Chiropractic: Active Release Technique

[panacea151]

About three weeks ago, I was working on a household project that forced me to hold an electric drill in a steady position under constant pressure for an extended period of time.

Afterwards, my right tricep was completely numb, I had to brush my teeth, comb my hair and perform anything that caused my upper arm to be parallel with the ground with my left arm fro about ten days afterwards.

Now, I have feeling back in my arm, and most things I can do, but I still cannot flex my right tricep when I lock my elbow.

After surfing body building boards I found out about a chiropractic technique called the ART, or Active Release Technique that may be able to fix the problem in my tricep. Has anyone had this done?

[jemsite]

A.R.T. can be very useful (and is very safe) but any treatment - by any licensed professional - needs to be relevant & specific to the actual injury. Get it checked out and see what the actual injury is. If you don't need a referral (ie. primary doctor/gatekeeper must send you to a specialist) then pick a D.C. who handles sports/extremities (ie. arm) also, not just spinal care. Good luck... glen

[panacea151]

Thanks for the reply, Glen. I really appreciate your advice.

Regards,

Mike

[Canadian Mark]

I've had about 4 ART treatments, and they didn't do a lot for me. The main reason for this is mostly due to my problems (muscular tension as opposed to muscular injury). My infraspinatus, teres major and teres minor tend to tighten up a lot.

The 2nd reason I think they didn't do a lot for me is because they were done by a chiropractor (a 5 minute treatment, repeat every week for the rest of your life).

It sounds to me like your problem is more of a nervous one than muscular. You might have pinched a nerve (perhap's a cervical nerve). From the articles I have read on ART, they can treat both nervous and muscular conditions, and work best in the case of injury (where there is adhesions between adjacent muscle layers or between muscles and nerves. The adhesions are usually caused by scar tissue resulting from injury.

My feelings on the most effective treatment is massage therapy followed by chiropractic treatment. My reasoning is the chiropractic treatment can realign joints, but if the surrounding muscles are tight, and biased, the joint will be pulled out of alignment in short order (why you have go back to the chiroproctor every week). The massage will make the muscles surrounding the joint looser and more supple, so they won't pull joints out of alignment so quickly.

But I agree with Glen, you should have your condition assessed by someone competent before putting too much weight in any one treatment.