Chinese ‘Tui Na' ( Relieve, Relax and Refresh Relieves pain, relaxes body and refreshes the spirit. Chinese massotherapy and manipulation will invigorate you
Dr. Zhidao Xia, Associated Professor of Orthopaedics and Traumatology from China. Graduated from Institute of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine as a M.D. in 1991. Graduated in Hubei Traditional Chinese Medical College in 1984. 11 years experience as an orthopaedic surgeon in both Western Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Currently works as a research assistant in Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Nuffield Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, the University of Oxford. Personal contact: Dr. Zhidao Xia, 6 Observatory Street, Oxford, OX2 6EW Tel. 01865 227964 (day), 01865 514172 (night) Email. Zhidao.xia@ndos.ox.ac.uk What is pain? Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage. It can be divided into acute or chronic pain, depending on the time scale over which it occurs. Why does pain occur at the first place? There are many reasons for pain. Basically, there are three essential reasons:
What are the common reasons for chronic pain? Although we do not think human body is a machine, actually we consist of matters. This means physical and chemical principal acts on human body as well. Physically, if tissue become weak by overuse, it could be called fatigue. There are two reasons for fatigue. The first reason is to use muscles for the same action that repeats and repeats again. When you play tennis, your will feel your elbow joint and muscle of the arm are very tired; When you use hand to knit sweater, you will feel index finger tired. The force, which produced by the contraction of muscle, effects on the fiber of muscle, tendon or ligament repeatedly to cause microfracture, torn and hemorrhage, slowing down circulation and accumulating of metabolic products. The second reason is keeping in the same posture for a long time. When you sit in front of a computer and bend your body for several hours, you keep in the same posture passively and you will feel back tired. In this situation, the ligaments in your back are in tension and your chest and abdomen are under pressure. The ligaments in a long time tension will be injured chronically and the strength will be lost. The physical worn of your muscles, tendons and ligaments leads to two consequences: long-term chronic pain or tiredness, or acute injury when you use your body for some heavy work or even very gentle work but put your muscle in some special posture which triggers the weakest point. Both causes pain. Chemically, if the macromolecular structures of muscle, tendon or ligament are changed, it can cause damage as well. There are two reasons to cause macromolecular structural changes. The first reason is aging. Collagen and macro-molecular could be peroxidized, or banded with saccharide, lactic acid etc throughout aging. Tissue friability will also increase by dehydration and cross-link between molecular during consenescence. The second reason is inflammation. During acute and chronic trauma, infection or immune response, the muscle, tendon and ligament may be attacked by inflammation cells and self-attack antibodies. Inflammation cells also secret factors to affect local blood vessel (swollen), nerve ending (pain) and tissue reparation (adhesion, hyperplasia, and even calcification). These inflammation factors play a critical role on chronic pain. Does medicine relieve pain? Yes, some painkillers do relieve pain. But the problem is that pain happens in local areas, and medicines affect the entire body. So after you take painkillers, they are distributed all over the body. Needless to say, the higher the dosage of medicine, the more side effects there will be. How can Tui Na relieve pain? Tui Na is also called massotherapy or manipulation. It is a traditional Chinese technique, which uses physician’s body, physical energy and hand skill to treat varies disease or injuries. For the aim of pain relieving, firstly the most painful points need to be found via a careful check using physician’s fingers. Usually, the physician can feel the muscular cord, tissue hyperplasia or adhesion. Then a soft manoeuvre is carried out using a special rhythm to eliminate the stiff muscle, stripping tissue adhesion and releasing the tendon and ligament. During this process, the local capillaries are stimulated by the rhythm of pressure and the microcirculation is enhanced. So you can feel aching, or warmth in your body and this feeling can be transmitted along special channels. Sometimes the painful points can move to a new position and change slightly, and then the same manoeuvre should be used at the new points. If the pain is near joints or vertebral articulations, a gentle manipulation is used to release tissue or nerve compression. After this manoeuvre, the degree of pain will decrease but the area of pain will increase. The reason is that as local circulation improves, some inflammatory factors are diffused. As the local circulation is promoted by the manoeuvre, the diffused inflammation factors will be eliminated by fresh blood supply and lymphatic fluid flow. Therefore, this feeling is normal and will disappear in 2~3 days. Are external used painkillers needed for Tui Na? Why? Yes, in China, sometimes herbal massage creams containing effective ingredients to relieve pain and to promote local circulation are employed in Tui Na. As I have mentioned above, after Tui Na, some inflammation factors will diffuse into tissue around the painful points and cause larger area pain for 2 to 3 days before the inflammation factors are eliminated by circulation. Herbal ingredients can diminish the feeling and local external use makes the side effects negligible. However, people may not like the smell of herbs and some herbs are not approved in this country. Personally I prefer use a prescription gel containing well-approved painkiller that is perfectly designed for external use without any irritative smell. How long does it take for Tui Na to relieve pain? If you take medicine to relieve pain, the effects can only maintain several hours, and then you need to take the medicine again. However, when you are treated by the Tui Na, the physician only gives you some biophysical stimuli---force and special rhythm. You repair your body by yourself. This is why Tui Na, or massotherapy, is called natural therapy. So the time depends not only on the skill of physicians but on the condition of your body as well. Generally speaking, if the pain is caused by trauma, the injured position is relatively fixed and stable, not being injured again during treatment, even the trauma happened many years ago, the pain can be relieved in 4 to 8 weeks. You will feel much better after 1 to 2-weeks treatment then you need time to recover. If the pain is caused by inflammation, the time depends on the degree and area of the inflammation. You can feel the pain relieved by every treatment, you need to do some exercises to recover the strength and function of your muscle or joint. If the pain is caused by incorrect posture, and you could not improve your posture during treatment, you will feel improvement after every treatment, and the pain will come back again in 1 or 2-weeks time. In this situation, you need to learn how to keep you body in balance. How often should I have a Tui Na? For pain relief, Tui Na should be carried out once a week. If twice a week is possible, then it is recommended one for treatment and one for relax. Too often treatment may cause injury or new problems. |
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