Treatment of Back and Spine Conditions With Massage Therapy | Andrew Wolfe, LMP, MMS, Massage Therapist in Arlington, WA 98223, 98271

When individuals think about the treatment of their spine they think of a number of ways they can treat it. Commonly prescribe thinking under mainstream medicine is to medicate it. While medication can help reduce the pain level and help fight inflammation, it masks the pain by hiding it; thereby not resolving the underlying cause of the pain. Medications allow us to go on with our day to lives in our demanding schedules but do nothing to correct the problem. The problem may be stemming from a number of things. Pain is a broad term and very subjective; as subjective as the person experiencing it. Acute pain (that arriving of a new injury or trauma or onset) is easier to determine the cause. By assessing what the individual did prior to the onset uncovers a lot of the mystery. But sometimes it’s not that simple. Back pain affects some 8 out of 10 people statistically at some point in the lives according to NIH: National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. It is the number one reason of disability of persons under the age of 45 as well as the second leading cause of doctors visits in American, second only to the common cold;
(http://wpms2063.com/images/backtek/Back%20Pain%20Statistics.pdf).
By taking an assessment of the history of the patient a better determination can be made. A proper diagnosis makes recovery easier to treat. Simple muscle strains and strain makes up for a lot of discomfort in individuals as well emotional, physical and physiological stress, poor nutrition, poor body mechanics, repetitive use dysfunction, spinal abnormalities, scar tissue formation from past unresolved traumas and or surgery and other abnormalities including underlying diseases can exhibit symptoms of back pain. So as simple as the diagnosis is of having back pain, it may have other dimensions that create a complexity of findings. Most health care providers as well as insurance companies policies require, which is a practical approach, is to start with the most cost effective and least evasive (non intrusive to the body) care in managing pain of a patient. Massage therapy happens to be one of the conservative, more natural approaches of healing for back and spine pain. By addressing the connective tissues in relaxing the tissue, giving it normal length and range of motion, eliminating scar tissue and inflammation and increasing circulation you allow healing to take place naturally. The attachments of soft tissue correspond to underlying structures (bone and cartilage) of the body giving it the ability to be flexible. By lengthening the tissues and addressing these attachments (connections to the structure or skeletal system) you are able to affect the body and it s structures naturally by changing the formation of dysfunction. Muscles and the soft tissues sounding and making up the muscular system are malleable and conduct behavior by patterning itself to conditioned response from the nervous system. Trauma, disease, stress, lifestyle, surgery and other dysfunctions as noted prior can disturb, change and affect adversely this response creating a repatterning that when becoming chronic (long-standing) can assume as “normal” conditioning or patterning. By changing the repatterning of dysfunction through soft tissue manipulation the body find restoration and balance.

Copy write 3/30/2012