What you need to know
Over-used muscles (and other soft tissues) change in three important ways:
- acute conditions (pulls, tears, collisions, etc)
- accumulation of small tears (micro-trauma)
- not getting enough oxygen (hypoxia)
Each of these factors can cause your body to produce tough, dense scar tissue in the affected area. This scar tissue binds up and ties down tissues that need to move freely. As scar tissue builds up, muscles become shorter and weaker, tension on tendons causes tendonitis, and nerves can become trapped. This can cause reduced range of motion, loss of strength, and pain. If a nerve is trapped you may also feel tingling, numbness, and weakness.
Benefits
ART is much more specific than a massage and more gentle than commonly performed trigger point therapies. The clinician will evaluate texture, tightness and movement of individual muscles, fascia, tendons, ligaments and nerves. Abnormal tissues are treated by combining precisely directed tension with very specific patient movements. Active release techniques (ART) attempt to address problems in individual tissues, since one tissue or structure can affect another structure both directly and biomechanically. With this method, the chiropractor identifies problems with movement, pressure and adhesions between the nearby tissues, and then addresses them.
