Is your activity or sport limited due to pain?

How to Recognize & Treat Overuse Strains, Myofascitis & Tendonitis 

The most common type of injury in ALL physical activity and sports is repetitive movement overuse pain.

Overuse injuries occur from any repetitive movements like running, throwing, jumping, lifting and kicking.  

Do you have pain with movement?  It could be a repetitive strain injury or tendonitis.  

Common conditions are
  • achilles
  • tendonitis
  • tennis elbow
  • golfers elbow
  • rotator cuff tendonitis
  • ankle pain
  • knee pain
  • shoulder pain
  • wrist pain
  • bursitis
  • thumb and hand pain

It can typically start as a mild pain and then develop into acute tendonitis with further use and then on to chronic tendinosis pain if not treated and resolved properly. It can occur with any sport, work and daily activities requiring continued prolonged use of a body region. It can affect the achilles tendon or other tendons in the foot or leg from running as well as the knee, hip, shoulders, elbow, wrists and hands.

You must not wait or just continue your activity hoping it will just go away.  You need to recognize and actively treat the overuse tendonitis to restore normal function or it may lead to the degenerative chronic pain form of tendinosis that may cause weakness and chronic pain in that region for life!

Take the right steps

The First Step: Help to recognize you have an overuse injury
  • Is there recurring pain during and after activity?  
  • Is there pain with simple movements?  
  • Do a physical body scan on yourself. 
  • Is there pain if you press the muscle and tendon and actively contract the muscle?  
The Second Step: Get a physical medicine evaluation

A key step is a complete evaluation to determine the type of injury, pain source, location, extent of injury and alterations in normal posture, body mechanics and body movement patterns.

The Third Step: Apply an active care approach to treat and resolve the injury

An active care integrative approach utilizes an integration of multiple therapies to support healing, faster recovery time and works to restore full function to the injured region so the athlete can return to activity pain free.

A Safe and Effective Way to Help Overuse Injuries Heal and Return to Activity Pain Free 

Active care means actively supporting the natural progression of the phases of healing

This is an integrative medicine therapy that is a personalized multidisciplinary therapeutic approach that integrates the disciplines of orthopedics, movement kinesiology, postural biomechanics, myofascial release manipulation therapy, specific joint manipulation therapy, physical therapies, acupuncture, micro-current therapy, nutrigenomics, neurologic proprioceptive balance training and therapeutic rehabilitation exercise to manage pain, restore function, reduce disability and improve quality of life.

The Integrative Physical Treatment approach includes:

1) ORTHOPEDIC, POSTURAL AND MUSCULOSKELETAL PHYSICAL EVALUATION:  
A thorough pain history daily activity history and a neuro-musculoskeletal examination to find the source of pain.  Pain can come from joints, muscles, nerves, tendons or ligaments.  Proper care requires identifying which structures have been injured. 

2) NATURAL MANAGEMENT OF INFLAMMATION
Natural ways to help control inflammation without OTC drugs involves a combination of plant botanicals, enzymes, therapeutic cold, rest and electro-acupuncture.

3) SUPPORT FOR COLLAGEN REPAIR AND TISSUE REGENERATION
Specific nutritional and botanical support along with bio-energetic frequency specific micro-current and light
wavelength therapy helps to accelerate healing and improve recovery.

4) MANUAL THERAPIES TO RESTORE MOVEMENT & BALANCE
Manual joint manipulation and soft tissue myo-fascial therapy is applied when inflammation processes have reduced and are designed to gently help re-establish full mobility to the injured region.  Research has shown that manual manipulation not only helps to restore mobility but also stimulates a quicker healing response from injury.  Many different types of manipulation procedures are used depending on the structures causing pain.

5) NEURO-MUSCULAR TRAINING FOR RE-EDUCATION OF MOVEMENTS
Proprioceptive training to establish balance to posture and movement.

6) REHABILITATION EXERCISES TO STABILIZE AND STRENGTHEN  
Therapeutic exercises designed to help restore full capacity & improve body function.

© 2020 Chris Z Lachowski, MS, DC, DACBN