Physiotherapy

Animals have the same muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons, cartilage etc as humans do and hence animals suffer from many of the same complaints as us! Similarly, physio can benefit your animals in the exact same way that physio can benefit you. Through a range of treatments including massage, stretching, joint mobilization and specific exercises, physiotherapy can be beneficial for any animal with pain, stiffness, after injury, pre and/or post-surgery, animals with age related diseases (such as arthritis) and much more.

Animal physio’s work closely with your vet and have to be qualified human physio’s before they can start working with animals and pets 

Shockwave Therapy

WHAT IS SHOCKWAVE?

Extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ESWT) is being used all over the body, for the treatment of a wide range of musculoskeletal pain and disorders, on both animals and humans. A shockwave is a very high energy sonic pulse (much like that of a jet breaking the sound barrier); ie there is no electricity that leaves the handpiece, it is only a pressure wave! Extracorporeal means the shockwaves are generated outside the body, making the treatment non-invasive and extremely safe with virtually no side effects or risks involved.

HOW DOES IT WORK

Shockwaves stimulates the body’s natural healing response; they simulate trauma without doing trauma to kick start the body into healing. Shockwave seem to have a healing effect on many different cells in the body, for example shockwaves:

• Stimulate osteoblasts, or bone production cells to improve fracture healing and bone density
• Stimulate fibroblasts or cells that produce connective tissues, such as tendons and ligaments, to help them not only heal quicker, but with less scar tissue and improved fiber alignment.
• Increases blood supply via vasodilation and angiogenesis. Not only do shockwaves increase blood flow to an area (vasodilation) they have actually been proven to create new blood vessels (angiogenesis) thus increasing the blood supply to an area even more. This is especially important when treating structures that typically have a very poor blood supply to start with, such as tendon and ligaments. Since blood supply = healing then the more blood we can deliver to an area the quicker and better things will heal.
• Pain relief, both immediately following treatment and longer term with healing of the injury.
• Anti-inflammatory effects and
• Increased immune response in the case of acute injuries

INDICATIONS

There is an abundance of research studies and clinical evidence behind the use of shockwave with more being published all the time. As a result, the list of indications for shockwave is constantly growing, and some examples of these are:

ADVANTAGES AND BENEFITS

• Provides fast pain reduction
• Speeds healing in affected areas and decreases healing time
• Virtually no side effects
• Requires no sedation, medication or anaesthesia in most cases
• Is portable, brings the therapy to the animal
• Is very cost effective compared to other treatments
• Requires normally not more than 3 – 6 sessions

Dry Needling

Dry needling is the insertion of acupuncture needles into trigger points or ‘knots’ in the muscles. Trigger points can develop as a response to trauma, repetitive work, too much work or fatigue, arthritis, immobilization and much more.

Benefits of dry needling include:

• No soreness during or after the treatment/ pain relief
• Relaxes muscles
• Improved muscle length/ flexibility
• Able to treat deeper/ thicker tissue than massage and other manual therapies
• Improved muscle recruitment patterns/ smoother, more symmetrical movement after treatment.

TENS

Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS) is a low voltage electrical current that is used for pain relief. The electrical current stimulates the sensory (pain sensing) nerves in the area being treated to block the pain-gate, ie confuses and reduces the pain messages being sent to the brain and hence reducing the amount of pain being felt in the area.

If a different frequency electrical waveform is used then we can elicit a muscle contraction via an EMS machine (Electrical Muscle Stimulation). This can be most helpful when trying to strengthen weak and/or atrophied muscles which occurs commonly in the case of post-surgery, neurological conditions and muscle imbalances.