Why Choose a Chiropractor for Chronic Headaches
Chronic headaches have the potential to take over your daily life. Instead of endless bottles of headache “remedies,” try chiropractic care to treat the causes at the sources of headache pain.
What is Graston Technique® or Muscle Scraping?
With a general move away from pain medication on the part of patients and practitioners alike, manual therapies for musculoskeletal pain and stiffness are growing in popularity and practice. The Graston Technique, a muscle-scraping modality, can effectively aid the treatment of muscle restrictions and myofascial scar tissue.
As Graston Technique specialists, the team at Active Care Chiropractic & Rehabilitation use the practice to treat soft tissue injuries and soft tissue mobilization as a drug-free way to relieve pain and restore function.
Let’s look more deeply into Graston Technique and muscle scraping so you can ask us about how this important therapy may fit into your own treatment plan.
Graston Technique basics
A form of instrument-assisted soft tissue mobilization, Graston Technique uses a smooth stainless steel tool to create localized pressure on problem areas involving muscles and other soft tissue, notably the fascial sheaths that surround muscle tissue.
Descended from the traditional Asian medicine practice of gua sha, muscle-scraping therapy aims to improve blood flow while deeply massaging ailing tissue to stimulate healing. Graston tools use light to moderate pressure, gliding across your skin while manipulating tissue below the surface.
Myofascial knots, also called adhesions or trigger points, are a common source of pain, tenderness, and tightness. The Graston tool helps our practitioners pinpoint these adhesions as well as breaking them up.
If you’ve ever used your thumb to successfully relieve tenderness and tightness in your neck or shoulder, you’re familiar with the effects of Graston Technique.
The benefits of Graston Technique treatments
Your back has a complex network of fascia, ligaments, muscles, and tendons, all soft tissues that can be strained and injured. While many of these injuries aren’t serious in terms of your overall health, they can be extremely painful while interfering with your ability to perform even simple tasks.
While patients sometimes respond differently to Graston Technique treatments, the potential benefits of structured muscle scraping include:
- Faster recovery time than unassisted natural healing
- Reduced reliance on pain-masking medications
- Effective treatment of chronic conditions that don’t respond to other therapies
- A fast, repeatable procedure that doesn’t interfere with other aspects of your treatment plan
- Improved blood and lymphatic circulation
The resources your body uses for natural healing arrive at the location of an injury through the bloodstream while waste products leave via both blood and lymph fluid for flushing. Improving these two circulatory processes helps to speed healing and reduce inflammation and pain.
Contact Active Care Chiropractic & Rehabilitation at the nearest of our six Pennsylvania locations to learn more about Graston Technique and the benefits it may offer to you. Call or click to book your visit now.
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