Help for Soft Tissue Injuries

 Soft tissue injuries can happen to anybody at any time, and they are wholly treatable if you take action immediately. For natural healthcare solutions in Nitro, WV, Dr. Jay McClanahan at the Dr. J Chiropractic & Wellness Center is on hand to provide exceptional chiropractic care for your whole musculoskeletal system to return to optimal health.

What Is a Soft Tissue Injury?

Your soft tissues are your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and other fibrous tissues, and they are subject to injuries, tears, bruises, strains, and sprains. A soft tissue injury may occur while you exercise, participate in sports, or receive a blunt force trauma injury. Soft tissue injuries are frequent among patients who participate in impact sports. You may also sustain injuries with repetitive motion tasks or while going about your day.

What Are the Symptoms of a Soft Tissue Injuries

Soft tissue injuries typically begin with inflammation, and this may be accompanied by:

• Pain or discomfort in the affected area
• Redness and bruising
• Swelling
• Reduced range of motion

There may be other symptoms based on the type of injury you receive, which is why seeking professional healthcare is a must.

How Can a Chiropractor Help With Soft Tissue Injuries

Dr. McClanahan at the Dr. J Chiropractic & Wellness Center serving the Nitro, WV, area is a chiropractor who knows his way around soft tissue injuries and their treatment. At our practice, we offer a complete set of chiropractic services to treat soft tissue injuries that include:

• Chiropractic massage therapy and a selection of massage treatments for relaxation and healing.
• Ultrasound therapy
• DTS therapy
• Spinal adjustments and manipulations to support better soft tissue recovery.
• Electrical muscle stimulation therapy to promote healing on a cellular level.
• Therapeutic exercise to support tissue strengthening and flexibility.
• Preventative chiropractic

Every patient receives a thorough assessment so that we can offer you the best course of action for your health. We believe in relieving the pain and treating the underlying cause so that you can have an active lifestyle and an overall better quality of life.

Likewise, our team offers holistic care for various chiropractic conditions in addition to treating soft tissue injuries. We also serve our community by providing weight loss programs and DOT exams.

Contact Us!

For chiropractic that will treat your soft tissue injuries, relieve your pain, and increase your mobility in Nitro, WV, look no further than Dr. McClanahan at the Dr. J Chiropractic & Wellness Center. Call 304-776-1520.

What Does Electric Muscle Stimulation Treat?

 

Electric muscle stimulation (a.k.a. EMS) is a type of healthcare treatment technique that involves the use of electrical currents to stimulate muscle contractions. Electric muscle stimulation, which is often used as a part of many rehabilitation interventions, has various applications in both medical and fitness settings. Dr. Jay McClanahan of Dr. J Chiropractic & Wellness Center in Nitro, WV, provides electrical muscle stimulation to treat a variety of musculoskeletal conditions and disorders.

How Does Electric Muscle Stimulation Work?

EMS, which is also known as neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES), involves the use of electrical impulses that stimulate a muscle to contract, which helps to strengthen, rehabilitate, and relax muscles, improve blood circulation, and reduce pain. EMS offers an effective treatment option for the following conditions-

Muscle Spasms

Spasms in muscles can be relaxed by EMS as it improves blood flow and reduces tension and resulting pain.  

Muscle Weakness

Electric muscle stimulation can help to strengthen a weakened muscle as the impulses help to enhance muscle tone and encourage growth.

Pain Control/Management

EMS helps reduce/alleviate pain and discomfort related to a variety of musculoskeletal conditions. EMS assists in the blockage of pain signals and the release of the body's natural pain-relieving chemicals – endorphins.

Injury Rehab

Electric muscle stimulation is a common rehabilitation component, as it helps to prevent the muscle from atrophying, promotes healing, and maintains/improves one's range of motion.  

Sports Injuries

EMS can assist in the treatment of sports-related injuries, including strains, sprains, and muscle tears. It can help reduce swelling, manage pain, and facilitate the healing process.

Nerve-related Conditions

In certain situations, like peripheral neuropathy, EMS may be an effective technique to treat nerve-related conditions by stimulating the affected nerves, which helps to improve nerve functioning.  

The speed at which EMS can potentially help is contingent on various factors, which may include –

• The specific condition.
• The symptom's intensity.
• The duration/frequency of EMS treatments, and more.

