Introducing Shockwave Therapy – What is it?
I just wanted to explain a little bit about shockwave therapy.
Shockwave therapy, which is something we offer here at the clinic, it’s also referred to as radial pressure shockwave. It’s a treatment that’s been around for a number of years now, and it’s responsible for managing pain caused by lots of different musculoskeletal conditions.
Who Used Shockwave First?
Initially, shockwaves were used in the treatment of kidney stones, and now it’s become the first-line intervention for that condition.
And it is because of these advances were made in this field some of the researchers, (the real clever people) looked at the shockwaves and they noticed they could have quite a substantial effect on bone, muscle, ligaments and tendons.
A series of experimental investigations later revealed that shockwaves have a healing effect on cartilage, on bone, and the associated soft tissues.
So, today, and here at the clinic, Midlands Physio, where we utilise many of the procedures employed to deal with lots of different types of soft tissue problems and other long-term problems in for example:
- The fascia,
- In the tendons,
- In the muscles, and
- In the ligaments
So, because of this shockwave becoming more and more available.
So, I hope that helps basic understanding of shockwave therapy.
How Does Shockwave Therapy Work?
I’m just going to explain how
shockwave… There’s a little bit of jargon, a little bit of science in here, so hopefully it’ll help.
But a shockwave effectively is described as a short, intense wave that moves faster than the speed of sound.
- They’re characterised by certain physiological things.
- They’re basically high positive pressure.
- They’re extremely short in time, probably around 10 microseconds.
- They’re also very, very fast pressure.
- The pressure rises in less than 10 nanoseconds.
And what this all does is it directs a narrow beam between two and eight millimeters in diameter.
Now, when this shockwave… (And to be honest, I don’t really like the term shockwave because it sounds quite awful, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.)
When the pressure wave passes through human tissue, it produces physiological and therapeutic effect, and it’s believed that there’s four main phases that it produced in helping these therapeutic effects.
- The first phase, is the direct effect of the shock, the mechanical pressure directly affecting the cells of the tissues being targeted, so where the injury is. It’s actual the shock going on that.
- And then the second phase is the physical and the chemical phase, which influences the metabolism of the cells around there, which increases their activity to promote the healing.
- The third phase is the chemical phase, which may be accompanied by molecular changes and reactions actually in the cell itself.
- And the last phase, phase four, is involving all of those phases, which gives us the physiological reaction, the response to the first three stages, which starts to promote the healing.
So, I hope that helps.
A little bit of information there. Hope it’s not too jargony for anybody who’s watching.
And if you need any more information, please feel free to reach out.
Learn some more about Shockwave Therapy.
The million-dollar question, “How does shockwave work?”
Well, the physiological changes responses lead to faster and longer-term healing. They lead to regeneration of the tissues, and shockwave can help to reverse chronic inflammation, which is what we tend to use it for, that really chronic long-term Achilles tendon or plantar fasciitis.
It will stimulate collagen production, collagen being the building blocks of what we need to help repair you. It’s a vital, vital, vital tissue in that repair process. It can also help the dissolution of calcium fibroblasts, which is a lot of the problem in chronic pain, especially in the shoulder. So these are the things that it can help to do.
And you then you might ask yourself, “Well, what conditions can shockwave treat?”
Here is a list of things that we can then treat. The medical research and our clinical experience tell us they’ve all had a positive response and the science is good on this for conditions such as:
- Plantar fasciitis
- Achilles tendinopathies
- Patellar Tendinopathies
- Also, your carpal tunnel syndrome, there have been some research suggesting that it’ll help with carpal tunnel.
- It’s also going to help with a hip or a shoulder bursitis if your doctor has told you have bursitis.
- It can help with a hamstring tendinopathy. So, if you’ve got a really stubborn long-standing hamstring injury, it’s possibly going to help.
- Helping with your iliotibial band syndrome
- Your lateral epicondylitis, so that’s the posh name for a tennis elbow, or actually sometimes it has been known to help your shin splints.
- There’s been some research around Osgood-Schlatter’s disease that it can help.
So, you can see that there are lots and lots of conditions that shockwave therapy can help. So, if it’s something you want to investigate more, if you want to see the machine, if you want to see it work, they’ll have a look at the other videos on here.
Hopefully that’ll help. But you’re more than welcome to phone us up and have a conversation about shockwave therapy.
Is the Treatment Painful?
What with the term SHOCK and all that !!
One other point, is shockwave painful?
We’re often asked that and actually it sometimes can be a little bit uncomfortable. Most people tolerate this. If you can’t tolerate it, we can adjust it, but it’s not meant to be painful. It might be a little bit uncomfortable, but it’s not meant to be painful.
And it also might be a little bit tender after we’ve treated the area. But the team we’re well versed in using the machine and we’ll teach you and show you how you can minimise that. But there is a little bit of discomfort, but I wouldn’t like to think there’ll be pain.
So, as I said, if you’d like any more information, please hit reply to this email or hit us on the website and we’ll see if we can help you. If you would like to know what happens in your Shockwave Treatment Session, just watch the video below.
