It is one of major tasks in sports medicine to prevent and cure sport-related injuries. At present, with increase in training intensity, muscle injuries occur frequently, which directly affects the athletic achievement or even ruins the athletic career. For this reason, the progress in prevention and treatment of the muscle injuries have been concerned increasingly in many countries.
In recent years, the research and application of the emitted qi is being developed in China. The emitted qi has been found to have physical and biological effects. Clinically, we have treated muscle soreness, scleroma in muscles, acute muscle sprain, muscle contusion and release of pain in athletes with the emitted qi and the result was satisfactory. The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the preventive and therapeutic effect of the emitted qi on ultrastructural changes in the injured muscle caused by overstrain.
12 healthy male rabbits, weighing 2 to 2.4 kg, were divided into two groups, the control group and the emitted qi group. Passive contraction of the quadriceps muscles of the thigh was given by stimulation of a chain of square impulses with a frequency of 60 Hz, intensity of 8-40 volt and duration of 0.5 sec. The stimulation underwent 6-9 hours everyday and lasted for 4 days. The emitted qi treatment was given to the emitted qi group for 6 times totally and each treatment lasted 3 minutes.
Three days after termination of the passive contraction, specimens of musculus vastus lateralis were trimmed into cubes of 1 mm3. These cubes were fixed at once with 2.5% buffered glutaraldehyde solution, post-fixed in 2% osmium tetroxide solution, dehydrated with graded series alcohol and acetone, and embeded with epoxy-resin 812.
Under a microscopy, we observed and compared the healing process of periosteal, bridging, uniting and sealing callus in both groups. It was found that the qualities and quantities of both fibrous and bony callus in the emitted qi group were superior to those in controls. Under the influence of the emitted qi the fibroblast could be transformed into osteocytes directly in the region of uniting callus and both of the chondrocytes and fibroblasts were capable of forming bone tissues. These phenomena were not seen in the control group.
The emitted qi promoted differentiation of osteogenesis transformed into osteoblasts, which had an inseparable and multi-layer arrangement, while the osteoblast in the control had a sparse and mono layer arrangement.
In the emitted qi group, the number of the osteoclasts appeared to increase relative in the process of both absorption of necrotic bone in the early stage of fracture and bony callus remodeling of the later stage. So the absorption of necrotic bone and reconnection of marrow cavity were both quicker.
On the basis of the results, we preliminarily considered that the emitted qi had a good therapeutic effect to promote healing of fracture.