For chronic or more serious circumstances,  several EMS sessions over a period of time may be required and combined with other complementary therapies.

Call a Leading Nitro, WV Chiropractor Today

Do you know or love someone who is challenged with musculoskeletal pain, stiffness, and discomfort? To understand how electric muscle stimulation may help treat your condition or better manage ongoing symptoms, contact Dr. McClanahan or a member of our staff at Dr. J Chiropractic & Wellness Center at 304-776-1520. If you prefer, please use our online contact form. We look forward to providing an accurate diagnosis and creating a personalized chiropractic treatment plan.

Relief for Soft Tissue Stress

 

For relief from soft tissue stress, you can count on Dr. Jay McClanahan of Dr. J Chiropractic and Wellness Center in Nitro, WV. Chiropractors are experts in soft tissue pain relief not just in the back but the entire body. 

What are soft tissues?

Soft tissues include fat, muscles, ligaments, tendons, and fascia that surround and support the organs and the skeleton. Without them, movement would not be possible. This makes them particularly vulnerable to injuries. Think sprains, strains, whiplash, and pain from overuse. 

What causes soft tissue stress?

You may think that soft tissue stress happens to athletes. You are not incorrect, but everyone is vulnerable to injuring soft tissue. It just takes one wrong step, and you can twist your ankle, lift a heavy box and strain your back, or take a bike ride and have screaming leg muscles. All of these result in pain and getting relief is what you need. 

Chiropractors and soft tissue stress

Chiropractors take a whole body approach to treating any pain. Not just treating the symptoms but getting to the root cause of why the injury happened. Medication is not the treatment of choice, but there are many treatments that can result in healing  and pain relief. 

Spinal manipulation is hands-on therapy that helps to realign the vertebrae in the spine. When the spine is in alignment, messages can get through from the brain unimpeded. The body has the ability to heal itself, but it needs to work at an optimal level. 

Therapeutic massage not only relaxes the muscles in the body which helps relieve soft tissue stress, but when the body is relaxed, it is more receptive to other therapies. Many different types of massage are available and one of them is right for you. 

Ultrasound therapy is not the same as the ultrasound that is used to look at babies in the womb. It uses sound waves to accelerate healing at the cellular level. It is a handheld device that the chiropractor used to bring heat directly to the affected soft tissue. 

Electrical stimulation therapy uses a small amount of electricity to cause the muscles to spasm, which tires them out and they relax. It can help with many types of soft tissue stress. This therapy can help with both chronic and acute pain. 

Therapeutic exercise can help your muscles to get stronger and stronger muscles help support the structure of the body. 

When you need relief from soft tissue stress, contact Dr. McClanahan of Dr. J Chiropractic and Wellness Center in Nitro, WV. We also serve Cross Lanes, Charleston, St. Albans and Teays Valley. For an appointment, call 304-776-1520. 

 

How Electric Muscle Stimulation Works

 

Spinal adjustments are an important technique for chiropractors working to relieve back pain. But they’re far from the only service we provide at the Dr. J Chiropractic & Wellness Center in Nitro. Our office is dedicated to non-invasive, non-addictive complementary therapies that will enable the body to fully use its natural means of healing. Among our tools is electric muscle stimulation, so to get patients comfortable with it, we thought we’d pass along the basics of how it works.

Inflammation is a part of the body’s natural immune response. When tissues are swollen with blood, pathogens will have a harder time flowing out, and weakness in the cellular walls will allow antibodies to move between them more easily. But prolonged inflammation risks long-term damage to tissues, and is uncomfortable and may not be helping the patient. Electric muscle stimulation is a means of reducing inflammation by forcing the muscles to contract, pushing old blood out and allowing new, nutrient-rich blood in. This also signals the muscles to produce natural pain relievers called endorphins.

Electric muscle stimulation works by delivering a pulse generated in a machine through wires connected by sticky pads to a patient’s skin. The pads are placed over the part of the body that is inflamed, which would typically be the back or a limb. In addition to reducing pain and inflammation, electric muscle stimulation can also help train an atrophied muscle to respond to the sorts of electric signals that come from the nervous system. It is often used as a complementary therapy for people in physical therapy following strokes.

Dr. Jay McClanahan is the owner and chiropractor of Dr. J Chiropractic & Wellness Center. Our office is located in Nitro, WV. To schedule an appointment with Dr. McClanahan visit our website or call 304-776-1520. 

