Calf pain is a common affliction that can occur to people at all activity levels and ages. Calf discomfort can also arrive alongside various other symptoms – for example, you may start feeling tingling sensations and tenderness or notice your leg(s) feeling weaker. In many cases, acupuncture for calf pain can help lessen all of the above and restore a full range of mobility over just a few sessions.
Calf injuries can occur as a result of overexercising or overexerting your body. You may also experience pain in your calves if you fail to stretch or cool down properly or even if you fail to hydrate appropriately throughout the day. Calf pain is also a side-effect of serious conditions such as diabetes and may occur through vascular disease, sciatica, or kidney failure.
Regardless of why your calves start to hurt, it’s crucial to seek help with regaining mobility and lessening pain. Leaving calf pain untreated may lead to long-term mobility problems and may impact your ability to work or exercise each day. While some medical treatments can help to ease calf pain and restore mobility over the long term, evidence suggests that acupuncture may help to promote faster healing and recovery altogether.
Just as acupuncture for achilles tendonitis can help restore mobility in your lower legs, calf pain needling can provide you with speedier relief than through pain medication alone.
How acupuncture can help with calf pain
Calf pain is not always simple to diagnose. However, acupuncture can help to restore mobility and eradicate pain simply by redirecting blood and oxygen across the body. By targeting points in your body that directly correspond with your calves (based on a map of your body’s nervous system), acupuncturists will target trigger points that deliver more nutrients to tissue needing healing support.
Acupuncture can also help lessen tissue inflammation, including inflammation that you may develop in the calves. If you have sprained your calf during exercise, your body will typically react by swelling – causing discomfort and pain that ibuprofen may soothe away. Acupuncture can go beyond the temporary benefits of pain medication and stimulate tissue repair (and lessen inflammation) for long-term relief.
Many active people, including track athletes, regularly undergo acupuncture to loosen up tight calves. Regular treatments can help to stave off cramping in the calves, which can prove highly detrimental to everyday mobility, let alone intensive running and sports. Acupuncture can help to promote collagen release, which can prove highly beneficial in efficiently repairing tissue damage for much time to come.
Acupuncture will also help to decrease pain signals delivered across your nervous network, specifically to trigger points where you may be suffering the most. The process will also release endorphins to help you manage pain in the short term. In fact, in most cases, you’ll expect to notice less pain and greater mobility in your calves after just one session at Lycoming Orthopedic & Sports Acupuncture.
Of course, acupuncture may only help so much regarding your overall health and any conditions associated with calf pain. It’s always prudent to speak to your doctor or physician if you suffer from any conditions that may aggravate straining in your calves.
How acupuncture for your calf pain takes place
As specialists in traditional acupuncture and various associated therapies, we ensure to carefully understand the pain you experience and why your calf pain may be occurring in the first instance. We’ll also guide you through what you can expect through various therapies.
It’s also important to discuss your future exercise goals with our clinic. You don’t have to be training for a 5K – you may simply wish to regain mobility in your calves and legs to work on your feet for hours at a time. All cases will be slightly different, so we encourage our patients to be open and honest when they attend our clinics. Without this communication, we won’t be able to help you!
All acupuncture sessions – for calves or elsewhere in your body – start with a short strength assessment session. This helps us to understand which trigger points across your body and nervous network may need the most attention.
Once you are laid back and relaxed, a specialist will carefully direct warmed needles towards points across your body that connect with the nerves in your calves. This process may feel warm, and you may feel some pressure – but you won’t experience the pain you may be expecting!
By symmetrically needling trigger points across your body, we can redirect blood and oxygen towards your calves, providing immediate pain relief in many cases. After your first session, you’ll likely regain some mobility and flexibility, too. For these benefits to continue, you’ll need to book regular sessions until your acupuncturist and/or physician advise you it is safe to do so.
Trying acupuncture for calf pain?
Acupuncture may seem scary at first, but studies show that it can prove highly beneficial for long-term pain relief and tissue regeneration. What’s more, regular acupuncture can help to prevent calf straining, which can prove detrimental to professional athletes and highly active lifestyles.
Thousands of athletes seek needling therapies to soothe debilitating injuries – whether acupuncture for golfer’s elbow, or cupping to help with calf strains, there are a wealth of options available.
If you’d like to know a bit more about treating calf pain with acupuncture, reach out to our team via phone or via form. From your first visit, you’ll have the chance to ask any questions you may have about the different services and treatments available to you.
It’s not always easy to know why our calves hurt. But, if you’re exercising a lot, it pays to prepare and protect your body as much as possible.
Acupuncture can help and support millions of people in millions of different ways. Why not start taking steps to ease your pain and restore mobility today? Book a strength assessment at Lycoming Acupuncture and start thinking about how much of a difference pain relief and flexibility restoration could make to your life moving forward.
