After an accident, your muscles can go into a protective state. This causes pain and sensations of muscular “tension” and “stiffness” following a crash.
One way we help your muscles relax is by using Electric Muscle Stimulation, also known as e-stim or muscle stim. Muscle stimulation works by using a gentle electric current to overriding injured muscles that are stuck in involuntary spasms and contractions. This causes them to relax, resulting in decreased pain. Along with this, muscle stimulation helps activate particular nerve fibers that turns off the signal to the brain saying, ‘hey everything hurts’.
So, how do you use it? Your chiropractor or chiropractic assistant will place sticky pads on the area that is in pain. These sticky pads will be connected to the muscle stim machine, which is plugged into the wall. After ensuring that you are connected properly, the medical provider will slowly increase the intensity until the therapy feels comfortable. Muscle stimulation should not be painful or uncomfortable to be beneficial to you. Instead, this should feel like a ‘tingling’ sensation localized to the pads. For the best results, the therapy will last for around 15-20 minutes.
