As part of your chiropractic care, there are several additional therapy modalities that may be utilized to assist in the speed of your results, decrease pain, decrease inflammation, or decrease swelling. Here are just some of the additional therapies during chiropractic care.
Cryotherapy
Ice! We often use ice and rarely apply heat to any patients that are in our office. Heat is great at relaxing muscles, but makes the discs and surrounding soft tissues of the spine swell. That’s why you may feel an “ahhh” effect when applying heat, but basically feel worse after the treatment.
By applying ice to areas that are inflamed or swollen, we can provide some pain relief and even help your adjustment last longer since your muscles aren’t so irritated.
Electrical Stimulation
This is usually reserved in our office for more acute (new) conditions. Electrical stimulation helps decrease inflammation, muscle spasm, and helps with pain relief — all symptoms present with a fairly new condition.
While some patients love the tingling feeling associated with this therapy, others are surprised when their muscles contract involuntarily when applied over some of the bigger muscle groups. This contraction actually helps the muscles relax and is completely fine as long as there is no pain associated with the contraction.
Intersegmental Traction
Allowing your spine to move properly and regularly is a good thing. Mechanical traction helps the individual segments of the spine get some solid movement to increase blood flow and relax the muscles. Most patients just think it feels good!
We won’t normally do this treatment when the area of pain will come into contact with the roller or traction device. Since you’re already sore to the touch, you don’t want to spend 10 – 15 minutes with something rolling over it again and again.
These therapies may or may not be applied for your condition or on each visit – we only use what is needed for your particular case. If you don’t like any of these additional treatments — no worries! Just let your doctor know so that an alternative treatment can be used.
The primary method of treatment is the chiropractic adjustment, these therapies only complement the main treatment. For more information on other therapies used by chiropractic office in a traditional setting, click here.