YOUR HEALTH and soft tissue therapy

YOUR HEALTH and soft tissue therapy

Tissues injured by acute trauma or chronic strain from overuse become tight and stiff. This stiffness is often the cause of your pain and contributes to restricting the proper movement function of the surrounding joints. Scar tissue also builds up around these tissues and binds them together, creating pain, inflammation, and reduced mobility. This leads to improper muscle function and chronic issues.

YOUR HEALTH offers several soft tissue therapies to break up scar tissue and improve movement.

Active Release Technique® (ART)

Active Release Technique® is a manual therapy that targets the muscles and the fascia that surrounds them to break up the scar tissue adhesions and allow muscles to function properly again. The doctor will use her hands to isolate specific muscles, applying tension to those muscles to elongate the muscle and break up the build-up of scar tissue. Effects are long lasting and are often felt after only a few treatments.

For more information, see the Active Release Technique website.

Graston® Technique

Graston Technique targets muscles and ligaments using surgical-grade stainless steel instruments with treatment goals similar to those of ART®. The stainless steel resonates in the doctor’s hands, indicating areas of increased scar tissue and fascial adhesions. The different instruments contour to different shapes of body parts and allow the Doctor to target deeper tissues and scar tissue build up.

For more information, see the Graston Technique website.

Contemporary Medical Acupuncture

Medical acupuncture targets nerves to reduce pain, stiffness, and dysfunction. The needles target nerves to produce the following effects:

  • interrupt the transmission of pain from the injury site to the brain
  • stimulate healing at the injury site by stimulating the nervous system to release specific pain controlling and anti-inflammatory chemicals
  • relax muscle spasms by fatiguing the muscle through the electrical stimulation of the specific muscle
  • increase circulation at the injury site, which helps to decrease inflammation at the site of injury

For more information, see the McMaster University Contemporary Medical Acupuncture Program description.