Repetitive strain injuries (RSI) or overuse injuries are becoming more common and can affect all types of people. These overuse injuries can be a challenge to find out what’s causing them, as these symptoms can be produced by sports & activities, work – either desk based or more manual professions, playing musical instruments and gardeners for example. Typically RSI injuries occur in the forearms and wrists, but you can also see issues in the neck and shoulders. Pain, discomfort, tingling, weakness and numbness can all be symptoms of RSI injuries.
Causes of Repetitive Strain Injuries
Over time, if a repetitive stress is place on a muscle or group of muscles, they can start to fatigue and inflamed. Once inflamed, the pain can be mild or severe and may cause pins and needles, numbness and weakness.
It’s important to address what’s causing the symptoms with repetitive strain injuries because simply treating the symptoms isn’t always enough and you want to prevent the symptoms from reoccurring where possible.
Treatment of Repetitive Strain Injuries
Osteopaths use a combination of soft tissue techniques to treat repetitive strain injuries. This includes massage to the muscles, tendons and ligaments, as well as articulation and mobilisation to the surrounding joints. Our osteopaths will not only focus on the symptomatic area, they will also look at the surrounding areas to make sure your body is able to function optimally.
Can an Osteopath Help with RSI?
RSI and overuse injuries are common injuries that we treat in our clinic. We are seeing more and more patients affected by these types of injuries. Osteopaths use a combination of massage and joint articulation to help alleviate your symptoms, allowing you to get back to your normal activities. Our practitioners are also trained in Western Acupuncture (dry needling) which is a technique aimed at releasing myofascial trigger points helping muscles relax, be less painful and improve their range of movement. Our osteopaths will advise you on the best exercises to help stretch and strengthen the body to help prevent your symptoms from reoccurring in the future.
If you are suffering with RSI type symptoms, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us here at Bright Osteopathy to see if we could help you with your pain. Whether you have a sedentary or manual job or your symptoms are being produce from playing sports, give us a call to see if we can help you today.