Manual Therapy
Types of Manual Therapy:
Manual or hands-on therapy is used to help decrease pain, increase range of motion and reduce joint and soft tissue restrictions. It is also used to evaluate the quality of movement of your joints and assess the tone and health of your tissues. Before performing any manual therapy, Dr. Trinh will perform a full assessment of the bone, muscles, blood vessels and nerves in the affected area and above and below the area.
Soft Tissue Mobilizations:
This is a hands-on technique used on your muscles, ligaments and fascia aimed at resolving trigger points, breaking adhesions and decreasing tone. Dr. Trinh is specially trained to use her hands to push, pull and apply specific pressure to your ligaments, tendons and nerves to bring about pain relief and return to function.
Joint Mobilization:
Dr. Trinh carefully and skillfully uses graded forces to move the affected the joint in a desired direction, stretch the joint capsule, and loosen the restricted joints.. This is important to improve motion and normalize joint function. Using slow velocity joint mobilizations, it’s also quite effective at controlling pain. The joint is moved in a manner that the patient cannot perform on their own.
Myofascial Release:
Fascia is a thin band of connective tissue, primarily collagen, that stabilizes, encloses and separates muscle and other internal organs. Myofascial release is a hands-on technique that involves applying a gentle, sustained pressure along the restricted tissues to relax contracted muscles, improve blood and lymphatic circulation and stimulate the muscle stretch reflex
Muscle Energy Techniques:
This technique works at the neuromuscular level, with the aim of lengthening shortened muscles and mobilizing restricted joints. The patient applies a specific voluntary muscle contraction against a controlled counterforce applied by the therapist. The goal is to fatigue the muscle and allow the therapist to take the muscle or joint further into the stretch without muscle guarding.