Preventing RSI injuries can be challenging as you may need or enjoy your daily activities.

However, early RSI treatment helps prevent your injury from getting worse and becoming harder and longer to treat.

When pain sets in, conventional RSI treatments may offer limited help because they do not address the root cause of a repetitive strain or overuse injury – scar tissue.

Your body naturally lays down scar tissue to heal micro-trauma caused by the strain of your repetitive actions. However, if your scar tissue doesn’t break up itself after healing your injury, it may need manual removal.

Your best chance for success is to find a health practitioner trained to break up scar tissue with a specifically designed treatment like Active Release Techniques ® ……more on that below.

What are RSI symptoms?

If any of these RSI symptoms sound familiar, chances are you have an RSI injury.

• Your muscles seem to always feel tight, achy, hard, and ropey.
• Stretching feels uncomfortable, no matter how much you do.
• Icing and stretching only seem to offer temporary relief.
• Your fingers and/or wrists feel tight when typing, using your mouse, computer, or electronic devices.
• You try to do the right thing and exercise regularly only to find the on and off pain you’re experiencing occurs more frequently. You know exercise is good for you, so you are reluctant to stop.
• Strengthening another area sounds like a good idea but you find this only works for a short time or causes pain in other areas.
• You try anti-inflammatory medication but they don’t work as well as you hoped.

How is our RSI treatment different and effective?

Active Release Techniques ® is our RSI treatment of choice. It is a medically patented soft tissue therapy specifically designed to break up scar tissue – the likely root cause of your RSI injury.

Active Release ® restores flexibility and circulation to shortened tissue – the common unwanted side effect of a build-up of scar tissue.

This treatment for RSI gives providers the tools to address the cause and effects of overuse injuries.

Our chiropractors are trained to exactly feel where your problem lies and use their hands to manually break up your scar tissue.

Chiropractors have the necessary touch and in-depth knowledge of anatomy and biomechanics (how muscles and bones work together) to accurately diagnose and more importantly, correct the root cause of a RSI injury.

Active Release ® can be done by a variety of health care providers. However, most are chiropractors.

By visiting an Active Release ® Chiropractor, you also get the dual benefit of scar tissue release and joint alignment. For example, if you have a tense wrist or thumb from an RSI injury, chances are your joints are also misaligned.

So while we recommend both Active Release ® and chiropractic treatment for best results, the latter is always optional.

Unfortunately many people only seek RSI treatment when their problem stops them. By then, it has become a multi-layered problem that can be difficult to unravel.

Shortened muscles increase the force going through your joints and cause damage. Muscles and tendons are designed to tear and heal. However, damage to your joints is often irreversible.

It is important to address your RSI problem early. This will decrease your treatment time and minimise the wear and tear on your joints.

Ask yourself how are you going to live when your thumbs, fingers, wrists, shoulders, knees, neck or other body parts wear out from repetitive use?

References

1 Can instant messaging damage your health? Doctor warns of ‘WhatsAppitis’, The Guardian, 27^th March 2014.