What is a Dislocation?

At the Dr. J Chiropractic & Wellness Center in Nitro, we use non-surgical, non-addictive therapies to help people recover from musculoskeletal injuries. Among the most common of those injuries is a subluxation, which is the partial dislocation of a joint. But what are dislocations, anyway? We thought it would be helpful for our patients if we gave a brief description of how this injury is defined, and why chiropractic treatment is effective for it.

 

A joint is the place where two or more bones connect to each other. When those bones get separated or knocked out of place, they’ve been dislocated. This could happen because of an acute injury, or it could be due to the long-term weakening of their connective tissue. But once the bones are out of place, they are likely to rub against and irritate nearby tissues, resulting in inflammation. Dislocations are often painful and they prevent the bones from going through their full range of motion or bearing weight efficiently.

 

An x-ray can be used to determine whether injured joints are merely dislocated, or if the bones are fractured. If a doctor deems it safe, they will adjust the dislocated bones back into place, relieving pressure on the soft tissues. At our office, we also provide several treatments for reducing inflammation, including therapeutic massages and electric muscle stimulation. Although healing joints may need to be immobilized or allowed to rest in the short-term, preventing a relapse will ultimately require the surrounding muscles to be strengthened through exercise, and to be trained to be more flexible and resilient to injuries.

 

Dr. Jay McClanahan is the owner and chiropractor of Dr. J Chiropractic & Wellness Center. Our office is located in Nitro, WV. To schedule an appointment with Dr. McClanahan visit our website or call 304-776-1520. 

Introduction to Spondylolisthesis

Back pain can have a lot of causes. Our spines are complex structures and problems often develop slowly over time. One common condition is spondylolisthesis, in which one vertebra has slid over another. Our practice at the Dr. J Chiropractic & Wellness Center can correct this problem, but since it often goes undetected, it’s helpful for patients to be aware of it.

“Spondylolysis” describes small fracture in the part of the vertebra that connects with other vertebrae to form a facet joint. It could be caused by a traumatic injury or overuse, as most often occurs in teenage athletes. It may also result from degenerative disc disease. As people age, the spongy discs between their vertebrae become less elastic, allowing the bodies of the vertebrae to slide out of place. Eventually, the body of a vertebra could become significantly dislocated, putting pressure on the lower back muscles. A slipped vertebra could even compress a nerve.

We can determine whether spondylolisthesis has occurred by taking x-rays. Our goal is to stabilize the back so the patient can develop stronger muscles that will keep the vertebrae in place. Adjustments may be useful. We can also recommend exercises that will loosen the hamstrings, which tend to tighten up when a lumbar vertebra has slipped forward, and provide relief from the strain with electric muscle stimulation and therapeutic massages.

Dr. Jay McClanahan operates the Dr. J Chiropractic & Wellness Center at 642 Cross Lanes Drive, Nitro, West Virginia, 25143. To schedule an appointment, visit Dr. J Back Doc WV or call 304-776-1520.

Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction

The pelvis plays a crucial role in supporting our upper bodies, so when it’s in pain, that’s a big problem. The Dr. J Chiropractic & Wellness Center in Nitro is dedicated to providing patients with low-risk, fast-acting pain relief, and when they come to us complaining of hip pain, we have lots of options available.

The sacroiliac joints are what connect the spine to the pelvis. The sacrum is a large body made up of fused vertebrae just beneath the lumbar section of the back, and the iliac bones are the top ridges of the pelvis. When there is inflammation here it is called “sacroiliitis,” although dysfunction does not always result in inflammation. No spinal nerves pass through the sacrum, but pain in the sacroiliac joints can still radiate to the lower back or down the legs. It tends to be worse after the patient has been standing or walking up stairs.

We will want to test patients complaining of hip pain for infections, but sacroiliac dysfunction is usually caused by acute or chronic injury. If a joint is dislocated, we can perform an adjustment. We can also loosen tight gluteal muscles with electric muscle stimulation. Stronger pelvic muscles will relieve pressure from the sacroiliac joints; we can advise patients on which exercises will subject them to the least impact force.

Dr. Jay McClanahan operates the Dr. J Chiropractic & Wellness Center at 642 Cross Lanes Drive, Nitro, West Virginia, 25143. To schedule an appointment, visit Dr J Back Doc WV or call 304-776-1520.