A Florida Chiropractor’s Guide to Electric Stim Therapy

Although chiropractic care classically focuses on spinal adjustment, there’s actually much more to chiropractic treatment. Chiropractors offer a variety of options that specifically target soft tissue, including electric stim therapy.

This therapy is used for pain relief and muscle re-education. It is often an important component of injury rehabilitation. For other patients, the therapy is used to relieve chronic pain.

Understandably, many patients are a little hesitant about any treatment with the word “electric” in its name! However, this therapy is quick and painless and provides immediate pain relief for many.

Today’s post provides insight into electric stim therapy — what it is, how it works, and what happens during a treatment.

How Electric Stim Therapy Works

Electric stim therapy uses a low electrical current to stimulate the subcutaneous nerves. These are the ones just beneath your skin. This causes your muscles to contract, which naturally builds muscle tone.

This therapy has also been known to interrupt pain messages transmitted from the nerves to the brain, and/or to increase the production of pain-relieving endorphins.

What Happens During an Electric Stim Treatment

During an electric stim treatment, electrodes are hooked up to an electric stimulation machine and placed on the skin of the affected area.

Your chiropractor will place the electrodes based on how deep he or she intends the current to go, and how your muscles change shape during stimulation.

After the electrodes are placed, your chiropractor will adjust the controls of the electric stimulation machine until you feel a mild tingling sensation. This sensation is noticeable, but should not be intense. The stimulation lasts for about 10-15 minutes, and will most likely be scheduled on a recurring basis.

How Electric Stim Therapy Can Help

Because electric stim therapy both builds muscle tone and relieves pain, it’s used in a variety of applications, and can help with many ailments including the following three.

Spinal Joint Stabilization

Electric stim therapy activates muscles and builds muscle tone, so it can be used to increase spinal joint stability and overall spinal stability.

For this purpose, electric stim therapy is often prescribed in conjunction with a home exercise program to build muscle tone.

Your exercise program will also be important for building muscle tone and stabilizing the spine, but electric stim therapy can help you along by increasing muscle strength and endurance.

Ultimately, stabilizing the spine can relieve common conditions like lower back pain.

Healing and Pain Control

Electric stim therapy has also been proven to reduce swelling and increase circulation in injured areas, thus able to enhance tissue healing and control inflammation.

Electric stim may also reduce pain sensations by blocking nerve transmission at the spinal cord.

If your chiropractor recommends this for pain control, he or she may also recommend a take-home unit so that you can do home treatments.

This approach is used to treat chronic pain conditions.

Muscle Re-education

Electric stim is often a component of physical therapy and rehabilitation programs to help patients recover from injuries, and restore functionality to the injured region.

This treatment is used to retrain muscles that are having trouble contracting. Injuries such as stroke or broken bones can cause muscles in the affected area to atrophy, inhibiting movement and functionality.

Electric stim may also help retrain muscles after neurological injury. When electric stim is applied, the muscle can contract without the help of the patient. Doing this while asking the patient to actively try to contract the muscle can help the brain re-learn how to contract the muscle on its own.

These are just a few of the ways that electric stim therapy can help chiropractic patients recover from different injuries and health conditions. If you’re suffering joint and muscle pain, ask your Florida chiropractor whether you could benefit from this treatment.

About the Author:

Dr. Singer has been a practicing chiropractor for more than 20 years, and USA Health & Therapy has been around since 2004. Over the course of his career, Singer has helped tens of thousands of people with all kinds of issues by using a wide variety of treatment strategies. He has extensive knowledge of chiropractic modalities, including Gonstead, Diversified, Thompson Drop Table, and Activator, and in 1997 he earned a special adjunctive Chiropractic Certification in Spinal Trauma (CCST) to better provide care for car crash victims. Dr. Singer is licensed to practice chiropractic medicine in both Florida and New York.