Manual Therapy Techniques: Unveiling Pain Management Secrets
Are you living with her persistent joint pain? Is it keeping you from staying active or performing day-to-day tasks? When musculoskeletal pain gets bad enough, it’s time to start thinking about a pain management plan–and you might be surprised that it doesn’t need to involve drugs or surgery!
Legacy Chiropractic offers several all-natural treatment options that can help you find lasting relief. As chiropractors, we aim to help your body heal itself, and one way we do this is through manual therapy techniques.
Manual therapy is an umbrella term used to describe various hands-on pain management methods. But these methods don’t just help with pain. They can also…
- Restore mobility restrictions
- Promote blood flow
- Facilitate your body’s natural healing processes
- Help you relax
Keep reading to learn how manual therapy helped one of our patients–let’s call her Maureen–manage her pain so she could get active once again.
Manual Therapy: The Key to Lasting Pain Management
Maureen had been dealing with chronic pain for several months when she visited us for the first time. She was looking for ways to manage her pain without resorting to medication.
Chronic pain can be tricky to manage; unlike acute pain (which has a clear underlying cause), it often has a psychological component. Many people also experience it throughout their bodies. Maureen would say that it sometimes felt like her pain was moving around.
To help Maureen, we developed a customized treatment plan pulling from several different manual therapy techniques:
- Spinal Adjustment: This technique is one of the mainstays of chiropractic care. By sharply thrusting Maureen’s spine through its current range of motion, we were able to provide immediate pain relief.
- Joint Mobilizations: We also used this technique to help Maureen improve the range of motion in her spine and other impacted joints. A mobilization is slower than an adjustment–we guided her joint through its range of motion rather than thrusting it. Over time, this process helped ease Maureen’s mobility restrictions.
- Myofascial Release: This soft-tissue technique is an excellent choice for people with chronic pain. It involves releasing restrictions in your myofascia, the tough, flexible tissue that wraps around your muscles.
- Trigger Point Therapy: We also targeted the trigger points that had formed in Maureen’s myofascia. Trigger points are small, tender knots that can defer pain throughout the body. By kneading them out, we helped Maureen find relief.
A Whole-Personal Approach to Pain Management
In addition to these manual therapy techniques, we worked with Maureen to correct postural issues that were putting strain on her lower back, which contributed to her pain. We also guided her through corrective exercises to build strength in her core, hips, and back.
Without manual therapy, however, Maureen likely would have been in too much pain to perform these exercises. Our comprehensive approach ensured she received the care she needed.
Want to learn more about how Legacy Chiropractic can help develop a pain management program just for you? Request an appointment at our Los Angeles clinic today!