Your doctor will go over your diagnosis and decipher any biomechanical alterations your body has created in order to accommodate your symptoms.  Many of our patients (even those with PT/Chiropractic experience) have expressed never undergoing the intense level of soft tissue mobilization needed to restore the integrity of the muscle.  Therefore, no matter your past experience, we like to remind all new patients some of the things to expect after receiving your first treatment.

One goal of treatment is to repair and improve joint and muscular function.  In order to achieve this, we use different forms of soft-tissue mobilization.  The process can cause inflammation and utilizes the body’s natural healing mechanism to repair the muscles and joints.  To a certain extent, we want inflammation to happen.  Depending on the patient’s tolerance level, all these components can cause soreness.  Average inflammation should take 2-3 days and decrease afterwards.  However, if the inflammation progressively increases with each day, this is most likely not the treatment but the condition.  If this is the case or you’re just concerned, we are here for you so please do not hesitate to contact us.

Throughout our experience, we often come across different methods patient’s try to soothe themselves during the inflammation phase.  The general rule is to NOT do anything that may increase inflammation.  Some methods may temporarily make you “feel better” due to the body’s selection of pain sensations through sensory, cognitive and emotional influences called gate control.  Some soothing methods we have seen are mimicking the doctor’s treatment, and checking to see multiple times where the pain is.  The best thing to do is leave the condition alone and just rest.  If you are uncomfortable, we suggest icing the area for 10-15min periods.  This will allow the gate control to kick in, numb the area, and not cause additional inflammation.

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