Muscle Joint Rehab
Helping patients live healthier and pain-free lives.
Muscle & Joint Rehabilitation Mesa, Arizona
Physical Therapy Modalities Practiced by SW Spine & Rehab
In addition to spinal manipulations and adjustments, SW Spine provides a wide range of physical therapy modalities designed to restore movement.
Ice and Heat Therapy
Ice and heat therapy offers a variety of benefits, particularly when combined with other chiropractic treatments. Ice or cold therapy helps reduce swelling and inflammation. It works well for managing acute pain. Heat therapy helps improve circulation and relax muscles, making it ideal for chronic pain. Most patients benefit from a combination of ice and heat therapy.
Muscle stimulation
Dr. Taylor employs muscle stimulation for a variety of reasons; the modality he chooses depends on the desired outcome. The treatment involves sending mild electrical pulses through electrodes attached to the skin. It helps reduce inflammation, relieve pain, contract the muscle to prevent atrophy, soothe muscle spasms, or any combination of these.
Therapeutic ultrasound
In therapeutic ultrasound, Dr. Taylor uses sound waves to “massage” soft tissue and joints. The ultrasound transducer emits sound waves that pass through the skin, heating the underlying tissues. Therapeutic ultrasound therapy offers a variety of benefits thanks to increased blood flow, which helps soothe muscle spasms and reduces pain, inflammation, and stiffness.
Transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation (TENS)
This is another type of electric stimulation used to manage pain. The main difference is that a TENS treatment is intended for patients experiencing prolonged, acute pain after an accident or injury. This type of treatment is not recommended for treating chronic pain, such as the lower back pain that sends many patients to a chiropractor.
Chiropractic Rehabilitation Exercises
Dr. Taylor often prescribes rehabilitation exercises for patients to complete at home. These are designed to support chiropractic treatment and optimize the patient’s recovery.
The types of exercises prescribed vary according to each patient’s unique diagnosis and healthcare needs. They may include:
- Foam rolling:
The patient uses a variety of devices of varying sizes to massage muscles in the back, legs, and arms. It helps relieve muscle tightness and release knots. The patient positions their body so that the device rolls along the length of the muscle. Also known as self-myofascial-release exercises. - Strengthening: Pain often causes the patient’s muscles to become imbalanced (i.e. one becomes weaker) as other body parts try to compensate for the injured joint. An example is the gait changes that often result from prolonged knee pain. Returning balance to the muscles often requires strengthening exercises.
- Stretching: This bears little resemblance to the stretching exercises you remember from high school gym class. For example, most stretches should be held for at least 60 seconds to achieve full relaxation of the muscle. Follow your doctor’s instructions as to intensity and duration of the stretch. The goal is to restore your muscles’ natural resting tension via prolonged stretches. Often performed in conjunction with foam rolling.
- Joint mobility exercises: These are often an extension of the stretching exercises first prescribed by your chiropractor. The goal is maximizing mobility and capacity of the patient’s joints.
The Benefits of Chiropractic Rehabilitation
Often, the pain that brings patients to chiropractic care is the result of a long-term issue. For example, pain in the neck and shoulders often occurs due to the cumulative effects of bad posture or non-ergonomic work conditions. In other words, the condition that caused the pain likely occurred over time. A return to health therefore takes more than a few sessions with a chiropractor. It requires strengthening and conditioning those muscles and joints. Not only does this speed recovery, it helps prevent a reoccurrence of the issue.
Whether you have chronic back pain or acute pain after an accident or injury, SW Spine & Rehab can help. Call us at 480-354-2008 (Mesa), or 480-525-5171 (Tempe), to get started.
