to a study conducted between 2002 and 2007 by the National Center for Health Statistics.
High-profile athletes like LeBron James and Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas have used acupuncture and yoga to stay healthy. Many pro and collegiate clubs, from cycling teams to football squads, have alternative practitioners like massage therapists and acupuncturists on staff. Outdoor athletes—mountain bikers, hikers, climbers, trail runners—are no different. As a result, things like ‘yoga for athletes,’ ‘sports acupuncture’ and ‘therapeutic sports massage’ are increasingly present and popular, especially on the Front Range, where fitness is core to the culture and some of the best athletes in the world come to train. But, how do they work and why are athletes—from weekend warriors to pros—increasingly drawn to acupuncture, yoga and massage for healing and recovery?
Getting to the Root
One reason alternative therapies seem to work may be that they take a holistic approach that looks at the entire person, not just their pain, to find the cause of an injury or imbalance. “If we can remove the root,” says Steven Rizzolo, founder of Boulder Sports Acupuncture, “then the branches (the symptoms) go away on their own and we’re more likely to make sure the injury doesn’t return.” Rizzolo’s hybrid practice combines Traditional Chinese Medicine with conventional methods like injection therapy, ultrasound and electronic stimulation according to the needs of the athletes he sees. “Everything I do promotes the healing processes that exist within the body. My treatments are less of a directive and more of a suggestion that the body picks up and carries forward. This way it can do what it naturally wants to, which is fix itself.”
Treatments that focus on only addressing the symptoms or the pain can sometimes miss the mark. “By the time I see an athlete, they have often already tried a number of things and nothing has worked,” says David Abookire, founder of Boulder Therapeutics, which specializes in sport and injury massage. “Alternative therapies look beyond the pain to the patterns behind it. Often, we need to put a system in place that will unwind these patterns and get the body back into balance.” By honing in on the body’s weaknesses and finding the injury’s source, practitioners can empower athletes to care for themselves over the long term.
Alternative therapies emphasize the importance of incorporating the mind in treating the whole person. “We can affect the brain through massage so it can release what’s causing tension in the body,” says Kay Levesque, a massage therapist and competitive athlete. “If an athlete can tune into their body and relax on the table, I can give them strategies for taking that onto the trail where it will also help.”
Steph Schwartz, a yoga instructor and accomplished ultra-runner, explains how the mind-body connection can play into healing injury. “Yoga is all about focus and being present. It allows you to get to know yourself more so you can get to the root of the things you are holding onto that may be manifesting themselves through your physical body.”
Chris Klinga, an experienced climber crushed by a rock the size of a coffee table while belaying a friend in Eldorado Canyon used yoga to get beyond the physical and into the mental aspect of healing. He broke both legs and feet and shattered his pelvis. After 13 surgeries and physical therapy, he added yoga, acupuncture and massage to his recovery regime. “The biggest part of coming back strong from an injury is training your mind. I really had to strengthen my head, and that’s one thing that Eastern medicine definitely does better than Western medicine. Since the accident, I would consider myself way stronger mentally.”
Matching the Mindset
Athletes are often a different breed: health focused, driven, results-oriented. From pro endurance mountain bikers to casual joggers, no one wants to hear they have to stop doing what they love. Time off can be detrimental to all aspects of an athlete’s life, from career, to team, to family, to psyche. “When you’re treating athletes, there’s a totally different mindset,” explains Boulder Therapeutics’ Abookire. “The focus has to be on helping an athlete heal so they can get back in action, back to what they enjoy—whether it’s running 100-mile races or going on a short hike.”
Alternative treatments such as acupuncture, massage and yoga are not invasive, have limited side effects and don’t require recovery time like surgery. In other words, athletes can often continue training while undergoing these treatments. “I was drawn to alternative options because if you go see a doctor they say to ‘take a break’. Well this is basically my job, so a break isn’t really an option for me unless it’s a serious injury,” says Adriana Pirtea Nelson, a top distance runner who logs up to 110 trail miles per week and is gunning for a shot on the 2012 Olympic team. Nelson sought alternative treatment for a nagging hamstring injury that had been holding her back for three years. “It’s important to find practitioners who are athletes themselves and work specifically with athletes. They know where you are coming from and focus on treatments to get you back to where you were instead of giving you pills and saying to take time off.”
