Rehabilitation

When muscles, tendons, or ligaments of the spine are damaged through work injuries, car accidents, overexertion, repetitive motion, or simply weakened by inactivity, your overall health is affected.

An important step towards complete rehabilitation is restoring proper spinal function through chiropractic adjustments.

Without some form of rehabilitation, recovery from an injury or a long-standing spinal problem can take longer to achieve. Overlooking the importance of improved range of motion and muscle strengthening can result in a relapse, with your original health problem returning again and again. Chiropractic rehabilitation involves the restoration of proper joint function of the spine or extremities, and the strengthening of supporting muscles and soft tissue. This will usually involve specific spinal adjustments, combined with a program of stretching, resistance training, and exercises to improve muscle tone. Some patients receive a set of simple exercises they can do at home. Other types of injuries will require the use of specialized equipment to isolate and strengthen specific areas of the spine.

Ask your doctor for ways you can speed the healing process and strengthen the supporting soft tissue of your spine through appropriate rehabilitation.

Patients often ask, “Am I going to have to keep coming back forever?”

An important part of the long term success of spinal decompression and our 5-Step Decompression Protocol is to strengthen and stabilize the spine. In order to ensure the most long lasting results we will test and measure the following:

• Strength
• Range of motion
• Balance and coordination
• Posture
• Muscle performance

Once we decide when you should begin your physical therapy program, you will use the Pt and Nutritional booklet which will cover the types of exercises one should perform. Together we will develop an individualized rehabilitation program to help ensure the most long-lasting and permanent success from even the most painful and debilitating conditions and even when other forms of treatments have failed.

Although we’re confronted with differing types of injuries, which can be one of, or a combination of tissue types, injuries to the musculoskeletal systems are the most common. These injuries can involve muscles, tendons, ligaments, joint capsules, fascia, cartilage or bone.

All highly vascular tissue tends to heal quickly and completely. This includes bone and muscle. You break your arm or you strain a muscle and they heal rapidly and fully. Connective tissue, however, is avascular (doesn’t have good blood supply — think of the grizzly part of meat and chicken) and your body has a very hard time repairing it. If you injure connective tissue (i.e. knees, low back, neck, elbows, wrists, finger capsules, etc) the injury heals very slowly, is prone to repeated re-injury, and seems to never be 100% healed. If you injure the tendons and ligaments in your neck, for example, whenever you re-injure your neck, the location and symptoms invariably involves the exact same spot, which clearly never fully recovered its natural condition. Most high impact trauma, such as in sports and auto accidents, involve connective tissue damage. If not managed well, an excess of fibrosis (fibrous scar tissue) will form which typically alters the normal connective tissue architecture. This in turn can increase susceptibility to re-injury while preventing full strength and function.

Once I assess the problem and you have been treated, we will use Deep Laser Therapy to accelerate healing and physical therapy to restore strength and function. To help you understand how to best exercise WITHOUT re-injuring yourself, please familiarize yourself with this chart. You see, muscle and bones grow stronger quite quickly but Connective Tissue does not. As you increase your exercise routine, the tendons and ligaments that hold together your joints, must become thicker and more robust to handle the extra load. Invariably, I will speak with patients who had re-started their exercise routine and thought they were doing so well and suddenly they re-injured themselves.

The more out-of-shape you are, the smaller the window between how much exercise (load) you must do to receive benefit, and how much is too much (tolerance) and causes injury. As you get in-shape, the window gets larger and you have a wider safety net. At the other extreme, the Elite athlete also has a narrow window because they are at the limit of the human body.