Center for Wellness Practices
г. Санкт-Петербург, Приморский проспект, д.137, корпус 1.
Тел.: +7 909 579 09 90
Manual muscle testing.
When examining a patient with any pain syndrome, a doctor who knows the basics of applied kinesiology monitors how the patient performs a movement that brings pain, and also conducts a detailed questioning, trying to find out what could cause pain.
Visual diagnostics allows you to identify the so-called "weak", shortened muscles that cannot be included in the movement, as well as determine which muscles are overloaded.
In "weak" muscles, functional activity decreases. To understand why this happened, the method of manual muscle testing helps.
This method consists in checking the main characteristics of the muscles (on which the tone and excitability of the muscle depend) and consists of several phases.
First, the doctor evaluates the response of a particular muscle to a signal from the central nervous system. The patient contracts the muscle, resisting the load from the doctor's hand. This is analogous to the muscle contraction that occurs when the body assumes a vertical position. If the patient's muscles contracted, then this means that the particular muscle responded to the signal given by the nervous system.
Secondly, the doctor evaluates the ability of the nervous system to save energy on holding the muscle contraction. During this assessment, the patient must hold the muscle contraction for three seconds and then increase it. The rate of increase in the force of contraction in the transition to the "economical" subcortical version is 1.5 times. If the muscle could not save strength, then it quickly gets tired and becomes unstable, trembling.
_cc781905- 5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ Finally, the doctor evaluates the speed of the muscle's response to its stretching. The patient holds the muscle contraction while the doctor stretches the muscle, thereby simulating the gravitational stretch that occurs in a person when the body is displaced in different directions. If the muscle is able to respond quickly (that is, to increase its contraction to the tension that has arisen), then the person is kept from falling. The norm is a sharp increase in the force of muscle contraction, which manifests itself in the effect of a "stretched bowstring". Otherwise, the effect of "stretched rubber" occurs, when the strength of the muscle rapidly decreases - this condition is called hypotension.
_cc781905- 5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ restoration of muscle tone and excitation. The correct work of muscles depends, first of all, on innervation (on the connection of organs and tissues with the central nervous system through nerves).
Compression of the nerve leads to disruption of the chain "receptors - excitation of receptors - spinal cord - overlying parts of the brain - impulse to muscle cells" and, consequently, to a drop in tone and a decrease in muscle excitability.
When a nerve is compressed, the kinesiologist checks the level of compression through various movements performed by the patient and subsequent muscle testing. When the level is determined, the doctor performs manual therapy, which restores muscle tone.