Thank you for joining me again this evening. Iím Dr. Harrison Campbell primary chiropractor and Restoration Health in Premier sugar land chiropractors office. I perform these nightly podcast in the hopes that youíll be able to further your own education and apply these tips and tricks to better your health and your life. And tonightís podcast we will be discussing palpation.
For Sugar land chiropractors the skill of the patient is our ability to feel your body structures and understand what is going on beneath the skin. This is where chiropractors really shine as the musculoskeletal experts.
This skill is invaluable as it allows us to know what condition muscle tissue, tendons, ligaments, and scar tissue are in at that time. I remember a tale we were given while in chiropractic school where we were required to walk in a shake a patients hand. From that ten to fifteen seconds we were to write a report on what we were able to ascertain or pick up from that patient.
The palpation part of that task provides more information than you might think at first glance. Let us break that downright quick.
When you shake someoneís hand you can few how strong their grip is. You can feel if their palms or fingers are sweaty. You can feel if theirs hands and or fingers are warm or cold. You can feel if they have a tremor or shake in their hand. You can feel if there are abrasions, cuts, or other defects on the skin. You can feel if there are calluses on their hands. Each of these things listed has a great meaning to sugar land chiropractors who are paying attention to the information at hand. Pardon the unintended pun.
Just this simple act of touching a hand during a brief handshake provides a great deal of information that can be deciphered.
Moving beyond the handshake when sugar land chiropractors are palpating a spine or a knee or a shoulder we are feeling for the muscles. Are they knotted or tense? Are they inflamed? Are they sore? Is the area warm? Does the patient grimace or make a face or even pull away from the palpation? Do the ligaments or tendons have adhesions which would feel like gravel? Is there edema when we palpate indicating swelling. All of these things are when sugar land chiropractors are looking for when we palpate.
Moving beyond the sensory aspect of palpation the act of touching someone conveys caring. With chiropractors touching our patients we let the patient n ow that we understand they are hurting and we are going to do our best to help them.
Nother has back to palpation often overlooked is touch helping with pain. Say this Sugar land chiropractors understand the mechanism by which touch decreases pain but I will briefly describe it to you now. When we touch something Mic canno receptors underneath her skin touch can receptors transmit the signal of a pathway to the brain. Pain receptors transmit pain signals up a different pathway to the brain. What is interesting is as these two pathways one for touch and one for pain or traveling up to the brain pathway for touch crosses over the pathway For pain. What this means is the touch pathway dampens or decreases the pain signal which is transmitted to the brain and what this means in a larger scale is in fact touching an injury helps decrease the amount of pain that injury produces.
Ultimately touching injury to decrease the amount of pain is not the reason for palpation is more beneficial side effect of palpation. But thatís just because it is a beneficial side effect and had a reason does not diminish the value of this.
Now some of you were asking how affective palpation is. How can sugar land chiropractors receive so much information from simply touching something. The short answer is practice and repetition in the long answer is practice and repetition. What I mean by this is we do not gain this skill overnight we practiced for months and years we are constantly enhancing and honing in refreshing our skill Skills in palpation with every patient with Paul paid. Test we use it we place a hair inside of a book and we fold one page over it and then we pave the page trying to feel the hair I want to become adept at doing one page I put two pages over it and then we try and palpate the hair become adept at doing meant three pages. Letís go so on and so forth for as many pages as you can and as you continue and as you develop and as you grow your palpation since becomes better and better and better.
In addition to pop any muscles and tendons we also palpate the joints. This is probably what we are most known for is this gives us the information I require when we adjust the patient. We are palpating for what we are looking to adjust as we are palpating for joint restriction. What I mean by joint restriction is each joint has a normal free range of motion it is supposed to have. When you are palpating you will feel a restriction in the joints where they do not have this free range of motion and does require an adjustment. This adjustment will then restore that free range of motion and when we palpate that joint again we will feel the normal range of motion that joint was supposed to have.
Thank you for joining me again this evening. I do hope you found tonightís discussion of palpation educational and informative. As always should you or someone you know require the services of Sugar land chiropractors please call Restoration Health today so that we may schedule you an appointment. Thank you once again for joining us I hope to see you tomorrow evening for a next podcast have a good night.