Chiropractic is a primary health care profession which is concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and management of a range of musculoskeletal complaints including back, neck and joint pain.
It is a safe and effective treatment, which primarily works by restoring normal function to joints, nerves, muscles, tendons and ligaments, allowing them to function at their optimum, which therefore promotes healing and helps to prevent injury.
The most common form of treatment is an adjustment or manipulation, which involves your chiropractor using their hands to perform precise, quick and small movements into joints, more often than not within the spine, to try and restore their normal function. You may hear a ͚click͛ or a ͚pop͛ during the manipulation; this is a normal response to the manipulation.
Our chiropractors will also use a variation of soft tissue techniques within their treatments including Dry-Needling, in order to resolve their patients problems, however if they feel you need a more in depth soft tissue assessment/treatment they may decide that you need an appointment with our Soft Tissue Therapist Ash, after which they will work closely together, and co-manage your health-care in order to give you the best possible outcome.
Issues that Chiropractors can help with include:
Acute & chronic back pain with or without sciatica
Mechanical neck pain
Headache arising from the neck (cervicogenic) and Migraine prevention
Joint pains including the hip and knee
Shoulder complaints including rotator cuff injuries
Elbow pain and tennis elbow
Ankle sprain
Plantar Fasciitis
Generalised aches and pains
Minor sports injuries
Muscle spasms
Cramp
Tension and inability to relax
In a Chiropractic Plus appointment, Sam takes a functional approach to her consultation and follow-up sessions. She incorporates chiropractic, soft tissue and active rehabilitation to get results with her patients. This active rehabilitation, she feels gives her patients the tools they need to help prevent re-occurrence and also helps improve performance in athletes. Techniques she uses include a combination of:
Chiropractic
Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA)
Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilisation (DNS) assessment and treatment
Active Release Techniques (ART)
Dry-Needling
Common musculoskeletal problems that Sam treats include:
Acute & chronic back pain with or without sciatica
Mechanical neck pain
Headache arising from the neck (cervicogenic) and Migraine prevention
Joint pains including the hip and knee
Shoulder complaints including rotator cuff injuries
Elbow pain and tennis elbow
Ankle sprain
Plantar Fasciitis
Generalised aches and pains
Minor sports injuries
Muscle spasms
Cramp
Tension and inability to relax
A full Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA) takes you through a series of body wide movements and assesses the quality of those movements. It helps your clinician to find out whether the site of pain is truly the source of pain, and whether a movement has a true mobility problem or a motor control problem (lack of stability leading to protective muscle guarding). The findings will then guide the treatment plan of management and let your clinician know whether an area needs working on using manipulation or soft tissue work, or whether it needs stabilisation exercises prescribed instead.
The ability for us to move and move well is inherent within us and should develop during the first few years of life. Our core starts to develop from 3 months old, and from then a sequence of movements occurs which gets us from lying down, to sitting, to crawling, to standing, to walking (and everything in between and after) However sometimes we lose the ability to move well, we develop a weak core, faulty breathing patterns, develop poor posture and eventually injury arises.
Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilisation (DNS) is a rehabilitation protocol which is designed to restore and stabilize locomotor function. It takes us back to our most basic movement patterns that we see during early development, in order to re-programme the correct breathing patterns and core activation patterns that we have lost. In these positions we can also help to correct the poor postural and movement patterns which have developed over time, and help to prevent injury from arising.
These sessions purely focus on rehabilitating your body in a global, dynamic and functional way.
Things that these sessions can help with include:
Muscular and Joint Pain Relief
Poor Posture
Injury Prevention
Better Movement
Improved athletic performance
Soft Tissue Therapists are trained in the assessment, treatment and rehabilitation of minor and chronic soft tissue injuries, which can be the result of any type of lifestyle factor, such as poor posture, occupational stress or sports injuries.
A Soft Tissue Therapist must have a BTEC Level 5 in Soft Tissue Therapy which is the equivalent of a degree level.
Issues which Soft Tissue Therapists can help with include:
Soft tissue injuries
Poor posture
Decreased joint mobility
Headaches
Aches and pains General tension
Soft Tissue Therapists incorporate a range of different soft tissue techniques in order to help relieve the injuries which they encounter. Our Soft Tissue Therapist Ash uses the following techniques:
Myofascial Release
Neuromuscular Technique
Active Tissue Release
Muscle Energy Technique
Active Stretching
Faradic Therapy
If you have a issue that is chronic (over 6 months), or a specific soft tissue injury then we would suggest you have a soft tissue therapy appointment rather than a sports massage.
Sports Massage is a branch of massage which uses a variety of different pressures (usually deeper and more intense than a traditional Swedish or Remedial Massage) to relieve muscular and soft tissue problems in those who take part in sporting activities, in order to aid recovery and help to prevent further injuries from occurring.
If a light, gentle massage is what you are after, this is not the massage for you. You may feel a bit sore and bruised afterwards which is normal so please do not worry.
A Deep-Tissue Massage is similar to a Sports Massage but is utilised in the treatment of non-sports related injuries, in people who may have issues related to things such as poor posture or occupational stresses.
