Olympic therapies available at local offices

Some cutting-edge therapies are not reserved for Olympic athletes.

At First State Health and Wellness in Midway Shopping Center, chiropractor Audrey Farrell has brought her skill set to the Cape Region, including skills she used working with the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team when it toured after the 2008 games in Beijing.

“The athletes have the best medical care in the world at their disposal, and the fact that they choose cupping, chiropractic care and taping really speaks volumes about its efficiency,” she said.

Cupping

Cupping is a technique that dates back thousands of years, but it has come to the attention of millions of Olympic viewers who watched swimmer Michael Phelps make history sporting circular purple bruises on his back and shoulders.

These bruises are the result of cupping, which uses vacuum power to bring blood flow to tired muscles with glass or silicone cups that have been pressurized.

“When you create a vacuum and apply to the skin it draws blood to the area, and where blood goes, so does oxygen,” Farrell said. “It has increased potential for healing tight or over used muscles.”

Pressurized cups are applied to affected muscles for nearly 10 minutes, sucking skin into the cup. When the cups are removed, the circular purple mark remains.

“The first few minutes you feel tightness as your skin goes into the cup,” said Stephanie Huerta, a registered nurse at First State who has had the procedure several times. “But it’s not painful – I felt no pain and no discomfort.”

There are several different techniques for cupping, such as wet cupping, fire and mechanical dry cupping, but at First State, Farrell focuses her practice on mechanical dry and fire cupping.

Wet cupping involves drawing blood to the muscle through a vacuum and then blood-letting, but the chiropractor said Olympic athletes and Western practice typically use fire and mechanical dry cupping to achieve results.

Typically, Farrell uses a mechanical device to draw air out of a glass cup applied to the skin over specific muscles to relieve strain.

She also demonstrated fire cupping by lighting a cotton swab and inserting it into the cup to create a vacuum, but she said a mechanical device typically delivers the best vacuum seal.

“Even if you are not an athlete, it really works for chronic lower back pain,” Farrell said . “It can also be used for upper back strain from computer work, texting or bad posture.”

Taping

Olympic athletes, particularly beach volleyball players, have added another accessory to their Olympic uniforms, sporting tape on arms, legs, shoulders and backs.

Farrell said it’s called kinesio tape, designed to increase or decrease activity of certain muscles.

‘You can either increase a muscle’s response or decrease it,” she said. “When you have an injury, sometimes the wrong muscle is working and over-compensating.”

Kinesio taping and cupping can both be found online, Farrell said, but she warns self-treatment can do more harm than good without deep understanding of the muscular system and underlying causes of pain or muscle fatigue.

“Usually these are not used as standalone treatments. They are used in conjunction with a comprehensive treatment plan including chiropractic care, massage, cold lasers or acupuncture,” Farrell said. “This happens every Olympics – there’s something new that pops up.”

First State Health and Wellness offers these Olympic-style treatments at several locations statewide. For more information, go to www.firststatehealth.com or call 302-645-6681.