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The secrete of Ultrasound

The Secret of Ultrasound TherapyTherapeutic Ultrasound - a Quick Overview

Therapeutic Ultrasound is a method of stimulating tissue beneath the skin's surface using sound waves. The sound waves are very high frequency, typically between 800,000Hz and 2,000,000Hz, and can penetrate up to 4 inches below the surface of your skin. The sound cannot be heard by humans or animals (humans can only hear sounds up to about 20,000Hz). This very high frequency sound affects very small molecules and cells in the body, and actually causes them to move around.

The way ultrasound waves are transferred into the body is a function of many factors. The frequency of the ultrasound waves is actually opposite to how deep they will penetrate the body. For example, a 1MHz ultrasound will penetrate about 4 inches below the skin, whereas a 2MHz ultrasound unit will only penetrate about 2 inches. While a low frequency means deeper penetration, using too low of a frequency will mean that the waves are too wide to properly move the molecules. For therapeutic applications, 1MHz is the optimal frequency for both effectiveness and penetration.

Power output is another significant factor. It is measured in watts per square centimeter. The higher the power, the more energy is transferred into the body. If too high a power output is used and an ultrasound unit is left sitting still on the body, it is possible to burn the tissue beneath the skin. While several professional ultrasound machines are capable of these high powers, your medical practitioner will typically use a lower power setting, below 1 watt per centimeter squared. More power is not necessarily better. Though some therapists may use higher powers to speed up ultrasound treatments, it is actually more effective to use a lower power setting for a longer period of time to achieve the optimal healing effect.

The power output rating is often broken down into two separate units: peak intensity and average intensity. Peak intensity can be thought of as how tall the sound waves being sent into your body are. The waves need to be large enough to affect the tissue and provide the desired therapeutic effect. At the same time, your body tissue needs breaks between groups of waves to cool down. So, Ultrasound machines actually send the waves in "pulses" (groups,) giving your body a vibrate-rest-vibrate-rest effect. The average intensity is a measure of how much energy is transferred over a period of vibrate-rest cycles.

When applied directly to the skin, an ultrasound device cannot effectively transfer the sound waves into the body. To make it work properly, a conductive medium is required - ultrasound gel. The gel simply makes it possible for the sound waves to travel from the unit head into your body. Ultrasound treatments without gel is ineffective, and can damage the ultrasound unit.Ultrasound machines provide a Total Power Output rating. High power units are typically used with large applicator heads to treat larger areas of the body. The important measurement part of ultrasound is the watts per square centimeter mentioned above, not the total unit power. Again, it is more effective to treat the affected area more frequently and for longer periods of time, using a lower power setting.

What Does it Do?

The heating and massaging effects of Therapeutic Ultrasound have two primary benefits. First, it increases blood flow to the treated area, which speeds the healing process. Second, it reduces swelling and edema, which are the main sources of pain.

Ultrasound can also be used to administer therapeutic medicines into the body, through a process called phonophoresis. In such a case, there are 3 benefits to a treatment, the first two from the massaging effect of ultrasound discussed above, and the third from phonophoretically administering the medication. Ultrasound treatments with Phonophoresis are rapidly becoming more popular than Ultrasound Therapy alone, due to the added benefits.

For most injuries and ailments, a cycle of ultrasound therapy should optimally consist of 5-10 minute treatments, repeated 2-3 times per day for the duration of the healing period- this routine will mean fast, efficient healing, allowing you to get back to your normal life without being in pain. This surprises many people who have gone for single treatments in clincs only 2 or 3 times each week. The clinic approach, while providing the benefits of ultrasound therapy, simply become too expensive and too inconvenient.

Ultrasound Gets Rid of Inflammation Fast!When you have a tendinitis or tenosynovitis injury, the area becomes inflamed as the damaged tissue cells release toxins. These toxins cause the injured area to be tender to touch, red, and sore to move. As the toxins and damaged cells accumulate, blood vessels become blocked and fluid gathers... resulting in swelling and pain. This is very much like the effect a dam has on a river - the flow is stopped and the fluid just builds up.

Ultrasound Treats Your Painful Scar Tissue

In most cases of a tear, strain, pull, or cartilage degeneration, scar tissue begins to form at the injury site, binding your tissues together abnormally.

Unlike healthy tissue that works like a stretchy elastic band, scar tissue is tough and inflexible. Most of us know of someone that just can't seem to recover from a soft tissue injury - a good example is a runner that has injured their achilles tendon: the injury stops hurting so they start running again, and the scar tissue from the old injury just prevent the achilles from flexing properly, so they keep straining it time after time. In fact, 90% of runners that have injured their achilles will reinjure their achilles again... this is what scar tissue can do - it turns a short term injury into a long term recurring injury.

