Old Injuries

If you have pain from an old injury, and you've tried pills, injections, surgery, physical therapy, massage, chiropractic, acupuncture, and everything else you can think of, and pain is still controlling your life, we may be able to help.

How?

First we need to understand why you still have pain years after the accident.

Okay then:  Why does something still hurt years later?  Isn't the body supposed to heal itself?

Yes, in many cases the body does an excellent job of healing itself.  Here's the thing:  Our bodies don't come with instruction manuals.  So sometimes we inadvertently do things that work against the healing process, and that's when things go wrong.

Like what?

Here's a common one.  Let's say you strain a muscle in your low back.  It hurts when you move.  So naturally you stop moving.  That makes sense, right?  You would think so.  In fact, years ago that was the standard medical advice:  Bed rest until your back is better.  What we didn't know back then was, you need to move a little while the tissue is healing.  Not too much at first, but some.  Because when you stop moving, things start sticking together.  Then later when you do start moving again, the things that are stuck together feel like they are getting ripped apart with every step you take.  Not pleasant.  Or you gradually start moving in a different way—an abnormal way—to avoid that ripping apart feeling, then that abnormal movement pattern sets you up to develop pain somewhere else, like a domino effect.

My injury was MORE than a simple muscle strain.

Okay.  But simple or complex, it's the same basic idea.  When you stop moving, tissue sticks together.  When you start moving again, the tissue that is stuck together causes pain.

How do you unstick it?

If it's only stuck a little bit, movement itself can unstick it.  That's why conventional physical therapy, mainly stretching and strengthening, is the first thing you should try.  If it's not stuck too badly, that can resolve it, and you're good as new again.  On the other hand, if you still have pain after finishing a course of physical therapy—or if you couldn't finish the physical therapy because exercise made the pain worse—then it's time for some specialized manual therapy.

Specialized manual therapy?  What does that mean?

It's what patients refer to as "that massage you do."  It's not general relaxation massage.  It's a set of massage techniques where we find the areas that need attention and then gently spread the tissues so that the different layers start sliding across each other again.  Gently—nothing forceful—then gradually increasing the shear force as the tissues become healthy, mobile, and non-painful again.

Non-painful?  You're saying you can clear the pain completely?

For some people, yes.  For others, we only have partial success.  For an individual person, I cannot predict which group they will be in.  What I can say is, for nearly everyone, the pain is improved enough to make a real difference in their life.

Yes, but.  My pain is REALLY bad.  What are the chances you can help me?

I don't know.  I'd have to ask a few questions first.  Why don't you tell me your story and we can go from there.

Ready?