Treatments
What we treaT
OUR TOOLBOX
These are how we treat the conditions above, and more!
Chiropractic care
Chiropractic manipulation, also known as an “adjustment” is one of the main tools that our doctors can use to provide relief for back, neck, and extremity pain. Joint pain in the spine is often the result of hypo-mobility (lack of mobility) in a joint or section of joints. This can be caused by lack of mobility in general as is the case when a patient does the majority of their work seated in front of a computer for hours each day.
There are other reasons for joint pain as well. Sometimes the joints of the spine can become chronically inflamed from repetitive motions. In other cases, an acute trauma can lock a joint down and prevent it from moving. On occasion, even a simple sneeze can cause acute back or neck pain.
However the injury is caused, joints of the body need to move the way they were designed to move. When they don’t, pain is a part of the clinical picture. Other consequences of limited joint movement can be lack of balance and coordination, muscle spasm, and/or poor sleeping patterns.
If you are nervous about chiropractic manipulation, and many people are, don’t let your fears keep you from seeking help. Our doctors are able to employ various methods to decrease your symptoms and they will tailor your treatment to your needs.
Massage therapy
Massage therapy is great for improving the overall health of your muscles and is a great addition to your regular chiropractic treatments.
Pain in the body, especially in the neck or back, is often created from dysfunction at the muscular level and the tissues that surround the muscles. It can help with muscle spasms, injuries to the soft tissue, and even reduce recovery time. We frequently use massage therapy as a part of the treatment plan for car accident injuries and sports injuries. Many of our patients that are athletes rely on massage therapy to enhance their performance and recover faster from their workouts.
Our amazing licensed massage therapists offer many forms of massage and can tailor their style to match what your body needs. This allows you to feel rejuvenated and increase the muscle function. The types of massage therapy offered at Mt. Hood Chiropractic are:
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Deep tissue massage
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Sports massage
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Trigger point therapy
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Swedish massage
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Pregnancy massage
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Myofascial release massage
What is fascia? Fascia is the connective tissue that wraps around your muscles and allows them to glide over one another and underneath you skin. It was once thought that fascia was like the Saran Wrap of the musculoskeletal system and wrapped around your muscles without doing all that much. We now know that that’s not the case. Fascia is a system that thickens in response to postural abnormalities. It can be warped or develop adhesions because of trauma. It can be a driver of pain that eludes detection from many doctors or therapists. Myofascial release is a deep tissue technique that helps to break down adhesions, and restore proper function to the muscle-fascial complex.
therapeutic exercise
At Mt. Hood Chiropractic we believe that exercise is a vital component to everyone’s health. That being said, our first priority when a patient comes to us is pain control. To that end we utilize modalities such as chiropractic manipulation, electrical muscle stimulation, and different nutritional supplements.
It should be understood from the outset that movement is paramount to overcoming pain, and that it is often necessary to use graded exposure to certain movements or exercises to get you back into the game of life. By “graded exposure” we mean pushing you slightly beyond what you think you can do in order to prove that you can, in fact, do it.
Exercises usually consist of well known exercises that will re-engage your core, protect you back and neck, and generally will require very little specialized equipment so you can practice at home between treatment sessions. These exercises aren’t used in a cookie cutter way, we will work with you to determine your tolerance to different movements, but we also make a concerted effort to stick to the exercises that have shown to be of the most benefit in rehab settings. At the end of the day, we believe that the most important thing we can do is give you the tools to help you heal yourself. That’s what all of our therapeutic exercises are designed to do.
Physiotherapy modalities
Electrical Muscle Stimulation
When dealing with acute, subacute and chronic pain, electrical stimulation is not the first solution that comes to mind for many sufferers. Instead, it is very common for people to ignore reoccurring back, neck, and joint discomfort for years and temporarily alleviate their symptoms with medications without seeing the chiropractor.
Studies of analgesic medications reveal that these drugs do lessen the pain but they do not treat the source of the problem. Over time as the body develops a tolerance to painkillers higher doses are required for relief.
Electric muscle stimulation mimics the body’s nervous system, by sending safe, low frequency electrical pulses to the affected area, causing the muscle to contract and increasing temperature and blood circulation. The same natural healing process of the body to repair injuries works with EMS to relieve other common nervous system disorders, including constant headaches, numbness of limbs, and back pain.
By utilizing and encouraging the body’s natural healing mechanisms , EMS and similar therapies can drastically reduce the dependence on medications and unnecessary surgeries and resolve the symptoms of underlying causes much quicker.
What does EMS feel like? A gentle tingling that develops into a massage like sensation as the frequency is increased. The therapy normally lasts anywhere from 10-15 minutes, often with the use of hot or cold compresses depending on the type of pain. Patients should always feel relaxed and comfortable. EMS is intended to help, not hurt.
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Therapeutic Ultrasound
Therapeutic ultrasound is a physiotherapy that is utilized to treat injuries related to joints, muscle spasms, and other soft tissues. While it shares the same name as Diagnostic Ultrasound, this is not utilized to screen internally into the body.
Therapeutic ultrasound stimulates the tissue beneath the surface of the skin with high frequency sound waves that are not audible to the human ear. It is used for three primary benefits: (1) speed the healing process with increased blood flow to the treated area, (2) decreases pain with the reduction of inflammation and swelling, and (3) soften and break down adhesions and scar tissue.
There is also a deep heating effect that helps to relax the muscles and ligament structures. This heat, combined with the other effects of ultrasound, help improve the healing process at the basic cellular level.
Flexion-distraction
Flexion-Distraction is a gentle, chiropractic treatment procedure that we use for back and neck pain. Flexion-Distraction is a safe alternative to back surgery for those 95% of patients whose conditions do not demand surgical intervention. The doctor is in control of the treatment movements at all times.
Flexion-Distraction is utilized for many conditions such as:
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Herniated/ruptured/bulging discs
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Sciatica/leg pain
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Whiplash injuries
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Stenosis
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Arm pain
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Neck pain
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Headache
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Many more conditions…
group classes
Once you have finished your treatment plan and are feeling great, what’s the first thing you want to do? For a lot of people they want to continue on the path of health and wellness and they do this by joining the local gym and taking the fitness classes that they offer. Too many times we see our patients get hurt and end up back in our office to treat the new injury that was caused when they just weren’t quite ready for the intensity of the classes.
This is where our fitness classes come in. They are specifically designed to be the stepping stone between your treatment plan and large group fitness classes. They are designed to further increase the activation and strength of your core, as well as increase the endurance of muscles that may have weakened while you were previously injured.
RESTING METABOLIC RATE
This test will help us understand at what caloric intake does your body perform at its highest function. This test will be able to determine for us what time of food your body is best at metabolizing, what dietary changes we need to have you make in order to lose or gain weight, and help us better understand your resting breathing rate and heart rate. All of these numbers will help us paint a better picture of how to guide you toward your optimal performance.
VO2 MAX TESTING
VO2 max testing measures the maximum volume of oxygen that your body can transport under heavy aerobic exercise. This can give us data to show us your overall fitness level, cardiovascular efficiency, and training effectiveness. Data like this can help us determine which type of exercise your body would benefit from the most.