Have you seen the new massage tools popping up everywhere? It seems that in the past year alone, there has been a rapid increase in the promotion and selling of vibration massage tools. I’ve started using one in the past year as well. Dr. Lyneil Mitchel brought in some new tools with him when he started working with us back in February of 2019. It’s been a great addition to the tools that I can use to help patients.
So what does it do?
Well, in short, it vibrates the tissue really fast! It is a massage tool that can help affect the muscles and soft tissues on the surface. I love to use it as a way to relax the tissue before I begin some kind of joint mobilization or other manual technique. It helps us in one piece of the puzzle. In physical therapy there are 5 main things that we do with patients.
- Examination: Getting assessment of what tissue is causing the pain, what stressors led to that break down of the tissue, and what stage of healing the tissue is in. (This happens to be Step one in the 5 Steps to Get Out of Pain)
- Patient Education: Teaching you how your body works, why you are in pain, and best of all, how to get out of pain.
- Exercise Prescription: Giving you the specific exercises which will help alleviate the symptoms AND more importantly correct the issue from occurring again.
- Manual Therapy: Using our hands to affect change in your body. This is where the vibration massagers come in. They are another tool that we can use with manual therapy to affect change in a particular way.
- Modalities: This involves using electrical current, or ultrasound, or temperature, or light rays to affect changes in your body to promote healing.
Can you use one at home?
Totally! They are a little bit on the expensive side, but if you have the extra cash they can be a great addition to your arsenal of self care products. Of course, the foam roll should be your number one tool, but if you want to go beyond, you can look into some products like these on Amazon.