Scar tissue limits the range of motion in your tendon (and attached muscle), greatly increasing the chance of re-injury (by overstraining), causes pain when stretching and can leave you vulnerable to a life time of chronic inflammation and pain.

Achilles

Achilles Tendonitis/Tendinitis

Achilles tendonitis is a debilitating, painful inflammation of the Achilles Tendon - a cordlike prominence at the back of the heel rising up toward the calf. Symptoms include an extremely piercing pain, a shooting or burning pain at the back area of the heel. The Achilles tendon connects the calf muscle of the leg to the heel bone. The degree of injury ranges from an irritated tendon to a tear or even a complete rupture of the tendon.

improper training program for athletes
wearing footwear that is ill-fitted or badly worn
improper warmup (or cool-down) for your activity
lack of flexibility in the calf muscles
wearing high heels that can shrink the tendon and become more vulnerable to injury

This injury is problematic among athletes especially runners and professional dancers, as both activites stress the achilles tendon quite heavily.

Achilles Tendonitis is a degenerative condition and should not be left untreated, otherwise a complete rupture may eventually result - a condition that is much more difficult to treat. When treating the achilles tendon, rest the area (meaning do NOT workout this area other than stretching), apply cold compression for 10-20 minutes at a time for at least 3 times a day. Do this to the injured area for the first day to 3 days. Blood Flow Stimulation Therapy® may be used after the acute swelling is improved and rest prevents further tendon injury. Cold compression therapy will reduce initial inflammation and swelling and the heat stimulates blood flow through the area to speed the healing process. This can be further helped by the use of ultrasound applications over the affected area, as it reduces swelling quickly and increases blood flow to the area. Therapeutic ultrasound can also be used to stimulate blood flow and minimize the build up of scar tissue around the Achilles tendon during the healing process.

The trick to any tendon injury is getting it to heal with minimal scar tissue formation and with as much realignment of tendon fibres as possible - something Blood Flow Stimulation Therapy and ultrasound are great at! Even with optimum healing there is always less elasticity in a previously injured tendon. The trick is to make sure you heal this the best you can, that way your chance of reinjury down the road is much lower than average - which is well over 50%.

This is what scar tissue can do - it turns a short term injury into a long term recurring injury. Scar tissue limits the range of motion in your tendon (and attached muscle), greatly increasing the chance of re-injury (by overstraining), causes pain when stretching and can leave you vulnerable to a life time of chronic inflammation and pain.
The best results for long term healing use a combination of therapeutic ultrasound and Blood flow stimulation.

Achilles

Anatomy of the hamstring

Anatomy

The hamstrings are bi-articular – this means they function over two joints. As a group, they act concentrically (to shorten) to provide flexion at the knee, extension at the hip and rotation of the tibia. They comprised of these three separate muscles:

Biceps femoris:

Originates from the ischial tuberosity of the pelvis (long head) and lower third of the posterior aspect of the femur (short head) and inserts on the head of the fibula. Concentrically provides knee flexion, hip extension and external rotation of the tibia.

Semimembranosus:

Originates from the ischial tuberosity of the pelvis and inserts on the posterior aspect of the medial condoyle of the tibia. Concentrically provides knee flexion, hip extension and internal rotation of the tibia.

Semitendinosus:

Now, there are other muscles that work synergistically with the hamstrings over the hip and knee joints, but we won’t go into the details until we break down the exercises.

Fibre Type

The hamstrings are predominantly composed of fast twitch muscle fibres; about 70% or so. When you consider that muscle groups such as the glutes and quadriceps are about 50:50, we can see that the hamstrings are designed for high forces and high velocities. A little look at how we need them to function helps tell us why.

Hip Extension

Triple extension (ankle, knee, hip) is the basis for running, jumping and squatting, the foundations of movement. Hip extension is the most powerful and important component of this triple threat. Although the glutes are the main workhorse of hip extension, the hamstrings are thought to account for about a third of the torque generated. They have a key role in providing propulsion and need to be trained accordingly.

ADDUCTOR INJURY

Adductor Tendinopathy

The hip adductor muscles help bring your legs together and rotate your hip inwards. The short adductors include the pectineus, adductor brevis, and adductor longus, and the long adductors include the adductor magnus and gracilis. These start at your pubic bone where the crease of your inner thigh meets your body and move down your thigh bone to the inside of your knee. At the end of these muscles are tendons, which are tough, fibrous tissues that connect muscles to bones.

