Neurology – Beyond Stretching, Strengthening, Massage And Adjustment
Fast, Slow, or GTO: For Fast-Effective Treatment, We Need to Know Which Signals Aren't Working Correctly
The 3 Key Pieces of Information Needed for Fast, Effective Treatment of Injury and Pain
Stretching, strengthening, massage, and adjustment all play important roles in the healing and recovery of pain and injury. They each send a signal to your body to take action—becoming stronger or more flexible, healing, or improving coordination and stability.
But could treatment be faster if we understood the exact dysfunction occurring in the muscles?
Muscles need to receive and respond to three specific types of information to function correctly:
Speed: They need to know how fast to move and communicate the speed at which they are moving (Fast Muscle Spindles).
Load: They need to be aware of the load they’re moving and the load they’re under (Slow Muscle Spindles).
Length: They need to know their ideal length and actual length (Golgi Tendon Organs – GTOs).
If any of these three pieces of information is not being transmitted correctly from the brain/spine to the muscles, or from the muscles back to the brain/spine, you may experience tightness and/or weakness, which can lead to joint instability, restriction, and pain.
When I palpate (touch or move) one of your joints, I can feel the tension or restriction in it. Based on when and how it hurts, I can assess which structures in your body are causing the pain.
Assessing your posture, observing your movement, and gathering information about your lifestyle also provide clues about which muscles are tight and which are weak. However, none of these assessments can reveal exactly what information is missing—whether there’s an issue with signals being sent from the Central Nervous System (CNS) to the muscle or signals being sent back from the muscle to the CNS.
Even if we identify a problem, it’s still challenging to determine which spindle or GTO is affected.
Quick neurological feedback tests can provide these answers. Within 45 seconds to a minute, we can reinstall the correct communication pathways by manually palpating or stimulating the appropriate neurological pathway. This uses the body’s natural ability to generate an electrical charge (piezoelectric effect).
This almost immediate correction in muscle action can result in profound changes in a short period.
As you can see from the timestamps on these photos, we corrected the scoliosis in Chris’s spine in about an hour, leaving him almost fully pain-free.
Once the muscle is correctly sending and receiving information about its behavior and state, we often don’t need additional interventions or exercises. However, if there’s structural damage, such as in cartilage, ligaments, or other connective tissues, a period of regular recalibration or treatment may be necessary. If you’ve been in pain for an extended time, you may also need exercises to regain coordination, mobility, or strength in the affected area. In many cases, once the muscle functions correctly due to restored communication, strength and range of motion are naturally regained.
Fast, accurate assessment of the communication between the brain/spine and muscles and joints leads to rapid improvement in strength, flexibility, and recovery time.
If a rapid, non-invasive treatment process appeals to you, please fill out the form below, and we’ll contact you as soon as possible
The classic approaches to pain or injury management involve treating the muscles via massage, stretching, or strengthening, such as physiotherapy or massage therapy. Another common approach is to “adjust” the joints into a more ideal position, as seen in chiropractic or osteopathic treatments. Often, these approaches are combined—first massaging the muscles, then adjusting the joints, followed by exercises to stretch or strengthen muscles to maintain an optimal position.
In my opinion and experience, if we assess and correct the communication between the central nervous system (CNS) and our muscles and joints, the treatment process would be much shorter, and clients would become pain-free much quicker.