After trying a host of conventional medical treatments, she went to Rizzolo, drawn to his expertise in Traditional Chinese Medicine techniques like acupuncture, and his experience with ‘dry needling,’ a new technique that directly releases tension in a painfully bound muscle by stimulating it with a thin needle. Traditional Chinese Medicine is effective because it increases energy flow and awareness to traumatized areas while also balancing the entire body so that rebuilding can occur. Nelson says she felt less pain in it after only one session with Rizzolo. ”I knew then that I was going to be a champion again.”
Ilg echoes a similar sentiment to explain why he sought alternative methods after his fall on Longs. “In those moments, we default to who we respect and who we want to emulate. If I had known Western MDs who radiated presence and were athletes then maybe, but all my teachers were rock climbers, Tibetan monks, yogis… so that’s where I went.”
And yet the mindset of an athlete can present some challenges to the healing process. Athletes tend to be in tune with their bodies, but they have also learned how to push through and ignore pain, says Liam McClintock, a naturopath and acupuncturist in Boulder. “This can help in the short term, but over the long term it can be detrimental. Sometimes you just have to rest. Getting people to listen and discover what their pain is about is part of being a good practitioner.”
Education and understanding are essential for an athlete to receive the full benefit that these therapies have to offer. For example, these methods do not always provide the immediate results that come from taking a pill. “Sometimes athletes want an immediate change. I explain that their injury didn’t happen overnight so they need to give it time. Slow and steady improvements endure,” says Rizzolo.
Beyond Healing
The minds and bodies of healthy, uninjured athletes can also benefit from alternative therapies. Practicing yoga adds strength, balance and flexibility, which can prevent injury and enhance performance. It also increases focus, breath and relaxation skills which are helpful during the crux of competition.
Schwartz, who became a yoga teacher after using it as a tool to enhance performance and remain injury-free while racing ultras like the Leadville 100, says that yoga helps develop the mind-body awareness to perform at optimum efficiency. Learning to maintain an unrestricted breathing pattern while moving through yoga poses, for example, is a similar to the breath function required when running or biking or climbing for a long period of time. “For the body, yoga is really restorative and helps recovery, but it also cultivates a mindfulness that mimics what you need on the trail,” she says.
Acupuncture works to aid recovery and increase performance in a completely different way than yoga. Needles placed in specific spots activate meridians (energy lines) and move energy through the body. Preliminary scientific reviews in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 2001 & 2010 suggest that this enhances performance in resistance and endurance sports. Rizzolo explains that Traditional Chinese Medicine can also help with recovery by “filling the gas tank” when it is depleted from vigorous training or competition.
This is why, even after healing her hamstring, Nelson continues to get acupuncture and massage as she works toward the Olympics. “I’ve been running extremely tough courses this season that I normally need a week to recover from. With acupuncture and massage, it takes me only two or three days to recover, so I can train even harder.”
Besides just feeling good, therapeutic massage increases blood flow, feeds tissue with nutrients, removes waste and decreases lactic buildup to help the body perform more economically. And you don’t need to be a professional athlete to benefit from regular massage work. “Massage and yoga are part of my regular training, just like eating well and getting a lot of good sleep,” says Jennifer Kwasniewski, a seasoned amateur athlete who recently made the leap to running ultras.
However, there are limitations to what alternative therapies alone can accomplish. As a result, many practitioners emphasize the need to thoroughly and honestly evaluate patients and collaborate with others. “It’s our responsibility to bring Western and Eastern medicine together to better serve our patients,” says Rizzolo.
Michelle Grainger, an elite cyclist, mountain biker and coach, embraced a conglomeration of treatments to recover after a truck hit her while she was riding her bike. She needed five surgeries and extensive physical therapy, but she also used yoga, acupuncture, massage, Tibetan healing and Feldenkrais. “You name it. I’ve tried it,” she says. “As a 20-year veteran athlete, I did everything it took to train better, to perform better, to recover more quickly and to maximize every single little edge I could come up with. Why wouldn’t I do the same to heal myself?”
While alternative therapies may not be for everyone, for some, like Ilg, they are life changing. He calls his fall from Long’s Peak his greatest blessing. “Without it, I would have missed so many inner lessons. Healing myself holistically has taught me that pain is purification.”
EO’s assistant editor, Chris Kassar is co-founder of Rios Libres.
