Sports Injuries

Ponca City Oklahoma Chiropractor Dr. Leon Bristow talks about sports injuries. There are basically two kinds of sports injuries, the serious and the not so serious. By serious I mean injuries that would require surgery or a cast. These injuries would be broken bones and tissues that are badly torn requiring surgery. Tendons, ligaments, and muscle could all be torn badly enough to require surgery in athletic injuries. These are the most serious injuries that happen in sports. Some sports are more prone to these types of injuries than others. The less serious athletic injuries can often be the more difficult injuries to treat. The less serious injuries have no surgery option and must depend upon two things to recover fully to pre-injury status. One is the bodies ability to heal and the other thing is what is being done to treat the problem. When we look at these types of athletic injuries they are all involving soft tissue damage. It is the tissues that get damaged in these types of injuries. It is the tendons, ligaments, fascia, and muscles that get damaged.

If we look at these tissues we find that there are only two tissues that get damaged in the less serious athletic injuries. One is the muscle cell and the other is connective tissue. Tendons, ligaments, joint capsule and fascia are all just different names for connective tissue. When we look closer at connective tissue we see that it is made up of fibers that hold us together, support us, and help us to move. There are three of these fibers called collagen, elastin, and reticulin. All three of these fibers are made of amino acids stuck together in chains. Several of these chains are woven together over and over until we have the fiber we need. These fibers are just ropes made of amino acids. We are held together and supported by ropes of amino acids.

What gets damaged in damaged tissue? Two things could get damaged. One would be the muscle cell and the other would be the connective tissue fibers. If the muscle cell gets torn or badly damaged then it is dead and will not be replaced. We do not make new muscle cells. The good news is that the muscle cell is wrapped in connective tissue. The muscle cell is surrounded by and connected to connective tissue fibers. The muscle cell pulls on the connective tissue fibers. The design is such that if something is going to be damaged it is much more likely that the connective tissue fibers will be damaged than the muscle cell. The design helps reduce the risk to the muscle cells. This leaves the connective tissue fibers as the main source of damaged tissue and the only source of repairable tissue. So sports injuries are damage mostly to the connective tissue fibers. Damage to the tendons, ligaments, joint capsule, and fascia are all just damage to the connective tissue fibers.

The important problem in sports medicine is the healing and repair of the damaged connective tissues. In the healing and repair of these injured tissues one must work to quickly reduce the swelling and inflamation in the damaged tissues, stabilize and prevent any further damage to the injured tissues, work to speed the repair of the broken connective tissue fibers, and at the same time work to reduce the amount of scar tissue formation. Once this process is far enough along then work must be done to ensure that the newly repaired tissues will reach there maximum strength to help prevent re-injury or future problems. If not all of the right things get done then there will be increased scar tissue formation which is always a weaker less flexible tissue and it may take considerably longer to heal. This will also set the course for future problems in these tissues and increase the risk for future injuries in the same area.

This is exactly what Directional Pressure Therapy was designed to do. Directional Pressure Therapy is the most advanced care for rapid healing and repair of sports injuries. There is no system available today that does more than Directional Pressure Therapy to speed the healing and repair of the injured tissues. Directional Pressure Therapy is what I have been using since 1992 to speed the healing of tendons, ligaments, and fascia. It can even help injuries that are not healing or have failed to heal properly. For more information on Directional Pressure Therapy please click on the following link.
Directional Pressure Therapy

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