5 Soft Tissue Healing Therapy Options You Should Know About

Health & Medical Blog

The soft tissues of your body include fascia, tendons, ligaments, and muscles. Since they are soft, they can be injured easily. Some injuries are acute and happen after a fall or accident, and other injuries develop due to repetitive motion or chronic strain. Fortunately, proper treatment and time can lead to the healing of soft tissues. Here are some types of soft tissue healing therapies to know about.

1. Massage Relaxes Tight Muscles

Massage is an important soft tissue healing therapy. Whether you have a relaxing massage or a deep sports massage, your tissues benefit in a number of ways. Massage increases blood circulation and that also improves oxygen and nourishment that your muscles and tissues need to heal.

Massage can also relax muscle spasms and break apart adhesions that cause pain. If you have a soft tissue injury, your doctor may recommend massage as a first choice in treatment. Plus, it can be given along with other therapies for even quicker healing.

2. Heat And Cold Therapy Helps Pain And Swelling

Heat relaxes tissues and improves circulation. Heat can also help reduce certain types of pain. You might have hydrotherapy in warm water or have ultrasound treatments that deliver heat deep under your skin. Cold is also beneficial for soft tissue injuries. Ice reduces swelling and can even affect your nerves so they aren't as sensitive to pain. Your therapist might want you to alternate hot and cold treatments or just choose one or the other depending on the type of injury you have.

3. Laser Treatments Decrease Inflammation

Laser treatments are sometimes used to treat soft tissue injuries. The lasers target the tissues deep under the skin and bring about pain relief and decreased inflammation. Plus the laser light stimulates cells to begin the healing and repair process.

4. Radiofrequency Waves Build Collagen

Radiofrequency waves can be paired with massage or pulsed wave magnetic frequencies to send heat deep into the tissues. This triggers your tissues to start building collagen that repairs damaged tissues.

5. PRP Injections Stimulate Healing

PRP injections come from your blood. Your blood is drawn and processed so the platelets are concentrated in the serum. Then the serum is injected into the area where you're having soft tissue pain. PRP contains growth factors that are found in the platelets. The growth factors trigger your body to begin healing damaged tissues.

A similar injection is a stem cell injection. The stem cells are drawn from your bone marrow and then injected into the injured area. Stem cells have the ability to become any cell that's needed so the cells can help heal a soft tissue injury. PRP and stem cell injections are newer treatments for soft tissue healing therapy, but they show promise and may speed healing when done alone or in combination with other types of healing therapies.

Share

27 April 2022

Making Changes With Vision Therapy

When my daughter began having academic problems in school and acting out, I knew that something wasn’t right. Her teachers wanted me to put her on ADD medications, but I didn’t think that that was the right course for us. I had serious doubts that ADD was what was causing her problems. I took her to several different specialists before discovering that her issues in school were actually do to a visual processing problem. The doctor recommended vision therapy, not medication, to help correct the problem and get her back on track. The exercises are really starting to pay off, and she’s showing great improvement.