Groin injuries comprise 2 - 5% of all sports injuries; adductor tendinitis and tendinopathy are among the most common causes of groin pain in athletes. The adductor longus is responsible for 62% of groin injuries, and tends to be the most prone to injury, followed by the gracilis muscle. This injury is problematic among athletes especially runners and professional dancers, as both activites stress the adductor tendon quite heavily.

The initial damage can range from overstretching or a slightly pulled muscle (grade 1 strain) to partial tearing (grade 2 strain), to complete rupturing of your adductor muscle or tendon fibers (grade 3 strain). If you do not allow your tissues to heal properly, your previous adductor injuries will build upon each other. The inability of your tendon to repair itself encourages microtears to accumulate faster than they can heal, increasing the breakdown of your tissue and reinforcing your pain and disability. The majority of adductor strains are grade 1 or 2 strains that involve partial tears, where your adductor tendon and muscle meet.

Causes and Diagnosing

The most common cause of tendon inflammation is overuse of your adductors. It results from repetitive stress placed on your adductor muscles and tendons during active sports (especially when running, kicking, twisting, or side-stepping), as a result of a sudden fall or direct hit, and/or overexerting yourself in everyday activities that involve twisting or lifting heavy objects while bending or running on an unstable surface (like grass or mud).

Alignment issues and leg length discrepancies, which affect the way you walk, or incorrect sport-specific motions, as well as strength differences in your muscles, lack of exercise and obesity, age-related weaknesses and/or degeneration, and genetics.

Your doctor will perform a medical history and physical examination, and may use some diagnostic tests (including X-Rays, MRIs, bone scans, CT scans, and diagnostic ultrasound) to determine your situation.

Prevention

Avoid doing too much too soon - decrease, modify and/or avoid any activities that cause pain and irritation.

Stabilize your groin, pelvis and hip area, build your core strength with light weights, exercise bands and balls, core balance training, and exercises to develop strength, speed and agility, such as jumping or bounding. Yoga, tai chi, or a daily stretching routine will also help keep your muscles and joints supple, and will increase your range of motion. Combine these with regular low-impact exercise and healthy diet.

Always warm up and cool down your muscles, learn the proper form and techniques to prevent injuries, and utilize any available mobility supports (braces, taping, orthotics, canes) to help alleviate undue stress and improve your function.

Treatment

When treating adductor tendinitis rest the area, apply cold compression for 10-20 minutes at a time for at least 3 times a day. Do this to the injured area for the first day up to 3 days. Blood Flow Stimulation Therapy may be used after the acute swelling is improved. Cold Compression Therapy will reduce initial inflammation and swelling and Blood Flow Stimulation Therapy increases blood flow through the area to speed the healing process. This can be further helped by the use of ultrasound applications over the affected area, as it reduces swelling quickly and increases blood flow to the area, helping the tendon heal more quickly.

The trick to any tendon injury is getting it to heal with minimal scar tissue formation and with as much realignment of tendon fibers as possible - something both Blood Flow Stimulation Therapy and therapeutic ultrasound are great at! Even with optimum healing there is always less elasticity in a previously injured tendon. The trick is to make sure you heal this the best you can, that way your chance of reinjury down the road is much lower than average.

Blood Flow Stimulation via electro magnetic pulse wrap!

If you want to heal quickly, you need to keep your blood moving and that's where BFST, comes in. What is BFST? It's a substantial increase in the flow of blood to your injury location without the need to exercise the area. This is what a BFST Wrap does... you can really feel it work!

Have you seen what happens when you add water to a flower wilted from drought? In essence, an injured tendon is much like a "wilted" flower; your body wants to heal its injury, but needs lots of nutrients to do it.

Blood brings new life to your cells by delivering healing nutrients and oxygen that are vital to your tissue. In addition, the blood carries away toxins and cellular waste cleaning the area and healing it faster. Without a good supply of blood, your tendon simply won't heal properly.

In order to get maximum blood flow to your injury, you need to help your body stimulate blood flow. BFST (blood flow stimulation therapy), is the fast, easy and pain-free way to increase blood flow and speed healing. It is the key to dealing with your tendonitis injury properly.

Within moments of applying an BFST Wrap to your injured tendon or muscle, you can feel the healing sensation and the increase in blood flow.

During a treatment, and for quite some time after you finish, your injured tendons, ligaments, bursae and muscles will experience increased blood flow even though your body is at rest. It's a soothing sensation and extremely effective.

With BFST your injury is constantly being fed with healing, nutritious, oxygen and energy filled blood. This is exactly what your body needs to heal.

Electromagnetic Energy = Increased Blood Flow = More Oxygen, More Nutrients and Less Toxins = Faster Healing

BFST is a new advancement to an age old therapy. The promotion of blood flow to promote healing has been a standard medical therapy for over 100 years. For centuries, doctors, therapists and moms worldwide have used warmth as a means of increasing blood flow. Hot water bottles and their variations have been used to soothe sore joints and muscles forever.

