Acupuncturist Treats 40 N.F.L. Players in 4 Cities

Jets fullback Tony Richardson recently had an acupuncture session at his apartment.
(Michael Nagle for The New York Times)

Today's New York Times has a wonderful, interesting (and INSPIRING) article about Lisa Ripi, personal acupuncturist to the pros. I've posted one of the photos here, as well as an excerpt from the full article. Wouldn't we at Health On Point be wonderful at treating local athletes? No need to fly all over the country when there are so many students in the athletic department in need! But you don't have to take our word.

Stretched out on a massage table in his Long Island City condominium, Jets fullback Tony Richardson closed his eyes. Over the next hour, he groaned and grimaced and eventually fell asleep, as Lisa Ripi, the traveling N.F.L. acupuncturist, went to work.

Ripi poked and prodded Richardson on a recent Tuesday, using blue and pink needles, until his body resembled a road map marked with 120 destinations. “SportsCenter” provided mood music. Afterward, Richardson said his soreness had mostly vanished.

“They always tell me I’m their little secret,” Ripi said. “I feel like the little mouse who takes the thorns out of their feet.”

Professional football players partake in a violent game, and as the season progresses, they spend more time in training rooms than on practice fields. They visit chiropractors and massage therapists, practice yoga, undergo electronic stimulation and nap in hyperbaric chambers.

Yet relatively few receive acupuncture, which brings smiles to the faces of Ripi’s clients. They remain fiercely territorial. They fight over Fridays because it is closest to their games. They accuse one another of hogging, or trying to steal her.

All swear by Ripi’s technique, which she described as closer to Japanese-style acupuncture than to traditional Chinese methods. She focuses less on established points and more on sore areas, using needles to increase blood flow, relaxing muscles tightened in the weight room.

Read the full article here.

Acupuncturist traveled to Mexico with U.S. archery team

Members of the U.S. archery team traveled to Guadalajara, Mexico, last month for the Pan American Championships and a chance to represent the U.S. at the 2012 Olympic games in London.

But they aren't the only ones with London in sight.

Their athletic trainer, Jody Murray of Brookfield, has similar high hopes, saying her dream is to make it to the 2012 games as well.

"I'm very patriotic and I love sporting events," Murray said. "Combining the two things is great."

Murray, the owner and sole practitioner of Acupuncture Therapy, will travel with the team and help them relieve their physical pain and stress.

She traveled with some of the same team members to Shanghai, China, in August for the Archery World Cup. She stayed out on the field with them all day, and after dinner they would come to her room and she would treat them with acupuncture.

"A lot of them have back issues from repeatedly holding the same posture (as they pull the arrows back to shoot them)," Murray said. "Plus stress, traveling, jet lag. I relieved them from whatever they needed."

Murray is one of only a handful of people in the United States who has an athletic training license and acupuncture license. She is the only Olympic athletic trainer with acupuncture credentials, she said.

"Acupuncture is beneficial to Olympic athletes because it has no side effects," Murray said. "They're constantly being tested for drugs, and they won't have to worry about failing. And it relaxes the muscles and promotes tissue healing."

Murray's work is a great step forward for the acupuncture profession, said Jonathan Lavelle, another acupuncturist in Brookfield.

"Sports medicine acupuncture is important because of the extreme stress that the athletes place on their bodies," Lavelle said.

The U.S. team pays for Murray's travel and expenses, but otherwise she does not get paid for her services, and she has to shut down her office while she is gone.

But for her, it's worth it.

"I do it because I love working with athletes and the opportunity to work with the highest caliber of athletes is my gold medal," Murray said.

Acupuncture eyes UNESCO

BEIJING - Acupuncture has been selected as a candidate for Unesco intangible cultural heritage status.

'That's significant, particularly for acupuncture, which is widely practiced in more than 160 countries and regions worldwide,' said Huang Jianyin, deputy secretary-general with the World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies, a non-governmental organisation based in Beijing.

"Landing the status would help improve and secure the notion across the world that acupuncture and other traditional Chinese medical procedures were created in China by the Chinese," he told China Daily on Thursday.

Internationally, traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture in particular, has been officially recognized and is widely practiced in countries like Japan, the United States, Germany and Republic of Korea (ROK), experts said.

Countries like ROK, Japan and France used to claim they were the cradle of acupuncture, according to Huang.

