Manual Therapy
Manual therapy in traditional Chinese medicine is called tui na, and it can be a comprehensive treatment all by itself. Similarly to Swedish massage, tui na involves various hand manipulations, but tui na involves a lot of individual and combinations of points stimulations using fingers, making acupressure a large portion of traditional Chinese manual therapy. Compared to western manual therapy visually, tui na may appear somewhat similar, but the theories behind the methods are very different. Despite being comprised of a number of different approaches, western manual therapy is based on anatomy and physiology. Tui na, on the other hand, is part of traditional Chinese medicine, and it follows the same principles as acupuncture, moxibustion, cupping and other traditional Chinese medical modalities do. Interestingly enough, an article recently published in the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy states the following: “Mechanistic-based treatment approaches to manual therapy offer an intriguing alternative for identifying patients likely to respond to manual therapy. However, the current lack of knowledge of the mechanisms through which manual therapy interventions inhibit pain limits such an approach.” At the Advanced Holistic Center’s Downtown Miami manual therapy and Miami Beach manual therapy, our practitioners use the most effective methods and techniques available today.
What Injuries and Conditions Can Manual Therapy Treat
Manual therapy is typically used to treat various issues that involve musculoskeletal system, but besides being used for rehabilitation purposes, manual therapy can help with many other conditions. At the same time, researchers struggle to explain the mechanisms of manual therapy. The authors of an article recently published in the academic journal Musculoskeletal Science and Practice claim that the reason people report feeling better after manual therapy has to do with the human touch. They explain that the human touch has three qualities that apparently can have therapeutic effects. These qualities are analgesic, affective, and somatoperceptual. All three qualities may appear to be only placebo, but it’s not so, because in mammals interpersonal touch is part of our biology, and it is accompanied by release of hormones that decrease our stress levels, for example. In other words, while the exact mechanisms of manual therapy remain unclear, they definitely exist, and the practitioners at the Advanced Holistic Center’s Downtown Miami manual therapy and Miami Beach manual therapy use the most effective time-tested methods for our patients.
Manual Therapy for Pain Relief
Research studies have shown that manual therapy can provide moderate level of pain relief in myofascial pain treatment, for example. There are many issues with conducting accurate research, however, because there are too many variations in the way manual therapy is conducted as well as how an individual person would react to each variation. This is why at the Advanced Holistic Center’s Downtown Miami manual therapy and Miami Beach manual therapy, our therapists often recommend combining manual therapy with other modalities, to ensure better clinical outcome for our patients. Lots of studies examined whether or not manual therapy can help with pain relief for various kinds of pain, and surprisingly many studies conclude that the pain-decreasing effect of manual therapy is weak in most instances. At the same time, some research studies report greater success rate of a specific manual therapy method over another, but some expert point out that manual therapy, because of its wide range of contributing factors, perhaps is more art than science. Yet, many patients report feeling better after manual therapy sessions, and at the Advanced Holistic Center’s Downtown Miami manual therapy and Miami Beach manual therapy, we let our patients decide what they want, while our therapists will try to make the treatment as effective as it may be possible.
Something Else
Advanced Holistic Center is a NYC based acupuncture and holistic healthcare clinic. Advanced Holistic Center has more locations and longer open hours than almost any complementary and alternative healthcare facility in all of NYC. With four offices manned by our fully licensed and board certified acupuncturists and herbalists, a team of highly-qualified: assistants, meditation teachers.
Benefits of Manual Therapy
Considering that research has not been able to establish the degree of manual therapy’s effectiveness, but most patients insist that manual therapy makes them feel better, it is difficult to list the benefits of manual therapy with reliable certainty. At the same time, many studies conclude that manual therapy can provide pain relief for short and/or longer term in some circumstances. Perhaps, those experts who explain that manual therapy is art more than science are correct, and the best way to test if manual therapy will work for you is to try it. At the very least, if you enjoy your treatment, it already has benefits for you, and the practitioners at the Advanced Holistic Center’s Downtown Miami manual therapy and Miami Beach manual therapy are trained to ensure that your treatment will bring you as much benefit as it may be possible. In other words, the benefits of manual therapy remain largely on a personal level. Although, using manual therapy along with other methods opens up a whole other range of possibilities, at the Advanced Holistic Center’s Downtown Miami manual therapy and Miami Beach manual therapy, we often offer integrative approach to our patients, and it often increases the treatment’s outcome for many patients.
Does it hurt?
Advanced Holistic Center is a NYC based acupuncture and holistic healthcare clinic. Advanced Holistic Center has more locations and longer open hours than almost any complementary and alternative healthcare facility in all of NYC. With four offices manned by our fully licensed and board certified acupuncturists and herbalists, a team of highly-qualified: assistants, meditation teachers.