Muscle therapy is well-known for being a stand-alone medical treatment provided by many day spas and healthcare facilities in the form of massage therapy. However, muscle therapy has its roots in other medical practices such as physical therapy and chiropractic treatment. And, it is frequently provided in different forms to treat a wide range of medical conditions.
This article will discuss various types of muscle therapy commonly used in conjunction with other chiropractic treatments. We will discuss the advantages of these therapies and why they can help with long-term spinal and postural health.
What Are the Different Types of Chiropractic Muscle Therapy?
Muscle therapy is a term that refers to the medical treatment of the body’s skin, muscles, and tendons. There are many providers of muscle therapy—including massage therapists, physical therapists, chiropractors, and trainers.
Chiropractic muscle therapy is administered by a doctor who has studied alignment and specializes in spinal health and proper alignment. When administered this way, your doctor will apply muscle therapy to guide you back toward healthy alignment. When a chiropractor administers this therapy, a patient has the added benefit of a lower risk of injury and pain.
Several types of chiropractic muscle therapy can help support long-term spinal and postural health. PostureWorks utilizes several types of muscle therapy to retrain muscles, treat soft-tissue injuries, and improve posture.
We’ve listed a few types of muscle therapy below:
- Myofascial Release: This type of physical therapy is often used to treat myofascial pain syndrome. Myofascial release helps relieve pain by releasing tension and tightness in specific trigger points. Localizing pain to a specific trigger point can be difficult. As a result, your therapist will administer myofascial release over a large area of muscle and tissue rather than at single points.
- Deep Tissue Therapy: Deep tissue therapy is commonly used to treat musculoskeletal issues like strains and sports injuries. It involves applying sustained pressure to the inner layers of your muscles and connective tissues with slow, deep strokes. This therapy helps break up scar tissue that forms after an injury and reduces muscle and tissue tension.
- Active Release Technique (ART): The active release technique (ART) treats soft tissue in your body by combining muscle manipulation and movement. ART involves locating, isolating, and targeting the affected treatment area to break up scar tissue. This therapy increases blood flow and promotes faster healing of injuries.
- Electrical Muscle Stimulation (E-stim): Electrical pulses are used in this therapy to mimic the action of signals sent by neuron cells in your nervous system. Mild electrical currents are directed toward muscles and nerves, causing muscle contractions. This therapy is known to improve muscle health, aid in muscle repair, and increase blood flow.
- Neuromuscular Re-Education: Neuromuscular reeducation involves retraining the brain and spinal cord in voluntary and reflex motor activities. It is a technique used to restore normal movement and posture.
How Does Chiropractic Muscle Therapy Work?
At PostureWorks, your doctor will first evaluate your overall health and look for postural issues before administering chiropractic muscle therapy. If a postural issue is found, your doctor will identify where your muscles require treatment to improve muscle lengthening in areas where the muscle is tight and shortened. Your doctor will develop a specific treatment protocol of therapies and exercise to strengthen your muscles and return them to a normal posture.
Treatment consists of several therapies to reset the body’s mechanoreceptors deep within the skin and joints. Mechanoreceptors detect touch, pressure, vibration, and sound from external and internal environments within your body. Your chiropractor will work to retrain these receptors and return them to a neutral position to support overall healthy posture and spinal alignment.
Chiropractic muscle therapy is part of your overall comprehensive care plan, in conjunction with other therapies, including spinal adjustments. Because the brain guards areas of injury, causing muscles to contract around the site of injury, adjustments will work to “turn off” and reduce muscle spasms in the affected area.
The Benefits of Chiropractic Muscle Therapy
Muscle therapy has several benefits, especially with ongoing treatment. However, to achieve and sustain long-term health benefits, you will need a more comprehensive treatment program.
At PostureWorks, we commonly treat muscular pain located around the shoulders, under the skull, and around the legs and gluteal muscles. Your doctor may administer one or several types of muscle therapy to achieve long-term health benefits.
- Electrical stimulation can produce excellent results for muscles that are getting missed signals and need to be reset. In these cases, E-stim can help reduce pain and inflammation.
- Neuromuscular re-education is capable of successfully retraining the body to hold itself in a correct posture, and it can help teach patients who have sustained an injury how to adopt a new, healthy posture and gait.
- Massage therapy, including stretching and exercise, can help reduce pain levels, improve muscle performance, improve healing after injury, and reduce scar tissue and inflammation levels.
It is essential to understand that muscle therapy should be used as part of a larger comprehensive healthcare treatment program. While muscle therapy is known to provide numerous health benefits, it cannot correct spinal misalignment or postural issues on its own. Additional treatment is required to address the underlying causes of spinal and postural issues.
PostureWorks — Get Treatment with Chiropractic BioPhysics®
Muscle therapy is a safe and natural way to relieve pain and inflammation in the body. It can help with soft tissue injuries and improve mobility. However, these therapies should be part of a larger comprehensive treatment protocol to treat spinal misalignment issues that originate deep within the spine’s joints (vertebrae). Patients will require advanced treatment to achieve long-term health benefits in these cases.
PostureWorks renders non-surgical structural rehabilitation of the spine and posture and can administer chiropractic muscle therapy. When you work with a Chiropractic BioPhysics® provider, such as the doctors at PostureWorks, they will evaluate your entire medical history and provide a biometric analysis of your spine and posture to provide a clear picture of your current spinal curvature. Using this analysis, a personalized treatment plan consisting of postural exercises, neuromuscular re-education, and spinal alignment traction is created to help realign your spine and relieve pressure from your nerves to improve your overall quality of life.
Chiropractic BioPhysics® is a deeply researched and results-oriented corrective care technique. Our Posture And Spinal Alignment Care Plans are adapted from the Chiropractic BioPhysics® evidence-based research. Over 30 years of research and 250+ peer articles all conclude that to achieve not just short-term pain relief but also lasting improvements for patients there are three main types of treatment necessary: Postural Exercise, Neuro-Muscular Reeducation, and Spinal Alignment Traction. Contact us today to schedule your appointment and learn more about chiropractic muscle therapy!
