Vibration Therapy for Chronic Low Back Pain
Chronic lower back pain is a complex issue, often caused by repeated incremental muscle damage - a common injury resulting from our modern lifestyle and work habits. This include the repeated overuse of certain muscles or muscle strain caused by poor posture. These small incremental muscle injuries are often ignored until they evolve into hard-to-cure, sustained lower back muscle pain.
The root of the hard-to-cure chronic pain is muscle stress due to scar tissues interwoven in the muscles and poor micro-circulation in the injured area.
Chronic Muscle Injury & Scar Tissue
Repeated small incremental muscle injuries can lead to the formation of scar tissues within the affected muscles. Scar tissue formation is our body's natural self-healing mechanism. Our body quickly repairs the damage by depositing collagen fibers in the damaged area when new muscle cell generation is not able to catch up.
However, when fibrous scar tissues displace the original muscle fibers, they impair the muscle's strength and performance. Furthermore, scar tissues usually form with a random texture and adhere to the surrounding muscles. Therefore, muscles with scar tissues are easily stressed and prone to further injury, leading to sustained muscle pain.
Scar tissues consist of non-living cells. Once formed, they tend to remain in place permanently.
Scar tissues within the muscles hinder the microcirculation. The arterioles and capillaries in the affected muscles are blocked or impaired, adding more challenge to the recovery.
Scar Tissues Breakdown
The challenge of recovering from chronic muscle pain is mainly because the scar tissues formed in the damaged muscle tissues are difficult to break down.
Vibration intervention provides an innovative way to break down scar tissues through inducing rapidly repeated intensive muscle contractions.
Vibration & Muscle Contraction
Vibration intervention can induce rapidly repeated skeletal muscle contractions because of our body's natural skeletal muscle stretch reflex.
When our skeletal muscles are suddenly stretched, they spontaneously contract against the stretch. This response is called stretch reflex. It is our natural mechanism for automatically maintaining balance and stability without a conscious command from our brain.
On a vibration plate, with a proper pose, vibration movement can quickly stretch and relax our skeletal muscles repetitively, and our skeletal muscles respond with rapidly repeated contractions.
Because of the dynamic vibration G-force, the mechanical force resulted from the rapidly repeated muscle contraction can achieve a certain magnitude to progressively break down the fibrous scar tissues, physically and physiologically.
Scar tissue breakdown brings the opportunity for new living muscle cells to grow back in the plate, restoring the muscles and their performance.
Micro-circulation Improvement
Micro-circulation completes the function of our circulation system, bringing in oxygen and nutrients to muscle cells and taking away metabolic wastes. If this function is impaired, the recovery of muscle injury will be hindered.
Muscle contraction promotes micro-circulation through skeletal muscle pump function.
Skeletal Muscle Pump Function
The skeletal muscle pump function refers to the mechanism by which skeletal muscle contractions assist in the circulation of blood and lymph. When skeletal muscles contract, they squeeze the adjacent blood vessels and lymphatic vessels. This squeezing action helps relay and distribute fluid flow within the vessels.
The role of skeletal muscle pump function is essential for a healthy peripheral circulation, especially at the micro level - capillaries, where the exchange of gases and fluids takes place.
Cardiovascular exercise alone is not effective in promoting micro-circulation in tissues remote from heart and major arteries.
Vibration-induced rapidly repeated skeletal muscle contractions bring efficiency and effectiveness to our skeletal pump function, making a big difference in promoting micro-circulation in the injured muscles.
Cellular Processe Promotion
Due to vibration G-force, vibration-induced muscle contractions can provide intensive short pulses of mechanical stimulation that may more effectively signal the production of growth hormone and influence stem cell differentiation for muscle cell regeneration.
For example, on a vertical movement vibration plate running at 2G and 30Hz, our muscles and bones overcome the pull-down force equivalent to twice our body weight in repeated short pulses, each lasting 0.08 seconds. Due to their short pulse pattern, our muscles and bones don't get stressed but receive high-magnitude mechanical stimulation.
A New Dimension
For chronic muscle injury, physical therapy is a fundamental treatment method, arguably the best. By incorporating the unique vibration intervention into physical therapy through the use of a vibration plate, we can significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness in scar tissue breakdown, microcirculation improvement, and cellular process promotion. This approach achieves muscle restoration results that may not be attainable through regular physical therapy and mainstream medicine.
Vibration therapy brings physical therapy to a new dimension for chronic muscle injury treatment.
Vibration therapy exercise holds promising potential for treating chronic muscle injury. While the process may require an extended period of time, the immediate relief of muscle stress resulting from vibration therapy could motivate users to persist in their efforts, aiming for a consistent, incremental and fundamental recovery.
