If you’re currently suffering from a muscle tear, one thing that you may be wondering is whether you should consider utilizing ultra sound therapy to help heal yourself and get back into the workout game.
Many people do suffer from very serious injuries at some point in time as they go about their fitness program, but it’s only those who use smart recovery techniques who are able to overcome them quickly and make sure that they don’t put a large dent in the amount of progress that they’re able to make.
One such technique that you might have heard about is ultra sound therapy. What’s the real deal with this form of therapy and is it a good way to heal torn muscle fibers?
Let’s give you the information that you need to know.
What Is Ultra Sound Therapy
First we need to cover what exactly ultra sound therapy entails. This form of therapy has been used for a high number of years to help with all soft tissue injuries and will work by sending small sound waves that have a very high frequency rate throughout the tissues the ultrasound pads are placed over.
The treating physician will place these small pads on all the areas of the body that surround the injured region so as to ensure that the waves are being dissipated throughout the entire muscular area.
In most cases a special gel will be used with these pads as well that will help to make sure that the maximum amount of stimulation is seen and there is continuous contact with the pads and the skin.
How Ultra Sound Therapy Will Help
There is still quite a bit of debate about the actual efficacy of ultra sound therapy with some people claiming that it quickly helps to speed up the injured area while others claim that it offers no such benefits.
Nevertheless, let’s look at some of the proposed ways that this form of therapy can help to heal muscle tears.
First, it can do so with the use of heat. As the ultrasound waves move through the skin and into the tissues it moves through the collagen with the vibrations its sending and this produces a high amount of heat in these tissues.
This heat may help to decrease the pain significantly of the impacted area and also help to reduce any muscle spasms that are currently taking place.
Both of these factors can help to promote faster healing and get you back to being pain-free.
Another benefit of ultra sound therapy with regards to the healing process is that it can help to reduce the amount of time you spend being inflamed after an injury and can help to enhance the amount of blood flow to the impacted region. With more blood delivering nutrients and oxygen, this too will speed up the recovery process.
Finally, ultrasound therapy can help to speed up the production of collagen in the body, which is a protein that is heavily involved in healing soft tissues such as tendons and ligaments which will likely be damaged around the muscle tear as well.
Precautions Of Using Ultra Sound Therapy
Despite all reasons for using ultra sound therapy, there are still some important things to keep in mind. First, if you’re going to be using ultra sound therapy, you should also be avoiding doing any intense exercise while doing so.
Some people may think that this will give them a ‘free pass’ to continue on with their workouts. Don’t let yourself believe this to be the case.
Second, make sure that you do discuss the injury very thoroughly with the treatment physician who is seeing you to ensure that they fully understand the nature of what caused the muscle tear as well as any other side effects that you may be experiencing.
Ultra sound isn’t going to be ideal in all instances, so it’s important that you are explaining how the pain came about thoroughly.
Finally, also keep in mind you can use both lower frequency as well as higher frequency waves, with higher frequency waves being used for muscle tears that are closer to the surface of the skin while lower frequency waves being used for those that are deeper.
Discuss this with your treatment physician as well so you can learn what’s best for you.
So there you have some of the answers with regards to whether you should be using ultra sound therapy on muscle tears. When used properly they can at the very least ease your pain and potentially help to speed the healing process along.
