Active Release Techniques (ART) is a soft tissue system that treats problems with muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia and nerves. The soft-tissue component of many injuries can often be resolved quickly and permanently with ART. These conditions often have one important thing in common: they can be the result of overused muscles.
How do overuse conditions occur?
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 can cause 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.
What is an ART treatment like?
Every ART session is actually a combination of examination and treatment. The ART provider uses his or her hands to evaluate the texture, tightness and movement of muscles, fascia, tendons, ligaments and nerves. Abnormal tissues are treated by combining precisely directed tension with very specific patient movements.
ART has over 500 treatment protocols. They allow providers to identify and correct the specific soft-tissue problems affecting each individual patient.
What is the history of Active Release Techniques?
ART has been developed by P. Michael Leahy, DC. Dr. Leahy noticed that his patients’ symptoms often seemed to be related to changes in their soft tissue that could be felt by hand. Dr. Leahy discovered that these changes to muscles, fascia, tendons, ligaments and nerves responded well to a combination of both the practitioner applying a precisely directed tension to the affected tissue while the patient simultaneously lengthened the same tissue.
Latest news
- Don’t Dismiss These Treatments as Placebos June 20, 2011
Evidence is growing, based on carefully controlled studies, that certain non-pharmacological complementary interventions may be useful adjuncts to conventional care. For example, the pain of osteoarthritis can be lessened by acupuncture; tai chi may be helpful in reducing the pain of fibromyalgia; and massage and manipulative therapies may contribute to the relief of chronic back pain and related functional impairments. Furthermore, evidence from basic research points to ways in which such interventions use the body’s own pathways known to be involved in response to pain.
Should we dismiss any benefits as mere placebo effects? Or should we explore the possibility, increasingly suggested by the science, that some complementary interventions provide powerful tools for studying the contributions of attention, touch, time, and reassurance, which are now in short supply in our health care system?Read more at: http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/06/dont-dismiss-these-treatments-as-placebos/240461/
- Handgrip strength test used to assess fibromyalgia January 3, 2011
A handgrip strength test has been developed as a complementary tool in the assessment of fibromyalgia severity in women.
Handgrip strength was measured in both hands (and the average score was used in the analyses) by a maximal isometric test using a hand dynamometer.
Read more here: http://www.prohealth.com/library/showarticle.cfm?libid=15833
- Gentle exercise key to easing lower back pain October 19, 2010
Gentle exercise key to easing lower back pain – Intensity, positions must be decided on age and condition
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Gunnar Mossberg reports: “Acute low back pain affects up to 80 percent of the population at some time, often repeatedly. Research studies have shown that exercise therapy is one of the few treatments for low back pain with moderately strong evidence of effectiveness. However, studies have also shown that exercise therapy for people with low back pain is vastly underutilized.”
Read more here: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/oct/12/gentle-exercise-key-to-easing-lower-back-pain/
- Why your desk job is slowly killing you November 1, 2010
Even if you exercise, the more hours a day you sit, the greater your risk of early death.
Hamilton’s take, which is supported by a growing body of research, is that the amount of time you exercise and the amount of time you spend on your butt are completely separate factors for heart-disease risk. New evidence suggests, in fact, that the more hours a day you sit, the greater your likelihood of dying an earlier death regardless of how much you exercise or how lean you are. That’s right: Even a sculpted six-pack can’t protect you from your chair.
Read more here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39523298/ns/health-mens_health/
