Pressure Point Therapy: The Little-Known Booster to Chiropractic Treatment

 

Today we are going to discuss some information with you in regards to Mattingly Chiropractic and pressure point therapy.

What Exactly Is a Pressure Point? 

Let’s start on the subject of pressure points. What is actually a pressure point? Well, a pressure point is a stress point, or point of irritation in your body. I mean, these things can occur in many places in your body. It can occur: 

• Down your neck 
• Both sides of the neck 
• Both arms 
• They can occur down the mid back into the lower back
• They can occur down the legs
• You can even have pressure points in your feet that can cause problems
• You can have pressure points in the jaw. A lot of people have jaw pain.

And so when the joint starts to dysfunction or malfunction, you start getting these stress points or these points of irritation. 

How Do Pressure Points Cause Pain?

Now, pressure points, when they’re present, can hurt the nerve flow or affect the nerve flow. It can cause muscles to be really tight. And that’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about a pressure point. We’re talking about very tight muscles and spasm muscles. 

As a result, you get this nerve problem where it actually can compress the nerve and you get blood flow problems, where it can actually compress the blood vessels that go through that muscle that is irritated. 

Now, the good thing about the stress points or points of irritation, when you recognize that you have them, then you have a problem and then it’s time to get that handled. So pressure points are kind of a warning system of problems that may start to happen or may already be occurring.

How Does Pressure Point Therapy Relieve the Pain?

Pressure point therapy. Why does it work? Well, muscles are set up in such a way that when you actually start to put pressure into the muscle, it will actually start to relax. Now, if you put too much pressure on it, a person will tend to want to pull away from the pressure point and it’s really difficult to get a result when they’re not allowing you to do the pressure point. Or if you do it too softly or with not enough pressure, well, you’re not going to really get a result with that either.

So you need to use the amount of pressure that’s correct for the patient by using thumb or finger pressure; or, in our office a lot of times, we’ll use Jack Nobbers (a handheld pressure point tool that resembles a jack) to treat the pressure points. So why does it work? Well, the muscles are set up such that when you push into them, they start to relax, although you do have to use the correct amount of pressure to do that.

Is Pressure Point Therapy Different from Chiropractic Treatment?

What is the difference between pressure point therapy and chiropractic? Well, pressure point therapy is actually a massage therapy technique, but it’s very direct into the areas that we want to treat, especially when we want to do a chiropractic adjustment. 

And so when we’re doing these pressure points, we’re going to be doing pressure points in the neck, or pressure points in the mid back, pressure points in the lower back, or pressure points down the leg and into the feet as it relates to the area that we need to improve so that the chiropractic adjustment is done more completely.

The difference between pressure points is that we’re treating the muscle. In chiropractic we’re actually adjusting the bone to improve the alignment of the bone. 

Are There Any Other Benefits to Pressure Point Therapy?

The benefits of doing pressure point therapy are to improve nerve flow, to improve muscle tone, and take what is a really tight muscle and decrease the tightness in the muscle so that you can actually feel better and have a better adjustment, and also increase the blood flow.

Of course, when you have a tight muscle, it’s going to affect the blood flow and the flow of nutrients into the muscle. So you, by doing a pressure point treatment, can better that blood flow, and you also help the muscle heal up.

Pressure Point Therapy Works with Chiropractic Treatment to Relieve Pain

Pressure point therapy is a great booster to chiropractic. And why is that? Well, it’s because of all the reasons that I have discussed. When you start to treat the pressure point, you start to improve the nerve flow, muscle tone, and blood flow. And when that is done, the area that you want to adjust (or that I want to adjust), is just much easier to do because I’m adjusting into a loose muscle as opposed to a tight and spasmed muscle that does not have very good nerve flow, or does not have very good blood flow.

So the booster point is that you treat the pressure point, you release the muscle tone or the bad muscle tone. Then that chiropractic adjustment can really be done more effectively. Basically, in most cases of course, the adjustment is actually the bone out of alignment, and doing the adjustment is actually the reason for the pressure point in the first place. When you have a point of irritation, a stress point, and you try to do an adjustment into that area, it does increase the amount of discomfort that a patient might experience. And so, hey, let’s treat this pressure point. Let’s get that adjustment made easier by doing the pressure point therapy treatment.

Visit Mattingly Chiropractic for Pressure Point Therapy 

So if you have some shoulder problems and neck problems, lower back pain or hip pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, frozen shoulder and all that, give us a call at (314) 635-1008. Let’s get some pressure point therapy done to help you feel better, and return to your normal activities of daily life.