Many a time, you can sustain an injury which may limit your joint range of motion. In such cases, one of the best option for you is to go for manual therapy. It is one of the skillful ways to use hands-on techniques by a licenced provider to adjust the movements of joints and soft tissues in your body. This help you improve tissue extensibility which help you recover your range of motion to pre-injury level, and thus improving overall body function.
Physiotherapy treatment decreases symptoms such as edema, pain, spasm and swelling. Overall it enhances your health, wellness, and fitness to maintain physical performance.
When you should go for manual therapy?
Here are some of the conditions under which you may want to avail the benefits of manual therapy:
- Neck pain due to muscle spasm, wrong posture.
- Lower back pain that occurs due to muscular imbalance/tightness, postural, facet joint restriction.
- Thoracic pain due to disc herniation, or rib restriction.
- Recurring migraines or headaches
- Fibromyalgia
- Temporal mandibular joint (TMJ) dysfunction
- Shoulder conditions like frozen shoulder, rotator cuff injury, tendonitis, bursitis
- Hip pain due to hip impingement or post-surgical hip replacement, or myofascial hip pain
- Knee pain as a result of post-surgical knee replacement, or conditions like iliotibial band syndrome, patellofemoral dysfunction.
- Ankle pain due to conditions like ankle sprains/strains, arthritis.
Manual therapy techniques
Manual therapy techniques are suitable for connective tissues and helps alleviate muscle aches. It also helps restore normal mobility to provide symptom relief in acute, sub-acute, and chronic pain conditions.
Here are some of the manual therapy techniques that help you restore your health position.
Soft Tissue Manipulation
Many a time, strenuous asctivity can cause muscular tiughtness and thereby causing wear and tear in soft tissues. As it turns out, even after the restoration process, the muscle spasms continue. In such cases, we may need to address the muscle tension, or else it may cause muscualar dysfunction.
Soft tissue manipulation works through the application of pressure to break the inelastic or fibrous muscular tissue (called ‘myofascial adhesions’). Typically, these are the scar tissues from injury to muscle fibres.
Pain Rehabilitation Techniques
One of the benefits of these manual therapy techniques is that it helps correct the abnormal neuromuscular reflexes. The abnormality leads to structural and postural problems, which results in painful ‘tender points’.
During physiotherapy treatment, the patient is held in a comfortable position for some time. Gradually, some intensity of asymptomatic strain is induced through mild stretching. Slowly, the body is brought out of that position. As a result, this allows the muscles to regain a usual status.
Your practitioner may decide to use these techniques for back problems that are too acute or too delicate to treat with other procedures.
Joint Mobilization
A manual therapy technique that involves joint mobilization can be used for patients who suffer from spasm in the back muscles or other connective ligaments and tendons. This technique includes loosening up the restricted joint and increasing its range of motion by providing slow velocity and increasing distance of movement. The movement propagates through the barrier of a joint to the actual bone surfaces.
Muscle Energy Techniques
Muscle energy techniques help improve muscle tightness. It also helps lengthen shortened muscles. Your physiotherapy treatment may include the application of a distinctly controlled counterforce. The force applies specifically in a particular direction, from a precise position. The procedure may be repeated two or more times.
Conclusion
Currently, if you or anyone you know are suffering from acute or chronic pain; and are looking for relief, you may need to take a quick step ahead to avoid further aggravation. For your specific needs, let’s get in touch and discuss which one, among all manual therapy techniques, suits you. At PhysioExperts Physiotherapy Clinic, Kanata we incorporate manual therapy into physiotherapy treatment to help optimize your recovery.
PhysioExperts Physiotherapy Centre is a Kanata-based clinic providing one-on-one appointments with registered physiotherapists. Our team strives to deliver the highest quality of care. As such, we take our time to fully understand your situation, so that you can make a full and effective recovery. Our facility is always clean and includes free parking for your convenience. We are open early in the morning to late evening, with on-call options on Saturdays. For more information, check out our reviews.