Li Zhigang, deputy director of the acupuncture school of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, told China Daily that ROK had tried to file an application for acupuncture to UNESCO.

"If they had made it before China and succeeded, people in other parts of the world might think it was South Korea that created acupuncture," he said.

Currently, China has about 600,000 licensed doctors in traditional Chinese medicine and almost all are trained in acupuncture, official statistics show.

In Beijing, a single session of acupuncture therapy costs 4 yuan ($0.59), a price set 20 years ago.

"That hurts the enthusiasm of practitioners and many acupuncture students at my school change occupation after graduation," Li said.

The final results will be announced around Nov 19.

Healthy Weight Loss - New Study Reveals Acupuncture Helps Obese Adults To Lose Weight

The results of a recent study indicate that the traditional Chinese treatment method, acupuncture, may offer significant benefits to obese adults who wish to lose weight. The study was conducted by Dr. Edward Lamadrid, who is a Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (DAOM), and it found that almost all of the participants in his study lost weight over the six-week period of the study, whilst at least half of the participants continued to lose weight, even after the acupuncture treatments had been discontinued. The results of this study are expected to be presented by Dr. Lamadrid at the Pacific Symposium which will take place on November 4 at the Catamaran Resort Hotel & Spa in San Diego.

Commenting on the results of this groundbreaking study, which is titled “The Effects of Acupuncture on Weight-Loss in Over-Weight and Obese Adults Over 24 Years Old,” Dr. Lamadrid said, “What’s particularly interesting and somewhat shocking about the study’s findings is that weight loss occurred across the board without much exercise or dieting, something everyone believes is essential to trimming down. I certainly don’t want to discount the importance of healthy habits such as good fitness and eating nutritionally, but this study confirms that acupuncture is a viable tool for successful weight loss.”

Acupuncture: Your New Sleep Apnea Treatment

Sleep apnea is one of the harshest sleep disorders around. In order to treat it, sufferers need to sleep with a CPAP mask—which can be really uncomfortable for some people. But people who aren’t compatible with CPAP now have a more feasible solution. Try acupuncture.

A recent study suggests that acupuncture is an effective treatment for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

Acupuncture reduces nocturnal respiratory events and sleep disruptions. Researchers say that its anti-inflammatory effects make it an effective sleep disorder treatment.

They say that the neck is the main acupuncture point for people with sleep apnea. One of the main symptoms of sleep apnea is gasping for breath during sleep. The neck stimulates a muscle that allows for easy air flow, resulting in better breathing for the sleep apnea sufferer.

The article is published in Acupuncture in Medicine (2010;28:115-119 doi:10.1136/aim.2009.001867), an affiliate of the British Medical Journal.

ABSTRACT

Background:  Most patients with obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) do not tolerate treatment with nasal continuous positive airway pressure, the ‘gold standard’ treatment for this condition. It was shown in a pilot study that acupuncture was more effective than placebo treatment (sham acupuncture) in producing significant changes in the respiratory events assessed by polysomnography (PSG).

Objectives: To investigate the immediate effect of manual acupuncture (MA) and electroacupuncture (EA) on the sleep pattern of patients presenting with moderate OSA.

Methods: 40 patients with an Apnoea–Hypopnoea Index (AHI) of 15–30/h were randomly allocated to MA treatment (n=10), EA 10 Hz treatment (n=10), EA 2 Hz treatment (n=10) and a no-treatment control group (n=10). The patients received MA or EA (2 or 10 Hz) just before the PSG study at 20:00.

Results: The AHI (p=0.005; p=0.005), the Apnoea Index (p=0.038; p=0.009) and the respiratory events (p=0.039; p=0.014) decreased significantly in the MA and EA 10 Hz groups, respectively (AHI (21.9, 11.2), Apnoea Index (5.15, 0.7), respiratory events (120.5, 61.0) in the MA group before and after. AHI (20.6, 9.9), Apnoea Index (8.2, 0.3), respiratory events (117.0, 56.0) in the EA 10 Hz group before and after). The micro-arousals decreased only in the MA group (146.0 vs 88.5, p=0.0002). There were no significant changes in the EA 2 Hz group or in the control group.

Conclusion: A single session of either MA or EA 10 Hz had an acute effect in reducing the AHI as well as the number of nocturnal respiratory events of patients presenting with moderate OSA.