Ankle sprains are the most common sports-related musculoskeletal injury and make up around 25% of sports injuries. Of those, an estimated 40% will progress to develop chronic functional ankle instability. This not only affects their athletic performance, but also affects the activities of their daily life. This is because the physical stresses from the initial injury can damage the muscles, ligaments, nerves, and mechanoreceptors. Because ankle proprioception is imperative for balance and ,those with chronic functional ankle instability show decreased levels of this as well as postural stability, it becomes even more important to seek treatment after your ankle injury.

How Electroacupuncture Can Help Your Ankle Injuries

Due to the damage to the ligaments and soft-tissues of the ankles (which are very high in density in pain-sensitive nerve fibers), your ankle will continue to be in pain for quite some time. Electroacupuncture does very well to calm down the pain conducting fibers to alleviate pain at the site of your injury.

Those that have suffered from ankle sprains usually will also mention how the muscles that move your ankle become much weaker, due to what’s called ‘arthogenic inhibition’, where the inflammation and pain signals from your ankle shuts off the nerves that power the muscles of your ankle reflexively to avoid further damage in the future. Electroacupuncture can also be used to stimulate these very same muscles to both reduce the amount of inhibition and aid in restoring them to their original strength.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that when your ankle is sprained, you also are causing injury to the nerves that are on the outside of your leg and ankle. These become stretched past their regular length when the ankle rolls over. Depending on the severity of the sprain, the fibular or peroneal nerves are damaged, reducing their functionality. Damage to these nerves leaves long term reductions in proprioception, sensation, and stability in the ankle- a huge part of the reason for a recurrence in ankle sprains. 

Electroacupuncture of the fibularis and anterior leg muscles can help to restore the strength and function of these muscles so they perform the way that they should perform, both during and after your rehab process. Even though rehab includes both strength training and proprioception, re-injury rates are still high for those that have sprained their ankles. Electroacupuncture combined with rehab along with manual therapies has been found to work extremely well to help those who suffer from sprains (or multiple sprains) to get back to the things and sports that they love doing, taking much less time to get themselves back to performing levels.

In contact and collision sports such as football, peripheral nerve injuries are quite common. One American football study showed that the lifetime rate of brachial plexus injuries was 50.3%. This nerve can be found in the neck, with many branches going down to the ribcage, the armpit, and down to the upper arm to the hand. The result of this injury can lead to what’s called the cervical “burner” or “stinger” syndrome, which can be identified through unilateral weakness, generally paired with a burning sensation that follows down an upper extremity all the way down to the fingertips. Although the condition may last only two weeks, it can also become a chronic syndrome. 

Injury to this region can affect both sensation and movement of different parts of your arm. These injuries can be caused by the shoulder being pushed down and the head being pulled up, which causes stretching and tearing of the nerves.

How Electroacupuncture Can Help 

In one research study, electroacupuncture was used in one group following a brachial plexus injury, while a second group did not undergo treatment. The results were quite promising. The findings were that the group given electroacupuncture treatment had an increased number of endorphins in the arcuate nucleus compared to those who did not receive treatment. This kind of endorphin is a peptide that is comprised of 31 amino acid residues and is found in vertebrate neurons. When we experience pain, this endorphin is released to reduce the pain that we feel. The group that received electroacupuncture therapy showed a much higher number of endorphin positive cells compared to the group who did not receive treatment.

Because this endorphin was found in such a greater quantity in the group that received electroacupuncture compared to the control group, it shows that a greater analgesic effect was achieved. This was also consistent with the behavioral observation that should how the thresholds for mechanically induced pain were higher, and instances of autonomy were less in the electroacupuncture group than in the control group. This further shows how electroacupuncture is an effective treatment option following a brachial plexus injury.

The conclusion of this study shows that electroacupuncture can be effective in relieving neuropathic pain after brachial plexus injuries, especially after total brachial plexus avulsion. Because electroacupuncture is both safe and inexpensive, it is a very good option after one undergoes an injury that harms their brachial plexus.