Among other things,ultrasound is a moderate blood flow stimulator. And unlike the hot compress approach which really just heats the surface, ultrasound penetrates below the skin to vibrate your inner tissue at the cellular level. More so, ultrasound's vibration technique is more effective as a clearing tool, reducing swelling (edema) and enabling circulation. Ultrasound stimulation is great for 'cleaning' the injured area below in the tissue, but ultimately you want to get that invaluable healing blood supply flowing through the area. That's what BFST® is all about.The problem with applied heat (aka the 'frying pan' approach) is that it only works on the skin and doesn't penetrate deep into the underlying tissue where most of the injured tissue really is. A warm bath is a similar concept but it still relies on the hot water to heat your skin, and your skin to heat the fat below the skin, and the fat to heat the muscle tissue, and so on. It works to some extent, but there are much more effective options.

BFST is all about promoting blood flow deep within your body tissue. You feel it right away. And unlike hot compresses, which are hot on your skin, the surface of your skin really just warms, and so does all the tissue below it, right down to the core. When you use BFST Wraps it gives you deep penetrating healing therapy, you feel the stimulation, the warmth, the increased blood flow deep within your injured tendon- and that's what you want. BFST stimulates the injured area, but don't let the name scare you. An BFST Wrap is not hot to the touch. Even after 30 minutes of treatment your skin is warm, but not hot. In fact, BFST Wraps are very comfortable to wear and very soothing to use. Arthritis patients swear by the deep penetrating, soothing effectiveness of our BFST wraps.

Why is BFST Deep Healing So Important?

The layer of fat beneath the surface of the skin (subcutaneous layer) actually works as an insulator and reduces the amount of heat that can penetrate into your tendon.Some heat therapies you may have tried such as heating pads, hot water bottles, moist towels, and warm baths only create a superficial heatnear the surface of the skin. There are 2 reasons for this:

Your body senses a temperature increase on your skin and increases blood flow in the skin layer to flush away the heat.

Basically, a heating pad or hot water pad gives you BFST, but at the skin layer instead of where it is needed most - at the location of the injury!

Why does it matter how deep the heat goes?

It matters because to effectively increase blood flow where you need it, you need the heat effect to occur at the location of the damaged tissue.

To get the blood flow deep - where you need it, you need the electromagnetic power of the BFST Wrap.

How An BFST Wrap Works

An BFST Wrap is purely a workhorse! It is why we offer them. They have been specifically designed for the treatment of deep, soft tissue injuries.

BFST Wraps contain a patented Energy Web which is flexible and shaped to conform to your body. This Energy Web emits a uniform wave of perfectly safe electro-magnetic energy over its entire surface. This energy travels deep inside your tissue and stimulates the blood flow needed to heal your injury. It is the electromagnetic energy that is crucial to the healing process.

There is no sound or vibration or motion that comes from the unit. There are no creams or gels required, you simply wrap it snugly around the location of your tendinitis injury and turn it on. It is very easy to use.

Contact me for information about a specific wrap , size or injury.

Blood flow stimulation enhances healing time and reduces pain via electromagnetic pulsed energy.

Dr. Health Flex has healing wraps for Achilles,knees, shoulders, backs, elbows and feet.
Contact the Physical Therapist at Health Flex for advice about the best non-invasive therapy for you!

Contraindications

Dr.health Flex highly recommends that you consult a Doctor of Physical Therapy before using this ultrasound device. Use of this device is not recommended:

on patients with hemophilia, abnormal blood pressure, spina bifida, surgical laminectomies of the spine, malignancies, or infectious diseases
over infected tissue or bone
on areas that are not within a normal body temperature range (i.e. recently iced or heated areas)
over open sores, lesions, or sunburned skin
over implants of any sort including plastic, silicon, cement or metal (including metal mesh)
over areas suspected to be cancerous or pre-cancerousover the skull area or face
over mucous membranes (mouth, nose, rectum, anus, vagina)
over numb areas of the skin
on patients with electronic implants such as pacemakers
over the midsection area of pregnant females (including lower back, abdomen, groin and lumbar area) or females suspected of being pregnant
directly over organs including sex organs, thyroid (upper front of neck), liver, stomach, lungs, spleen, bowels, kidneys, heart
for use anywhere above the neck (this includes over areas such as the eyes, ears and temple)
over areas injected with medication or a steroid (i.e. cortisone) within the last 30 days

If you are unable to use ultrasound due to any of the contraindications listed above, using an BFST Wrap for BFST can achieve similar treatment results.